Why the West stopped making land Works in Progress
Does Living Abroad Actually Change Who You Are? Study Offers Nuanced Answer StudyFinds
Listening for Life Among the Dead BioGraphic
Be Not Afraid. Bats Are Amazing The Tyee
Climate/Environment
As Europe broils, the US braces for its own heat wave over the next several days Balanced Weather
Super El Niño Is Now Breaking Into the Atmosphere as July Forecasts Show a Pattern Shift for the U.S. and Canada Severe Weather Europe
The marine heatwave in the Mediterranean Sea continues to escalate, with water temperatures now up to 7.4°C (13.3°F) above normal.
Waters off the coast of Italy are now locally exceeding 28.5°C (83.3°F), downright tropical.
This is one of the worst June marine heatwaves on… pic.twitter.com/QetE9HQjEw
— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) June 25, 2026
Europe’s extreme heat is shutting down power plants MIT Technology Review
Major wildfire rips through moorland close to Greater Manchester The Guardian
Carbon Captured ProPublica
Earth’s Plants May Have Nearly 2 Billion Years Left Before the Planet Becomes Too Hostile ZME Science
Ebola
The Ebola Outbreak’s Central Mystery: Where Did This Virus Come From? New York Times
U.S. provides experimental Ebola treatment for outbreak in Congo, bringing trials closer NBC News
Japan
Constitutional debates intensify in Japan parliament over emergency clause Japan Times
New entity mulled to push production, exports of defense equipment Asahi Shimbun
China?
Chinese universities are cutting language majors to make way for AI Rest of World
China’s new ethnic law explained: Can Beijing target activists overseas? Business Standard
🇺🇸🇨🇳NEW ARTICLE: US Prepares Terrorist Army to Expand its Dirty War on China
(NOTE: Because X continues censoring links previously banned by Twitter in cooperation with the US State Department including NEO, I am providing the entire article below).
The US media has invested in… pic.twitter.com/ZoFLdJ9S2N
— Brian Berletic (@BrianJBerletic) June 24, 2026
Syraqistan
Israel Bombs Palestinians in Beach Tents in Gaza Drop Site
Israeli Foreign Minister Proposes Official Recognition of Armenian Genocide, Calling It a ‘Moral and Historical Obligation’ The Armenian Report
Netanyahu ‘convinces’ Trump to back Israeli occupation of south Lebanon: Report The Cradle
JD Vance: Our new relationship with Iran Unherd
Exclusive: Trump claims Iran funds to be spent on US food false Al Mayadeen
Iran’s post-war pivot to ‘economy first’ stirs hardline backlash Amwaj
Iraq considers leaving OPEC to increase oil output Iraqi News
You will only read it here!
President Trump has quitely and without any news reporting renewed Executive Order 13303, which puts all Iraqi oil revenues under his control. There has not been a single news item or White House press release since Trump signed the renewal in early… pic.twitter.com/T0MPXPiGjL
— Hussein Askary (@HusseinAskary) June 25, 2026
Yemen’s Houthi group vows to target any Israeli presence in breakaway Somaliland Anadolu Agency
Africa
Old Blighty
UK foreign policy to remain unchanged despite government transition, deputy PM Lammy says Euronews
INSIDE LABOUR TOGETHER’S SECRET BATTLE AGAINST JEREMY CORBYN Declassified UK
New Not-So-Cold War
La Marine Nationale a arraisonné mardi le pétrolier Deliver alors qu’il transitait au large de la Sicile en infraction avec le droit de la mer.
Cette nouvelle action contre la flotte fantôme, conduite quelques jours après une opération similaire par le Royaume-Uni… pic.twitter.com/5Gjn43MhLr
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 25, 2026
Denmark says it won’t grant refugee protection to Ukrainians eligible for conscription Kyiv Independent
Next Phase of Psyop: Ukraine Now Accuses Belarus of Rapid Militarization on Border Simplicius
Rubio says no Ukraine agreement reached at Alaska summit, contradicting Moscow’s claims Kyiv Independent
Lavrov’s Realization That Anchorage Only Bought Time For Ukraine To Rearm Was Long Overdue Andrew Korybko
HISTORY WAS LIKE THAT, NOW IT’S LIKE THIS John Helmer
When did Western statecraft lose its fear of the unknown? Responsible Statecraft
Imperial Collapse Watch
When the Hegemon Becomes A Developmental State… Un-Diplomatic
U.S. Military Bases Around the World Are Facing Growing Protest From an Emboldened Antiwar Movement Covert Action Magazine
US plans to quadruple THAAD interceptor output under new $35 billion deal Interesting Engineering
L’affaire Epstein
Judge orders DOJ to produce, unredact sought after Epstein files The Hill
South of the Border
Venezuela: Earthquake Death Toll Rises, US SOUTHCOM Deploys Military Assets Venezuelanalysis
Colombia to work with Israel ‘like never before’ — De la Espriella TRT World
Buenas noches a todos aquellos que decían que en Sudamérica no existía un plan orquestado.
