Vaccine to Curb Chlamydia Devastating Koalas Approved Human Progress
Pandemics
Long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalitis share similar pathophysiologic mechanisms of exercise limitation Physiological Reports
Climate/Environment
The Myth of Peak Fossil-Fuel Demand Is Crumbling Bloomberg
Betting on bonds, ignoring climate risk Moving Day
Water
Running Out: Texas’ water crisis — and the path forward Texas Tribune
The Koreas
Lee says ICE raid could make Korean firms ‘hesitant’ about investment in U.S. Yonhap
Nepal
Nepal army says in talks with protesters to decide on interim leader Al Jazeera
India
Nepal turmoil adds to India’s woes in South Asia BBC
This American nuclear company could help India’s thorium dream MIT Technology Review. Thorium reportedly helps reduce US nuclear dependence on Russia for enrichment.
Adani Bid to End Bribery Case Stalls Amid Frosty US-India Ties Bloomberg
When the State Always Doubts Your Identity The India Forum
China?
Trump pulls China hawk’s nomination for key post in tech war with Beijing South China Morning Post
US House delegation to visit China for first time in over 6 years South China Morning Post
China’s High-Tech Food Security Push China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe
Africa
US Bombs Somalia for 75th Time This Year Antiwar
Stop Trying To Make Somaliland Happen Foreign Policy
Old Blighty
Starmer’s right-wing reshuffle prepares austerity budget WSWS
Syraqistan
Palestinians in Gaza City Confront Brutal Israeli Displacement Campaign with Nowhere to Go Drop Site
Trump wishes… read.. Yes, wishes not demand… that Benjamin Netanyahu reduce…yes… reduce bombing Gaza.
Basically, Trump wants Netanyahu to drop fewer than 1000 bombs daily on Gaza. Perhaps 950 or 900, but less than the usual daily bombing.
No words to describe both men.
— Elijah J. Magnier 🇪🇺 (@ejmalrai) September 11, 2025
Col Wilkerson & Chief Fritz | Absolute Imperial Disaster: Full Scale US War In Middle East Imminent Jamarl Thomas (Video)
Gallia and Gaza New Left Review
***
‘There will be no Palestinian state,’ Israel’s PM says as he signs West Bank settlement plan Euronews
“Settler madness.” The Floutist
***
For anyone fooled by Qatar’s protests against being bombed by Israel.
“President” Herzog is staying in the Park Lane Intercontinental – which is owned by the government of Qatar.
Last night I was finally thrown out of the hotel and joined the protest just as Herzog arrived back. pic.twitter.com/2ViWSx0qr4— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) September 11, 2025
***
Diplomatic Sources to TML: Al-Sharaa’s US Visa Sets Stage for UN Debut, High-Stakes Diplomacy The Media Line. “Preparations are also underway for a bilateral meeting between al-Sharaa and President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the General Assembly.”
Porn Drones and a Ninja Instructor: The Israelis Behind the Abduction of German Heiress’ Kids Haaretz
European Disunion
Trump’s EU Tariff Gambit on India and China Crumbles Larry Johnson
Trump administration ramps up campaign against EU climate rules Semafor
New Not-So-Cold War
Zelenskiy urges allies to rethink air defence after Poland drone intrusion Reuters. “He said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk had already agreed to send military representatives to Ukraine on the issue. The Polish military representatives will undergo training on shooting down drones, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday.”
40,000 soldiers to be deployed to Poland’s border in response to Russian military exercises Anadolu Agency
Russian Drones Allegedly Swarm Poland in Major Provocation…But Whose? Simplicius
Exclusive: Germany’s army needs to more than double in size, commander says Reuters
Belarus frees 52 political prisoners as U.S. lifts some sanctions on its national airline NBC News
South of the Border
Jair Bolsonaro found guilty by Brazilian Supreme Court Brasil de Fato
Rand Paul Reveals Venezuela Boat Attack Was a Drone Strike The Intercept
Vessel struck by US military off Venezuela was heading back to shore, AP sources say AP
US vs Venezuela: a new Caribbean Crisis Black Mountain Analysis
Trump 2.0
Ted Cruz AI bill could let firms bribe Trump to avoid safety laws, critics warn Ars Technica
Appeals court blocks Trump bid to ax top copyright official in AI spat The Register
Sugar Daddies Maureen Tkacik
Weimar Republic
FBI shares photos of ‘person of interest’ as hunt for Charlie Kirk shooter continues Euronews
Ammunition in Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology: Sources WSJ. But…
Whoops pic.twitter.com/EY1OsU0esy
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) September 11, 2025
A sampling of the “swatting” across the country:
HBCUs face campus threats following Charlie Kirk shooting The Hill
Bomb threats target homes of state Democratic Senate and House leaders Wirth and Szczepanski Source NM
Midshipman shot during police response to Naval Academy threat NBC Washington
Rhode Island State Police investigating ‘bomb threats’ sent top Senate Democrats. What we know. Providence Journal
***
US politicians make additional security changes following Kirk’s death Semafor
***
Publicly condemning interpersonal acts of political violence is often a tool for normalizing and promoting ongoing acts of mass political violence like stripping people of Medicaid, destroying public health systems, police-state violence against immigrants and minorities, etc.
— Eric Reinhart (@_Eric_Reinhart) September 11, 2025
E.g.:
This demand for COINTELPRO 2.0 sure was quick
(Rufo’s employer, the neocon Manhattan Institute, was founded by former CIA director William Casey) pic.twitter.com/pDeSLfpr5r
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) September 10, 2025
State Department warns it will revoke visas of foreigners who ‘glorify violence’ after Kirk shooting Fox News
GOP’s Higgins seeks ‘ban for life’ of social media users celebrating Kirk’s shooting The Hill
The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk Chris Hedges
Israeli Leaders Found a Martyr in Charlie Kirk for Their Struggle Against the ‘Global Left’ Haaretz
***
Kirk went from unwaveringly supporting Israel to suggesting it allowed October 7th to happen, accusing it of ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and inviting one of the most prominent anti-Zionist voices to speak at TPUSA’s flagship event. If he’s willing to go this far in a matter of a…
— Jeremy Loffredo (@loffredojeremy) September 11, 2025
Neo-Nazis, who despised Charlie Kirk and frequently called him a tool of Israel and the Jews, are widely suggesting, without evidence, that Jews and Israel played a role in his assassination.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) September 11, 2025
Police State Watch
House GOP—and 11 Democrats—Pass Bill to ‘Supercharge’ Trump Anti-Migrant Agenda Common Dreams
Trump admin spends millions to reopen private California prison SF Gate
Private Prisons: An Exceptionally Niche Asset Class Meets It Moment Commercial Observer
The Uniparty
After ‘Years of Neglected Oversight,’ House Votes to Repeal Authorization Used by Presidents to Wage ‘Forever Wars’ Common Dreams
Accelerationists
Silicon Valley’s Reading List Reveals Its Political Ambitions Programmable Mutter
🚨 HOLY CRAP! Sam Altman sounds VERY guilty in the suspicious death of OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji last year
The official narrative is “suiclde,” but Balaji’s family believes he was murdered on Altman’s orders
The circumstances are INCREDIBLY concerning
— Happened one… pic.twitter.com/7rGK0ZoMkv
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) September 10, 2025
AI
OpenAI secures Microsoft’s blessing to transition its for-profit arm TechCrunch
Albania names world’s first AI-generated minister as Rama unveils fourth-term cabinet Intellinews
Peak bubble Gary Marcus
Antitrust
When Corporate America Set America Down a Dark Path BIG by Matt Stoller
Our Famously Free Press
Exclusive: New owner of CBS coordinated with former Israeli military chief to counter the country’s critics, according to leaked emails All-Source Intelligence
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Court rejects Verizon claim that selling location data without consent is legal Ars Technica
Mr. Market
Sticky inflation report unlikely to keep Fed off course for rate cut next week Yahoo! Finance
Class Warfare
ATM fees are at a record high, a new survey finds. Here’s why. CBS News
Blood Complicated The Baffler
“And as long as people have problems, the blues can never die.”
