Hey America! Happy 250th Birthday, darling! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Wishing you the brightest Independence Day yet.
May the next 250 years shine even brighter.
Cheers today 🥂
4th of July, 2026. pic.twitter.com/VMuP3a7Ano
— Muse (@xmuse_) July 4, 2026
20 animals that look like nothing else on Earth Quartz
American Colonists in 1776 Lived With Pain Every Day and Their Medical Tools Show How Brutal Life Was ZME Science
Astronomers Spot an Extremely Rare Galaxy Mega-Merger Universe Today
College Students Are Testing at the Level of 10-Year-Olds Futurism
COVID-19/Pandemics
Diabetes worsens long Covid complications Healthcare in Europe
Ebola cases in DR Congo jump to over 1,500, death toll rises to 473 Andolu Agency
Climate/Environment
The Heat Is the Story—Climate Change Is the Cause Scheerpost
The cooling divide: how air conditioning is creating a new climate inequality The Conversation
South of the Border
Venezuela: The Tortuous Road After the June Earthquakes Fair Observer
Once a source of national pride, Cuba’s healthcare system declines as energy shortages deepen crisis AP
Keiko Fujimori declared winner of Peru’s presidential election weeks after vote BBC
China?
🇨🇳🔥Esta es una fábrica de plantas en China, un sistema de cultivo vertical totalmente en interiores.
Las estanterías de varios niveles, que ahorran espacio, permiten una producción de alto rendimiento en una superficie reducida.#China pic.twitter.com/GfpfGSRKb7— Hermosa China（Beautiful China） (@90Hercost) July 3, 2026
China’s Latest Satellite Engine Sets Global Record: High Performance Allows For Larger, Faster and More Manoeuvrable Spacecraft Military Watch MagazineChina’s express delivery volume tops 100 billion parcels by end June CGTN
China’s military promotes 2 new generals after anti-corruption purge thins ranks AP
Beijing sends new coastguard force into waters east of Taiwan SCMP
India
Skyroot Aerospace targets July launch window for India’s first private orbital rocket Cryptopolitan
India, Japan deepen business ties Semafor
‘Fearmongers wallowing in depths of despair after India successfully navigated energy crisis’: PM Modi Deccan Herald
Africa
The Deadliest War You’re Not Hearing About Fair Observer
Africa’s Security at a Crossroads: A Continent Confronts a Changing World In Depth News
South Africa deploys troops as anti-migrant protests escalate Africa News
European Disunion
European Commission attempts to spur EU defence teamwork with five new major projects Euronews
EU moves to block retail investors from explosive boom of multibillion-dollar prediction markets CoinDesk
Von der Leyen admits ‘technical problems’ with new EU airport border checks Politico
Old Blighty
Celtic nations begin to plan for breakup of UK in event of Reform election win The Guardian
Andy Burnham should take a taxi Prospect Magazine
Israel v. Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iran
Breaking 🚨 Israel has once again launched a blind, tempest-like assault on Lebanon, reducing homes and walls to heaps of rubble. The footage clearly reveals that, after such widespread carnage, Israel is finally bent on total destruction. pic.twitter.com/n2nl6z9LqU
— Asif Ali (@AsifAli_Haider) July 4, 2026
Lebanon-Israel deal betrays ‘victims of war crimes’, rights groups say Al JazeeraIsraeli strike kills Palestinian in Gaza as army continues demolitions Andolu Agency
This Week in Palestine: 1,000 Days of Genocide, as Israel Continues to Kill Kids Zeteeo
250 Candles, One Funeral: How Iran Turned July 4th Into a Judgment Day Think BRICS substack
New Not-So-Cold War
Russia claims taking control of 5 settlements in eastern, northeastern Ukraine Andolu Agency
Brief Frontline Report – July 3rd, 2026 Marat Khairullin substack
Ukraine hits major oil terminal in Russia’s St Petersburg BBC
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
“Invisible Cameras” Reshaping Daily Life—Privacy Concerns Mount as Smart AI Glasses Proliferate Finance BigGo
Imperial Collapse Watch
Trump 2.0
Trump launches America’s 250th birthday celebrations with partisan attack The Guardian
How Trump became the president of Washington, DC Semafor
Trump’s $600M memecoin income revives ethics fight over Senate crypto bill Cryptopolitan
Musk Matters
Tesla sales roar back to life after backlash over Musk’s political adventures This Is Money
