Links 12/6/2025

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1. The Rev Kev December 6, 2025 at 7:28 am

   “The Trump Administration’s New US National Security Strategy Signals a Divorce from NATO Over Ukraine”

   I was reading through this article about the new doctrine when I came across this section-

   ‘A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes.’

   Is this projection? One reason that Trump was elected was to get America out of the Ukraine but he has instead made it his own. Then there was taking part in Israel’s war in the Middle East and now there is this threatened attack on Venezuela. Don’t a large America’s majority want an end to continuous wars or is this the US ‘governments’ subversion of democratic processes’ at work here?

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   1. Lee December 6, 2025 at 8:01 am

      Pots and kettles all the way down.

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   2. Kontrary Kansan December 6, 2025 at 10:54 am

      We scarcely need foreign poñicy lessons on the “subversion of democracy” in the US. Pols pay attention to donors not voters.

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   3. Lefty Godot December 6, 2025 at 12:40 pm

      The ability of governments to ignore the wishes of the majority is a cardinal feature of democracy as now practiced. Perhaps that was always the case and the disjuncture between the will of the governed and their government’s behavior was not so easy to observe, due in part to more primitive means of communication and absent or unreliable polling. But it’s beyond dispute now.

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2. Louis Fyne December 6, 2025 at 8:11 am

   The American Red Cross is a prime case of admin. bloat, >20% of donations goes to administration and fundraising costs. (IRS Form 990)

   But tell a Normie that the Red Cross is “a scam”—-you come across as a crank loon, lmao

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   1. Yves Smith Post authorDecember 6, 2025 at 8:20 am

      Oh, it’s worse than that. They raised money for Hurricane Sandy and there is no evidence they delivered any services. Somewhere in the archives, we wrote up what IIRC was a ProPublica report on other American Red Cross no-shows.

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      1. ArvidMartensen December 7, 2025 at 12:57 am

         The Australian Red Cross raised millions off the back of the devastating bushfires right down the east coast in 2019.
         The biggest use of the money I saw was a huge sign advertising the Red Cross in our local shopping centre.

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   2. The Rev Kev December 6, 2025 at 8:21 am

      I was reading of some disaster that hit in America not that many years ago and millions of dollars were raised as people donated money for disaster relief but I believe that none of that money made its way to the disaster area. The Red Cross was, however, able to spend a lot of money on publicity.

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   3. Louis Fyne December 6, 2025 at 9:07 am

      to be kinda fair to the Red Cross, I looked into some of the charities who have fundraiser license plates in my state (for non-USAers, an organization can ask the state to issue a vanity license plate with the org’s design and the org gets a cut).

      Some of those charities have administrative and fundraising costs that are >50% of donations

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   4. Patrick Lynch December 6, 2025 at 10:24 am

      Change American Red Cross to United Way of the Bluegrass and I don’t think as many normies will think you’re a crank loon. About 30 years ago, United Way got caught up in a scandal over what happened to donations not being used for their stated purpose. I seem to remember it had both a local and a national aspect to the scandal where the local UW chapter head was accused of misusing funds in a way similiar to the national CEO. I can’t find the local stories online, but I did find a Wikipedia entry on the national UW CEO’s scandal.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Aramony

      The entire rank and file of the public library I retired from refused to have deductions from our underpaid wages to finance the lifestyle of an abusive CEO. For a long time, United Way came around begging for donations and people declined remembering the scandal. It’s been long enough that people have either forgotten or were not around when it happened.

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      1. Rod December 6, 2025 at 2:29 pm

         This is stink that blew in on Charlotte circa 2007/2008.
         Fall out still continues for those w a memory:

         https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/united-way-settles-lawsuit-with-former-ceo/275-374182932&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwivrMmb16mRAxUr8MkDHebyKKcQFnoECAgQAg&usg=AOvVaw3EaHYciK7SaSinel7RHaWp

         https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.philanthropy.com/news/nc-united-way-accused-of-inappropriate-accounting/&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwivrMmb16mRAxUr8MkDHebyKKcQFnoECAIQAg&usg=AOvVaw2ekuTxgFg7rLL01u8_v-w8

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   5. Laughingsong December 6, 2025 at 11:56 am

      Indeed. There has been enough of this type of story about large organizations that we now only give to small local charities with good reputations. We look for their past actions and present initiatives and how well they work, but also their structure, such as the size of their administrative costs, and what is in their mailers: like don’t spend money on sending out calendars and tote bags, just a simple letter with an envelope.

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   6. eg December 6, 2025 at 10:44 pm

      A lifetime ago the Red Cross accredited my swimming lessons. I don’t believe I’ve had occasion to deal with them since.

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   7. Eric Anderson December 7, 2025 at 1:38 am

      Why the focus solely on 501(c)(3)s.
      We’re simply talking about the Iron Law of Institutions.
      Corporations, check.
      Universities, check.
      Political parties, check.

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3. Mikerw0 December 6, 2025 at 8:29 am

   On the finances of AI — there is no possible way any of this math works.

   I recently got into a serious discussion with senior I-bankers at a top tier investment bank. My conclusion is so long as they continue to earn fees from putting financing in place for the hyper scale data centers asking the real questions is irrelevant. And, I literally got the following answer, which is there are smart people behind these things (LLMs) so they must know what they’re doing, even if they don’t tell us.

   That said, no one disputed my back of the envelope math…

   This is an unheard of level of capital expenditure for an unproven technology that people really don’t want to pay for. Assume a $500 Bn cap-ex = $500 Bn in assets. Then use the average ROA and profit margins for Meta, Apple and ABC (Google). For each $500 Bn on asset you need $355 Bn in revenue per year (500 x 20.5% ROA / 28.9% profit margin). While there aren’t good disclosures on current revenues, which probably tells you something, it is nowhere near this level. At $1 trillion this increases to over $700 bn per year, each.

   At a minimum this means a massive increase in the fee to use these things, that no-one seems to want to pay for now.

   And, assume that in 2030 there is a $2 trillion installed base across the industry, which is what is being discussed (OpenAI being like $1.3 on its own). And, assume that to get a corporation to replace workers with these tools they would want a 25% improvement in cost. So, for a $100,000/year worker at that productivity Improvement a corporation would pay $75,000 as their indifference point. By my math that would displace over 15 million workers by 2030, or over 20% of the white collar workforce. Not gonna happen. The only way this level of unemployment would occur other than if we go into depression.

   If we displace this many workers, and the unemployment produced, who has the money to buy products from the firms that just reduced headcount by 20%. Um, no one.

   So, it would be really useful for at least one of these companies to explain how the economics might ever possibly justify the investments.

   Of course, this flies in the face of the physical reality that you can’t get the power generation, transformers and water to do this in the time frame discussed. Alas.

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   1. ChrisFromGA December 6, 2025 at 9:42 am

      Don’t forget that 2033 or thereabouts is when the SS Trust Fund runs out. And the cost of an employee is not just the salary, but includes benefits, such as health care costs. Kicking out 15 million workers forces some of them to early retirement, and if they’re not 65, their only choice is likely Obamacare.

      The 2030s are shaping up to be a killer decade, maybe literally. Or as Jason B. says, this timeline is lit!

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   2. ilsm December 6, 2025 at 9:46 am

      This “new IT” is not all that revolutionary! The only innovation is the chips, and they continue to follow Moore’s law: new generations every couple of years.

      NVDA and many others are designing new disruptive chips, and approaches to “compute” that would make this generation hyperscale/data center obsolete long before any payback of the debt. Improved, more efficient LM’s arriving.

      That said what are the underwriting “standards”, and do any get into operating costs/overhead, product sustainment and life of technology issues.

      IOW why capitalize trillions when the next tech is on the doorstep?

      Add to that outside of chips which will be replaced in months by new technology no one in the vertical space enjoys “new product” margins.

      Microsoft is missing all AI sales. OpenAI, who has numerous competitors to CHATipt, is losing money, all the pundits talk about is revenue.

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      1. MartyH December 6, 2025 at 5:57 pm

         Since the design of a unit of memory and a processor has been pretty static the new magic chips are packing more memory and processors per square centimeter and more of them are active at a time consuming electricity and generating heat. There are very real costs to “multiprocessing” in either of its popular forms and so “parallelization” doesn’t mean linear performance gains for linear electric consumption and heat production. And we don’t see real discussions of the effective improvements, only the the claimed densities.

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   3. Random December 6, 2025 at 9:48 am

      The argument for how this works is that it leads to AGI within a few years and at that point nothing else matters because the problems just solve themselves.
      Seems like a very risky premise to bet the whole economy on but that’s the idea.

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      1. ChrisFromGA December 6, 2025 at 10:58 am

         Reminds me of a joke from grad school:

         The professor starts scribbling equations on the board, trying to do a complex mathematical proof;

         Reaches the bottom of the board, stops, and scratches his/her head for bit;

         Writes out “And then a miracle occurs!”

         Proven!

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         1. Janie December 6, 2025 at 3:36 pm

            My favorite econ prof used Finagle’s Constant.

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   4. flora December 6, 2025 at 1:09 pm

      Racket News reporter Eric Salzman has a good take-down of the AI “Frankenstein” funding merry-go-round. Mostly paywalled, unfortunately.

      Time to Pump the Brakes on Artificial Intelligence Finance?
      Big Tech needs trillions to fund their AI dream, much of it from insurance companies and pension funds. What could possibly go wrong?
      Eric Salzman

      https://www.racket.news/p/time-to-pump-the-brakes-on-artificial

      Two paras from the full article:

      ‘In the old days of a few years ago, these hyperscalers — which Bloomberg reports have a combined $324 billion in outstanding corporate bond debt — would do a combination of investing their cash and borrowing in the corporate bond market. That’s no longer a complete option for this amount of funding, not even close. To achieve the level of spending the hyperscalers need, if they tried to raise all the funds in the public bond market, they would probably all be downgraded to junk by the ratings agencies, not to mention increasing interest rates for all of us (like mortgage rates).

      ‘To the delight of Wall Street, much of the needed funding will come from “Off Balance Sheet” sources, a lot of which come from private credit. As we have already reported, private equity firms have been snapping up life insurance companies and annuity providers, and funneling these companies’ assets into their private credit deals.’

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   5. Es s Ce Tera December 6, 2025 at 1:37 pm

      I think I would challenge “that nobody wants to pay for”. I was willing to pay but after a few months OpenAI shut down my subscription with no explanation given and no way to redress it (customer service is just an AI bot with not even the power to “do” anything). This experience led me to discover that I’m not alone, the forums are filled with people saying the same. It’s almost as if OpenAI does not want a user subscription model even though they offer it, it’s seemingly deliberately compromised or sabotaged. Which makes me think something more nefarious is going on, though I can’t figure out what.

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   6. neutrino23 December 6, 2025 at 3:05 pm

      “ I recently got into a serious discussion with senior I-bankers at a top tier investment bank. My conclusion is so long as they continue to earn fees from putting financing in place for the hyper scale data centers asking the real questions is irrelevant. And, I literally got the following answer, which is there are smart people behind these things (LLMs) so they must know what they’re doing, even if they don’t tell us.”

      This is an interesting point. No one is really in charge. Each individual actor is getting their piece of the action. It reminds me of the adage “No single raindrop feels responsible for the flood.”

      The entire AI fiasco is really fascinating. There are so many powerful actors pulling in different and impossible directions. Huge funds spent against minuscule revenue requiring vast resources we may not actually have.

      Edward Zitron has made some interesting points. One is that with hundreds of billions of dollars sloshing around there is bound to be a lot of fraud. Out of hundreds of billions surely some clever and corrupt lawyers can manage to scrape off a few tens of billions for themselves?

      A second point is a question from Edward Zitron. NVIDIA claims to have been shipping millions of their powerful GPUs and yet there doesn’t seem to be enough power for data centers to turn them on so where are they? Are they piled up in warehouses? There may be a legitimate answer to this, but we haven’t seen it yet. Possibly this refers back to the fraud question.

      One more fact to deal with is that these GPUs have a relatively short shelf life. This is not like laying down miles of fiber optic cable that lasts a long time, or building miles of railroad tracks. In a few years these GPUs will become so much ewaste.

      It really seems like this has to end badly. Someplace a small event will trigger a mad dash for the exits that will grow and grow. Everyone wants to get cash. No one wants to be caught holding the bag when things go south.

      From Bloomberg:
      “ Morgan Stanley, one of the key players in financing the artificial-intelligence race, is considering offloading some of its data-center exposure via a so-called significant risk transfer.
      The bank has held preliminary talks with potential investors about an SRT tied to a portfolio of loans to businesses involved in AI infrastructure, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is confidential.”

      At least they are fairly open about it. SRT. Passing the risk along to someone else.

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4. Bas December 6, 2025 at 8:35 am

   Armchair squirrel have seen things.