— B.B. King pic.twitter.com/kMNH7TuAMy
— Melodies & Masterpieces (@SVG__Collection) September 11, 2025
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
127 comments
Comments are closed.
“Exclusive: Germany’s army needs to more than double in size, commander says”
Germany’s young people seen to be inspecting the tops of their shoes or gazing at distant chimneys.
Is anorexia a big problem in the Bundeswehr, or is it just a lack of cheap gas to heat their wursts and kartoffelklosse?
“Vaccine to curb chlamydia devastating koalas approved”
Poor koalas!
So, having successfully removed copy editors, next step is removing plain old editors?
At least we’ll always have the John Oliver Koala Chlamydia Ward. Russell Crowe is a bloody genius.
Here is a tragicomical interview with the Russian Ambassador to Sweden. The interview is in English.
The media employee is like a crappier, provincial version of Piers Morgan. Silly questions and expecting sound-bite replies to loaded questions
But good Lord, the Ambassador really needs media training to make his case in this kind of hostile media environment. There are people in Sweden that don‘t believe in the idea that Russia as the evil empire and would be open to hearing the Russian version. But this guy isn‘t up to standard to deliver the case in a way that flies in Sweden.
https://www.svtplay.se/video/e7ddPDw/30-minuter/sergej-beljajev-rysslands-sverige-ambassador
Col Wilkerson & Chief Fritz | Absolute Imperial Disaster: Full Scale US War In Middle East Imminent – Jamarl Thomas
They say USA / Israel actions are going to push more countries in region toward Russia and China as if Russia and China also haven’t supported Israel.
Ultimately, none of the three (USA/Russia/China) countries can gaurantee the Mid East security better than unity among themselves.
Until then, they will continue to be played against one another.
Empirically the precise opposite has happened and continues to happen.
Because in the Middle East they understand one thing — strength — and Russia and China have been displaying nothing but pathetic weakness while their enemies are pressing full steam ahead.
>Because in the Middle East they understand one thing — strength
You sure that’s not just you projecting Western phallocentrism onto the Other? It’s just what happens when you allow children to read Homer instead of permanently jailing the people who provide war porn to minors.
Russia has a “complicated” relationship with Israel, and will never challenge it directly, and has shown itself to be an unreliable ally generally. China is concentrating on shoring up its economic and military resilience and isn’t going to jeopardize that by sticking its head too far over the parapet. At some point China will have to back up its rhetoric about a fairer international system and the primacy of international law by taking concrete action if it wants to make this vision a reality. But for now it is content with focusing on trade, taking care of domestic considerations and observing its western rivals slide into a self-destructive doom loop. People who expect everything to change all at once will always be frustrated and disappointed.
I have enjoyed the videos of the Chinese UN ambassador calling out Israel for BS. It would be good if they got to more views. Pardon me that I don’t have one handy to link to.
Russia has shown itself to be an unreliable ally generally, when compared to whom exacty? USA? UK? NATO? EU? China? India? Israel? Turkey? Qatar? Who are those reliable allies generally, that you speak of? Is there a list of allies sorted by general reliability?
Saudi Arabia and the UAE joined BRICS in Jan 2024.
Saudi has recently joined the Shanghai Coop Organization as a dialog partner. A step to better relations with PRC.
Great, they joined BRICS (and even that is not true — Saudi didn’t actually do).
Did they kick out the US military bases and did they close their airspace for US/UK/Israeli planes?
No.
Well, one of these things matters and the other is performative. Guess which one.
Russia and China view the Middle East as a tar baby and are willing to sit back and watch the consequences for Trump as he digs himself deeper and deeper into the morass and he will.
That is my view, I don’t really know anything but I have an opinion as well as something else.
I can’t help but think that all the bigger powers prefer a Middle East that they maintain leverage over. The divisions can be played without the psycho body count that is being witnessed these days.
But there is just as much concern about access to and price of energy resources.
I haven’t a clue as to who the guy is or was. So perhaps I’m also clueless about this supposed seething underground of rightwingers just waiting for the excuse to rise up and declare Christian “sharia.” After all 1/6 was practically a coup already, barely avoided./s
We who hang out on the web may be making too much of its importance to the bulk of America who do indeed stay glued to their smartphones but so they can talk to each other. If Kirk really was a kind of milquetoast character then it seems unlikely that biker gangs are much mourning his loss.
As for
“There is no equivalent or even similar list of Obama or Biden supporters who have carried out murders, attempted murders, or violent attacks against Republicans or conservatives in recent years,” wrote Hasan.
Maybe not murders but there was quite a lot of non peaceful rioting back in 2020. Arguments that MSNBC watchers are incapable of violence are delusional. And that the USG is capable of violence against all political stripes goes without saying.
Hedges gives a link to Kirk rebutting Ms Rachel and Jesus with Leviticus 19:18 and 18:22. I wish Hedges had quoted 19:20 to expose God’s approval of (sexual) slavery.:
«Whoever lies carnally with a woman who is betrothed to a man as a concubine, and who has not at all been redeemed nor given her freedom, for this there shall be scourging; but they shall not be put to death, because she was not free.»
“We who hang out on the web may be making too much of its importance to the bulk of America who do indeed stay glued to their smartphones but so they can talk to each other.”
Proabably the best advice right now – even though you’re not giving advice.
Turn off the news for a while.
With an election year coming up, tantrums are going to turned up to 11.
the identity of the alleged perp, who is in custody, has been released.
many people of all politics are not going to be happy, and push their preferred web of explanations versus the lone, lucky radicalized wolf
I’d like to know for the scientific record if the alleged perp. was prescribed psych meds as an adolescent, and/or had chronic exposure to hyper-THC marijuana.
not holding my breath.
Daily Mail has all the salacious details re. suspect’s personal life (as usual).
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15091869/Charlie-Kirk-assassination-updates-killer.html
Notice how the killer’s side profile bears a resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald?
I noticed how this assassin did not seem to have a middle name.