Basta con observar el mapa de América del Sur para darse cuenta de que, según esta interpretación, el escenario ha sido diseñado minuciosamente para desembocar en la situación actual.… pic.twitter.com/RgZQGMOopt
— Hector | 𝙴𝚕 𝙷𝚒𝚕𝚘 𝚁𝚘𝚓𝚘 (@ElHiloRojoTV) June 24, 2026
Democrats Suck
California’s ‘first partner’ targeted by Trump, Newsom says. Here is what we know about her career, finances Los Angeles Times
The Israel Lobby Is Losing It’s Grip On The Democratic Party. The Dissident
Mamdani
NYC Rent Guidelines Board approves 2-year rent freeze, fulfilling Mamdani campaign pledge Gothamist
Jeffries Says Mamdani Has “Work to Do” to Placate Establishment Dems in Congress Truthout
AOC on NY Primaries: I feel like it’s déjà vu all over again. There was so much fear back when I was elected, and none of it bore out to be true. pic.twitter.com/ogqfVusBSx
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 25, 2026
The Supremes
US supreme court allows Trump administration to strip Haitians and Syrians of protected status The Guardian
Court rules for Roundup maker in dispute over cancer warnings on pesticide labels SCOTUS blog
Taft at the Beach Can We Still Govern?
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Why do these Castro gay bars have TSA-style face scanners? Gazetteer San Francisco
Police State Watch
New Mexico governor calls for criminal probe of DEA allowing fentanyl shipments to hit streets The Independent
Groves of Academe
The gas industry is sneaking into kids’ science classes HEATED
AI
Ford Has Been Rehiring Quality Inspectors After AI Fell Short Bloomberg
Texas leaders are asking data centers how much water they use. Most aren’t responding. Texas Tribune
On AI, all eyes are on Ted Cruz Politico
What a Data Center Moratorium Can Buy Boondoggle
***
Micron locks in historically high memory prices for five years The Register
Following Apple, Microsoft Dramatically Hikes Xbox Prices, Again Forbes
***
Tumbling AI stocks signal another day of turmoil for tech companies CNBC
The Generative AI Fizzle™ Gary Marcus
AI frenzy makes Asia ripe for a ‘chip wreck’ Asia Times
Class Warfare
Unions are furious after GM replaces 1,000 workers with 50 robots Geekspin
Left behind: American federal workers in Europe stripped of labor rights their foreign colleagues keep Federal News Network
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
>Micron locks in historically high memory prices for five years
A 500 gb SSD I got for $70 three years ago is now $300 from the same vendor. A one tb then for $90 is now $450. I won’t be getting either anytime soon, if ever.
Yes, this is pretty distressing. Granted, if we had sensible motives in the software world, software would be optimized for the hardware, and we can get much milage out of what we have today, no doubt. So much stuff today is just trash web apps wrapped in a Chrome browser and skinned to look like a real native application. I hate Electron apps.
I’ve kept all my oldish rotational hard drives; I have a few 300GB, a 250GB, and a 640GB and a 1TB that I dropped and maybe still works. Never thought I might need them because the elite class engaged in a shared AI delusion.
My photos folder from my most recent phone is already 40 gb. My photos from the previous 20 years are over 140 gb, they’ve already been moved to one of those spindle drives (of which I also have quite a few). They aren’t very easy to access but that’s where we’re at. My main SSD is already at 29,000 power on hours (what I’ve heard vendors say is that couldn’t be). Everyday I hit the power on button with bated breath, wondering: was yesterday the last day?
Ahh the good old days, when we had pictures developed and assembled into photo albums. No cloud storage, no subscription fees, no being held hostage to any of that. Of course the downsides of not being able to instantaneously share with someone on the other side of the planet, edit on a whim, much else…
I am starting to wonder if these local storage price increases are part of the plan to force us to store all our data in the cloud.
I refuse, and will always refuse. I will delete my photographs before I put a single on in iCloud.
Well done Christian. Me too.
With those prices mechanical hard drives may make a comeback.
Unfortunately they’re up also, like almost double, but not four or five times. So it may come to that.
We’ll be in the slow lane again.
:-/
“Ford Has Been Rehiring Quality Inspectors After AI Fell Short”
You wonder if that AI was introduced not on the basis of whether it was ready for deployment but timing it for some stock market event. And they waited until the problem was causing them billions of dollars in losses before they were forced to use human meat solutions. I for one hope that an AI quality inspector does not hallucinate a brake cable being installed properly when it isn’t.
My one time father-in-law was a quality control engineer at Ford, I quipped: wasn’t that was an oxymoron. It wasn’t much appreciated then (Fix Or Repair Daily was in the back story). I had other problems with the family which came to the fore shortly. This was nearly 50 years ago, Tempus Fugit.
Our household , and anyone who listens to me will NEVER buy a ford again.
I just had a 2018 ford escape with 119,000 miles on it hauled out to the junk yard. They manufacture an engine with a defect. A defect that existed in a group of these engines before. Then they make the same mistake again. Then after a class action lawsuit…. somehow the lawyers allow the company to walk away with a deal that they will only replace engines that fail before 87,500 miles. I guess because all those high price lawyers consider that getting 87,500 miles on a car is all anyone would expect when they are buying a car.
The days of my little trucks getting 300,000 miles is over…
Now ford has decided they don’t care. They make niceish disposable vehicles and will keep selling them to people until everyone figures out the brand is dead.
Family blog… ford!
I don’t think this is a problem limited to Ford.
Ive been researching cars lately, and it seems most manufactures have at least one or two cluster family blog vehicle/engine/platforms right now. Even traditional high quality stalwarts like Toyota (Tacoma twin turbo engine recall) and Mazda (PHEV). Many issues seem related to “advanced” very high efficiency engines forced by legislation. I guess it’s easier to write the rule than engineer cost effective solutions to meet the rule… although even the “simple” EVs have issues (Hyundai/Kia ICCU, Chevy’s burning batteries).
All this puts my old, somewhat reliable car in a new light. Maybe the devil you know is better…
I agree completely.