DOGE self-deletes on July 4th. The grand experiment fell apart long before that. Politico
Elon Musk’s X Money — New Details On Bank Killer Super App Benzinga
Elon Musk literally sat down for a 45-minute talk with Y Combinator that explains how to build world-changing companies better than any business school on earth. This is the advice he gave a room full of young founders:
1. Don’t try to build something great. Try to build… pic.twitter.com/7ecpzklwmK
— Lewis 🏴 (@WaldronLewis) July 2, 2026
Democrat Death Watch
James Carville warns radical democratic socialists’ victories signal ‘end of the two-party system’ NY Post
Democratic Infighting Threatens Party’s Bid To Reclaim House Majority Foreign Policy Journal
Immigration
Trump Border Wall and ICE Expansion Illustrate Long-Term Shift in U.S. Immigration Enforcement Davis Vanguard
Appeals court rules ICE must allow bond hearings after 90 days of detention Fox News
Our No Longer Free Press
A.G. Sulzberger: On Independence Day, we must remember the free press’ role in our freedom Dallas Morning News
Mr. Market Is Moody
America In Focus: consumers still gloomy about economy; US hiring falls in June AP
3 Reasons the Trump Bull Market Can Implode in the Second Half of 2026 The Motley Fool
Cleveland Fed president says AI spending is fueling inflation — and warns of interest rate hikes Quartz
AI
Alibaba’s DAMO Academy AI Autonomously Discovers 4 New Superconducting Materials, Verified by Experiment Finanace BigGo
ByteDance discovers new scaling law that could sustain the AI boom past its current limits Crypto Briefing
AI is Driving Utilities to Spend a Record $240 Billion in 2026. Buy These Stocks to Capitalize on the Power Surge. The Motley Fool
The Bezzle
OMB says fraud losses ‘in the hundreds of billions’ annually The Center Square
Guillotine Watch
The richest people in the world (1987-2025), created by ‘TopDataChart’
Sources: Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg
— Science girl (@sciencegirl) February 7, 2026
Top 10 Richest Families in the World:
1. 🇺🇸 Walton family – $513.5 Billion
2. 🇦🇪 Al Nahyan family – $335.9 Billion
3. 🇸🇦 Al Saud family – $213.6 Billion
4. 🇶🇦 Al Thani family – $199.5 Billion
5. 🇫🇷 Hermès family – $184.5 Billion
6. 🇺🇸 Koch family – $150.5 Billion
7. 🇺🇸 Mars… pic.twitter.com/jfWAbJhFt8— Global Statistics (@Globalstats11) January 30, 2026
Antidote du jour (via)
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
“Trump shares strong hints he’s about to add HIS face to Mount Rushmore as White House sends message supporting his inclusion on iconic monument’
Yeah, I can’t see that happening. In that proposed rendition, Trump is the most prominent face there because of course he is. But if you look at the geology of Mt. Rushmore, the rock face is not there to support such a carving. If it was done, he would be recessed to the left & back of Lincoln which he would not like at all-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rushmore#/media/File:Mount_Rushmore_detail_view_(100MP).jpg
Same problem if he was at the other end of those carvings. The rock is simply not there. I suppose that one of those four Presidents could have their faces re-carved in Trump’s image but which one would be lost?
Easy. Trump’s face in cosplay regalia on all of the Mount Rushmore presidents, like the recursive moment in Being John Malkovich where John Malkovich becomes all John Malkovich, all the time.
The cartoonist who goes by Mr. Fish and draws for Scheerpost did something like that for a Chris Hedges piece, a while back:
https://scheerpost.com/2025/05/04/chris-hedges-trumpland/
F it. Let’s do it. Lincoln would be the only one worth saving, and even he was a mixed bag. It could be (though it will be, regardless) a comment on nature’s inexorable erasure of human ugliness.
But there should also be a separate Trump monument, at a site with suitable geology and overall shape, with a carving of his disembodied face at the bottom of a toilet bowl. It could be called Mount Flushmore.
Geology, schmeology. His preferred design can be accomplished easily using gunite. As an added bonus, this material can be colored to accurately portray his spray-tan tint and “blond” hair or, better yet, the surface can be entirely covered with gilt.