Middle names are more of a southern US thing generally speaking (Mormon country is in the West and wasn’t founded until around the Civil War I think). I mean when the middle name is a prominent part of their name. Not everyone with a legal middle name uses it as part of their signed name. My parents are from the south and gave me a 3 part name but I dropped the middle in introductions as an adult and now it only exists on my drivers license. Lee Harvey Oswald was from New Orleans.
There are syllable rules for them although I cannot describe the rules, I’d recognize one that is ‘off’ – kind of like the unspoken American English rule for order of adjectives goes general to more specific, it has something to do with rhythm/cadence – I don’t think I’ve never seen a two syllable first name followed by a two syllable middle name except when the last is one syllable for example. The syllable pattern for my full birth name was 3-1-3 and I see 2-1-2 or 1-2-2 most commonly I think.
Assassins with triple-barrel names seem to be a thing – John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, Mark David Chapman, etc. but not this guy.
all the men you listed are from/were born in the south (Ray was technically born in IL but on the Mississippi river not far from St Louis, and Missouri is the weird state out when it comes to assigning southern or northern because they supported slavery but not the confederacy, so I’ve always considered them part of the south, and everyone I knew there had 3 part names). Today’s character appears to be Mormon.
It will be especially difficult on the family of the assassin, Mormons are very clannish and the father’s days of being a policeman might be numbered.
I mentioned in another thread that Washington County where the killer resided, voted 74% for Trump to 23% for Kamala in 2024
Statewide totals were much lower, 59% for Trump to 38% for Kamala~
No you are not getting it.
If the perp is right wing, it is the lone wolf with mental problems.
If the perp is left it is a vast left conspiracy to bring the US down.
I think the only Hail Mary left for the right to pin the tale on the Donkey Show is the hope the assassin’s family were Jack Mormons~
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Mormon
“Pin the tale on the Donkey Show”
Bravo! You’ve coined a brilliant phrase!
Thanks, I’ve been doing a lot of LDS lately looking through the Beehive windowpane
Ah here’s my “lost” comment from today’s other post. May need more naps.
Elsewhere on the web the new Construction Physics is on the Manhattan Project and does a good job of explaining the complexity of the bomb creation–all the things the movie Oppenheimer was uninterested in.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/an-engineering-history-of-the-manhattan
And I read that the dreadful Ellison/Paramount gang is now angling to buy Warner Brothers including HBO and all the cable channels. It’ll be a rightwing empire!
How the hell would the killer engrave ‘oh bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao’, on a bullet? I can’t visualize how that would even work. I still think fake news is afoot. Even to a schitzo, that is too much work.
Another clue that nobody has mentioned, is the K98 Mauser they found on the campus was the standard rifle for the Wehrmacht, so doing in a fascist with a fascist weapon, a double killing.
…perhaps there was a madness to his method?
You don’t know guns. It’s a popular hunting rifle.
https://www.americanhunter.org/content/the-mauser-98-still-perfect-for-hunters/
I know symbolism when I see it~
You do not pick a gun for an important shot based on symbolism. Above all, you choose it because you are comfortable with it and it is fit for purpose.
Hard to know, and coming from a family of gun nuts, i’m sure he had ample choice of firepower, why go with that?
I’d feel the same way, were the weapon a M1 Carbine, sure you could use it, but modern rifles predominate.
True. One of the most produced firearms ever. Also true that Wukchumni doesn’t know guns (he often uses the term “assault rifle” inappropriately). That being said, I think that he might be just jesting here, as he often does. :-)
I’ll sheepishly admit that a Mannlicher-Carcano assault rifle would be a better fit~
Those require higher caliber target.
Well played…
Just in case it’s not clear, he did not use actual German vintage Karabiner 98k chambered in 7.92×57mm (like Wehrmacht did), but a “Mauser-type bolt action hunting rifle chambered in .30-06”.
Just measured the casing for a Mauser round 43mm length by 11mm dia at the base. That’s some tiny scribbling!
Perhaps he spent a lot of time w/ that rifle and the cartridges, and amused himself scribbling on casings while waiting for the barrel to cool. A K98 with iron sights can be a tack driver, but one must have some (a lot) experience with the particular rifle and the cartridges. Picking up someone else’s zero, a box of cheap (old) surplus rounds, and shooting a perfect bulls-eye under combat-like pressure is doable, but not highly likely. I hope the “press” tells us that he trained daily at a good range. He had only four rounds…Or he might be very “lucky”.
Oh. So it was just wanton murder for no reason. No wonder assassinations and killing sprees have become the order of the day in the US; blowback is a thing, after all.
“Russian Drones Allegedly Swarm Poland in Major Provocation…But Whose? Russian Drones Allegedly Swarm Poland in Major Provocation…But Whose?”
‘Poland was shooting down cheap Russian drones with missiles costing 400,000 euros each yesterday, reports Bild.’
Look, any modern military is going to have to face drones and putting the stress and strain on your top line fighters make no sense. The Return of Investment is heavily skewed towards the drones. So I got an idea. They should buy a squadron’s worth of Brazilian Super Tucanos. They are a proven design, come equipped with machine guns and can fill several rolls-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano
Let them hunt down any drones and take the strain off your top line fighters.
The Poland incident will (purely coincidentally I’m sure) make the case for big investments in drone defence from companies like Anduril.
>>>>Col Wilkerson & Chief Fritz | Absolute Imperial Disaster: Full Scale US War In Middle East Imminent
From the alt-media headlines (if not the actual analysis) it’s been imminent for months.
There are timelines to be complimented which will help with the reas… excuses for casus belli. The Countdown to Prevent Another Iranian Nuclear Crisis Just Began (25th August)
Thanks!
How do you see it?
I personally am not immediately following the doom by now as it is predicted often.
Last time too – I had the impression – even non-aligned media fell a bit for the Trumpian “trump l´oeil” of bluster and then not much else.
But that´s just me in my small room with my small screen.
Squared in from all sides so to speak.
And the world is round after all…
Re: When the State Always Doubts Your Identity — a great companion read to this important article is Arundhati Roy’s interview in last week’s New York Times: https://archive.ph/vqvXq
Here’s a good excerpt:
“You are currently under threat of arrest in India for comments you made about Kashmir in 2010. Do you feel comfortable explaining your position? And can you tell me a little bit about the status of that legal case? I really don’t want to talk about it, actually, because it just increases the risk of something being taken out of context and something blowing up. It’s dormant right now, so I just let it be.
Even the manner in which you’re responding, which is that you do not want to address this because of the fear of legal repercussions, what does that say? Well, I think in America you’re beginning to head in that direction. Ours started a long time ago, and one has to learn how to navigate it. And the reason that I don’t talk about it is because I would much rather write what I want to write than have some controversy about something you say off the cuff. It’s like they’re always trying to trip people up and trying to prevent you from thinking clearly. This culture of fear is everywhere here. People are arrested for things they say on Facebook, on Twitter, or what they don’t say. In the U.S., it seems new to you, but we have been living with this, and it’s increasingly becoming normalized. It’s a very disturbing situation, especially for Muslims, where it doesn’t stop with just court cases and jail. It goes on to lynching and murder and social boycotts and economic boycotts and homes being bulldozed. You meet people who have stories that you can’t look away from.