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5. PlutoniumKun December 6, 2025 at 8:38 am

   I think this paints with far too bright colors but would appreciate informed reader input:

   – New KMT leader.

   There is probably less to this than meets the eye.

   The KMT have always been in favour of unification – on the understanding of course that they’d be in charge. They’ve struggled in the past couple of decades since the DPP has become the dominant party, and have really become a coalition of various conservative right wing factions. They’ve swung various ways over the past decades according to whatever they’ve seen as an electorally popular stance. So far as I can understand they chose Chung Li-Wun as part of a policy of promoting what were seen as younger, more female faces as a way to combat the perception that they are aging and out of touch (and to keep a lid on the multiple internal factions). But she is the daughter of direct Chinese immigrants and as such seems to have little real feel for the nuances of Taiwanese politics, in particular as she seems to have made an explicit connection between wanting reunification with the ethnicity of the more recent Chinese incomers (i.e. those who invaded and took over post wWII). Whether this will be shrugged off, or bad for the KMT is hard to say at this stage, she has just taken over and is something of an unknown quantity. There aren’t any recent polls that I’ve seen to indicate whether she’s given them a polling bounce.

   Repeated polling indicates that only a tiny minority of Taiwanese either want an overt declaration of Independence, or reunification. Almost all want the ‘status quo’, however you define that, which essentially comes down to independence in all but name, but with good relations (at a distance) with their oversized neighbour.

   The big problem for the KMT is that while the DPP is becoming more and more unpopular, there isn’t a detectable swing to the KMT – they are seen as yesterday’s party, especially by the young. The DPP is losing votes to independence and the TPP, who have grown to be the third party by avoiding saying anything about anything important.

   Taiwanese politics can be very hard to read as so much is unsaid – even terms like ‘Chinese’ when used can be highly ambiguous when used by political leaders (and much gets lost in translation). This is why polling which indicates peoples identification (Taiwanese or Chinese) can be difficult to interpret. But there are underlying stresses between the mandarin speaking ‘new’ Taiwanese (who mostly vote KMT) and the majority of other linguistic and ethnic groups.

   The only consensus among observers seems to be that most Taiwanese are far more concerned about property prices than arguments about reunification or independence.

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   1. Polar Socialist December 6, 2025 at 10:25 am

      I may be mistaken, but the “big news” in this case is that the new KMT leader Cheng Li-wun was previously a pro-independence activist and labeled KMT as “opressor”. It’s about her political 360 (as they used to say in Germany), not really about any change in Taiwanese politics per se.

      On that level the storm in a teacup is that DPP is about to ban the RedNote app so that Taiwanese young people wouldn’t get too comfortable with their mainland peers. Which is annoying even people not using RedNote.

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      1. PlutoniumKun December 6, 2025 at 11:56 am

         It’s old news – she was a leftist youth radical who switched sides around 2 decades ago. She joined the KMT around 2005 and has been pretty prominent since then. She actually came from a KMT military family (her father was an army officer) -, the DPP at the time was the party for the cool kids. Its just part of her branding.

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   2. Victor Sciamarelli December 6, 2025 at 1:53 pm

      My guess is that unlike people like Zelensky or von der Leyen, Cheng Li-wun is able to live in reality. The world is a different place than it was just 10 years ago. China is an economic and military power, Russia and China are working together, there’s BRICS, Belt and Road, and rising India.
      And the US? It’s clear that the US is pulling out of Ukraine and neither the US, NATO nor Europe is able to defeat Russia. Despite continuous announcements of we’ll do whatever it takes, UA is wrecked. Nobody in Taiwan should think the US will defend Taiwan. Closer relations with China must not seem like a bad idea.
      In the beginning of 2009 US govt debt was roughly $10 trillion, now it’s approaching $40 Trillion and there’s no end in sight. What can the US really offer Taiwan today?
      Lastly, imo, the legacy of Mao is still in the air. Perhaps because Mao is more recent, I think his legacy is stronger in China than say the legacy of the American revolution is for Americans. If there is one thing to take away from Mao, it is that people who are oppressed and/or occupied have a right to resist. Whether Chinese or Taiwanese, I think they are appalled by what the US is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza.
      I’m assuming, but as far as I can tell, Cheng Li-wun views the US as dangerous and unreliable, and in todays world, China is a realistic alternative.

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6. The Rev Kev December 6, 2025 at 8:56 am

   “Greece’s Missile Plans in the Aegean Raise Alarm in Turkey”

   It’s the Turk’s own fault. For many years now they have been flying aircraft, helicopters and drones into Greek airspace meaning the Greeks have to scramble fighters to intercept them and this is being done virtually every damn day of the week. If you want to get an idea of the scope of the problem, simply put in the following search term into Google and see what comes back-

   turkish planes intrude greek airspace

   So it looks like the Greeks have had enough and are now deploying mobile missile systems across the islands which will prove a headache for the Turks. Instead of getting the Greeks to wear their aircraft out by intercepting these daily intrusions, then those planes and helicopters will find themselves locked up by some of those missile batteries.

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   1. Polar Socialist December 6, 2025 at 9:13 am

      The problem here is that way back both countries agreed on 6 nautical miles zones on the Agean sea, where the Greek islands are basically right on the Turkish coast. At some point Greece decided that they need a 10 nautical mile zone, while Turkey still adheres to the 6 nautical miles and claims it’s aircraft are flying in the “international” airspace.

      While I’m not saying there’s no friction or even hostility between the two countries, this “contested interpretations of a 4 nautical mile wide zone” is totally made up issue, and escalating it would be downright stupid.

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      1. The Rev Kev December 6, 2025 at 9:22 am

         Thanks for the extra detail and it looks like both sides have got a case to make for their grievances. Having said that, of course both sides will keep on escalating and yes, it will be downright stupid.

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         1. Ignacio December 6, 2025 at 4:15 pm

            This is a case in which the application of the Law Of Sea is clearly problematic. If the 12 nautical miles rule was to be applied to the Aegean there wouldn’t be a way to navigate in the Aegean, for instance from the Bosphorus strait or anywhere in the Black sea, to the Mediterranean Sea without crossing Greek territorial waters. Very much like when you pass through the Turkish straits between the Black sea and the Aegean. This is the same problem. So here Turkey wants to preserve control of passage through its straits (so they don’t sign the LOS) and at the same time wants to avoid Greece having the same control of navigation through the Aegean. The solution would be for Turkey to sign the LOS and all countries around agree on the transit rules envisioned for straits and define transit corridors through the Aegean as well as the straits with which Turkey, Greece and other interested countries should agree as these connect international waters.

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      2. Revenant December 6, 2025 at 9:37 pm

         They also disagree about their air traffic control airspace limits….

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   2. lyman alpha blob December 6, 2025 at 10:00 am

      This likely has something to do with making Greece dependent on US weapons systems. There was some talk around here at NC that Mitsotakjis was making a devil’s bargain with the US/Israel in the hopes of having them kick the Turks out of Cyprus. This could be related – spend a few billion on US missiles and the US will consider doing something about Cyprus. Except it will never get past the considering.

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   3. raspberry jam December 6, 2025 at 11:57 am

      I have assumed that the re-flaring of Greece-Turkiye spats is Israel playing “Let’s you and him fight” as part of a ploy to get some variation of the EastMed Pipeline funded and stop Turkiye from blocking that. It was supposed to deliver natural gas from the Leviatan/Tamar fields to EU through Greece but hasn’t gotten funding. Turkiye, Cyprus, and Israel all claim the territorial rights. This also sort of explains Egypt’s continued ties with Israel (nat gas re-export/import pipelines for their liquefaction terminals, the only in the region). This paper is good, goes in detail through the issues with each country (except for Greece). Note also that Ashkelon is just north of Gaza and the fields are off the coast of Gaza; Palestine would also have a claim. I’ve assumed that any actual state recognition by Israel would require payments by Palestine (or giving up the rights to the fields) as ‘reparations’ for the war. And I’ve assumed that the foot dragging by the Netanyahu regime regarding the ‘peace’ plan is as much about getting all the necessary international players in place for this as much as it is about keeping Gaza subjugated and continuing the genocide and taking back territory until the agreements are reached. Making Greece an arms export market is just another benefit for Israel.

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7. Hastalavictoria December 6, 2025 at 9:04 am

   If YP adopts,similar socialist policies to those that Corbyn offered the electorate in in 2017 and in the subséquent election they should do well.i.e There is a natural base of 25 per cent still in the UK that will vote for this.Maybe also Réform will help also, especially if they win the next election.

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8. debug December 6, 2025 at 9:04 am

   re: “This 2-minute clip is spreading like wildfire tonight for one simple reason…”

   The throwaway line “It’s like teachers unions” is a non-sequitur and stands out like a sore thumb. Who are these people sitting around and critiquing teachers for organizing for better pay and better hours and better education for public school children?

   I assure you that many teachers unions are vital organizations that are more about the work than the organization itself. IIRC, teachers unions have been featured here at NC from time to time for actual mobilization efforts and subsequent improvements obtained. And Nurses unions, etc…

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   1. Wukchumni December 6, 2025 at 9:09 am

      They couldn’t have picked a worse location for the interview, with the ocean nearby and quite an expanse of grass that just screams wealth beyond everybody’s means, as they caterwaul against lessers, which in their mind would be everybody else not in their financial circle, who might be better categorized as leeches.

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   2. Alice X December 6, 2025 at 9:47 am

      The premise is social uplift through NGO (non-profits), the need for them to raise funds and its ineffectiveness. To their minds it is a sham.

      The alternate premise of social uplift by direct collective action through government policy is not considered. That is against the privatization principle these two seem to start from. Social uplift might be good but it can’t be done.

      Effective propaganda against the horrors positivity of socialism. That is where we are at.

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      1. Keith Newman December 6, 2025 at 5:58 pm

         @Alice X at 9:47 am
         Great comment Alice X.
         I am on the board of an NGO (The Canadian Health Coalition) that organises to protect, improve and expand public healthcare in Canada. It’s very lean, all money goes toward action. There’s no grift anywhere in sight. The organisation is focused on collective action in provinces and across the country. A recent gain has been to get the federal government to provide funding for diabetes drugs and contraceptive devices and medicines for free. Of course provinces with backward governments, Big Pharma, insurance companies and others that want to profit off the misfortunes of the sick oppose us at every turn.

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         1. Alice X December 6, 2025 at 7:28 pm

            Thank you!

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   3. Bugs December 6, 2025 at 10:52 am

      She’s a billionaire libertarian airhead who came into her money from marrying and divorcing a Google founder. Had an affair with Musk. Of course it’s the teachers unions.

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      1. erstwhile December 6, 2025 at 2:15 pm

         Had an affair with Musk. Recalls a line in a pop song, She works hard for her money…

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         1. bob December 6, 2025 at 3:22 pm

            What’s more weird, an affair with musk or an affair with RFK?

            There’s no sex….

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   4. Kurtismayfield December 6, 2025 at 11:15 am

      The irony of a woman, whose billion dollars wouldn’t exist without federal grants and NSF support, railing against the teachers unions as a scam is completely lost on her. Google wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without federal grants. And Brin was on scholarship from the NSF.

      So thank the government for that beautiful location of yours.

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   5. dave -- just dave December 6, 2025 at 12:47 pm

      The “teachers’ unions” smear really stuck in my craw. Thanks for speaking up about it.

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      1. Kilgore Trout December 6, 2025 at 6:31 pm

         Mine too. I had to replay that section because I wasn’t sure I’d heard it right. A gratuitous comment shared by two ditzes born on third base and believing they’ve earned the right to claim they’ve homered.

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   6. NN Cassandra December 6, 2025 at 1:12 pm

      If NGO trying to solve poverty in Chicago actually solves it, it will be disbanded, therefore the people running the NGO and collecting donations have incentive to not solve poverty. Fair enough, I can understand that argument.

      But how that translates to teachers unions? If teachers had too much money, they would close their union, therefore they actually don’t want more money, because then, instead of sitting in meetings, they would be on vacations in Barbados?

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      1. Darthbobber December 6, 2025 at 5:31 pm

         I understand the 1st argument too, but it’s still pretty silly, given that actually eliminating poverty in Chicago (or much of anywhere) is well beyond the resources of any ngo or grouping thereof. Nevertheless, they are sometimes effective in ameliorating some of the more egregious manifestations.

         Given that capitalism pretty much mandates the generation of a large poor population at one pole, it’s cheerleaders are ipso facto pro poverty, and the more the better.

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   7. Keith Newman December 6, 2025 at 5:44 pm

      @debug at 9:04 am
      The slur against teachers unions stood out for me too. I was a member of one for several years and it did great work for teacher and kids. No grift anywhere. She lost all credibility for me after that.

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      1. rowlf December 6, 2025 at 6:56 pm

         Rather than use teachers unions as an example, politicians would have been a better example of people/groups that realize that correcting problems is not in their long term interest.