I do think we need an anti-Mt. Rushmore somewhere. Maybe on a crumbling wall that used to be part of a thriving factory, caricature artists could create portrayals of our worst Presidents, not the Washingtons and Lincolns but the Buchanans and Hardings. My nominations include all the Presidents from Clinton forward. We’ve really been on a bad run.
My idea is to “carve” Trumps rear end somewhere on Mount Rushmore. Then we could legitimately talk about “the end” of history.
I really like that. But no matter what part of Trump is on Rushmore, it is a telling indication of the state of the empire.
There is an opportunity to use a horses ass…
https://crazyhorsememorial.org/
Mount Tushmore, indeed.
With or without the loaded adult diaper?
Rushmore would be a horrible location. President Trump is a singular success, he can’t share the stage with others.
He deserves to be carved into the Grand Teton, above the billionaire enclave of Jackson Hole. The French title is most fitting.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think all the Reagan acolytes have died yet. Fastest way to make sure that there is even more GOP antipathy would be to seriously attempt to put him on Mount Rushmore before Ronnie.
Seriously, I really want to see the bill when they have to remove what ever has happened once this crew has been kicked out. There aren’t enough tarps in the world….
Naval shipbuilding article
That’s a damned shame. I guess we’ll have to give up the “belated” (meaning needed) great power military competition. As the neolibs like to say, every “crisis” an opportunity.
This issue must be killing them in Washington. I mean, where are you going to recruit a disciplined, experienced and qualified workforce that will be willing to work for McDonalds wages and will not join a union? Pay them high wages you say? But as Trump would say, that is Communism.
“where are you going to recruit a disciplined, experienced and qualified workforce that will be willing to work for McDonalds wages and will not join a union?”
China ticks all the boxes.
Oh, wait…
Several decades ago “the disciplined, experienced and qualified workforce” was laid off and advised to learn to code. Now we are asked why we do not trust “received wisdom” from the elites. What a surprise! Family blog ’em all.
I’m sure The Market can solve the problem, no need for Federal intervention to tweak labor skills formation. Just spend enough money and profit-seeking companies will invest in 30-year training of the master craftsmen needed. /s
I personally witnessed UK big engineering firms in the early 1980s killing their apprenticeship programs on the grounds that they couldn’t afford it. They were asking training management to fail the lads, regardless of performance, so that they could be booted.
Thanks to AI, skilled workers are no longer necessary. Just enter the prompt “Give me instructions on how to build a submarine in the style of an IKEA assembly manual” into ChatGPT.
The article is nice enough to give the reason for the decline, although they don’t emphasize it overmuch –
“Technical education, meanwhile, gave way to four-year college degrees as policymakers encouraged young Americans to pursue careers in finance, technology, consulting, and other white-collar professions rather than the skilled trades.”
The US made moar PMCs instead. Instead of ships we have scads of Corporate VPs of Company Good Cheer and Deans of Creating the Next Dean Position, along with mountains of student debt. Meanwhile, for want of a nail….
Of course, the problem with the Navy in shipbuilding due to a lack of skilled personnel is there in almost every technical field in the US (except AI, coding, finance). And I maintain that the educational system to create those skilled workers of the future was heavily self-attrited over the last decades, requiring additional years to recreate.
It was amusing to see a linked article on the number (which misquoted the original defense one article) needed to point out that the Navy supports a very well-funded training program that has graduated (drum roll) 100 per year since 2021, when 100,000 are needed! It would be funny if it weren’t tragic.
As with all such expressions of anxiety, the question is: Could the degeneration* of the MIC into a pure money machine ever threaten its ability to function as a money machine? All evidence suggests that it could not.
I know Groton, Connecticut (“submarine capital of the world”), and a glaring question for me was: If Electric Boat (“EB”) is not hiring welders, machinists, and pipefittets, because there aren’t any, who is it hiring? Anecdotally, it is the major driver of the soaring housing costs in the area, with its seemingly interminable expansion. My guess would be: Engineers, systems analysts, and all of the other PMCs who really make military Keynesianism work. I suppose when they do find enough skilled laborers, it will become even more unaffordable.