You touched on this a little, and so I would love to hear your thoughts on how you view parallels between the Hindu-nationalist movement in India and the MAGA movement here in the United States. There are a lot of parallels. One of the first things that happened when Modi came to power was demonetization — this direct hit on the economy, where he said 500-rupee notes were illegal, like, overnight. If you look at the attack on citizenship, the attack on universities, the attack on students, the attack on Rohingyas, the continuous uncertainty, the fact that you might be ambushed by anything at any time — it’s so similar that you wonder, is there a playbook or is it just osmotic authoritarian behavior? The ruling party is confused with the government and all of it is confused with one man. So you’re seeing that in the U.S., and I look at it in shock. You thought that there was a mechanism in place, there were checks and balances in place. But clearly there isn’t a way of handling someone who’s completely out of control. The way statisticians are being fired for giving out figures that the authoritarian doesn’t agree with — same thing here, you can’t believe any of the government figures on economics because everything that doesn’t suit the ruling establishment is dismissed, it’s thrown away, and a new picture is put in its place.
The one big difference is that in India, the mainstream media has completely compromised. It’s not just rolled over, it is actually an organ of the authoritarian state. It’s actually calling for people’s arrest or making up lies. And of course America is sitting on top of a crumbling world. Whatever Trump does affects the whole world, whereas here, it just affects this country.
Suddenly, or not so suddenly, salient.
Thanks for the link.
“Just another BRIC in the wall.”
Thanks!
Certainly here they are going to learn the wrong lessons from her insight.
It should be added that she never compromised in her scholarship. Be it India, be it the US or the EU. And has remained astute for soon 40 years (according to my memory).
Craig Murray last year warned of India possibly using lessons from how Israel does a few things for their own “Muslim problem”. Of course one often reads the sheer size of India makes it difficult to streamline. There might be some truth to that.
US NSC or think tanks – if the administration cannot tow India into its own port – will try to upset the country in other ways. Whatever harmful fallout there is welcome.
Of course the little one usually knows about India around here, perhaps makes any comment as mine questionable. Since the 1990s Arundhati Roy has been a household name. Add a few others. And having read material by them one already is an “expert” – on a country with soon 1,5B people. That´s of course not even funny.
It might be a hint that as far as I can judge in Germany fwiw her name is being dropped much less frequently than it used to be in the heydays of Occupy and A Different World is Possible. Wether that´s just her or in general the demise of decent journalism on foreign affairs I don´t know…
India buys a lot of weapons from Israel. According to this they’re the fourth largest defense supplier to India and they’re looking for more:
I believe the lesson a lot of states will take from Gaza is that they can define who is worthy of citizenship by force. I fear this more than climate chaos but it is likely they will collide in the coming decades.
“China’s High-Tech Food Security Push”
Saw a video a few days ago showing how China’s shift to high tech is playing out though I have not confirmed what they said. In that video that stated that American soybeans growers had attempted to ship their soybeans into China from Argentina and Brazil in a coupla shiploads. One huge ship full of soybeans was checked out by Chinese customs and the beans had higher protein levels than Argentinian soybeans but which matched US levels. Further investigations showed suspicious ship movements, the bags were found to be manufactured by a US company and a DNA analysis indicated a North America origin. So they sent to boats back and now the Chinese are required certificates showing the province of foodstuffs like this from farm to Chinese ports.
Benedick Donald has essentially bankrupted the USA soybean growers in entirety, chapter 86.
Liberation Day, from end user.
re: ‘This American nuclear company could help India’s thorium dream MIT Technology Review. Thorium reportedly helps reduce US nuclear dependence on Russia for enrichment.’
What could help dispel US nuclear dependence on Russia for enrichment is a properly capable nuclear power industry that recycles nuclear fuel and is moving towards closing the nuclear fuel cycle.
Nuclear waste is a myth that the US promoted to justify its crappy once-through fuel cycle model, which it set up entirely for political and economic reasons. So when various folks here complain that they don’t like nuclear power because ‘we don’t know how to get rid of the waste,’ they’re ignorantly repeating propaganda that the likes of the CIA have promoted.
We DO know how to ‘get rid of the waste.’ Talk to anybody in the nuclear industry. If they’re honest, they’ll tell you the reason nobody’s ever solved the problem of how to bury that ‘waste’ deep enough so it won’t be a problem for several centuries or millenia is that nobody who knows anything realistically expects that ‘waste’ to stay in the ground because people will probably use it for fuel in the next one or two centuries.
Because it’s barely-used fuel. In the US once-through nuclear fuel cycle, merely 3% to 5% of the original uranium fuel’s total energy content is extracted and used in the reactor before the fuel is discarded. Specifically, Uranium-235, the fissile isotope, comprises only about 0.7% of natural uranium, and enrichment boosts this to 3–5% for reactor use. After fission, a significant amount of U-238 remains.
This isotope could be converted into plutonium-239 and reused in breeder or reprocessing cycles—but in the US once-through model, it’s discarded. So are other actinides formed during operation that also retain substantial energy potential, but aren’t tapped unless reprocessing is done.
In closed or advanced fuel cycles (e.g. MOX fuel, fast reactors), reprocessing raises total energy extraction to 60–90%, depending on the technology and number of recycles. Furthermore, with 21st century technology like laser isotope separation (LIS) —
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/laser-isotope-separation
the remainder that can’t be reprocessed for fuel can be transmuted. There’s no need for any ‘nuclear waste’ to exist.
Why does the US nuclear industry have its crappy nuclear power model? This is due to: –
[1.] The mid-20th century historical contingency that Admiral Rickover’s nuclear submarine program developed the boiling water reactor model first and this military application was then ported over to civilian application, and the US has been incapable of moving on from this 75-year old technology;
[2.] As always, the US government placed profitability for US corporations first, and discarding barely-used fuel as so-called waste without recycling seemingly promised greater profits for US energy corporations;
[3.] The US wanted to maintain its nuclear hegemony as much as possible and be able to threaten other states who didn’t have nuclear weapons, and reprocessing technologies are dual use — they’re nuclear enrichment technologies, too.
If you’ll recall, in the 1970s and 80s the US beef with the French nuclear power industry industry was essentially that it did reprocessing and the US beef with the Iranian nuclear industry is that it’ll permit enrichment now.
I got an idea. The US industry needs enriched uranium and are getting from the Russians still, right? So what if the US makes a deal with Iran to buy all their enriched uranium and any more that they can make. Iran gets rid of their enriched uranium but make big bucks to spend on American imports. Its a win-win all around. Well, if Bibi allows the US to do so that is.
Its a win-win all around.
To be serious: not really, even putting Bibi aside.
The Iranians want energy independence. And why not?
I can’t say anything about the scientific value of your claim that nuclear waste Shouldn’t really exist.