From what I have seen the newish congressional legislations which forced the changes away from lead in the bearing races, the high pressures needed to achieve fuel efficiency standards, vis a vis the engine type and design, which forced the water like oil they require now, as well as the “tightening” of the clearances, and thinning of cast parts… all of which would work for performance engines that are rebuilt constantly…. and all of which should be jettisoned for the sake of reliability and longevity.
the whole of the US market is being subject to morons in congress and their lawyers and lobbyists… making laws like a lawyer. They tend to believe nature will bend to their design, just because they put it down on paper. And here we are…
Never mind the security state … that is now our cars.
But I still will never buy a ford again.
I got over the fact that ford was one of the us giants who worked with the nazi’s during WWII… And figured at least they made a good enough little truck… but now they don’t make one of those either… So what do they have? nothing.
Car nut here. No question powertrain reliability and durability has been reduced by new complexity added to meet tightening emissions standards. Orangey ditched the fines for noncompliance, but cars are a global business and his term is only four years, so they can’t just re-engineer everything the minute they stop getting punished for polluting. (Not that polluting is a good thing anyway.)
Lest the carmakers seem like the innocent victims in all this, it’s worth recalling that GM for one schemed for many years to kill off more efficient trolleys so they could sell more buses and cars in cities. So there is a very belated karmic aspect to this.
From a few years ago but I think still relevant. Apologies if I have posted this before but I think it still applies. “The ten worst to best car brands” by Scotty Kilmer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5XVqbEgSIE. 9 minutes.
Rob
> Now ford has decided they don’t care.
‘Now’??? ‘Twas ever thus. Ford and the rest of them. Oldsters here may recall the case back in the antediluvian ’70s or ’80s where one of the big Detroit automakers had a small, cheap, popular car. Only problem was that the petrol tank could explode if you looked at it funny. Nevertheless, they crunched the numbers and found that profit margin x volume sold, even with – payouts for liability lawsuits = good enough to carry on. I don’t remember exactly why / how they finally stopped making those death-traps.
I’m not sure AI can screw things up any worse than some design “engineer” who gave us things like fuel pumps submerged inside the gas tank, starters underneath the intake manifold, or the battery in a box under the back seat, to name a few…
And it’s not just Ford. 2016 Chevy Colorado, 70k miles bought new. $1400 to fix a temperature problem. Dash gauge would go up, almost into the red zone, then go back down. Two different dealers, $800 to one, $600 to another – not fixed. Solution – none. GM says “problem deemed normal by engineering at this time.” Normal? Really? And the service manager tells me “just don’t let it get into the red.”
Yea, so if it does, I just pull over a wait along the side of the road? I guess so. It’s a bad design, they can’t fix it. Needs a recall and different parts. They are too cheap to do so. I wanted my $1400 back back since they didn’t fix anything. Nope, screw off.
“I’m not sure AI can screw things up any worse than some design “engineer” “
Remember: those AI agents are trained by ingurgitating whatever human beings have produced in the past, and they have a habit of making some wild extrapolations out of their training data (generally called “hallucinations”), so I would not exclude some real surprises if they learn from the blueprints of those “engineers” you lambast…
This interview with Cory Doctorow goes a long way towards explaining why CEOs are switching to AI no matter what:
Krystal & Ryan SPAR Over AI Hype w “Enshitification” Author
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJmUbkRqXeE
If you’re in an AI bubble but you don’t “make AI” then you have to use AI and brag about it to Wall St to get the benefits of the bubble. Doesn’t matter if it works as long as the stock go up.
But for the CEOs of major manufacturers in America that have treated their workers like replaceable widgets, COVID caused some real problems that they will take a LONG TIME to undo. They lost experienced workers and just assumed they could put anybody in there to get the work done. This happen on the factory floor and in engineering.
mind blowing!
@niko_kukushkin
This is insane: so aside from delivering DNA, sperm grabs RNA from the seminal fluid and delivers it to the egg? RNA levels is proxy for “which genes are currently on”. Tell me this is not a mechanism to pass on the father’s experience. It’s like adding .md files to a model.
reminds SRV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3woPVQExDsQ
Lamarck was right all along! Darwin, meet Epigenetics.
This is a fascinating finding, but it’s not that new. This from 2011, for example:
https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/acquired-traits-can-be-inherited-small-rnas
Darwinian evolution and DNA-only genetic inheritance were groundbreaking ideas when they arrived on the scene, but as with so many new discoveries it’s actually not quite that simple.
To paraphrase an old management epigram:
“For every complex biological phenomenon, there is always a simple explanation: neat, plausible, and (at least partly) wrong.”
James Rosen-Birch ⚖️🕊️
@provisionalidea
·
13h
ngl it’s kinda wild that China is the land of hypercapitalist competition fueled by open-weight models anyone can use, and America is the land where the executive branch of government must personally approve you to have the privilege of giving a private company your money
Kinda wild that in China many small companies must compete against each other in a Darwinian competition leaving only a few winners left to reap the benefits while in Trump America, the government gets to pick the winners and the losers with often the winners having Trump family members associated with them.
Effectively, this is true where intellectual property rights can be used to remove or take over possible competitors ensuring the generation of unassailable monopoly rents, innovation is plateaued out, and political power, in the form of highly credentialed but ineffective nonentities, is held in golden chains to protect the IP created élite. This is true of the West as a whole and is evidence of increasing irrelevance and ultimate decline. This can be seen in lost wars, the volume of money traded as opposed to goods and non-financial services, and the inability to use realpolitik as basis for diplomacy and the development of policy.