         Or, as my down-to-earth decorated retired-from-the-military doctor who had worked under combat conditions said sardonicly a while ago: “Cure cancer? Where’s the profit in that?” (said to critize the medical industry)

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   8. eg December 6, 2025 at 10:55 pm

      Yeah that shot at teachers unions was ridiculous — glad there are plenty of people calling it out.

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   9. Eric Anderson December 7, 2025 at 1:48 am

      No mention yet in the thread that the “Ivies” are almost always running the big nonprofits these days.
      It’s a racket.
      Just spreading money to friends.
      The Ivies have been the death of orgs like the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, etc.
      It’s always what happens when you put the privileged in positions of power to help the stupid poors who can’t help themselves.

      Nothing gets done. But, hey, they know how to throw a wine cave party.

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9. Henry Moon Pie December 6, 2025 at 9:06 am

   Jews and Goys–

   First of all, I learned a lot from this piece even though I’ve spent considerable time studying the Hebrew bible, and at the U. of Chicago, studying it in a bi-religious setting. That itself testifies to one of the author’s points about the suppression of the most inflammatory anti-goy and anti-Christian statements in Jewish religious literature even in academic settings.

   But I had heard about such statements before I could even name five books of the Hebrew bible. Growing up on a farm outside a town of a thousand people in the Midwest, I had no Jewish schoolmates, no black ones either for that matter. It was not until I began attending a boys’ prep school in the city that I encountered Jewish culture for the first time. For the first three years, I didn’t see what was the big deal beyond a few different holidays and the fun opportunity to sing Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” in glee club, but in my senior year I became friends with a Jewish classmate who was heavily involved in a school activity with me. Since I lived 40+ miles away from the school, and since bi-weekly newspaper paste-up was a communal activity that went until 2 or 3 in the morning, I needed to stay overnight in the city. Since paste-up usually took place in the basement of that Jewish classmate, I often stayed at his house. Over time, he became more comfortable talking to me about his family, and one day he began talking about how he was troubled by what his maternal grandfather taught him and his siblings about goys. It explained a lot about his mother’s treating me as a sort of non-person during breakfast (on the goy china?). That was my first exposure to the material discussed in the article.

   Two decades later, I was in the Ph.D program in Hebrew bible in a department with more Jewish instructors than Gentile. One day, my gentile advisor asked me to pick up a German biblical scholar from O’Hare and bring him to Hyde Park where he was presenting a paper before the Div School community. He turned out to be a very nice fellow who was especially appreciative that I took him to a hardware stored where he could buy a voltage converter for his razor so he could at least shave before making a presentation late in the afternoon after flying all the way from Germany.

   After delivering him as requested, I stayed for the presentation. His paper proposed that parts of Leviticus had been adapted from the Middle Assyrian laws, the kind of proposal that’s very common in biblical studies where it’s recognized that cultures and religions frequently borrow material from each other. For example, my advisor was the world’s expert on Daniel, and he proposed that the famous beasts of Daniel 7 were drawn from the polytheistic Ba’al cycle of Ugarit. Not long after the presentation began, the two Jewish scholars began interrupting with questions, criticisms and finally attacks. The poor German guy had come all the way across the Atlantic just to suffer a nasty tongue-lashing. Most interesting, my advisor, who had invited the German, remained silent, never once defending even the idea that parts of the Hebrew bible might have been borrowed from other religions and cultures. It spoke to me of a very tenuous armistice between Jew and Gentile even within high-level academia.

   Is it possible to air all the dirty laundry and still remain peaceful, even civil toward one another? The kinds of editing and translating that have been employed in the interest of good Jewish-Christian relations look like they’re not going to succeed in keeping the peace now that there’s a whole nation carrying out a genocide that they consider justified by their religion. Maybe it’s time to give honesty a shot.

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   1. Wukchumni December 6, 2025 at 9:30 am

      I became a numismatist’s apprentice at 15 and the coin biz was around 30-40% Jewish, and most of my transactions were dealer-to-dealer, so my exposure to American Jewry was fairly complete, and I have to say that I enjoyed butting heads with them, smart fellows one and all, and aside from a couple of Orthodox Jew numismatists, almost all of them were your basic secular American Jews who made sure you knew that they celebrated the high holidays (an aside, one of them was one hellova stoner who would ‘drug test’ potential employees, as he was on the hunt for somebody like him, a stoner with a work ethic) and that was the extent of their religious activities.

      We had Goldbergs, Weinbergs, but no Zuckerbergs, and I read something in regards to those names years ago, in that they self-selected said names in the 18th century when it became possible to do so, and so highfalutin they were, Gold Mountain, Wine Mountain and Sugar Mountain are the English translations.

      I worry about them, in that a broad brush of anti-Zionism will surely reflect badly upon their likes-despite having not much to do with Israel, if things continue apace.

      Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev December 6, 2025 at 9:40 am

         If blowback to Israel’s genocide started to make life more difficult for American Jewry, I am sure that Israel would count that as a win as they figure that these people would end up fleeing to Israel.

         Reply ↓
   2. Yves Smith Post authorDecember 6, 2025 at 9:43 am

      I have managed to remain clueless by spending time with very assimilated Jews.

      I went to first and second grade in Newton Center, Mass, which is 90% Jewish. I felt oppressed because everyone else (the Jewish and the Catholic kids) got more days off from school than I did.

      My parents asked at the PTA for the name of a day camp. I wondered why all the counselors knew my name. I learned years later I was the only gentile.

      I found Jewish Wall Street firms (Salomon and Goldman) much more receptive to smart women MBAs, even if goys, than WASP firms. I have dated at least as many Jewish men as gentiles. Only one broke it off after 6 weeks because I was not Jewish. He was Israeli (Morrocan, spent > half his life in Paris so not hard core Israeli) and wanted to marry ni the faith, so investing too much time in a non-Jew was a waste.

      I spent a fair bit of time with a college girlfriend’s family. Her grandfather developed a lot of Bel-Air. Their synagogue was so Reform that they jokingly called it a church. The mother created a scandal among her friends by going to Lebanon and not Israel. “Why should I go to Israel? It has no culture.”

      Reply ↓
      1. raspberry jam December 6, 2025 at 11:24 am

         I found Jewish Wall Street firms (Salomon and Goldman) much more receptive to smart women MBAs, even if goys, than WASP firms.

         My experience is the same within tech; I’ve worked for a string of very well-known Jewish tech executives and private tech companies owned by Jewish families, and of course everyone here is aware I currently work with an Israeli tech team. They have all been very clear that they respect me for not merely being intelligent and a hard worker but especially that I will defend my position and, if necessary, fight for things I think are correct, and I’m unafraid to do this with people who outrank me.

         Compare this to the handful of overtly Christian or Evangelical organizations: I did not even make it through final interviews for not being a cultural fit. You don’t say!

         Regarding the piece itself, I have run across some of these things primarily with the US ultra Orthodox who work in tech and are Israel-firsters. These are mostly US-born NYC adjacent who went to rabbinical school and then pivoted into tech in the 90s and are nearing retirement age now. One was quite open that he liked having me around to give outsiders a better initial impression about the company. All of them, even the Reform ones, had some version of a quasi-argument with me that went like this:

         Them: You’re Jewish, which congregation do you belong to?
         Me: I’m not Jewish, I was raised without religion.
         Them: Raised without religion, what does that mean? You don’t act Christian.
         Me: I told you, I was raised without religion, I’ve never been to a church service. Or a synagogue service.
         Them: So your mother is Jewish then?
         Me: Nope, my grandparents were Catholic but nobody has gone to church since the 1960s. I wasn’t baptised.
         Them: You weren’t baptised, you can be Jewish.
         Me: Why would I convert, I was raised without religion, it’s all alien to me!

         Later I figured out they were trying to make it clear to me that I was ‘one of the good ones’.

         Reply ↓
   3. Lee December 6, 2025 at 10:46 am

      Outside of coworkers in the life insurance biz, some of whom were rabid, racist Zionists where airing my views would have been professional suicide. OTOH many Jews I came to in know in other venues are either Marxists of one flavor or another, or they frequent the local Zendo where they are thick on the ground, with some overlap between the latter two groups.

      Reply ↓
   4. Alice X December 6, 2025 at 10:58 am

      It is a piece well worthy of further study, starting with part II and then back.

      Reply ↓
      1. Carolinian December 6, 2025 at 6:04 pm

         Yes it’s a real truth bomb that accords with things that you can see elsewhere. But it is talking about a version of Judaism which may have been different pre Talmud–all these discussions very remote from this Southerner’s milieu.

         Plus one does have to tally up the many victims of religious dogma in general and all those European wars over what sect to believe. The body count on that one is huge.

         You’ll see a lot of criticism of our US founders but freedom of religion was one of their keystones and not to be dissed.

         Reply ↓
   5. skippy December 6, 2025 at 11:26 pm

      In the realm of 64 yrs of life in the U.S. and – all over the shop – having exposure too so many religious tribes, its just nuts. Then the divisions in house over some “interpretation” that then is used to basically re-frame the entire religious texts of some tribe. Yet for all the stoopid[tm] hours I spent researching the dominate lots in history, anthro, natural history past and new/present findings [waves at Hudson] just to understand the state of humanity and life on this orb – only thing I am certain of is some will wave books around claim authority over everything – special people by dint of deity …. sigh so much for divine royalty or rule thingy …

      I personally thought my YT link not long ago about the Chicago worlds fair shindig would inform some.

      It might be as simple in a Marx like framing that Religious capital always seeks dominance once monetized. How this religion became slavish about it before those that followed in is an interesting question, long before Christendom. In someways I bemuse myself with the notion that the original economic meaning of Boom/Bust Markets is based on the notion of divine rewards/punishment.

      “in the interest of good Jewish-Christian relations”

      Ugh even Raygun denied Pat Robinson the toe in the door as an early AIPAC interloper but, political cycles and funding can whiteant anything.

      More in a reply to YS below. Oh and it would be amazing to chat with you over a nice glass of something.

      Reply ↓
      1. Henry Moon Pie December 7, 2025 at 7:40 am

         That does sound nice, skippy.

         I had a conversation a few months back with a professional woman in her 40s who informed me early on in our conversation that she was a convert to Roman Catholicism. I looked at her for a few moments and responded, “So you were looking for a source of authority and certainty?.” She heartily agreed. My background in theology comes from the Lutheran side of things, and Luther was a man in search of certainty. He was convinced there was a God (not unusual in 16th century Europe), and that God had it out for him (we’ll leave the reasons for that to Erikson). When he broke with the Pope over indulgences, that eliminated that source of authority and certainty, so eventually he found what he was looking for in the Bible (sola Scriptura) and the sacraments as Lutherans redefined them. That was the beginning of the proliferation of “tribes” and the Thirty Years’ War.

         Of course, the whole monotheistic enterprise began as an attempt to recover the sense of certainty that YHWH was a powerful and trustworthy god.

         The East looks inward, but not so much for certainty, but for harmony. That seems to me to be the inquiry with more potential to bear good fruit.

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   6. Francis Parker December 7, 2025 at 12:06 am

      > Maybe it’s time to give honesty a shot.

      John Murray Cuddihy wrote a fantastic book called The Ordeal of Civility about this very subject.

      Most of us remember when we were supposed to have a “national conversation about race”.

      I think that we would be better served having an honest global conversation about Jews as such, without Jewish control, influence or even participation.

      If Jews want to begin their own soul-searching, my suggestion would be to engage in the behavior they demand of others and immediately disavow all religious, legal and cultural texts that are anti-gentile or promote hate of non-Jews.

      Reply ↓
10. David J. December 6, 2025 at 9:15 am

    Thanks so much, I’ve bookmarked the Shahak piece for attentive reading later today.

    I had the great honor of studying under Norton Mezvinsky in the early 90s. He was a good friend of Shahak and they co-wrote a book I frequently recommend to people: “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel.”

    Shahak (and Norton) took a lot of flack from the Israel lobby and it was very instructional (and inspirational) to see how Norton stood up to the slanders. R.I.P. to both of these people; they are heroes in my pantheon.

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    1. jhallc December 6, 2025 at 10:45 am

       I found this YouTube interview of Israel Shahak to be very interesting as well.

       https://youtu.be/MiA-0Sqj_Bs

       This paragraph stood out to me from the paper:

       “However, a great many present-day Jews are nostalgic for that world, their lost paradise, the comfortable closed society from which they were not so much liberated as expelled. A large part of the zionist movement always wanted to restore it – and this part has gained the upper hand. Many of the motives behind Israeli politics, which so bewilder the poor confused western ‘friends of Israel’, are perfectly explicable once they are seen simply as reaction, reaction in the political sense which this word has had for the last two hundred years: a forced and in many respects innovative, and therefore illusory, return to the closed society of the Jewish past.”