For comic relief:
https://theonion.com/congress-reluctant-to-cut-funding-for-tank-that-just-sp-1819576530/
*It was always our society’s crowning waste of resources, but it did for a time produce weapons systems that worked.
College students’ testing decline–
This is a continuation of a long process. They had to reset SAT scoring in the mid-90s because the median scores had fallen so far below 500.
I found it very interesting that the worst-performing nation appeared to be not the USA–we were close–but those tech-whizzes in Israel. It must be noted, however, that Israeli college students did rank first in one category: number of Palestinian babies killed.
Among the many contributing factors that we will enjoy speculating, I’d like to mention the commitment to quality education. Good teachers, schools, and equipment are necessary. And getting good teachers requires making the job appealing. Poor salary, excess work, budget cuts, and run down facilities are not conducive to good education. It’s an expensive business.
I remember as a kid going to the library and my mum showed me the display about local government budgeting. It had a pie chart showing that education (primary and secondary) had the biggest chunk by far. My mum explained that it is always so. That was in Glasgow, Scotland. Decades later around 2021 or something I saw a similar city budget chart on public display for Boston, Mass. where I now live. The biggest chunk was given to what they euphemistically call “public safety”. They had graphs of the budget breakdown over past years too. I talked to a young city representative and pointed out that the budget for public safety was going up, not down. Since a healthy community needs less policing it would be a measure of success of city governance if spending on cops was going down. The idea was incomprehensible to the representative who was proud of the city’s inflating policing budget.
The education-coercion trade off is I suppose also in play with national budgets as Western nations commit to more war and social control and the corresponding belt-tightening elsewhere.
I would personally rather live in a highly literate and cultured society, a result of good education of the citizenry, than one which doesn’t value the works of the muses.
My concern right now is innumeracy. With the scamopoly that our economic system has become, a citizenry that doesn’t do math is particularly vulnerable to being grifted. (Exhibit A: current government throughout the U.S. of A.)
I’ve been told many, many, many times that I should be a teacher. I really should, as my life experience at this point would be invaluable to the students, and my Aspie-driven frankness and forthrightness might even lead to a bit of respect on their part…what am I saying? Teenagers, yeah nah. Bruh, all it would take is some yoga-pants-showing-off-the-mons-pubis and boobie-bouncing-crop-top wearing girl to get her panties in a twist ’cause I gave her an F (and if that’s what she earned I would) to put my “career” in jeopardy. Uh uh. So not worth it.
Plus, I have no interest in going through any kind of education degree or certification. I’m GenX, I have plenty of “certifications”, even an ABA Banking for Professionals Certificate. Besides, are all of these Teaching Credentialed folks really working out for us? I have a Masters degree, so I should be able, in principle, to teach at the Undergrad level, certainly at the Associates level. But why would I be interested in some adjunct position with no real path to a “career”?
So I do what I can. I used to give public lectures, but not so much any more; the Moon is a pretty niche topic. I do keep our registers at work stocked with $2 bills, $1 coins, and Fiddy cent pieces for when kids are doing purchases and we make them do some math to figure out what their change will be. I’ll wave some bills in their face and tell them that this is why you pay attention in math class; the better you do in math, the better you’ll do with these. Girls will typically get Sue Bs and Sacajaweas for some relevant Grrl-power history discussions with Mom, who gets to vote in part because of Sue B.
The solutions to our current education debacle are more than just better pay and nicer gymnasiums. It’s going to have to be a fundamental shift in how we view education as a culture, all facets of U.S. culture, to start steering this ship in a better direction.
It is the continuation of a process that really started with the mass popular adoption of television. Engaging with the world and having one’s narratives about the world constructed of visual images, especially quickly changing and attention-grabbing visual images, with added music snippets and low-context catchphrases, just makes the lengthy and serial presentation of information in writing/print much too tedious by comparison, and the effect became cumulative as we went from broadcast networks to a multitude of cable channels, supplemented with VCRs in every home, to personal computer screens and DVD players, to “smart” phones and tablets with streaming available 24×7.