China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, to name the most obvious, are highly pragmatic, making moves when circumstances make the achievement of specific objectives possible and adopting defensive and adaptive policies as circumstances demand, and recognising policy failure occurs and that policy development comes from the recognition of failure, and that a rolling adaptive policy is central to governance and, particularly, to competitive international behaviour.
Caution and failure to respond to provocation is a policy choice. By and large, it means that when the circumstances are appropriate, escalation in response to even a minor provocation will be massive and form the basis for a positive outcome resulting in a clear understanding of a fundamental shift in the balance of power, or a comprehensive defeat on the battlefield.
Western élites have conditioned themselves that they are the only ones with significant agency – frequently expressed as a rapid reaction or over-reaction to a slight shift in circumstances – and, as the lingering ghosts of the Enlightenment, assume that their world view is the only frame of reference that need be considered. That is why we see red blooded Europeans exhausting their countries in the Ukraine whilst, first muttering, and then publicly declaiming their intention to make war on Russia – and even stating the year in which Barbarossa II will take place. A reliance on monopoly power and its evil twin oligopsony has destroyed the capacity of the Western élites to actually see the world as it is, let alone what it will become after their hand is called.
Starting with an e-blast I received this morning from Matt Taibbi about his latest, in which he unintentionally reveals who is the nitwit.
To wit:
—So the recently disappeared Walter Kirn is the rational one?
—When you’re fifty-six and write things like the above, what do you do at seventy-one? Crawl on broken glass to the tomb of Francisco Franco?
—“Marxian socialist.” Sheesh. Well, as I have mentioned more than once: Welcome to Scoundrel Time!
—Meanwhile, the video above of AOC assuring everyone that there is nothing to fear is another revelation. Plenty of Democrats should be fearing the termination of their careers, but AOC wants to make nice in her best Minnie Mouse voice. People are asking for bread and roses, and she wants group therapy sessions.
—Truthout: Wowsers. Hakim “AIPAC” Jeffries issues orders.
—Truthout: Letitia James channels Strother Martin. “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” “What we have to do is sit down and work with the left-leaning part of the party and see if we can come to some sort of understanding going forward,” New York Attorney General Letitia James.
—Truthout: For a glimpse at the sheer stupid heart of the current Democratic Party: Gottheimer added, “If you’re a socialist, you’re not a Democrat.”
—Well, I am convinced. I will also note that as someone who has voted Green in the U.S. presidential races since Obama’s second run, because he had squandered everything, I’ve seen comments like this before. They are a regular feature of so-called discourse among U.S. Democrats. And Pina Picierno, too! Yes, I am a stupid Marxian socialist who has volunteered to help the peasants with the spaghetti harvest! Jill Stein made me do it.
—Luckily, Nancy Pelosi, as reported by an esteemed commenter here, is still cashing in on conflicts of interest at the tender age of 123.
—And as a sign of progress, Steny Hoyer, age 167, retired from the House in this latest round of elections, just as the embalming fluid was wearing off.
After that mention of Pina Picierno, I may have to head over to Papalele for a “vegan” gelato — almond-milk gelato with tangerine peel and shavings of vegan chocolate. Want to meet up?
Taibbi lived in Moscow as the USSR was already collapsing and was a rich entitled 21 year old pr*ck way back then. No surprise.
A nice summation of today’s Democrat idiocy – and Taibbi’s continued decline into irrelevant nothingness.
As you say, “… I’ve seen comments like this before. They are a regular feature of so-called discourse among U.S. Democrats.” Indeed. I’ve been listening to this crap my entire adult life. And that AOC quote is priceless as well. It does seem that more of the electorate is able to see through this bulls**t today than in previous decades. Unfortunately, the distance between public perceptions and the ideology of our oligarch-supported Uniparty keep growing.
Yeah, I like the AOC quote too, but when I think of the deja vu, it’s that of so called progressives revealing themselves to be go along to get along libs. I wish they were more concerned with scaring the status quo than reassuring them.
AOC: “There was so much fear back when I was elected, but none of it bore out to be true.”
Translation: “There was so much hope when I was elected, but none of it bore out to be true.”
And Hakeem Jeffries talking about how these insurgents will need to “placate” the establishment Dems. A true heir of Nancy Pelosi. “Behave yourselves, children! Your elders know how things work!” No change, no hope, no care in the world for you little people and your problems–they sound a lot like Trump, come to think of it.
Re: “I will also note that as someone who has voted Green in the U.S. presidential races since Obama’s second run, because he had squandered every thing, I’ve seen comments like this before.” DJG, Reality Czar, I can add a literal “me to” not only word for word to the quoted passage but to your entire comment. Love it — thanks!
Green or not voted, since 2012. 2024 I simply left the country. October and November in Italy.
I’ll skip the vegan gelato. I’ll take a cappuccino with a proper Italian pistachio cornetto.
Love your prose style. One of my satisfying brags is not having voted for any uniparty candidate since Carter in 1976.
Ugh, Matt Taibbi. I probably shouldn’t bother, but it’s not like I have anything better to do, this morning.
Yeah, you said I refused to talk about Israel–what do you call CARICATURING CRITICISM OF ISRAEL?! Looks like someone owes me an apology, now, don’t they?