       Reply ↓
       1. Alice X December 6, 2025 at 4:28 pm

          I’ve just watched in its entirety. From 1989. Shahak was an intense critical observer of the situation at the time, which, for the Palestinians was very grim. Thank you, well worth the time. What would he say now? I can only imagine.

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    2. Alice X December 6, 2025 at 2:33 pm

       pdf archive

       Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel

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    3. Alice X December 6, 2025 at 2:56 pm

       Copyright © Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky 1999

       Fair use

       From the Preface:

       Virtually identified with Arab terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism
       is anathema throughout the non-Muslim world. Virtually identified
       with ignorance, superstition, intolerance and racism, Christian
       fundamentalism is anathema to the cultural and intellectual elite
       in the United States. The recent significant increase in its number
       of adherents, combined with its widening political influence,
       nevertheless, make Christian fundamentalism a real threat to
       democracy in the United States. Although possessing nearly all the
       important social scientific properties of Islamic and Christian fun-
       damentalism, Jewish fundamentalism is practically unknown outside
       of Israel and certain sections of a few other places. When its
       existence is acknowledged, its significance is minimized or limited
       to arcane religious practices and quaint middle European dress,
       most often by those same non-Israeli elite commentators who see
       so uncompromisingly the evils inherent in Jewish fundamentalis-
       m’s Islamic and/or Christian cousins.

       As students of contemporary society and as Jews, one Israeli, one
       American, with personal commitments and attachments to the
       Middle East, we cannot help seeing Jewish fundamentalism in
       Israel as a major obstacle to peace in the region. Nor can we help
       being dismayed by the dismissal of the perniciousness of Jewish fun-
       damentalism to peace and to its victims by those who are otherwise
       knowledgeable and astute and so quick to point out the violence
       inherent in other fundamentalist approaches to existence.

       This book is a journey of understanding – …

       And now genocide.

       Reply ↓
       1. John Steinbach December 7, 2025 at 1:18 am

          Also read Shahak’s Jewish History, Jewish Religion and Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear & Foreigh Policies. I used to subscribe to his newsletter Notes from the Hebrew Press back in the 80s. It was translations from Israeli Hebrew language newspapers where things were said that weren’t in the English press.

          Reply ↓
11. Windall December 6, 2025 at 9:26 am

    Iran’s rial Hits Record Low of 1.2 Million per Dollar Amid Nuclear Sanctions Meyka

    I don’t know how much this matters to Iran because I don’t know how much of their trade is in dollars at the moment.

    Reply ↓
    1. Wukchumni December 6, 2025 at 9:38 am

       What Americans are blissfully unaware of, is what Aubugs Indians and Iranians are, nobody there believes in their currency all that much, and they have good reason.

       It was about 5 Iranian Rials to the $, 50 years ago.

       Reply ↓
    2. Louis Fyne December 6, 2025 at 9:43 am

       pistachio nut exports (being serious, lmao)

       California and Iran are the 2 big global producers.

       but ya, the on-the-ground impact is detached from the headline

       Reply ↓
12. The Rev Kev December 6, 2025 at 9:30 am

    “Putin Goes to India”

    ‘My core argument is that the Ukraine war is the main source of US hostility toward both India and Russia, and indeed that hostility has pushed Moscow and New Delhi closer together.’

    It’s remarkable when you think about it. Probably one of the biggest disasters of US foreign policy was to push both China and Russia together instead of trying to keep them separate. The US now has to face Russia and China together as solid partners. Having done that, they have now pushed India and Russia together instead of trying to make India their “aircraft carrier” in this region to face off with China. Now that India is partnering with Russia, a lot of the tension between China and India will start to dissipate. So much winning.

    Reply ↓
    1. ilsm December 6, 2025 at 9:59 am

       “Ukraine war” what is Ukraine war and when did it start?

       For me it started before 1991 (1945), with meddling in the west of Kiev add-ons. It got hot from Maidan, 2014.

       US hostility (avarice?) to Moscow controlling vast land and resources formatted the long running “Ukraine war”, not the other way around.

       Reply ↓
       1. hk December 7, 2025 at 12:36 am

          The one that started in 1917?

          Reply ↓
13. debug December 6, 2025 at 9:50 am

    re: Studying Science in an Anti-Scientific Time

    “Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies?” asked Bruno Latour, the most famous sociologist of science in the world, in 2003. “Should we apologize for having been wrong all along? Or should we rather bring the sword of criticism to criticism itself and do a bit of soul-searching here: What were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of scientific facts?”

    I haven’t signed up to read the whole article, so apologize for that, but my answer to the lead question is “Yes, you should apologize.” Thomas Kuhn’s work “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is part of the canon and the cannonade against the way science works under-the-covers. If I had a pair of dimes for every time I’ve heard the word “paradigm” used to denigrate a certain state of affairs within a scientific field, I’d be a trillionaire now. Kuhn and all his hanger’s on are fundamentally misled. They seem to think that scientists live and work in paradigms. From what I’ve seen of science being done, up close and personal, scientists live to break this notion of paradigms, not live within them.

    The idea that science is done by fallible humans was never anything new. Nor was the observation that sometimes science progresses in ‘fits and starts, ‘ so to speak. Sometimes there are complex roadblocks on the way to further knowledge acquisition that take a while to figure out.

    The attempt to make all of science into a mere social construct delivered weapons of mass destruction into the hands of climate deniers and the like. I.e., “Scientific Consensus” doesn’t matter because scientists are driven by the need for money just like used-car salespeople.

    LaTour participated in this type of activity and deserves some of the blame.

    If anyone can enlighten me about the rest of the article, I’d be happy to hear about it. (not an assignment!)

    Reply ↓
    1. pjay December 6, 2025 at 12:38 pm

       I have not yet been able to get around the paywall, but that statement by Latour disturbed me, as did your interpretation. Or at least *part* of your interpretation, because I think that you are half right.

       Here’s the part where I would agree with you:

       “The attempt to make all of science into a mere social construct delivered weapons of mass destruction into the hands of climate deniers and the like.”

       Indeed, those who portray science as a *mere* social construct do provide ammunition to its enemies. But Kuhn did not do this, nor did his most relevant followers in the history and sociology of science. The good ones were not relativists. But they did recognize that scientific research, including not only the methods used but the very questions asked, always -*always* – occurs in particular social and historical contexts. Along those lines, here is the part of your comment with which I disagree:

       “Kuhn and all his hanger’s on are fundamentally misled. They seem to think that scientists live and work in paradigms. From what I’ve seen of science being done, up close and personal, scientists live to break this notion of paradigms, not live within them.”

       I spent most of my adult life in academia around both “hard” and “soft” science and scientists. I agree that the term “paradigm” is, or was at one time, overused. But such research never occurs in a vacuum. It always takes place among particular communities and institutions that shape everything from availability of resources to number of staff or students or disciples to – yes – the “paradigm” in which the research is organized. I prefer the term of Imre Lakatos – ‘scientific research programs’ – to ‘paradigms,’ given the latter’s overuse and misuse. But Kuhn’s basic idea is important, crucial, in fact. Within academia there are indeed those who challenge the dominant paradigms in their field. But there are also many with a vested interest in a particular theoretical approach or methodology or research program. To the extent they are in positions of authority (elite departments, funding sources, journals, etc.) they can, and do, shape their field. In the postwar period an increasingly important element in the socio-historical context in which science takes place has been that of Cold War ideology and concentrated capitalist economic interests. In the many valuable contributions on this subject by KLG at this site this point is always noted.

       We criticize the excesses of “woke” political correctness a lot here, and for good reason – it gives ammunition to the enemies of *real* critical thought. But that does not mean we reject the actual lessons of the history of racism, sexism, or other forms of domination. The same goes for the excesses of “social constructionism” in the history and philosophy of science. We can rightly criticize the extremists for providing ammunition to the enemy. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath. As KLG has also noted, the arrogance of scientific “experts” who fail to recognize their own bias has also contributed to our current difficulties.

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       1. Bugs December 6, 2025 at 1:45 pm

          I’m so old that I remember when the acceptance of plate tectonics as an explanation for “continental drift” was – get this – a paradigm shift.

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       2. debug December 6, 2025 at 2:20 pm

          Thank you for your thoughtful response, pjay.

          Your points are well made, and taken. I think there are discussions on Kuhn and his brethren that cover lots of ground like this so I won’t belabor the kind readers here with reams I have written. I did take a hard line, purposefully.

          IF we agree to use Lakatos’ terms, I will agree with you on the fine points of your objection. But I stick to my point that this social view of science is nothing new or ground-breaking, and hasn’t been since the days of Louis Pasteur and Ignaz Semmelweis, at least. Of course, science is done by humans and groups of humans who work in concert toward single or multiple goals along lines of research they think individually or collectively may be promising. Some people have more money and control over choosing lines of research than others. Some people are differently motivated in scientific pursuits of knowledge — war and peace, to use your Cold War example. This is self-evident.

          Sometimes, a research effort is constrained by current knowledge and pursues a line of research that seems to have a goal that is commensurate with prevailing views of a field, but ends up in a totally different place. Sometimes they end up where they thought they would. This is not new and oversimplification and coining of terms that oversimplify the broad picture do more harm than good. The world is full of oversimplifications, and Kuhn, et al are one of them, in my opinion. He puts square pegs into round holes of his own making. We didn’t need him then, and don’t need him now, to understand the important things we need to know about science and scientific research programs.

          I’m never sure when I engage a discussion about Kuhn, etc,, that I am actually talking about the same thing everyone seems to want to talk about. Somehow, many of my previous discussion partners have the attitude that Kuhn was somehow original or important. And I think not. Maybe, as you hint at, it is a form of arrogance on my part, having been a part of a large institution engaged in a multiplicity of scientific research projects earlier in life. But I, too, have seen inner workings, guts and all, and I still think what I thought then — after much deliberation.

          I don’t think this social research has taught us anything we didn’t already know. In fact, I think the whole enterprise was far more self-descriptive of social philosophers than descriptive of real-world scientific research. The harm done was greater than any supposed benefit that resulted from it. If the baby is still-born, bury it with all due respect, and get rid of the bathwater, too.

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       3. Alphonse December 6, 2025 at 3:31 pm

          Yes. Academics are among the most susceptible to propaganda and the most ideological. A good book on this is Jeff Schmidt’s book Disciplined Minds. While I don’t share Schmidt’s proto-woke ideological convictions, he provides a detailed explanation of what social construction of scientists (and hence science) means in practice.

          Schmidt’s core argument is that workers in intellectual and creative fields cannot be controlled as easily as labourers of the past. Frederick Taylor measured how many tons of coal a worker could shovel in a day. It was easy to see who was most productive and to find ways to manage the worker to extract more labour. How does one measure and control the activity of a scientist, artist or professional? Schmidt argues that the primary purpose of training in the universities is not to teach the technical skills, but to select and discipline individuals so that they internalize the interests of the elites they will serve.

          Schmidt’s field is physics, not an area that springs to mind as particularly ideological. But physics research in the United States is largely funded by and directed towards military applications. Physicists are therefore trained to have a narrow technical view of their field so that they will not question the larger implication that they making it easier to kill people. A physicist who takes a more playful, creative, holistic approach is a poor fit and likely to be drummed out of the discipline.

          This applies to pretty much the whole of the PMC. As Noam Chomsky said to a journalist “I’m not saying you’re self-censoring. I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”

          In the woke universities valuable critique has ossified into a rote dogma repeated by students and academics who don’t really understand it and who certainly don’t apply it to their own ideological convictions (critical theory provides some of the best tools for understanding the woke phenomenon). However, I would not tar Bruno Latour with that brush. Latour is explicitly not part of the Social Construction of Technology field.

          In his 2005 book Reassembling the Social Latour says that social scientists freely throw around the term “social” as if it refers to an invisible or metaphysical force that makes things happen. Social isn’t a substance that explains other things: it is instead a description applied to configurations of non-social phenomena. Something that is socially constructed is an actual construct, an assembly or real people and real objects. Capitalism, for example, isn’t a social thing that changes the world: it is a tangible network of people and things like fences, bankers, contracts, investors, factories, and so on.

          I take Latour’s work as a devastating attack on the woke ideology executed so subtly that it did not trigger an immune response. Latour would say the world is made of people and things, not racisms and patriarchies. Racism is a description: so what is it describing? Who and what are the actors, what are the relations? Until you can identify them your theory has no explanatory power. Racism as demon possession is not a scientific concept. A war on racism is as impossible to define and win as a war on terror. Tracing networks of terrorists, funders, arms suppliers and so on – that network is a construction, and it is social in the sense that it is an assemblage of actors. A social construction.

          Reply ↓
          1. Alice X December 6, 2025 at 4:46 pm

             I am an earth bound being. When I use the term social, as in social housing or social medicine or in other things, I envision a community of people joining together in general provisioning. Maybe that is too simplistic.