Human civilization of the second millenium (CE) was based of writing and then print, and literacy was a requirement for children who wanted to advance (or at least be more useful socially) as well as providing a source of entertainment. At the end of that millenium and now in the third millenium the reality is that the highly compressed and rapid-fire language of moving pictures and visual symbols has replaced print and writing for many people, yet school curricula have not completely adapted to that despite a number of bad attempts (from Channel One and other school television programs, to putting PCs in every class room so everyone could grow up to be a coder and “knowledge worker”, to letting smart phones and tablets in the classroom and using apps for engagement—all bad ideas that helped make the literacy-requiring part of the curriculum seem even more dated and tiresome).
That’s why we see all the moaning now about falling scores when people are tested on the old, passé information models. People now can manage 160 character text messages with lots of misspellings and emojis to keep things from being too dull, but most can no longer read a novel or serious nonfiction work. (Yes, there are “best sellers”, but all but a few of these have pitifully small sales numbers compared to the overall population. And most of these are female pornography (AKA “romance”) or special forces/weapons pornography (“thrillers”) or books that people put on their coffee table and don’t ever read.) And who writes letters anymore, which at one time was a treasured way for people who cared about each other to stay in touch over long distances and surface deeper feelings and thoughts that they felt it important to share? Now we just instant message each other with banal blurbs that express little.
The trouble is, our civilization was built up based on writing and print, and when most everyone can only read at a 4th grade level, who will be capable of maintaining that civilization and keeping it from falling apart? AI? Which is limited to everything that’s been written before, right or wrong, and will soon exhaust itself in “model collapse” when left with nothing but its own prior output to “learn” from?
After hearing these stories over and over again, about declines in education at school, I want to know: is anybody asking these students about skills and interests they have?
That is going to have to be the bridge leading to the more advanced reading and math skills.
Just trying to find a glass half full…
Nobody today will read a manual to fix the lawn mower when they can watch a video.
” Oh yes, literacy is on the skids !” – Marshall McLuhan, c. 1968.
McLuhan sound archive at ubuweb :-https://ubu.com/sound/mcluhan.html
Clearly, the ethics of the Israelis are not on par with those of a ten-year-old child.
“I found it very interesting that the worst-performing nation appeared to be not the USA–we were close–but those tech-whizzes in Israel.”
I wonder whether this is the result of an Israeli society deeply divided between:
1) urban Ashkenazim and Sephardim Israelis, the oldest social strata of the country, following a modern living style, generally well-educated and often integrated in the IT / electronics sector;
2) a large proportion of Mizrahis and Falashas, often despised by the aforementioned Ashkenazim, and who traditionally constitutes the underclass of the Israeli Jewish society;
3) an important fraction of ultra-conservative Jews; I wonder whether they have the equivalent of Madrassas, where pupils would be primarily taught Torah and Talmud instead of mathematics or foreign languages;
4) the colonists in the West Bank and Syria; these violent Israeli rednecks stealing Palestinian land, cattle, and houses are immigrants who were already losers in their countries of origin. Those who were not belong to category (1), live and work in Tel Aviv.
I would not be surprised if it were the categories 2, 3, and 4 that are bringing down the testing score averages. Somebody more knowledgeable with the Israeli social conditions may want to chime in.
I first assumed that it was 2 and 3 (as with PISA scores). But they are talking about college students, and I didn’t think that these groups even got to college in the first place.
How can they be testing at the level of 10-year olds? Haven’t 10-year olds also suffered a similar decline?
I do hope Trump keeps up his verbal attacks on us Reds. He’s preaching to a choir of Fox News Boomers who are dying off while making the Trump-hating youngsters Red-curious at the least.
“Trump launches US’s 250th birthday celebrations with partisan attack”
‘In speech at Mount Rushmore, US president claims resurgent ‘communist menace’ poses threat to country’
A quick check shows that there are only five communist countries in the world left – China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam – so are they the new Axis of Evil? Does being a critic of our version of Capitalism, aka Neoliberalism, make you a Communist? Does he want a new Red Scare 2.0? Is Communism the new bogey man? Will visitors to the US be forced to answer the question ‘Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?’ But he seems to want to equate them with illegal emigrants so if you defend the rights of them, then you are a supporter of Communism.
Trump July 4 disaster to go with all his other disasters.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-july-4-speech-crowds-b3009099.html
This infrequent TV viewer did catch the Brooklyn bridge fireworks which I thought were pretty cool.