To be fair, he might have a point about some of the ultra-woke DSA posturing, if it didn’t contradict the claim you quote above, about “Marxian socialism.” If it’s all just rich-kid lifestyle politics, then it’s really not anything “instantly recognizable to anyone who’s ever lived in a socialist country.” Either they’re children of the elite, playacting, or they’re a threat to the machine that Taibbi is, at this point, deeply attached to. But he won’t let the fact that those two things are mutually exclusive get in the way of making his paying Racket News readers’ heads explode even harder, because that’s what they pay for.
A lot of people on the left mistook Taibbi for one of their own, and, while he (one might say, cynically) encouraged this, they still should have known better. But from the emotional brittleness of his response to losing admirers, it seems like he really must have thought he could come out as a right-winger and somehow keep his prior fanbase, like they were his own personal terra cotta army.
Sigh. I was encouraged that Kirn was gone, hippy punching was down, right wing nuttery was way down in the comments (along with the overall volume of comments) and Taibbi had started to focus on literature again with a new partner, so I did not cancel my subscription when it came up for renewal a couple weeks ago. More of this and I will finally have to pull the plug.
Two years ago, Taibbi wrote a Racket article with this headline:
The Democrats’ Dirty Tricks Playbook?
Documents just made public show how groups aligned with the Democratic Party hit a third party rival with an array of underhanded schemes that put Watergate tricksters to shame
https://www.racket.news/p/the-democrats-dirty-tricks-playbook
So what’s his argument with the new article?
The Dem estab sucks but if you run on the Dem ticket you’d better not rock the estab’s boat? /smh
This sounds so angry-old-man I’m starting to wonder if he’s afraid his taxes might go up. Other possibilities include: prime middle-age pushing back against any change, unknown benefactors, and desire to keep friends who think exactly what he wrote.
What he wrote sounds exactly like what I imagine the very wealthy said about FDR’s New Deal economic recovery programs. They even used the same language. Man, did they ever hate FDR.
FDR welcomed their hatred.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvSO5upnvcQ
/ ;)
In another speech FDR mocked the rich man’s GOP “promises.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb-7Dpp-LPk
Antidote: Like Trump at a Teen beauty pageant?
More like Trump at an EpsTeen “Beauty Pageant.”
“Here Donald. I’d like to introduce you to Miss Mile High Club.”
“Oh, thanks Jeffrey. I remember when Ol Roy inducted me into that Club on Hughes private jet.”
“You’re welcome Donald. We’ll talk later about that resort deal.”
‘Brian Berletic
@BrianJBerletic
🇺🇸🇨🇳NEW ARTICLE: US Prepares Terrorist Army to Expand its Dirty War on China
(NOTE: Because X continues censoring links previously banned by Twitter in cooperation with the US State Department including NEO, I am providing the entire article below).
The US media has invested in recent years in rehabilitating Uyghur Chinese extremists now based in Syria, depicting them as “freedom fighters” whose ultimate goal is to “liberate” (carve off) territory in western China, and are preparing to fight China across Eurasia – adding to an already ongoing dirty war the US has been waging against China over the 20th and 21st centuries.’
I keep on waiting for the other shoe to drop and start reading about “freedom fighters” attacking US & western targets stood up, financed, trained, equipped and armed by the Chinese or the Russians. They do say that turn around is fair play after all and if pushed too far, could easily happen. And the US and the west do have a lot of bases scattered around the world.
Hey, they are already here! Didn’t you see the news about the NY primaries – and that Matt Taibbi warning noted in DJG’s comment above? Clearly devious outside forces are supporting such “Marxian socialist” and “Islamic terrorist” groups in order to divide and destabilize US society. That’s the only possible explanation for such un-American political upheavals in our own country.
It’s always those outside agitators
In my state they blamed the anti-data center protests on the Chinese communists
Fox news offered a correction for the outside agitators story:
https://www.mediamatters.org/artificial-intelligence-and-data-centers/fox-business-anchor-maria-bartiromo-apologizes-guest-kevin
I’d like to have the Fox Anchors ask for solid documentation at the time the inflammatory statements of their guests are made.
Instead, the lie is given wings and much later a “never mind” is issued.
Some listeners will never see the “never mind” broadcast.
Maybe Taibbi had really outside agitators in mind. “Marxian” makes no sense for a guy who spent so much time in Moscow. He knows what a Marxist is.
Maybe he meant “Martian” agitators. Not widely reported, Elon issued a decree expelling all undesirables, especially Lefty undesirables, from the Red Planet last week after his big IPO. He wanted to clean house before his eagerly expected arrival. Taibbi spotted the new arrivals before anyone else.
Sorry to think what happened to this guy, who once wrote such a good book about the crash. I try to remember that government persecution, in retaliation for revealing how government cajoled social media, played a role.
But it and Kirn sure brought out the worst in Taibbi.
And don’t forget….. it’s the Chinese that are making us hate on the data centers!
Update: argh, ye Camelot Kid, ye beat me to it!
In the early 2000s, the scholar Chalmers Johnson wrote a trilogy of books about American empire, beginning with Blowback, whose first edition came out in 2000. After September 11, the book almost became a best seller, because it seemed so prophetic. The whole trilogy has held up remarkably well, (That would be “Blowback,” “The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic,” and “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic”). One of Chalmers Johnson’s themes was the incredible size and cost of the network of American military bases around the world. Fluent in Japanese (as well as Chinese), he was especially familiar with with the controversies surrounding the American bases on Okinawa, and with the bad behavior of American troops there in a series of rapes of Okinawan girls and with the protest movement against the bases in Okinawa. The Japanese government had great difficulty in suppressing that protest, though they eventually succeeded. But even knowing this, Johnson at one time suggested (again using Okinawa as a major example), that the world wide Empire of military bases might one day collapse in a moment. He thought the Okinawan movement might re-ignite, and that if they succeeded in throwing the Americans out, many many peoples elsewhere, who, he showed, hate the proximity of American bases, might follow the example and rise up and put an end to the Empire of bases once and for all.