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          2. debug December 6, 2025 at 4:49 pm

             Thanks Alphonse,

             “Latour is explicitly not part of the Social Construction of Technology field.”

             If I have mis-characterized him I will happily retract any such allusion in my comments above. I was responding to a fragment of an article. Perhaps I mis-read the question. In isolation it may have suggested, to me, something different than what Latour himself intended.

             I am not nearly as familiar with Latour’s work as you are. If you might recommend something where he explicitly disavows being part of the group I cast him in, I would appreciate learning of it. I value accuracy in understanding and fairness in attribution.

             Reply ↓
             1. Alphonse December 6, 2025 at 5:45 pm

                SCOT (Social Construction of Technology) is a particular approach associated with Bijker. Here Latour talks about what would qualify for a reading list for his own approach, Actor Network Theory (ANT):

                Is the list of what is social in the end the same limited repertoire that has been used to explain (away) most of the elements? If the social remains stable and is used to explain a state of affairs, it’s not ANT. For instance, no matter how enlightening it has been for all of us, the Social Shaping of Technology (Bijker 1995) would not be part of the corpus since the social is kept stable all along and accounts for the shape of technological change . . . a book like Cronon’s (1991) is certainly a masterpiece of ANT because no hidden social force is added to explain the progressive composition of the metropolis itself.

                I am not familiar with Cronon, but I think the passage is clear: Cronon qualifies because it doesn’t even need a “social” category, whereas Bijker doesn’t because it treats social as explanatory without breaking it down into non-social elements. Latour might ask, what’s the alternative to socially constructed? Appearing fully formed at a word from God, like Adam and Eve 6,000 years ago? His concept of actor networks doesn’t require humans. I think even forest and weather systems would qualify.

                Latour continues:

                ANT has been confused with a postmodern emphasis on the critique of the ‘Great narratives’ and ‘Eurocentric’ or ‘hegemonic’ standpoint. This is, however, a very misleading view. Dispersion, destruction, and deconstruction are not the goals to be achieved but what needs to be overcome. It’s much more important to check what are the new institutions, procedures, and concepts able to collect and to reconnect the social

                This is relevant because Latour argues that abstract categories like capitalism, empire, the social, etc. are not actors in the world. Capitalism per se doesn’t make things happen. But he’s not trying to say that capitalism doesn’t refer to anything at all: rather that “capitalism” doesn’t do anything. It is merely a label for a network of things that are not capitalism. It’s the social scientist’s job to find out how capitalism is constructed of other things, not to reify “capitalism” as an actor in the world.

                I may have spoken too broadly. In a general sense you could say that he is interested in how things are socially constructed, but he’s not a social constructivist – and not an adherent to SCOT – because he doesn’t think bare social construction as a concept has explanatory power.

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                1. debug December 6, 2025 at 7:13 pm

                   Thank you Alphonse, it starts to make some sense to me, the way you have explained it!

                   I have to step away for a while, but will reply in kind later, if anyone wants to follow. I had no idea what I was getting into when I posted that initial comment. (Well, maybe I did..)

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                2. debug December 6, 2025 at 11:33 pm

                   So many excellent comments and ideas here!

                   But first things first.

                   Alphonse, you have convinced me I was wrong about Latour, at least as far as Latour’s own final conclusions are concerned. I admit my ignorance of his contributions, but have tried and found some of his work to be difficult to read and difficult to discern his intentions. Maybe I read it wrongly. Maybe that’s on me, maybe on Latour, or both.

                   My only remaining question about Latour would be why couldn’t I find him when I’ve been agreeing with him for twenty years now, at least. Perhaps– maybe — some of his dense language finally cleaved to pure expression — as you, Alphonse have graciously supplied in an additional comment below. Latour pulls no punches, (oops, a sports metaphor – boxing) and his description is better than I could have hoped to produce myself in many or most respects.

                   So, I have found respect for Latour.

                   And respect for Alphonse as a teacher. Many thanks.

                   ANT has been on my radar for further study. I am currently, believe it or not, engaged in a deep polymathic dive into a certain set of sociopolitical circumstances that seemed to lead to and to perpetuate some botched science and much pain and suffering for many people. Notwithstanding my agreement with the idea “that abstract categories like capitalism, empire, the social, etc. are not actors in the world,” I believe there is intersection between the practice by humans of science, politics, economics and sociology, and the effects of psychology in its singular and group forms. Humans are the most complex things we are scientifically certain exist in this Universe. I am searching through existing frameworks and attempting to analyze and synthesize a cross-disciplinary look at my issue. I am not searching for a mysterious social force, but trying to name actors and actions properly and understand something of bad motives and/or good motives gone astray or led astray. Perhaps it is a futile attempt to understand something so complex in all its facets, but every other approach to the issue has been done, and left me wanting. How is it that we can look at something from every angle yet not see the whole? But I’m getting off topic…

                   These conversations here are helpful to me, and proof in my mind that what Henry Moon Pie and Alice X both have to say about there being something ‘social’ here, as exemplified in these conversations themselves. But I think we have to be careful about using one word to describe different things. Humans are social creatures. We do not thrive, or really even survive in any circumstance of pure isolation. To me, there is a difference between social theory and the experience of being a social being. I’ll say more below in response to specific comments.

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          3. Henry Moon Pie December 6, 2025 at 5:50 pm

             “In his 2005 book Reassembling the Social Latour says that social scientists freely throw around the term “social” as if it refers to an invisible or metaphysical force that makes things happen.”

             Is it so crazy to think there is something, something beyond our current understanding, that constitutes a force or power when groups of people are gathered. Understand that I’m not proposing sociologists do things this way because I agree with everything you said when it comes to sociology, or history for that matter.

             What I’m talking about is more intuitive, more woo-woo as Lambert would say. At times, it can be a glue, holding a collection of people together, even one as large as a nation. At other times, it can be an accelerant moving mobs to savagery, or it can be an intoxicant.

             Despite my openness to such things, I’m really so damned left-brained that I’m frustrated by it. But I have had just two experiences that included something that felt metaphysical. The first was when a college friend who was quite taken with some kid called the Guru Maharishi came to Boston. He asked me to go with him and see what I thought. It was not the presence of this young teenager, who could have used some time outside. He had no charisma at all that I could perceive. But there was this odd feeling, almost a shimmering, over the crowd of gathered “believers.” It was something I’d never experienced before–in rock concerts; in political rallies; in religious services–and it was a feeling I might describe as uncomfortable if one is not part of it, but not frightening.

             The second time was decades later when I attended a Young Christian Athletes gathering where I was college chaplain. A young, very musical couple from the local charismatic church provided the music, and a large part of the meeting consisted of singing songs with short, simple, oft-repeated, sing-along choruses. After several minutes of this, a feeling hit me that I immediately connected with that guru gathering in Boston. It did not hit me, left-brained as I am, beyond that feeling, and I can’t say I really felt part of it. Nevertheless, I realized that something very similar was happening, some force only present in human groups was acting.

             Indirectly, I’ve heard Staughton Lynd describe the reaction of the Mississippi Freedom Summer leadership to the report that James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were missing. Even his telling of that tale almost brought the roomful of IWW members I was among to that pitch again, but this group, myself included, was too caught up in rules and ideology to get there, and Staughton’s story was told to us to point that out.

             As is clear in these stories, I’m ambiguous about such a force. We desperately need its power. Otherwise, the billionaires are taking us to the bitter end of the Highway to Hell. At the same time, even though my experience of this force was not frightening at the time, such a potent force is dangerous, especially if cynical and/or manipulative people gain skill at mustering it at will. Leni Reifenstahl comes to mind.

             But I do believe in its reality.

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             1. Alice X December 6, 2025 at 7:34 pm

                Social as in shared empathy. moi

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             2. debug December 7, 2025 at 12:14 am

                Henry Moon Pie

                “…beyond our current understanding…”

                I have experienced what I think are the feelings you have described. I have even experienced what I felt was a full and complete religious conversion experience on par with what others describe.

                I have subsequently, after much thought and reflection, come to a different understanding of what I think these feelings were and are. As I mentioned above in a reply to Alphonse, the teacher, I think there is a difference between social theory and social practice. Humans ARE social creatures. We are built for one another, not for ourselves alone. When we feel radical “shared empathy” (as Alice X describes it below) in a group setting, it is I think because we are doing what we have always done in the history of our evolution as a species. We need human bonding to survive.

                That’s not really an explanation, I know, but it is something. There are indicators in the world out there that we need each other. Acknowledging this need, and acknowledging our dependence on one another is a radical act in many settings in these days of hyper-focus on the individual. But when an individual experiences this radical connection to the group, it is a very real feeling. Just be careful what group(s) you allow yourself to be in empathy with.

                There is another kind of radical feeling that we are wired for as humans. It is a radical empathy for the Whole Thing. A oneness about this existence of ours, surrounded by mountains and oceans and prairies and life-forms of a multitude of types, all surrounded by the wondrous skies. I have felt this. It is a real feeling.

                Where one chooses to believe these feelings have their place within themselves is up to them. Or outside of themeselves, if they wish. But I believe they come from inside, for the record, and I believe it because I have pondered it long til weak and weary. And I guard these feelings carefully, lest they be manipulated as you suggest. I believe that no human is totally immune to these feelings. Psychopaths may be an exception. So, I also believe that truth is where you find it, and in Proverbs there is a verse that reads “Guard your heart above all else for it is the wellspring of life.”

                Walk in harmony and peace, HMP.

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             3. anahuna December 7, 2025 at 6:21 am

                In reply to HMP and Alice, with thanks for relating their experiences.

                As one who spent the first half of her life firmly “left-brained,” only to have that state repeatedly shattered or dissolved, I offer an observation or two. Timidly, as I simply haven’t previously tried to formulate them (“left-brained” is itself a borrowing).

                I first experienced those dissolvings within formal groups, with chanting or group movement. Thinking about that now, I would venture that it was not just, or even primarily a feeling of connectedness to the other participants; it was instead a dissolving of boundaries: yes, between self and others, but also between the narrowness of self-centered perception and the vastness of revealed reality.

                Reflecting on what both Alice and HMP have rightly observed about the potential misuse of these states, I can only say that I’ve been fortunate. My criterion would be to eliminate any situation wh ere fear or hatred toward others might enter or be stimulated. But I never experienced that, and now, for the purposes of this conversation, I ask myself why.

                It occurs to me that the difference may lie in Exclusion. Is the group one that is open to anyone willing to participate, or is it targeted and targeting. Is there a focus on the previously constructed social identity of the participants or on the simple fact that they have agreed to be there and to set that identity, with all of its assumptions and concerns, temporarily aside.

                Finally, perhaps, there is a distinction between groups formed with particular, finite intentions and groups (inevitably, gropingly, called spiritual) that presuppose a reality beyond the known. In that humility — freed from dogma — there may arise a different kind of oneness.

                We are all in this together. On this planet and maybe beyond it. All, in our limitations and our contradictions, in the ignorance of opinions and disputations.

                That’s all…

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          4. Alphonse December 6, 2025 at 6:34 pm

             Here Latour attacks social constructivism head on, calling sociologists out for their use of class power to create the illusion that they possess the gnostic truth (emphasis mine):

             in spite of what they often claimed, sociologists had always studied down, since the power of science remained on their side and was not itself scrutinized. Religion, popular culture, mythical cosmologies, markets, corporations—even works of art—were never as strong as the science of the social, which was replacing all those softer things by the harder stuff of some hidden social aggregates as well as their powers, structure, and inertia.

             . . . religious people never screamed in anger when they were ‘socially explained’. Who would have listened to them anyway? If anything, their sobs would have been further proof that they could not stand witnessing their fanciful and archaic illusions explained by the cold glare of hard social facts. . . .

             Science represented a completely different challenge . . . for the first time, social scientists had to study something that was higher, harder, and stronger than them. For the first time, the explanandum resisted and grinded the teeth of the explanans’ cogs to mere stumps. Not only that, but the screams of those being studied could be heard loud and clear—and they were not coming from Bali, the ghettos, TV studios, corporate board rooms, or the US Senate, but from departments next door, from colleagues in the very same hiring and grant committees.

             Now, at last, it was time to carry out in the social sciences the experiment which had never been carried out before: What proof do we have that a social explanation holds when we study up? When the reactions of those studied cannot be ignored? When the ‘cultural capital’ of those studied is infinitely higher than those doing the study? When the objects to be replaced by ‘social force’ are obviously much stronger, varied, longer lasting than this very social force that is supposed to explain them? . . . After a week in Roger Guillemin’s laboratory thirty years ago, I remember how inescapable I found the conclusion: the social cannot be substituted for the tiniest polypeptide, the smallest rock, the most innocuous electron, the tamest baboon. Objects of science may explain the social, not the other way around. No experience was more striking than what I saw with my own eyes: the social explanation had vanished into thin air.