That sounds like a semantic issue for the future. All of these uses for nuclear waste to address the life cycle, sounds like what SHOULD be happening. If these technologies are being implemented anywhere, then the knowledge base as to the results will show us how everyone SHOULD proceed in the future. Good for those who may benefit someday.
I wouldn’t bet a dollar against our corrupt energy industry, doing whatever it takes to make more money now… and let the future deal with the consequences.
But , you can’t really say we don’t have a nuclear waste problem in the US. Look at hanford, los alamos, and other repositories of waste for a relatively few short decades. We already have pollution in the atmosphere. So how are you going to undo what has already been done? Yucca mountain…. what a stupid idea…
I could hope as you say of a more elegant and substantive approach of how to deal with nuclear energy…Maybe china will lead the way. They seem to have certain strengths, and maybe this will be one of them.
But in america…. we are stupid. we don’t let a little pollution get in the way of some companies making money. So we DO have a nuclear waste problem. Also… the industry is as corrupt as the government that is supposed to regulate it. So, anything likely to happen here in the near future is not likely do be done well, or intelligently. But someone is going to make a bunch of money.
And the answer being to make the government of the US benefit the people…. is too heavy a lift at this point in time…So again…. we have a waste problem.
So, in other words, you’re agreeing with Michaelmas, but have to wave your no- nukes flag. He explicitly said it wasn’t a physics or engineering problem, but a political / profit driven one.
Reprocessing fuel will happen sooner or later, as long as we haven’t completely destroyed civilization beforehand, but repeating slogans tarring the entire conceptual space because the entrenched players seem immovable is one of the tools they use to maintain appearing immovable.
You said: “ …you’re agreeing with Michaelmas” but rob said: “I can’t say anything about the scientific value of your claim that nuclear waste Shouldn’t really exist.” That doesn’t sound like agreement, it sounds like rob is saying that he doesn’t have the specific knowledge to be able to speak to that.
You said: “He explicitly said it wasn’t a physics or engineering problem, but a political / profit driven one.” That sounds like you’re saying rob didn’t agree, but rob said: “ …we don’t let a little pollution get in the way of some companies making money.” So it seems he does at least take on board that the problem can totally be profit-driven.
Here’s the thing: doesn’t matter really why we have to contend with a nuclear waste problem. What matters is that we do. And no one is saying that it’s not pollution and not a health hazard.
And we’re at a point in our decline where government authorities that should be requiring energy companies to recycle their fuels ain’t gonna.
@ Rob (and whoever) —
All flag-waving — yours and mine — aside, the point here is that had nuclear power been handled intelligently, and particularly had the US not implemented the nuclear policies it did both at home and abroad, then how much global climate forcing by CO₂ release could have been avoided?
Let’s suppose, specifically, that the world as a whole had moved to nuclear power along the model France implemented in the 1970s. France today generates around 70 percent of its electricity from nuclear, so it’s one of the lowest per-capita CO₂ emitters among industrialized nations. One recent analysis I’ve seen claims that France’s nuclear program has prevented emissions equivalent to 28 times its total CO₂ output in 2023 over the past 47 years.
Okay. Scaling that globally, if the world had followed France’s lead starting in the 1970s or 1980s, we can estimate:
Global electricity-related CO₂ emissions could have been slashed dramatically. Electricity generation accounts for roughly 40% of global CO₂ emissions. Including plant construction, nuclear emits some 4 grams of CO₂ per kWh, as compared to 400–1000 grams for coal and 200–500 grams for gas. That’s a 99 percent reduction in many cases.
As the world has emitted over 1,700 gigatonnes of CO₂ since 1850, and about 1,000 gigatonnes since 1970, a nuclear-powered world could plausibly have avoided 300–500 gigatonnes of that.
In turn, given that the models suggest that every 1,000 gigatonne of CO₂ adds approx. 0.45 degrees C of warming, that means we might have avoided 0.13–0.23°C of warming, which is a substantial dent in the currently visible 1.2 degrees C rise.
(Visible, because there’s another 3 to 8 degrees of warming in the pipeline currently being masked by aerosol particulate release.)
So the point is that if things had been different they wouldn’t have been the same?
Hanford
Now I see Rob has anticipated me.
The article on Texas water supply in links above, is using a GenAI bot at the end of the article where we can ask questions, dig deeper on a specific topic etc I almost tried it out, but held off…. What stopped me was the thought about the gallons of water I be using for the LLM to spit out a response.
Kind of ironic that an article on Water, is directly contributing, potentially, to wasting water.
What one will notice about this LLM usage is, the answers rarely give you what one wants if we want a deeper understanding of a concept in 1 query. We will have to keep prompting and fine tuning.
I sometimes feel like humans are no smarter than a bunch of Dodo’s following each other off a cliff with the short sighted approach to everything.
“GOP’s Higgins seeks ‘ban for life’ of social media users celebrating Kirk’s shooting”
If some of these GOP lawmakers had their way, they would bring back Proscription lists-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proscription
blues everyday, deeply personal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9EKqQWPjyo&list=RDMM&index=41
your everyday metaphorical Bob Dylan telling us “Things Have Changed”
mourn with Prince https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm03wqLY3Nc&list=RDMM&index=27
RT is reporting that they think that they have Kirk’s shooter in custody-
‘Trump said he had been informed of the suspect’s arrest just minutes before going on air. “Essentially, somebody that was very close to him turned him in,” the president stated, without revealing any further details.
NBC News has also reported that a suspect in the high-profile murder case has been taken into custody, citing senior law enforcement officials. This person was reportedly turned in to the police by a family member, who saw his photos released by the authorities.’
https://www.rt.com/news/624571-suspected-charlie-kirk-assassin-custody-trump/
Of course the next question is just who is he and why he did it.
From the Daily Mail I linked above. They had found his discarded gun.
Cox said there were three unfired casings:
One read, ‘hey fascist! catch!’ with an up arrow symbol, right arrow symbol, and three down arrow symbols.
Another one read: “oh bella ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao,” Cox said.
The third fired casing read: ‘if you read this you are gay lmao.’
Sounds like another Butler style nut rather than a vast leftwing conspiracy.
The police themselves walked that account back, even the WSJ had a headline that said so.
Yes, this suspect doesn’t resemble the droids the MAGA gang is looking for.
Was watching Fox News @ physical therapy, and in an hour of coverage, they barely talked about the shooter in terms of political sway one way or another.
As I mentioned the other day, it turns out the assassin is from the Zionsist Movement.
Apparently he comes from a very pro-gun family, and Kirk was very pro-gun too, kismet.
I find the whole thing depressing. No manifesto, no blue hair, no red meat for the MAGA base. Looks like the kid just did it for the heck of it. Two live ruined, not to mention the families.
This is who we are in 2025. Life is cheap.
Former site moderator and host extraordinaire Lambert would often summarize a week like this in the following, I am paraphrasing, statement. A month just happened all within a single week.
A little virtuoso guitar from BB King is soothing, even if temporary.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”–Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.”
Whether Lenin was paraphrasing someone, dunno.
Geological catastrophe metaphors are also on my playlist..