It has not turned out as he speculated it might, but still, now, many American bases have been destroyed, and forward positioning is being questioned in the age of drones and cheap but accurate missiles. It might take less effort from “freedom fighters” than one might think, to, over the next years, collapse the Empire of bases. It is tempting to interpret what is going on in Iraq now as the beginning of such a process. And perhaps as the economic consequences of the Trump-Epstein-Netanyahu (TEN) war bite especially hard there, rejection of American bases might spread across Asia. The Okinawans might wake up again.
One more note about Johnson, it helps to have read some of what Johnson wrote about American abuses, when reading and listening to Brian Berletic. Berletic sometimes teases the boundary between analysis and animus, but that too is informative, since Berletic is someone who has watched Americans in Asia up close.
One word: Cascadia
Big corporations making sure the playing field is tilted downhill for them, uphill for us department:
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/legal-exchange-insights-and-commentary/dell-exxon-moves-reveal-texas-corporate-law-isnt-cut-and-paste
This will have the effect of making it nearly impossible for small shareholders to file a derivative action lawsuit, as you’ll need to meet a 3% ownership requirement to have standing under Texas law.
The trend is to move corporate domiciles to friendlier states where it is harder for shareholders to sue them for malfeasance by the board, or introduce stronger governance measures.
From Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Mate.
CNN IS MELTING DOWN AS PROGRESSIVES TAKE OVER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55NMFG0j9A4
an aside: Bari Weiss is reported to be taking over CNN now as well as CBS. / ;)
“Melting down” is a term in constant use by the right-wing mediasphere when talking about anyone who dares to criticize or condemn their various billionaire-serving projects. It’s funny how so much of what features in media stories is just stock language, for instance how adjectives like “beloved”, “iconic”, and “legendary” are always used to describe some has-been entertainment personality or franchise in “news” articles that are basically press releases to make that person or group relevant again. At this point you almost could just replace the media with AI, since there is little truth being conveyed and many topics-which-must-not-be-mentioned.
There’s also the term “slams” if some politician or something bitterly complains or fires off a reddit tier one liner about an idea or proposal or agreement or whatever the topic is. “So and so slams proposal for housing or trade agreement” and the like. Never liked the usage of that term either
I feel like there’s been a race to the bottom, with this kind of thing, as well as the slop thumbnail images, even (or perhaps, especially) among antiwar independent media. But the text is arguably worse. It’s much easier to filter out an image of Putin with eye beams as a mushroom cloud emanates from Friedrich Merz’s head (or something like that) than MASSIVE STRIKE IMMINENT. If any YouTubers are here, you know who you are, and you are better than this.
carbon capture–
ProPublica’s series on carbon capture is useful as a history of how the fossil fuel industry uses academia and media to mislead people about the climate effects of their product and ways those adverse effects of burning fossil fuels might be alleviated. I did not find in the series, however, any discussion of why carbon capture was originally developed. It had nothing to do with addressing climate change.
In 1952, Atlantic Richfield researchers patented a new method for enhancing oil recovery using carbon dioxide. There wasn’t much interest at the time because Permian Basin production was still rising with just primary and secondary (water flood) recovery and oil was selling for $2/barrel thanks to the production from Saudi fields.
Only about 10% of the oil in a formation is recovered during what’s now called primary recovery. Primary recovery involves drilling a hole in the ground and relying on the natural pressure to push the oil up to the surface. As the natural pressure wanes, a pump jack can added to siphon a small, additional amount of oil. Beginning experimentally in the 1950s and in production in the 1960s, injecting water into a well to push the oil to the surface, a process called “water flood” or secondary recovery, can retrieve an additional 10-30% of the oil, but that still leaves 60-80% of the oil underground. Injecting carbon dioxide into a well increases the miscibility (slipperiness) of the oil, and can recover another 30-60% of the oil in combination with water flood.
In 1972, Occidental Petroleum began a carbon capture project at a gas processing plant in West Texas. The recovered CO2 was piped to a declining oil field to test the tertiary recovery technique utilizing CO2 that had been researched by Atlantic Richfield 20 years earlier. The project was initiated to produce the CO2 required to test the tertiary recovery technique, not to sequester carbon.
The OPEC oil embargo in 1973 provided the impetus to move from small experimental efforts utilizing the small amounts of recovered CO2 to ramping up full production. Key to this were two huge, natural, underground deposits found earlier in the American Southwest: the McElmo Dome in SW Colorado; and the Bravo Dome in NE New Mexico. After the 1973 price spike, Shell and Mobil began to develop the McElmo Dome and Amoco the Bravo Dome. Plans included pipelines to bring the CO2, as a liquid under high pressure, to the Permian Basin where the CO2 would be used in tertiary recovery on a large scale. These projects were further incentivized by the exemption of oil recovered by the new tertiary recovery method from the “Crude Oil Windfall Profit Tax Act of 1980,” a benefit that Shell people said more than paid the billion dollar cost of the Cortez Carbon Dioxide Pipeline.
Those projects became operational in the mid-1980s, and the CO2 in those natural formations has been drawn down substantially, but there are still many wells suitable for tertiary recovery. My guess is that oil companies are hoping for another tax break, this time for carbon capture, that will make it more profitable for them to build capture facilities that produce CO2 to replace the depleted naturally occurring CO2 in McElmo and Bravo.