             . . . scientists made us realize that there was not the slightest chance that the type of social forces we use as a cause could have objective facts as their effects. . . . since social accounts have failed on science so pitifully, it must have failed everywhere, science being special only in the sense that its practitioners did not let sociologists pass through their turf and destroy their objects with ‘social explanations’ without voicing their dissent loud and clear. Elsewhere the ‘informants’ had always resisted but in a way that was not so noticeable because of their lower status or, when it was noticed, their furor was simply added to the data of the critical theorist as further proof that ‘naive actors’ cling to their pet illusions even in the face of the most blatant refutations.

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             1. debug December 7, 2025 at 12:23 am

                ” . . scientists made us realize that there was not the slightest chance that the type of social forces we use as a cause could have objective facts as their effects. . . . since social accounts have failed on science so pitifully, it must have failed everywhere, science being special only in the sense that its practitioners did not let sociologists pass through their turf and destroy their objects with ‘social explanations’ without voicing their dissent loud and clear. ”

                Hear Hear!

                An unequivocating and clear quotation, with which I heartily agree. Thanks again! And in case someone doesn’t read my prior comment, I stand corrected as regards Latour. My ignorance and my reading of the opening question in the posted link missed its mark, but I’m still glad I took a stab at it.

                It’s been said before, and it will be said again, many times. The commentariat here is the best.

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          5. ocypode December 7, 2025 at 5:00 am

             This is a good comment and I share the appreciation for Schmidt’s book (for which he lost his job!) However I do think that throwing the term “woke ideology” weakens your point. Schmidt is quite simply a communist (he uses Marxist categories to discuss academic production) whereas I’ve found that mobilizing the category “woke” which is very ill-defined serves mostly to build strawmen.

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       4. Sub-Boreal December 6, 2025 at 4:20 pm

          I wasn’t able to see the full article in Chron of Higher Ed because my institution’s text-only access has a 1-month lag. But the mention of Latour in the snippet above the paywall was something of a tripwire, because I’ve tried hard to read him before but had always run out of gas. (My copy of “Facing Gaia” has been sitting on my shelf for half-a-dozen years with a bookmark stuck at page 40. I hate not finishing books that I’ve bought, so it has to be pretty dire for me to give up.) I later discovered that he’d fallen in with the Breakthrough Institute, a clubhouse for technocracy fanboys aka “ecomodernists”, and that was another red flag.

          After several years of occasional encounters with his name, I recently ran across an article which cited one of his earlier pieces in which he reported his observations of scientists doing field work in Amazonia (Ch. 2 in this collection; poor quality pdf). They were soil scientists, so that piqued my interest since that was the trade that I practiced for ~ 40 years.

          It was a hoot! In almost 60 pages with a couple dozen photos, he managed to turn his encounter with the most routine kind of field data collection into an anthropological expedition in which he reports on a series of mysterious rituals, layering on plenty of theory depicted in incomprehensible diagrams. I had no idea that for these many years I’d been engaged in such strange and remarkable practices. I just thought that I’d been out in the woods, digging holes in order to see what was there. Silly me!

          I have to confess that this kind of writing always is a bit triggering, as it brings back memories of undergrad days studying geography in one of the larger Canadian departments for that field. Early on, the students picked up on the mutual dislike that the physical and human geographers had for each other, and this seems to be pretty typical. (I decided by 3rd year in my degree that my interests were on the physical side, and this was reinforced by mandatory courses in cultural and economic geography that had loads of puffed-up social sciencey b******t.)

          Please don’t get me wrong; I find many parts of the humanities quite compelling, and in retirement I’ve been on a major reading binge, mostly in history. But if anything, I’m now even more allergic to bad jargon-ridden writing. If someone really knows their stuff, they don’t have to puff it up with a smothering fill of fake “theory”. If this outs me as a redneck, I plead guilty.

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          1. debug December 6, 2025 at 6:37 pm

             Sub-boreal, thanks for the link to the pdf. And thanks to everyone who tried the subscription wall.

             I read the entire first chapter wherein Latour claims not be a metaphysical denier of reality and that he’s not one of the “bad guys” I characterize as being in the same bin as Kuhn. But I’m still not sure I trust him. It’s so much tongue-in-cheek I’m not sure where he stands! I think he says a lot that seems to make some sense, but I’m not sure whether it boils down to pseudo-profound hockeypucks or not, yet. LOL! But apparently I have some hope left, according to Latour. I’m reminded of why I am not more familiar with his work – I’ve tried it before, too.

             Oh well, I’ll slog through some more of it. Like you, it never seemed so complicated to me until social philosophers starting training on it. And I’m not sure the efforts have added much of anything to science itself. I do consider science to be a discipline unto itself, unlike some who want to drag it back to pre-Cartesian and pre-Galilean times and talk about Greek philosophers’ opinions of ‘science’ which didn’t even really exist as a discpline in those days. Historical fallacy much?

             btw, your moniker reminded of the word I was looking for in a conversation I had yesterday – boreal, and of course sub-boreal, too. Double thanks!

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             1. Sub-Boreal December 7, 2025 at 1:41 am

                Home turf.

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                1. debug December 7, 2025 at 3:09 am

                   Nice!

                   Thanks for the share.

                   I love these kinds of papers, btw. I can’t think of a bettter way to finish the day than to think of being in that forest somewhere. Maybe I’ll have a good dream about it.

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          2. debug December 7, 2025 at 12:30 am

             OK, so Alphonse has helped me, tremendously and graciously. see above comments.

             I’m still going to try to read the pdf you shared, and I’m still not impressed that this is an example of Latour’s finest work, yet…

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    2. AG December 6, 2025 at 9:34 pm

       Someone archived the above text on Latour
       
       Studying Science in an Anti-Scientific Time
       Peter Dear’s new book struggles to negotiate our polarized present.
       https://archive.is/xMAfL

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       1. debug December 7, 2025 at 3:06 am

          Thanks AG.

          I’m almost afraid to read the article now, there’s so much water under the bridge here already! LOL!

          I’ll try tomorrow.

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    3. KLG December 6, 2025 at 10:02 pm

       Offline most of the day. What a great discussion! Just a few short comments that don’t come close to those in this thread.

       I tried to read Latour. Should have tried harder. My difficulty with the “social studies of science” writ large was always that the practitioners of the discipline never seemed to understand how science works on the ground. Here I am talking about experimental sciences. I have no idea how theoretical physics works, but I do know that theoretical biology as a separate sub-discipline has never really been a thing despite delusions of grandeur among a few.

       Of course, most of my colleagues in biochemistry, cell biology, and genetics have had no clue they are also social actors, and this is part of our problems right now. The eugenicists of the 19th century didn’t know they were social actors, either, because they knew their own social class as the only stratum worth considering. Unfortunately, no matter how many stakes are put through the heart of eugenics it cannot be killed. That science is a social construct is obvious to anyone who thinks about it for more than a minute. But it is not only, or primarily, a social construct, contrary to Critical Theory.

       As for T.S. Kuhn, I think he is overrated, but the Leftist NewYork-ites I knew in my 20’s loved their “paradigm shifts.” It is probably not irrelevant that his first book was on the Copernican Revolution, which I actually did a book report on in the sixth grade when my teacher took me to the high school library to find something to stretch my imagination. I really had no clue, though, and it was way over my head! Everything that came after Copernicus in planetary astronomy was different. I have referred to Errol Morris’s The Ashtray as an interesting take on Kuhn and other philosophers. Kuhnians were not impressed, but they seem to he a humorless group.

       Paradigm shifts in chemistry and biology are small bore compared to the shift from Ptolemaic astronomy to Copernicus: Lamarck v. Darwin, spontaneous generation compared to Cell Theory, Germ Theory of Disease vs. Terrain Theory (which RFKJr. is bringing back to life along with other “post-modern” ridiculosities), Gene Theory versus gemmules. None of these things could be seen, but Mars, Venus, Jupiter et. al. were perfectly visible in their motions, especially in a world without so much light pollution. As mentioned below, plate tectonics is equivalent to the Copernican Revolution.

       Sort of on topic, I have just begun my way through the new translation of The Guide to the Perplexed (Stanford University Press). Now there is a book that mediates between paradigms!

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       1. debug December 7, 2025 at 1:27 am

          Thanks KLG,

          There really are some nice conversations going on today. I’m glad I joined in. I’ve learned a lot.

          “As for T.S. Kuhn, I think he is overrated, but the Leftist NewYork-ites I knew in my 20’s loved their “paradigm shifts.” … I have referred to Errol Morris’s The Ashtray as an interesting take on Kuhn and other philosophers. Kuhnians were not impressed, but they seem to he a humorless group.”

          Funny, I’ve had the exact same experience!

          The Ashtray is a good read and as thorough a dismantling of Kuhn as is available in one piece.

          My beef with ‘paradigm shift’ is not that from a view from a million miles away that they don’t seem to happen to be overnight ‘revolutions’, but that every example, including the Copernican example is far more complex than is represented in the words ‘paradigm shift’ as defined by the inventor of the term.

          I am reminded of the old fella who when asked by the Baptist preacher if he had been born again replied “Well, I’m not sure, but if I was it’s been a long slow birthin’.”

          Copernicus possibly and I think probably had access to previous Persian and Arab knowledge and speculation that is known to have existed for a century or more before he published “De Revolutionibus…” And no one paid much attention to Copernicus either, for a while.

          My point is, “when did this ‘revolution’ and ‘paradigm shift’ occur? Was it when the Persian guy thought it up first? Was it when Copernicus published a book in Europe? Was it when Galileo was sent for house arrest by the Inquisition? Or was it when the Inquisition finally quit trying to suppress the idea, centuries later? Or somewhere in between? And which scientists were or were not operating under which ‘paradigm’ at what time, and what does it matter? When the explanatory power of heliocentrism was recognized as having greater predictive power after many years of semi-peaceful coexistence with the Ptolemaic epicycles, everyone who needed the better accuracy dropped Ptolemy. A few old guys who weren’t really doing science anymore, if they ever did, refused to budge. Old Guy’s do that stuff sometimes. No surprise there. No new predictions offered by the idea of a ‘paradigm shift’ revolution. Science just moved on because that’s how it goes.

          In my opinion, there was one Scientific Revolution, one Age of Enlightenment, and everything else is a result. These artificial seams and packets are not really there as science progressed, and are not necessary for explanation. In fact these artificial seams hinder the understanding of what really happens when new knowledge is generated or discovered. The terminology ‘paradigm shift’ is an oversimplification of the process it claims to name and is really totally useless to anyone who actually does science. It is pop culture Andy Warhol recycled soup cans on cardboard that some people call art.

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          1. Henry Moon Pie December 7, 2025 at 9:18 am

             NC is really groovin’ in this thread.

             I’m going to defend the idea of paradigm shift from the standpoint of cybernetics. Donella Meadows asserted that the most powerful way to change a system is to change the paradigm. She was looking at how we might possibly get off the Highway to Hell of Business As Usual, and she recognized that there was a hierarchy of leverage points. Near the top was the “goal,” and in our society, that’s pretty clearly “maximize profit,” or in the post-Greenspan era, “maximize shareholder value.” Meadows saw there was no way to displace that goal, which was driving Business As Usual, unless the paradigm operating in most people’s heads, which can be summed up as “the one who dies with the most toys wins,” was changed first. I believe she could see this because she herself was a bit of a hippie who had already rejected that paradigm and stood outside it.

             We all operate with a collection of paradigms operating to order and even restrict the flow of information we receive. These paradigms aren’t just relevant at an individual level. There are dominant paradigms in communities and even societies at large. While these shared paradigms can provide stability and consensus in a society, they can also prevent necessary change as long as they prevail. The problem is that we are so dependent on these paradigms for our own psychological stability that we usually put up strong resistance against a paradigm change until the cognitive dissonance between observed reality and the paradigm becomes so dramatic that the paradigm collapses, leaving us disoriented until a new paradigm replaces it. That’s the dilemma we currently face.

             I liken it to Gramsci’s observation that the old world is dying as a new world is struggling to be born. I hope the answer to that crisis lies in Durruti’s response to a reporter’s question about the havoc being wrought by the Spanish Civil War:

             We, the workers, can build others to take their place, and better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth, there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world, here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.

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          2. debug December 7, 2025 at 11:21 am

             “When concepts shed complexity and gain memetic fitness, they often cross from true to false; the false version spreads faster and replaces the original. Epistemic damage follows”

             https://aiprospects.substack.com/p/when-ideas-round-to-false

             I’ll just leave this here, a note to myself and anyone coming back around for a last look. My point is not that paradigms and paradigmatic thinking don’t exist at all. HMP has noted such thinking in his nearby reply about cybernetics.