RE: Common Dreams AUMF article, key paragraph:
In other words, nothing to see here. Not to mention Trump just blows people up with no AUMF needed (Monroe Doctrine I guess?).
Reading the long form article on the corrupt Sugar industry, hoo boy and yikes. Sounds like just the sort of neighbors one would wish for in Palm Beach county. Small wonder ( eh, not ) how diabetes and related illnesses became more prevalent in the past 40 to 50 years.
Makes the billionaire class pursuing shiny objects ala professional sports teams and luxe hideaway escapes look like toddlers. Which is saying a lot.
If we’re posting blues, I love revisiting the session that Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan did. Opens with an incredible version of Born Under a Bad Sign, then on to Texas Flood.
Re. Kirk shooting:
All these famous people screaming for steps to be taken against the “radical left” in the US have imparted a huge sense of relief.
I have spent the years since 1975 searching the country frantically in hopes of figuring out where the radical left went! No matter how hard I looked, I could find no trace of anything remotely resembling a group of high-profile leftist agitators working to take down the warmongers and imperialists. The last couple of decades have been especially bad.
What a relief to find out they are suddenly all around us.
The “radical left” s whatever the reactionaries want it to be. That is the beauty of it. I am sure they have used this label on every Democrat and anyone they have labeled as a “RINO” for the past decade. Reagan when he raised taxes would have been labeled the radical left.
I just find it amusing that sometimes the reactionaries are 180° off in their terms of abuse. Insults can apparently be compliments under the right conditions.
We saw this with the Sanders campaign when his opponents were abusing him for suggesting free healthcare, raising social security, raising taxes on the rich, and so on.
Did we MAHA yet?
States Want to Ban ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Cookware. These Chefs Say Don’t Do It. (NY Times via archive.ph)
Wowzers.
Cha-Ching!
Safe when used responsibly, LOL! I guess no heat then.
Try a well cured cast iron pan, ffs.
I gave up on that. From what the Internet says, I’m doing it wrong. But that magic cast iron owners have with chemistry I do not. Mine always flash rusted instantly. Do not pass go do not collect unrusted cookware.
I couldn’t reseason either. Always flash rusted, the issue I’m trying to resolve sigh. Moved to carbon steel. No issues now.
I blame trash Lodge cast iron. It’s pitted. From the factory. Apparently classic cast iron was sanded down smooth.
No idea how you get flash rust out of pitted from the factory cast iron. And Lodge pre seasoned material is trash that comes off quickly. Oh well.
Lodge used to make good pans. The iron of their current offerings is of poor quality, much too grainy. My pans are all older, Wagners and Eries and the like. They hold the cure. I’ve a Griswold muffin pan that puts out an unrivaled muffin. I use bacon fat to cure my pans.
Been using Lodge cast iron for 30 years. Follow the instructions on 1st seasoning, avoid soaking in water or lots of soap. It’s not that hard?
Yeah, that’s exactly the condescension that also turned me off from cast iron. Clearly the user is stupid. You cast iron people are something else.
Thanks!
Rare but Serious Complication Shows Flu’s Potential Harm (NY Times via archive.ph)
(bold mine)
COVID immune damage, is that you?
A few remarks on the alleged suicides of Gary Webb and Suchir Balaji.
Gary Webb allegedly shot himself in the head, twice, with a double action revolver.
This is possible because sometimes animals (Including humans) have convulsions or spasms when shot in the head. I witnessed this when I shot a diseased trapwise feral cat with a .22, the bullet entered 1/2 inch behind the ear and that cat went counter high in my kitchen, twice, before finally dying.
The family of Mr Balaji had their own autopsy done which revealed that he had been shot in the head twice, something that the SF medical examiner missed.
It’s SF, Jake.
And no surprise to anyone familiar with SF’s government, being appointed ME in SF has nothing to do with one’s qualifications or lack thereof.
Mr Balaji allegedly shot himself in the head, twice, with a Glock while full of GHB which is a poweful muscle relaxant.
Supposedly BANG, Relax, Spasm, BANG.
With a recoil operated self loading pistol.
See “Limp Wristing”, if you are not holding a Glock firmly you will get a “Stove Pipe” jam.
And if you are full of GHB I doubt you could hold a Glock firmly enough for it to cycle even if you had not already blown your brains out.
The death of Webb may very well have been a suicide and if he were drunk at the time I would consider it more likely.
Suchir Balaji’s death was almost certainly murder, the odds of his Glock functioning under those circumstances are between slim and none and slim is out of town.
For fans of George Carlin’s “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it” line of thinking, I highly recommend the Sugar Daddies article in today’s link. Maureen Tkacik has become a must read for me – great investigative journalism.
Israeli Strikes on Media Offices Kill At Least 25 Journalists in Yemen, Antiwar.
Yemeni opposition officials warned that the Israeli attacks are leading to broader support for Ansar Allah
The deadliest journalist massacre in years.
Triti Parsi linked to this very interesting Foreign Policy article on Iran which looks into why Iran hasn’t pivoted more to China by now, and why China has been rather ‘cool’ on plunging in fully with an Iranian alliance.
Iran’s Foreign Policy Is Changing in Real Time (Foreign Policy, Sept 11 2025)
Amazingly, the ‘reformist’ factions in Iran still harbor hopes of improving relations with the West:
Evidently hope dies last if they think there is a chance of promoting co-operation with the Western powers. Really reminds me of Brian Berletic’s talk with the Duran boys a few days ago about how dangerous it can be if your country’s political elites get their brains colonized by the globalist mode of thought. Although there is deeper re-alignment happening now due to the Israeli-US attacks in June.
On the China-Iran relationship:
China apparently was looking at deeply upping co-operation back in 2016 and was rebuffed. $40 billion! Adds more context to Russia’s rebuffed overtures to Iran as well. Trust takes time, even more so when there is a pro-Western faction but not much of a pro-China faction. America (and the Western world’s) greatest trick has always been the foreign elite buy in. So there we are.
The US has tremendous rewards to offer fellow travelers in other countries. Or at least the fellow travelers think so. If you look at where the most billionaires are in the world, the US keeps coming out on top. And, if you’re extremely wealthy, where would you like to live? China, or the US?
I’m not saying everyone in Iran thinks this way, far from it. But there seem to be enough such people to comprise a fifth column in Iran, and probably in almost any country. Personal greed is the secret weapon of most imperial powers.
Anyone who has looked at the actual history and fate of US quislings would probably not be reassured. Saddam, Noriega, Marcos, Guaido, Batista, and many, many others ended up in places they assuredly did not have in mind originally. (Things always look much better on the drawing board!)
Indeed, bribery is one of the oldest tricks of statecraft. I believe it was Philip II, Alexander the Great’s father, who remarked that he could conquer any city with nothing more than a donkey laden with gold brought up to the gates.
https://7news.com.au/news/covid-outbreak-in-control-tower-causes-sydney-airport-chaos-c-20000466
COVID outbreak in control tower causes Sydney Airport chaos
Oh dear, airlines have got themselves collectively furious over a Covid outbreak, how nice.