I guess Trump’s acolytes (and I certainly don’t mean you, Carolinian) must be pretty happy with their leader’s performance in the Circuses department. Unfortunately for him, he seems to be letting them down a bit in the Bread part. As Alfred Henry Lewis noted, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.”
“OPEC production in June was still 28% below February levels, and US inventories are near a 40-year low. That combination is what you’d expect from a one-off backlog and reserve drawdown pushing the marginal price down worldwide while the underlying position stays tight, not from a genuine global surplus.”
Nick W@Hattusilis_III
The “global glut” argument is misreading the data – it’s interpreting a localised bottleneck and mistaking it for a global condition, then reinforcing itself by pointing back at the price fall as proof.
Two finite mechanisms are pushing prices down right now: SPR and Chinese reserve drawdowns, and the release of the Gulf’s wartime backlog. Both are one-off, and both are draining.
The Gulf backlog is exiting into a market where China, the barrels’ main buyer, has temporarily stepped back. UAE and Iraq heavily discounted the trapped oil that exited to clear the backlog. China’s teapots opportunistically bought it cheap. Iran didn’t match it, focusing instead on long-term arrangements rather than a discount that isn’t lasting – its oil was placed in floating storage in the meantime.
West African crude explains the same story from a different angle. Asian refiners paid a premium for it during the shortage, when Gulf supply was cut off and any barrel would do. That premium has gone now that Gulf crude is back and cheap, which is why a Congo cargo is currently unsold at a record $14 discount to Brent.
If the glut were global, prices would be falling everywhere at roughly the same rate, but they aren’t. The WTI-Brent spread has remained in its normal $2-8, while other crude such as Oman and Djeno is heavily discounted against those global benchmarks. That divergence, not the general price fall, is the critical piece of evidence. A global surplus would push every grade down at a similar rate, but this is pushing specific grades down much faster than others.
OPEC production in June was still 28% below February levels, and US inventories are near a 40-year low. That combination is what you’d expect from a one-off backlog and reserve drawdown pushing the marginal price down worldwide while the underlying position stays tight, not from a genuine global surplus
I wonder how useful June averages are to some degree since the MOU did come mid month. Same issue I had with the Kpler data showing five million barrels a day in June from the strait. I did try and look for additional clarification on that one and didn’t have any luck.
“I spent fifty years proving one thing: almost nothing is as random as it looks. The 50.75% that built Renaissance wasn’t luck. It was a tiny crack in the randomness, found and repeated a million times.”
Persi Diaconis, Stanford mathematician and former professional magician:
https://x.com/Rossst_03/status/2073398696725696945/video/1
Diaconis wrote a paper showing that when you toss a coin, the probability that it lands with the face that it started with up is 0.51…
“Celtic nations begin to plan for breakup of UK in event of Reform election win”
Didn’t they say something like this at the time of the Brexit Referendum? This is like the famous people that said that they would leave the country if Trump was re-elected but then never did.
The difference is that Reform is all about Britain straight-up recolonizing the semi-autonomous Celtic republics that constitute the rest of the UK, not just doubling down on delirious fantasies of a new global British Empire. Staying would be an existentially awful deal for them.
I did plan for it, by applying for Italian citizenship. I can’t plan for the breakup of the U.K., since I will only be able to apply for Scottish citizenship after the breakup.
RE: College students are testing at the level of 10 year olds
From 2024:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/9/3/new-math-intro-course/
Harvard Launches New Intro Math Course to Address Pandemic Learning Loss
Sounds similar to something that I read some time ago. How kids were turning up to college without the basic skills of the use of English. So those colleges had to institute special classes for those kids so that they could catch up to what they never learned in high school. The course was nicknamed ‘Bonehead English’ which must have been humiliating. What is different about this anecdote was that it was told by Robert Heinlein so probably he was talking about the 1970s or the 1980s – about half a century ago.