             My problem has always been with those who cram complex ideas and complex transitions in science history into a ‘one-size-fits-all’ memetic construction of a ‘paradigmatic revolution.’ So much detail is lost that the description becomes a toy universe in which every scientific advance looks like every other one. That’s so way far out too easy, it results in a false impression of the historical progress of science. Every single example in the original work that started this meme, in all of its editions, rounds to false when crammed into the nice neat little package that is supposed to be an all-encompassing observation of the progress of science. As such, the meme is worse than useless, in my opinion.

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             1. debug December 7, 2025 at 11:57 am

                And, not wishing to be directly confrontational, in respect for a previous comment above, I believe that the height of humility, for me, is found in not believing anything other than that we are all here together, possibly alone, effectively alone, in our Universe, and that our disputations and arguments here are among the finest examples of creating meaning for ourselves, amongst ourselves. I hope that is the most dogma-less position attainable, but I may be wrong.

                Rising out of ignorance toward something better and toward a more complete understanding of our fellow humans and the Universe we find ourselves in is my goal. I have gained knowledge here from the exchange, about myself and about Latour and about Alphonse and HMP and several others. My Universe is enriched, thereby. I consider it an honor to have participated and been heard, whether agreed with or not.

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14. The Rev Kev December 6, 2025 at 9:57 am

    ‘Massimo
    @Rainmaker1973
    A pensioner from Siberia gave a home to an adult lynx rescued from a fur farm.’

    Why am I reminded of one of those Maine Coon cats?

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    1. Paleobotanist December 6, 2025 at 11:33 am

       ear tuffs

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       1. Paleobotanist December 6, 2025 at 11:33 am

          ear tufts! argh

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          1. Rabid groundhog December 6, 2025 at 1:18 pm

             Second “antidote” this week featuring “pet” owners that are Darwin Award Nominees.

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             1. Kouros December 7, 2025 at 12:25 pm

                Seems safer than a pitbull though, with their shark eyes…

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                1. Wukchumni December 7, 2025 at 12:29 pm

                   Every year in the USA about 30 people are killed by dogs, and around 25 of them are Pit Bulls.

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    2. .Tom December 6, 2025 at 3:24 pm

       The lynx looks rather well fed.

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15. mzza December 6, 2025 at 10:17 am

    A friend once said, “Philanthropy is a problem disguised as a solution,” which I repeat all the time. And the truth of that quip is fully evidenced when Allie Beth Stuckey pipes up with, “it’s like teachers’ unions, it’s the same racket.” Unions are not NGOs (at least no more than any organization, once established, is invested in it’s own permanence). The only thing that would “value add” that bucolic interview would be the two of them declaring that they, themselves, and their uber-wealthy peers are the foundational problem retarding the “uplift” of “those communities,” and committing themselves to the self-destruction of themselves and their class. Punching down at the PMC leech class they’ve created by existing higher and higher in the wealthosphere is no more a solution than hand-wringing about having to attend the next fundraising gala so their name stays on the NGO’s door.

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16. Henry Moon Pie December 6, 2025 at 10:52 am

    Geoengineering–

    Ecomodernists, like the author of this article, are in the ascendancy now, but it should be just the opposite. While the Denialists, with the help of idiots like Dore and Rogan, have tried to give us absolution for continuing with Business As Usual, it’s the EcoModernists who have sought to lull us into a complacent trust that the elites have this figured out. Keep flying, keep driving giant SUVs, keep building McMansions. Our genius TechBros will invent fusion or cover the desert in PVs or build giant mirrors in space or suck the carbon right out of the sky so that it all works out. And when that turns out to not be the case, here they come with spraying sulfur in the sky every two years. I expect the Denialists to join their bandwagon in the kind of “Say what?” moment that’s becoming common these days. The stock market will have new bubbles to blow with the geoengineering project requiring new aircraft (but, in desperation). No doubt the Trump family will concoct some way to profit personally from it.

    The idiocy (or is it cynicism) of this article is that the only concern is about temperature. Human activity has brought us to breaching 7 of 9 planetary boundaries, any of which could make maintaining civilization very difficult, and spraying sulfur in the sky addresses only one of them while possibly making some of the other boundary breachings worse. Moreover, the side effects of this spraying range from acid rain to disturbing major weather patterns like monsoons. It’s really more of a weapon than a salvation.

    So the bezzle continues. Our billionaire bosses are fiddling with data centers while the planet burns. Think of the money to be made from geoengineering. If you can just corner the sulfur spraying market, you can charge the world what you like as they face a choice between wet bulb 35 and ponying up whatever a Musk or Gates demands. Now having the power to extort money from all of humanity is a power few humans have “enjoyed.”

    It’s a tragedy dwarfing anything Aeschylus or Shakespeare could concoct. The richest 10% of the planet continue to consume conspicuously, accounting for 50% of the CO2 we’re emitting. A planet that has sheltered humanity and the rest of life on Earth in the Holocene is turned into a raging Gaia visiting destruction on all that humans have built all so the PMC can bore their friends with tales of their travels. All I can say is…

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    1. Kurtismayfield December 6, 2025 at 12:28 pm

       People bought the recycling lie hook, line, and sinker. They would rather have to believe that they will have to change very little.

       Reply ↓
    2. Lefty Godot December 6, 2025 at 1:01 pm

       I’m waiting for the headline that says “Why Nuclear War Is Now a Moral Imperative”, with graphs and pictures with circles and arrows showing how Nuclear Winter is just the fix we need for the climate crisis. Also making the case that even destroying only half of that 10% of the planet consuming conspicuously would bring about a 25% reduction in CO2 emissions. That has to sound appealing to somebody in power. Unfortunately for us, Xi and Putin might be the ones who pick up on it.

       Reply ↓
    3. nigel rooney December 6, 2025 at 3:15 pm

       Thank you HMP, your wonderful comment describes my own similar concerns and opinions far better than I could have myself.

       Reply ↓
    4. juno mas December 6, 2025 at 3:29 pm

       (Michael) “Mann calls Hansen’s arguments for the necessity of solar geoengineering, “misguided policy advocacy.”

       “The authors are promoting the unprecedented, and potentially very dangerous, ‘geoengineeering’ gambit of attempting to manipulate our planetary environment,” Mann writes. “This desperate action is motivated by what I consider to be a fallacy, advanced by the article, that large-scale warming will be substantially greater than current-generation models project.” (Current models say that carbon dioxide emissions will warm the atmosphere a lot less compared to Hansen’s analysis.)

       According to Mann, the climate situation is still extremely dire. But it is a situation that concerted efforts to decarbonize our economy can address, without resorting to geoengineering. ” (quoted from a Time article)

       Radical conservation by the “10%” is the solution to CO2 pollution.

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       1. juno mas December 6, 2025 at 3:40 pm

          Addendum: The 10% is the “Golden 1 Billion” of the planets population that is creating the majority of global warming.

          Reply ↓
17. Es s Ce Tera December 6, 2025 at 11:17 am

    re: YouTube, aka The Biggest Platform on Earth, Has Deleted All My Albums David Rovick.

    The significance of the piece, to me, is not that Rovick might be oblivious to similar clampdowns happening everywhere across different platforms and politics (which I doubt if he’s involved in any way with the pro-Palestine movement), it’s that I see humanity slowly coming to the realization that human creativity, if we wish to keep, cherish and nurture it, needs to be altogether separated from and removed from tech.

    So, yes to “if your business depends on a platform, you don’t have a business” to some extent, but I would go further – “if you value creative works, they need to be manifested and preserved in non-digital formats”. And perhaps even “if you attempt to monetize creative works of art, create a business out of them, you’ll only diminish those very works.”

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18. John Wright December 6, 2025 at 11:18 am

    Re: House of Luddington in Escanaba MI.

    I had dinner at the House of Luddington, just before Halloween or a little over a month ago.

    We had an early dinner, but we were the only two diners.

    Escanaba has finished resurfacing Luddington Street that runs in front of the House of Luddington down to the old lighthouse.

    Another sports bar restaurant on Luddington had a kitchen fire in August and claims on their sign that they will be back

    Escanaba has a lot of “help wanted” ads at the fast food restaurants at $15/$16 per hour.

    Nov 10 was the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the iron ore ship “Edmund Fitzgerald” on Lake Superior and Escanaba had exhibits in the public library (even though Escanaba is on Lake Michigan).

    A lot of resource extraction occurred in the UP, copper, iron and timber.

    Timber is still ongoing, to judge from the trucks carrying logs.

    I’m sorry to hear about the fire.

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    1. Jabura Basadai December 6, 2025 at 1:45 pm

       a beautiful building, sad to see it go – perchance you’ve visited Kitch-iti-kipi over near Manistique –
       https://familydestinationsguide.com/michigan-freshwater-spring-wonders/

       lived in Ishpeming while attending NMU and drove a delivery truck for Nagelkirk’s market which went down to Escanaba often –

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    2. ex-PFC Chuck December 6, 2025 at 2:23 pm

       About two years ago the oldest resort in Minnesota burned to the ground, and finally just this past week, the owner was arrested for arson. The Lutsen Resort was founded by Charles Nelson in 1885 about 90 miles northeast of Duluth on Lake Superior. Because the Highway 61 made famous by Bob Dylan that now snakes along the lake was decades in the future, access to the resort was initially possible only by boat. After World War II the founder’s grandson, who had served in the 10th Mountain Division, developed one of Minnesota’s earliest ski areas on the thousands of acres the family owned in the highlands just north of the lake. His daughter, Cindy Nelson, went on to become a world class downhill skier. Her brother was in the process of taking over the management of the resort, but when he died young of cancer the family began to divest the property. I have fond memories of the place, having worked there for several months immediately prior to being drafted into the army in the early 60s, and 40+ years later when my son was married there.

       Reply ↓
19. Steve H. December 6, 2025 at 11:41 am

    > Vladimir Putin’s Philosophy of Complexity Russia in Global Affairs (Micael T)

    >> Putin’s appeal to the principles of the philosophy of complexity is entirely logical: the world of international politics will very soon represent precisely such a “complex” system, a complex paradigm. Theories developed in the era of globalisation are no longer sufficient to understand it.

    Compare with:

    > If a scientist pays no attention to the metaphysical premises he uses in making his observations, conducting his experiments, or constructing his theory, then he will use an unscientific pseudo-metaphysics.

    [Wells Glossary of Critical Philosphy and Mental Physics]

    (PDF, presented without endorsement)

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20. Mikel December 6, 2025 at 12:01 pm

    A massive Bronze Age city hidden for 3,500 years just surfaced – ScienceDaily

    Touching the surface of what’s left to discover about this planet.
    Stll to come: Deeper into the ocean and deeper than that.

    On another note: I would imagine eyes are on the Antarctic region.

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21. Mikel December 6, 2025 at 12:21 pm

    Putin’s Top Envoy Kirill Dmitriev & His Deep Connections with the WEF, Western Elites, & Trump’s Business Circles – Fiorella Isabell

    Around the beginning of this year, I looked at his resume. Since then, I’ve considered his involvement like sending dog whistles and smoke signals to those leaning more toward neoliberal economics.

    Reply ↓
    1. Polar Socialist December 6, 2025 at 1:15 pm

       There are no neoliberals in Russia, as much as the neoliberals would like there to be. At best they are old school liberals, but in this case Dmitriev is the director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund because he believes in “strategic investment” – i.e. he was the funding behind the Vostok covid vaccine and even more important in “selling” it to 60 foreign countries to gain prestige for Russia.

       Using billions of government money to invest in infrastructure, import substitution and regional development does not really spell liberal of any kind, don’t you think?

       The reasons why he has become one of the negotiators are multiple: having graduated from Stanford and Harvard he speaks fluent English, he’s old friends with Kushner and knows Witkoff from the spring, he was accused by Mueller during the great inquisition of Trump, he’s Ukrainian (of the wrong kind) and his wife is friends with Putin’s daughter (so he’s almost family). And he’s responsible for getting foreign investment into Russia.

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       1. Mikel December 6, 2025 at 2:34 pm

          I don’t think anyone with involvement with the global banks has totally abandoned neoliberal economics.
          And I am watching what they do in other countries too.
          Stay tuned.

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       2. jrkrideau December 6, 2025 at 10:21 pm

          Minor quibble. I believe you mean the Sputnik 5 vaccine not the ” Vostok” vaccine.

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       3. Yves Smith Post authorDecember 7, 2025 at 2:09 am

          Huh? Elvira Nabiullina is regularly described as a neoliberal. Consistent with that, she gets high marks from other central bankers.

          Reply ↓
          1. Polar Socialist December 7, 2025 at 7:47 am

             She’s described as a neoliberal in The West, but nobody in Russia, neither her enemies or herself, ever describes her as neoliberal. She believes in market economy and that the central bank’s main task is fighting inflation (but so does everyone in Russia who lived trough the 90’s).