First they profit from spreading it far and wide, while punishing mask wearers on a random basis, now they have profits threatened by sick people with a deadly illness, and they are furious.
It struck me that we never said boo when the assassinazis have been going at it recently, oh-we acted as if we were shocked, shocked that the Israelis did a hit job on Doha that rubbed out innocents, but not the intended targets.
But get a lone wolf marksman here, and we go ape shit.
We have had attempted assassination on a presidentian candidate,, real assassinations of politicians, and now an assassination of a mouthpiece for the reactionaries in the past year or so. The political violence is becoming normalized in a violent culture.
I certainly noticed the distinct lack of “thoughts and prayers” this time, it was straight to the jugular from Demonic Don on down. Whew.
And now it’s a Republican shooter, can’t wait for the whiplash mañana.
I’m flabbergasted most any time I speak with a “liberal”
I spoke with an old close friend yesterday, that is exactly like most liberals.
He admitted that he spent no time reading or trying to understand Ukraine war. Yet he was positive we must defend the democracy in Ukraine. .and continue to send weapons. He had no idea the number of casualties for Ukraine.
He didn’t believe that Ukrainians have been round up and sent to the fronts only to be killed by the Russians. He didn’t know the Russian language was band.
He truly believes that Putin is evil, a dictator, and is reconstituting the USSR. He said the security concerns of the Russians, is of no significance.
He is absolutely certain that Putin is a direct threat to western Europe.
He believes Russia is collapsing economically and we should do anything to make it happen.
He believes Russia tampers with our elections. While ours are corporate/billionaire extravaganzas.
He is unaware of the decline of Europe.
If I ever try to explain the complexity of these issues. It’s a waste of time.
If i criticize the democrats, I’m a Trumper.
If you say, we have two rightwing parties that work together…. they don’t get it….
It’s scary. If someone tells me I’m wrong or ill-informed, I check.
None of the liberals in my family will admit that the democrats promoted/allowed the Genocide in Gaza.
Whenever given the chance, I tell people that the world will not forget our GENOCIDE in Gaza. It’s all on record. So many GENOCIDES by the western world have been forgotten or ignored, Gaza won’t ever go away.
We may be able to set the world on fire, but I doubt our history will be written by Americans. The world will move on.
I spent most of 2022-2023 living with my parents to help them with elder care for my grandparents (I’m an only child in my mid-40s, they’re in their late 60s/early 70s). They would be considered average Democrats, living in a very Republican part of flyover. They hate Trump, love Obama, watch national and local news every night, and any news consumption beyond that comes from smartphone news aggregation, like that from Apple News. I was there for the start of both the SMO and Israel’s war on Gaza, so I saw their reaction to the start of both conflicts and how it was shaped over time. I will never forget my mother hissing at the TV in the most scathing, disgusted voice to footage of Lavrov discussing the need for security arrangements: “YOU STARTED IT!” Any attempts I made to probe or question that would make her suspicious or bored. She didn’t want to know facts, she had already made up her mind.
With the Israel war on Gaza it has been different. At first my parents were pro-Israel, after all they still have fresh memories of 9/11 and can easily map one terror event on another. They even seemed really annoyed by the pro-Palestinian student protests in the US; I remain convinced the absolute worst thing that can be done to a Liberal is to inconvenience them, so protesting of any type is simply inexcusable. My filial duties completed, I had already returned to my coastal enclave by the time the famine footage began hitting the nightly national news. That was the point when she began asking me Why doesn’t Israel just stop? Haven’t they done enough? She knows I work with an Israeli team and have been on calls with them when missiles come in. I tried to explain some of the history to her and without the thick layer of Russophobia from a lifetime of the Cold War propaganda I got a little further before she began tuning it out too. At the end of the day she is against the genocide, for which I am relieved.
After the daily Gaza body counts became consistently high I began pointing out that after 3.5 years of war in Ukraine we still don’t see civilian casualties anywhere approaching Gaza. Doesn’t that make her wonder if what Ukraine is telling the US is perhaps less than true? That perhaps Russia are not the evil villains she has been told? But there are no starving babies, nothing that is acutely and immediately wrong for her to latch on to without also holding in mind several facts that are antithetical to what she has been told for years, so the best she can do is sigh that everyone should just stop fighting.
This whole experience has led me to believe most liberals (indeed, most Americans regardless of political affiliation) are simply intellectually lazy. They don’t want to know what is happening, they want to be right. That is all. The Republicans are just as bad with their support of Israel no matter what. All of them cannot imagine a world where not only are all of their very strong opinions wrong but they have absolutely no say in the ultimate outcome.
My father was an officer in the US military when the USS Liberty was attacked and has strong feelings afterwards as signal intelligence got spread in the US armed forces. He is also knowledgeable of the British being driven out of Palestine by terrorists.
Even after that, he has a hard time to not resisting the plucky little nation (the size of new Jersey, without the glamour of Elizabeth or the Meadowlands landfill) narrative.
Terrorists are people who resist colonialism?
If new invaders/colonialists drive out the old via terrorism or otherwise, is that an improvement? (See Vilnius, 1942, for instance.)
Terrorism describes means, not goals. Zionist terrorists did play a part in making the British leave, though.
Terrorism in the dictionary, yes. But when used by the government, it now solely implies a lack of basic human rights. One who may be extrajudiciously killed.
I have a similar family situation, but I can report that before my dad died he, after a life time patriotic liberal Dem who voted Reagan and supported all the wars, turned to me and said “well, we cooked the planet didn’t we?”, and I gently said ya, dad, we did.
My mom is 92 this year and while just a short time ago was on the Kamala train has now been discussing with me how history never ends and that the US has a huge blowback on its plate. She was born in 1934 and would have only barely caught the tail end of the depression and lived WWII as a young girl.
“This whole experience has led me to believe most liberals (indeed, most Americans regardless of political affiliation) are simply intellectually lazy. They don’t want to know what is happening, they want to be right.”
I’d expand that to people in general, all over the world. Russian liberals and Russian patriots are both like that en masse in my experience, except for the very few I know who deliberately, systematically attempt to be otherwise. I’d be glad for examples of some highly enlightened foreign citizenry elsewhere. However, I know from myself that trying to understand events in a way that doesn’t just pander to my biases requires a constant, uncomfortable effort. You have to actually be willing to discover that you are wrong; you have to spend considerable time and energy on parsing unpleasant information from questionably trustworthy sources (if only because those sources are ultimately also people). And in the end you might still be no closer to the truth, which you could find out by accident much later.
That being the way humans apparently are, I cannot seriously blame people for not wanting to do that to themselves. Although this does, of course, make a mockery of various democratic ideals, which are rooted in the assumption that people would be better citizens if given the chance, well-informed, sound in their judgement, very interested in justice and truth.
Very well expressed.
Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that in examining any world event, if you are not made uncomfortable by some of your conclusions, you are not doing critical thinking correctly. Having some grounding in a particular ‘ism’ is an important intellectual anchor, not least in testing your own assumptions against reality, but I think we are all vulnerable to confirmation bias and most ideologies thrive on the power of lazy thinking and bias.