In the course of checking my facts on this comment, I ran into an article I had never seen before, written by the Shell VP who was my main contact when I represented Shell during land acquisition for the Cortez Pipeline. In an article written for an association of right-of-way agents before construction began, Roger spends a lot of time writing about the efforts of his Woodward-Clyde (acquired by URS) archaeologist and girl friend, who rode on the front bulldozer with the power to stop all activity. He briefly mentions what constituted the main barrier to the project:
First, re: what’s accurate in Ryman’s account. First, the “extremely competent counsel” was Bill Schaab, a partner in the Rodey firm, New Mexico’s largest. Schaab was not only a Yale Law grad, he was the Editor of the Yale Law Review, and he had established his credentials as a practitioner by establishing prior water rights for several of the New Mexico Pueblo tribes, a noble endeavor. We gained some advantage against him when a tired Schaab arrived late in the afternoon at Shell’s HQ in Houston to conduct depositions after testifying before a Senate committee that morning about tribal water rights. Second, Schaab was not interested in merely upping the price that Shell had to pay for his client’s land. He intended to stop the pipeline by challenging Shell’s power to condemn at all, and he could well have succeeded.
Now, what’s inaccurate. Roger said that the three days of trial were directed at demonstrating the “public benefit” of the pipeline. That was not true. Shell had been very clever in dealing with the feds re: regulation of the pipeline. They had argued before the ICC that they had no power to regulate because the pipeline carried a gas, not a liquid. They had argued before FERC that they had no power to regulate because the pipeline didn’t carry a hydrocarbon. Shell’s success in this effort to escape regulation probably won kudos for the Shell General counsel’s office, but it made my job against Schaab much harder. New Mexico was among a minority of states that required a showing that the public had an actual right to use the improvement in order to establish the power to condemn. Public benefit did not suffice under New Mexico law. Schaab understood this, and he had a bevy of hot shot associates to research this for him. Since there was no federal regulator, and since the recently passed New Mexico legislation granting the power to condemn for carbon dioxide pipelines included no guarantee of access to potential New Mexico shippers, I ended up pulling an all-nighter, realizing about a hour before the UNM law library closed the night before final arguments that the Interstate Commerce Act was based on common law case law. I argued that shippers could make a common law claim against Shell if Shell refused their shipment.
At the hearing, the judge had not read my brief countering Schaab’s brief, so I had to present it orally. After I concluded, the judge took five minutes, going over the briefs and other pleadings. Roger admitted later at dinner that he had wanted to cry out “No Suit!,” a Texas rule that allows a plaintiff to withdraw the case right up until a decision, but there was no such rule in New Mexico. Finally, the judge announced his ruling in our favor. Schaab cried out that he was appealing, but on later reflection, he realized he didn’t have a case, and they settled for a nice sum.
That night, in addition to recounting how frightened he was, Ryman said that if we had lost, the entire project was unlikely to proceed. There was a whole county full of potential condemnees, all represented by the Speaker of the New Mexico House, watching the outcome of our case. If Shell had lost the power to condemn, it would have been al but impossible to continue.
So a point of pride in my skill as a lawyer became a source of shame in furthering a project that has produced millions of additional barrels of oil.
re: WWII revisited
NEW LEFT REVIEW
preview only
Rethinking The Second World War
Richard Overy Interviewed by Tom Stevenson
One of Britain’s leading historians discusses the development of his understanding of the war as a terminal clash between imperial-colonial systems, built on close analysis of its interrelated military, political and economic dimensions.
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii158/articles/rethinking-the-second-world-war
Nate Hagens’s Friday Youtube lays out four possible futures:
1) Mordor persists
Basically, Business as Usual that continues until geopolitical competition, resource depletion and/or climate collapse ends growth and the political and economic institutions that depend on it.
2) Fortress World
We see a move in this direction if the USA concentrates its Full Spectrum Dominance efforts on the Western Hemisphere with the help of Palantir. This world can last as long as it has the resources to suppress the population, unhappy as material wealth contracts, exacerbated by income and wealth inequality.
3) The Unraveling
The eventual outcome of 1) and 2). There’s a breakdown of authority beyond the very local level. The economy becomes more hunter-gathererish. Technology recedes.
4) The Long Repair
Similar to “Stabilized World” scenario in Limits to Growth. Planned degrowth to get back inside planetary boundaries. This is the hardest of the four scenarios to attain because the current dominant worldview seeks economic growth, unbridled technological “advancement,” and domination of the biosphere.
Hagens acknowledges that no one possibility will dominate the entire world. Instead, there’s likely to be a patchwork of these and other possibilities. He says that your zip code may tell you more about your situation than what nation you live in.
>the Zionist Entity
I just boil over every day with the vids that come out from MEE and others.
If their god were real, s/he would strike them down.
End of rant. :-/
I too, and we are certainly not alone. Do you also feel powerless? I do. I’m sure someone will tell us it’s fear that makes us powerless. I won’t say they are wrong but we also know that single voices are suppressed, often violently. That fear is justified.
Big Serge (who has had some of his articles featured here) on revealing his identity before another journalist threatens to dox him
https://bigserge.substack.com/p/to-my-readers
AOC tweets ‘Its deja vu all over again’
Reminds me of a recent president noted for their absurd and hilarious verbal missteps
(Of which long lists have been compiled)
Korybko: It’s a matter of speculation whether Trump intended to dupe Putin …
I’m surprised that Korybko and Lavrov ignore Trump’s failed ‘peace deal’ with North Korea.