I thought Harvard had alreasdy solved the problem by just handing out “A”s to everybody – https://jonathanturley.org/2023/10/12/the-incredibles-roughly-80-percent-of-grades-given-at-harvard-are-as/
Very egalitarian of them, don’t you think?
re: Dean Acheson
Present at the Destruction
Martin Sieff on Dean Acheson’s True Legacy
https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/present-at-the-destruction
First paragraph:
For 20 years after his departure as the most reviled secretary of state in United States history, Dean Acheson was toxic. He was a non-person in among Democrats. His unbelievable combination of arrogance, incompetence, and contemptibly bad judgment in Korea stood for itself.
or:
Thus it was that Zbig, later working through his loyal, clueless, yet widely despised protege Madeleine Albright, became the Pied Piper for half a century of Democrat phony-tough guy national security “experts.” Albright’s PhD thesis was nearly rejected at Columbia University until Brzezinski pulled some strings (with Rockefeller behind him) to ensure she got the parchment, thereby setting her up as a vital member of the anti-communist intellectual front.
My first reaction to this piece was: valid criticisms of a deserving target — now do the Dulles brothers! But if you skim the articles in the Realist Review, it seems to reserve a special place in Hell for what they see as the “Achesonian” branch of the Democratic party that eventually came to dominate and shape it into the blue half of our current warmongering Uniparty today. I think a useful companion piece that puts this Acheson-hatred in historical context is this one by James Carden:
https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/a-legacy-betrayed
Carden’s article makes the purpose of this one by Martin Sieff more understandable to me.
There are a few concerns with Martin Sieff’s take-down of Dean Acheson, but one on which he is way off base is attributing to him the incitement of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor behind Roosevelt’s back. Acheson may well have been the one to issue the order to cut off oil exports to Japan, but if so he was doing it as part of a carefully thought out, deeply informed plan approved by the president.
Within hours of the news becoming public some of Roosevelt’s adversaries accused the administration of deliberately inciting the attack, and soon rumors of a smoking-gun memo began to circulate. All of these were vehemently denied by the administration, and continued to be done so by its apologists long after Roosevelt and the war were history. However nearly 60 years the rumor proved to be true due to the research of one Robert Stinnett, who found a copy of the memo in an obscure Navy document storage facility in the Pacific Northwest. He published a photocopy of it in the appendix of his book about his years of research entitled Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor, published in 1999.
In October of 1940 Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum, the Head of the Far East desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), wrote a memo to the ONI Director that summarized the world situation, identified dangers to the United States of passively reacting to events initiated by adversaries, and proposed an eight item action plan intended to entice Japan into attacking United States’ military and/or possessions. The memo reached President Roosevelt who, after consulting with McCollum and other officers, implemented the plan.)
“McCollum had a unique background for formulating American tactics and strategy against Japan. Born to Baptist missionary parents in Nagasaki in 1898, McCollum spent his youth in various Japanese cities. He understood the Japanese culture, and spoke the language before learning English. After the death of his father in Japan, the McCollum family returned to Alabama. At eighteen McCollum was appointed to the Naval Academy. After graduation the twenty-two year old ensign was posted to the US Embassy in Tokyo as a naval attaché and took a refresher course in Japanese there. . .
The following is a summary of the key points of the memo quoted from the book:
This revelation begs two questions the answers to which can probably only be speculated upon at this distance from the events. The first is how did the project that led to this memo originate? Did it come from the mind of LCDR McCollum himself? Or was he ordered to develop a plan by someone up the chain of command? If the latter, by whom?
The other conundrum is why would President Roosevelt sign up for something that was so politically risky for him, and perhaps on a legal or personal level as well? The most plausible answer to this question seems to be that he must have regarded the rise of fascism as an imminent existential threat to the United States. Given the way history has unfolded in the subsequent nearly nine decades, it appears that view was well founded.
One of the most disturbing details about fb-feed are misleading dates: I am getting recommendations posing as new but the actual item can be several months or even years old.
Jared and Ivanka bring down a government, such accomplished fellows they are. I guess the “bringing down” part has not yet happened, but that is a really big crowd! How long until Trump threatens or bribes Albania with….something.
Albanians take to the streets in protest for the 35th night in a row
https://apnews.com/article/resort-prime-minister-rama-kushner-flamingos-resort-9e2cbb682d9445f2e2d946c44ea2fecd
“Von der Leyen admits ‘technical problems’ with new EU airport border checks”
Why does this story not surprise me? Ursula has a history of incompetence so bringing in a security system that is suppose to take about 70 seconds but in fact can take several hours is par for the course for her-
‘These delays are impacting millions of passengers entering the Schengen Area … At the same time, airports and airlines are experiencing growing operational disruption, including flight delays, missed connections and increasing pressure on frontline staff’
Yep. Sounds like Ursula’s handiwork here.