To be filed under Acceleration.
More than two million people evacuated from deadly floods in Pakistan, BBC.
That’s a lot of climate refugees, perhaps temporary, perhaps not.
This is an interesting aside, emphasis mine,
This week, the UN allocated $5m to support Pakistan’s flood response, while the US State Department approved funding and deployed disaster response personnel – the first assistance of its kind during Trump’s second term, ABC reported.
Never let a crisis go to waste
Right-Wing Activists Urge Followers to Expose Those Celebrating Kirk Killing
Kirk´s murder shocked the world? Seriously?
Martyanov calls him a martyr? Seriously?
I only know, two days ago friends knew nothing about him. Never heard of him.
And if I didn´t fall for a joke, Mark Sleboda too seemed rather oblivious…
And now for the umpteenth time the country is at the brink of breaking apart, civil war, upheaval.
Revolution never sounded more lame than these days…
Sorry but this is kindergarten…
first minute:
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/09/he-is-martyr.html
If Kirk was a martyr then EU Parliament wouldn´t get out of mourning all year long commemorating someone every week, were it serious.
Gaza alone produces a dozen serious heroes every week.
How many martyrdoms are being declared?
How many global shocks?
How often did EU mourn the reporters kill in the Ukraine War or in Gaza or in Lebanon or Syria.
I dont wanna hurt feelings, but ffs.
It’s being covered extensively in the Kommersant (but they cover all major foreign political stories and their tone is, as usual, neutral; they just observe that he was very popular on his side, very unpopular with the others and a key ally of Trump, plus this is a sign of America’s increasing division and political violence) but not mentioned in our local city news portal (which occasionally mentions sufficiently consequential foreign events).
Vzglyad has an “America expert” from a Ministry of Foreign Affairs institute calling Kirk “the American Danila Bagrov”. Bagrov was a celebrated 90s action movie hero, a young man who served in the First Chechen War and then got dragged into violent crime but tried to stick to his simple sense of justice (whether that sense of justice is worth a damn has been debated, but that’s the image). I guess in this case the point of comparison is that Kirk was, supposedly, a fearless fighter for the truth and one of those who could ensure that Trumpism would outgrow Trump and common sense would prevail in America once more.
That does strike me as fairly ridiculous. I think that a lot of people, or at least a lot of public intellectuals, in Russia have a kneejerk hatred of all things connected to the Western left (whether because they’re anti-leftist in general or because they are Communists; both tend to despise most Western leftists, and so find a curious common ground), and so are disproportionately fond of people like Kirk. That sort of American seems to them more “human” than the others. That he has, apparently, been down on supporting Ukraine surely did not hurt either. I don’t follow Martyanov, but at a guess he may share in this tendency.
Mind you, this murder wouldn’t do much by itself. The reaction to it in America may be a different story. I also don’t see the US going into a civil war any time soon, but further escalation of political violence seems plausible and could go pretty far.
Daniil, I am curious. Is the Russian antipathy towards Western leftists, or towards Western “leftists”? Who would you consider a Western leftist that is reasonably well-known in Russia? Or is the disdain due to their observed inability to rein in the dominant imperialists and neoliberals?
“Who would you consider a Western leftist that is reasonably well-known in Russia?”
Hmm… Chomsky, probably? I wouldn’t say he’s known among the general population (I’m not sure any living American leftist is except through dim Soviet-era memories of Angela Davies), but he’s come up often enough with people who are otherwise not very interested in American politics.
“Or is the disdain due to their observed inability to rein in the dominant imperialists and neoliberals?”
That is a part of it, but also, there isn’t a lot of sympathy for the “woke”, for lack of a better word. What I see even among Russian leftists, outside of the most thoroughly westernised ones, is that they regard Western leftists as more focused on what is seen as petty culture war issues while letting more substantial economic and foreign policy issues get away from them. They seem to be either weirdly incompetent or outright coopted. That also makes the difference between leftists and “leftists” (meaning Democrats and their ilk, persumably?) appear blurry. The former may speak differently but either do nothing or fall in line with the latter when push comes to shove. Some people make the distinction between those two groups, some don’t.
I should add, “distracted” is the most charitable frame I’ve seen among them. Most communists and “leftist patriots” (pro-Russian non-communists with more moderately left-wing economic views and often a more populist approach) are also very socially conservative, in my experience. Certainly with regards to LGBT+, where many of them say Stalin had the right idea. They would say they support racial equality and women’s rights, but in a 20th century frame; they typically look down upon what they see as manufactured modern identity politics (that may be a better phrase than “woke”) with its accompanying virtue signalling and hypersensitivity to slights. Meanwhile, the most visible part of the self-identified Western left appears to them to be primarily concerned with such things.
Most of people never heard of him, and would not if he was not shot. He was some kind of niche celebrity, and this is his 15 minutes of fame. Everyone else is trying to use the incident for their own agenda, just like with the poor girl form the Ukraine murdered in the subway. There is nothing new under the sun.
Martyanov needs to take the chill pill. Sleboda is da man.
P.S, This is also an illustration of how much “American lives matter”, when compared to us foreigners. One guy is more important then one million of dead Slavs (plus Gonzalo Lira, et al.).
Have just learned the sad news that BBC In Our Time radio/podcast will be losing the retiring Melvyn Bragg after 27 years, although he may do other shows. So the annual summer break turns into a forever break for Bragg and a blow to some of us who are devoted to the show including Lambert, wherever you are. A new host will be chosen.
https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2025/melvyn-bragg-decides-to-step-down-from-presenting-in-our-time
If Seinfeld was a “show about nothing” In Our Time is a show about everything with different academic experts each week to discuss.
Speaking of Seinfeld, the Guardian reports he equates anti-genocide protesters to the Ku Klux Klan:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/sep/10/jerry-seinfeld-palestine-comments
Interesting obs from Larry Johnson, who’s channeling the Gray Zone (ie not exactly a RW source):
https://sonar21.com/is-there-something-more-nefarious-behind-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk/
This is in line with what I read at the time (when all I knew about Kirk at the time was from the annoying TPUSA ads on YT and some caricatures from both sides), where he was said to be speaking out against US getting too involved in Israel’s wars, and the mysterious tweet from Harrison something or other about how Kirk feared Israel might come after him if he went off the reservation. I’m skeptical if there is too much here, but I suspect stories like this will help draw his fans, many of whom, I think, were skeptical of the Lib and Cons mainstreams, to the more “nuances” of where things are around the world (even if those “nuances” are really in the form of hundreds of thousands dead…)
Re: Hatfield and McCoy (BLOOD COMPLICATED)
Funny how the writer perpetuates stereotypes by making accents nicknames.
To whit:
Anse for Anderson. Say it quickly. Same word.
Ranel for Randolph.
Johnse for Johnson.
‘Lias for Elias.
I get microaggression now! Your pronunciation sucks. Must be spelt different. Rednecks Emma Wright?