             Having graduated as a Marxist (and as the first one to join the Komsomol in her class), she sure was drawn towards the “market Bolsheviks”* led by Chubais, but as that liberal experiment failed so totally (Nabiullina herself was responsible for several likewise failed attempts between 2008-2012), she’s nowadays a “systemic liberal” very aware of the benefits of the “social contract” and “government intervention”.

             From what I’ve read she’s Putin’s technocratic creature (as in; her position depends completely on Putin’s good will). Besides executing rather conservative economic policies, Putin also uses her as a counter-balance against the social-democrats like Glazyev (who actually wrote the Russian economic policy plan) and the very strong power block of government industrial managers – let out of leash Nabiullina would at least try** to privatize the lot of them.

             Let’s just say that if the liberals running the Russian Central Bank and other Russian financial institutions actually were nowhere close to neoliberal thinking, Russian economy would have austerity instead of autarky – the proof is there for anyone to see.

             The only Russian liberal who ever really preached neoliberal ideas was Boris (“profits or go die!”) Nemtsov, and he was so much in the margins that even other Russian liberals kept him at a distance not to be tarnished.

             * as in liberal reforms enforced from above, even by using violence, if need be. The closest Russia has come to neoliberalism. Although Chubais et al did drop the rest of the package (decentralization, civil society, democratization, rule of law) and got cold feet when the society crashed
             ** given the previous cock-ups regarding this in Russia, she would be fighting an uphill battle and likely lose, but also given the previous cock-ups, nobody really wants to have that battle if it can be avoided.

             Reply ↓
             1. Yves Smith Post authorDecember 7, 2025 at 9:38 am

                John Helmer, who cites a lot of Russian sources, depicts Nabuillina’s interest rate policies as pro-bank and harmful to the real economy, which strikes me as neoliberal. Some examples:

                https://johnhelmer.net/central-bank-governor-nabiullina-is-the-nato-bankers-favourite-russian-banker-president-putins-too/

                https://johnhelmer.net/no-gdp-growth-no-inflation-no-war-by-2028-central-bank-governor-nabiullina-follows-us-nato-imf/

                Reply ↓
                1. Polar Socialist December 7, 2025 at 11:28 am

                   Since fighting inflation to achieve price stability is a basic tenet in classical economy, liberal economy, neoliberal economy and Keynesian economy, and Russia has near full employment and 1/3 of Russian companies don’t have any debt (so CBR interest policies are no concern for them) one can interpret her interest rate policies in almost any way one wants to.

                   I choose to believe Paul Robertson’s books and multiple Russian commentators regarding there being no neoliberals after Nemtsov’s death and interpret Nabiullina’s actions against the three decades of double-digit inflation Russia has suffered from.

                   Reply ↓
                   1. Wukchumni December 7, 2025 at 11:30 am

                      Russia and China both have had quite painful periods of hyperinflation in the near past, which had to color the way they go about things now…

                      Reply ↓
22. XXYY December 6, 2025 at 12:42 pm

    The fentanyl killing America is from top ally India — not Venezuela Dan Cohen

    The reason fentanyl has made such a showing on the world drug scene in the last decade or two is not because people want it or it has some attractive quality. The reason is because of the War on Drugs ™.

    Since fentanyl can be made in a lab rather than requiring huge opium fields, and since its extremely high potency makes it much easier to smuggle in minute quantities across national boundaries, it’s the logical choice for narco traffickers to make and sell. It’s especially dangerous in poorly black market drug distribution systems, where purity and dosage control are likely to be poor and fatal doses are easy to get by accident.

    The War on Drugs is a self-inflicted tragedy that has killed millions or hundreds of millions for absolutely no reason (other than providing gigantic budgets for various government enforcement agencies). I keep hoping we are going to see our way past it, and sometimes it looks like we are doing just that.

    Other times, not so much.

    Reply ↓
    1. Rabid groundhog December 6, 2025 at 1:27 pm

       An amazing coincidence-how interest in Afghanistan evaporated just as fenty appeared on the scene.

       Reply ↓
       1. vao December 6, 2025 at 5:17 pm

          That is a shrewd observation, leading into a rabbit hole of further considerations. After all, it is well-known that the CIA and some parts of the US military have been heavily involved in the drug trade, from the Vietnam war through the intervention against Nicaragua to the occupation of Afghanistan.

          Let me refer to the other shrewd comments on a post (here) about the various recent actions of the USA in Central and South America:

          1) the USA want to protect the narcotics trade (and therefore local politicians involved in it who just happen to have a favourable attitude towards the USA);

          2) the USA want to go further and actually seize control of the narcotics trade for themselves.

          Hence, what could be the role of the aforementioned players, between “losing interest in Afghanistan” and the concomitant emergence of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs?

          Reply ↓
23. XXYY December 6, 2025 at 12:53 pm

    Facing Severe Drought Iran Plans to Purchase Water From Neighboring Countries Kurdistan24

    I think it was Bill McKibben who pointed out once that the best way to import water is to import grain. It takes a thousand tons of water to grow one ton of grain.

    I don’t know if Iran has a substantial domestic agricultural industry, but it obviously uses a vastly disproportionate share of the domestic water supply if so. Hopefully the leaders of the country are way ahead of me on this.

    Reply ↓
24. Mikel December 6, 2025 at 1:28 pm

    The End of the Israel Exception – Foreign Affairs.

    The article: what some people want to hear.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNkEvv8ZRtk/
    Vanessa Beeley | Hezbollah In A Cauldron: Israel Pushing Lebanon To Brink Of War

    The video: what is actually happening. The map of walls is stunning.

    Reply ↓
25. raspberry jam December 6, 2025 at 1:39 pm

    Am currently in Athens and a big protest/rally is underway around Panepistimou station. I’m in Exarchia and was staying in (have a cold) and was trying to figure out why the traffic honking was worse than usual. Turns out it’s a big anti-police violence rally that happens every year on December 6 to commemorate the death of a teenager in 2008 in Exarchia. I’ve been wondering why there have been so many riot cops around Exarchia since I’ve been here – the locals are not exactly in solidarity with the farmers, the other big protests going on elsewhere in Greece right now – it hasn’t gotten violent yet but I’m a few blocks from Omonia and the noise is getting louder. Live footage on the local news a little while ago shows Panepistimou and Stadiou completely shut down with hundreds of riot cops. I didn’t really see any protesters, though.

    Reply ↓
26. Bootstraps December 6, 2025 at 1:43 pm

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2141837/europe-putin-spy-satellites-daily-basis

    Panic in Europe as Putin sends spy satellites over huge country ‘on a daily basis’
    Russian reconnaissance satellites fly over the territory of one European country several times a day, it has been revealed.

    True. As a matter of fact, they fly over territory of most countries, all the time, because that’s how low Earth orbit works.

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev December 6, 2025 at 6:01 pm

       The Express trying to do their bit to make people panic about Putin. It’s all pathetic.

       Reply ↓
       1. Polar Socialist December 6, 2025 at 6:19 pm

          But it’s working even without any evidence so there’s that.

          Reply ↓
          1. The Rev Kev December 6, 2025 at 6:25 pm

             I’m wondering if all that panic over those drone sightings on the US eastern seaboard was just a practice session for what is happening in Europe right now.

             Reply ↓
27. OIFVet December 6, 2025 at 2:13 pm

    Eurocrats and their shills continue to demonstrate that they are several cards short of a full deck and ought to reside in rooms with padded walls. Meanwhile German Gen Zs are protesting against being forced to register for the draft and potentially dying for the greater profits of Rheinmetall and Kaja Kallas’ revenge fantasies. Interesting times.

    Reply ↓
28. AW December 6, 2025 at 3:32 pm

    OT: Some source code downloads weren’t behaving as expected since last I had need of them a few years ago. Thus I came across this slashdot link regarding the free software foundation that some readers here might find of interest. It is five months old, so apologies if it was reported on already; seems to be ongoing.

    Reply ↓
    1. nyleta December 7, 2025 at 12:10 am

       Yep,used to be able to browse marc.info to see the state of play regularly. Now seems only the 32 bit Firefox can linger there, protective measures have been taken against the LLM crawlers who have ruined it for the rest of us. Wonder how the mailing lists are holding up internally, Just another step down like Usenet news.

       Reply ↓
    2. .human December 7, 2025 at 3:38 am

       Years ago, entire archives at debian were taken offline due to finding altered files. It was the better part of two years before _every_ bit of code was vetted and released.

       Reply ↓
29. ChrisRUEcon December 6, 2025 at 4:30 pm

    #UKSuperFlu

    Man … I always say, if you want a peep into the future of what potentially awaits the US like a delayed train coming down the same tracks, look at the UK – from the mass school absences to the teeth falling out to the new super-flu … all because of #BoJo’s “let ‘r rip” approach. I will forever maintain that #Bojo should have died of COVID in April 2020. His survival made it OK for his horrible policy to survive, much like he did.

    Reply ↓
30. ilpalazzo December 6, 2025 at 6:41 pm

    A good report on computer memory situation. Usual suspects are mentioned with detail.

    https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram-deal

    Reply ↓
31. principle December 6, 2025 at 7:13 pm

    The other day we had news about stolen Fabergé egg. The story came out to its natural conclusion.

    https://www.dw.com/en/stolen-faberge-egg-bowel-movement-new-zealand/a-75025623
    Police recover Faberge egg swallowed by suspected thief
    After six days of inspecting the suspect’s bowel movements, New Zealand police recovered a stolen Faberge pendant that he had swallowed after being caught.

    Reply ↓
32. rowlf December 6, 2025 at 7:22 pm

    I have been enjoying Dmitri Orlov’s podcasts at No Questions Asked utube channel.

    Podcasts featuring Dmitry Orlov and his cat (who doesn’t ask any questions).

    I’ve had an interest in understanding the Soviet Union and Russia for 55 years, starting by going to the Montreal World’s Fair (USSR had a very good pavilion) and luckily having an uncle who was a professor of Russian History to pester with questions. I grew up on US military bases that had nuclear weapons and we were expected to be vaporized early on during the Cold War.

    Reply ↓
    1. AG December 6, 2025 at 9:09 pm

       Then will give it a try, with doubts (I only heard him very briefly in the past.)

       Reply ↓
33. Alice X December 6, 2025 at 8:00 pm

    Ken Klippenstein

    FBI Making List of American “Extremists,” Leaked Memo Reveals

    They’re making a list, they’re checking it twice

    Attorney General Pam Bondi is ordering the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism,” according to a Justice Department memo published here exclusively.
    The target is those expressing “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology,” as well as “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-Christianity.”

    /blockquote>

    Well, I’m a commie so here I am you mother f*ckers.

    Reply ↓
34. AG December 6, 2025 at 9:05 pm

    re: Germany vs. the election recount

    BERLINER ZEITUNG

    by Sarah Wagenknecht

    Guest post
    Sahra Wagenknecht: Germany has the election review of a banana republic
    Voters have a right to fair election results. The election review committee, however, has decided in favor of Merz and against democracy.

    Sahra Wagenknecht
    December 6, 2025

    https://archive.is/oBFaW

    Reply ↓
35. AG December 6, 2025 at 11:15 pm

    re: EU decoupling from Russia based on unchanged fairy-tales

    German JUNGE WELT daily

    EU agrees on complete import ban for natural gas from November 2027
    https://archive.is/0hBPG

    “(…)
    Press releases announcing the recent decisions reveal that Russia’s share of the EU’s natural gas consumption has fallen from 45 percent in the first half of 2025 since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, dropping to 13 percent in the first half of 2025. This remaining share represents a value of approximately 10 billion euros. Russia’s share of EU oil imports has also decreased to just two percent – ​​down from 27 percent before the war – and imports of Russian coal have been completely banned since August 2022. Europe is paying for this “independence” with electricity prices that are among the highest in the world.
    (…)”

    I wouldn´t be surprised if the share in reality is still higher.
    But the suicidal path is obvious and resistance which is voiced is ignored by the EU.

    Of course this begs the question about the leverage by the US used against the EU to enforce this since ruling parties in the EU would have a valuable token for their voters if energy prices could be reduced with keeping RU routes open. I don´t think that internally EU still believes they can bring about a collapse of RU as alleged by this German blog piece which is citing BLOOMBERG and such neutral entities as the “Polish Centre for Eastern Studies” and the “Finnish central bank.”

    I am still puzzled that approaching Year 5 such a text is published by an alleged altern. medium as TELEPOLIS, seriously quoting statements as this:
    
    “(…)As a Bloomberg report now reveals, the European stance may be calculated. The report suggests that the problems of the Russian economy will worsen next year, “which would weaken Putin’s negotiating position.”(…)” to conclude with this sub-headline: “Civilian economy collapses”.

    see:
    Why Europe is playing for time – will the Russian collapse really happen in 2026?
    https://archive.is/DnTqU

    So cui bono in all this madness.

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