Also memory-holed by Western MSM.
Iraq and OPEC–
Not much mystery here. Iraq is hurting financially because of the Iran War, and they need to sell more than their OPEC allotment to catch up. If OPEC won’t let them, they’re threatening to leave OPEC.
But here is an oil mystery that’s puzzling me. Even with the MOU, how can an August WTI contract close under $70 today? That’s less than the price before the war. A big part of the answer is the 6 million barrel drop in China’s oil imports. How they are doing this is a question. Why are they doing this is an ever bigger question because this drop in imports, as long as it lasts, is significantly softening the impact of the Strait closure on us and the rest of the world. Here’s a spot cut to Jeffrey Currie (who’s been quoted here before in an OilPrice piece and in Water Cooler) in a Nawal interview talking about the mystery.
The Assholiness ( Using religion to excuse the most vile depravity) of the Zionist entity is educational to behold, I’m still hearing about “The most Moral Army in the World”.
Setting aside the fact that “Moral Army” is a nonsense, the IoF is among the most brutal and depraved armed forces of the last Century.
And Israel is far and away the most Anti Semitic Nation on earth because Palestinians are a Semitic people.
Einstein was right about the second Infinity…Human stupidity
Ah yes, using religion as an excuse. From Tucker Carlson 2 months ago.
Tucker Responds to Israel’s Attacks on Jesus Christ & the American Christian Leaders Supporting It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GT8E7HTwKM
and a short
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GGT3xKgSEI0
Could this be called Zio pogroms against Christians?
Tucker earlier today.
Israel Thought No One Noticed. We Did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyhiQgQj3go
What a brave young woman.
re: China documentary
put online by Films For Action
How China Actually Works (2026)
Directed by Tony Chamas
84 min.
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/how-china-actually-works/
Accompanying commentary:
“China defies easy labels. It’s not the communist bogeyman of Cold War propaganda, nor the socialist workers’ paradise some on the left imagine — and this documentary digs into why both framings miss the mark.
What emerges from this careful, 85 minute analysis is something far more complex: a system that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty through a hybrid of state control and market forces, while simultaneously suppressing independent labor movements, expanding surveillance infrastructure, and consolidating power in ways that sit uncomfortably alongside any progressive vision of socialism.
The film traces China’s arc from Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatic market reforms — Special Economic Zones, dual pricing, carefully managed capitalism — through the ideological consolidation of the Xi era, where Marxism-Leninism blends with Confucian tradition and Han nationalism to produce something genuinely without historical precedent. The Belt and Road Initiative, the social credit system, the Common Prosperity agenda: all get examined with the same unflinching curiosity.
Perhaps most valuable is the film’s treatment of the socialist debate itself. Is China capitalist? Socialist? The honest answer, the film argues, is neither — it’s a form of state capitalism optimized for global competitiveness, not worker empowerment. That distinction matters enormously for anyone trying to understand what China actually represents, versus what we’ve been told it represents by either its defenders or its enemies.
For anyone trying to see China clearly — past the propaganda of both Washington and Beijing — this is essential viewing.” – Films For Action
Thank you so much, will watch.
re: Ukraine crime and corruption
A highly recommended conversation by German reporter Patrik Baab with Swiss Col. Ralph Bosshard about various aspects of Ukrainian big crime and how politics is in the midst of it:
Like money laundering (and London connected), arms trafficking, drug trafficking involving Ukrainian pharmaceutical company Charkiw – Himprom who is providing AFU soldiers with the addictive synthetic stimulant drug Mephedrone which has been banned in much of the EU – the mysterious vans transporting 100M in cash in Hungary and so on.
English dubbing, not perfect but it´s enough to get most:
What our media are hiding regarding the Ukrainian underworld
65 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exTuu9Eq0Fs&list=PLC8BiBSArcJGQki_cNNBtI4C7N6q86ehS&index=7
re: USA unhealthy population
The U.S. Is A Too ‘Big’ Country
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2026/06/the-u-s-is-a-too-big-country.html#comments
The average grownup man in the U.S. has a height of 68.9in [175.6 cm] and a weight of 199.0 lb [90.3 kg] for a Body Mass Index of 29.3.
The average grownup woman in the U.S. has a height of 63.5in [161.3 cm] and a weight of 171.8 lb [77.9 kg] for a Body Mass Index of 29.9.
A Body Mass Index [BMI] above 25 is considered overweight, above 30 is obese.
I had of course known that the U.S. is a ‘big’ country. But that the average U.S. person is just decimals away from obese is astonishing to me.
Well, I’m 77, 5’8″ 128 lbs which according to the calculator puts my BMI at 19.5, the lower range of the normal range. I suspect that in most other categories I am way outside normal. :-)/
And here I was thinking that you were
‘Five foot two,
eyes of blue’
I’d give the BMI chart a bit of a miss as it is as useful as the old Food Pyramid. Looking at my own BMI, I should be about 67 kgs – about 148 pounds – which would make me look like a Dachau survivor. It’s a one-size-fit-all sort of chart. You’d best be using your own judgement.
Ahso but 5’8″ & eyes of hazel
My size 10 dresses fit with ample room
My size 10 pants require a belt tightening, I always include a belt so they don’t fall down
I think human wealth at the top needs a serious belt tightening
So much that all people have a proper diet, no longer programed by profit
How Warsh Has Begun to Change the Fed (NY Times)
and
also