She asked Trump for recommendations on contractors. /s
I am very much n favor of adding Donald Trump’s face to Mt Rushmore, upside down.
You know with his luck lately, were he to go that route, I wouldn’t be surprised to see his “face” ending up a pile of rubble at the bottom because of some “freak accident” (small earthquake, heavy rain, landslide you name it)
What about with a bowl of mashed potatoes dumped on his head?
Ka-boom tish!
I’ll try the veal, you’ll be here all week…
re: Top 10 Richest Families in the World:
Lets take Walmart. As long as nobody questions the shere idea that the business people running the company earn multiple of the people who actually work at Walmart our system won´t change. On what grounds may the capitalist keep the profit. On what grounds can he demand a profit margin in the first place.
If every individual involved in the creation of the products/goods Walmart is selling, starting with the extraction of the actual materials, then to the transformation and manufacturing, transport, distribution, selling and so on earned the same wage and advertising would be strictly controlled and eventually private wealth extremely limited we would have no such perverted lists.
Why should a kid on a cocoa farm earn less then the suit in Bentonville, Arkansas. Or the sewer in Romania, Bangladesh or Oman, or the factory worker in Haiti or the truckdriver in France less than the corporate lawyers in Chicago representing Walmart´s management.
“On what grounds may the capitalist keep the profit.”
It is written in the 66th Chapter of the Book of Mammon, commencing at the 6th verse:
👍
Bear in mind that Sam Walton is dead and that richest family consists of heirs who had little to do with the company’s success.
Inherited wealth is the issue on this one.
But we’ve long had debates about Walmart here and as giant corporations go, IMO, there are worse
I picked out Walmart but it´s the mechanics of wealth accumulation of course which are alike everywhere. Fwiw Walmart didn’t even crack the German market. But that doesn´t make their policies and practices any better. And Walmart is considered a symbol since everyone goes there and knows the brand. It´s the same as ALDI, LIDL or REWE in Germany. Those family businesses are among the wealthiest but nobody would call them out.
And if you get to changing the tradition of inheritance resistance is immese.
The demise of the left has led to a demise of left discourse and economic analysis too.
What used to be permissable to argue has vanished.
The problem is pressing as ever and talked about less and less.
p.s. That you don’t create a “Walmart” empire without illegitimate means, methods, using illegitimate rules and laws is a different topic and the actual nut to crack. It has become part and parcel of our intellectual everyday culture to cry “selfmade man”. The counterpart to Rubio´s “Might makes right” is “Success makes right”. Both are pathologic.
Maybe you´ve seen that McDonald’s “biopic” with Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc, “THE FOUNDER”. It offers a decent take on the twisted dark truths of “American capitalism”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Founder
I have seen it.
I should have posted earlier.
Don’t underestimate the role Sam Walton played in moving American factories, jobs, and technology to China. He was a big player in de-industrializing America:
Wal-Mart & China: A Joint Venture
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/secrets/wmchina.html
And I’m not saying China was “given” anything, they have an aggressive industrial policy which they pursued, but what could be called “America’s industrial policy” which was whatever Wall St wanted, turned out to be very stupid.
“NY Times publisher: Remember the free press’ role in our freedom”
Are they serious? If the press is at the weakest point ever, then I would have to say that they did it to themselves. They gave up simply reporting the news and became the gatekeepers of the news – their word, not mine. They would give fabulous coverage to a Trump but if they did not like a politician running for office who was a socialist, they would not report or talk about him. They decided – not their readers. Then the internet came along and they were in anguish as people who had given up on the main stream media got their news there instead. Their role of “gatekeepers” was now under serious threat so they actually started to report the news. Nah, just kidding. The demanded censorship of any media that was not main stream media to protect their lameness. If you want news, then these huge news organizations should be mostly broken up. And would anyone miss the New York Times with its constant lying? Or even the Washington Post? They no longer have a reputation to lose.
Without a twtrX account I can no longer watch the posted twtrX videos. Musk’s twtrX must be hurting for new user accounts. / ;)
Have you tried using XCancel, flora? Just edit the URL to replace x(dot)com with xcancel(dot)com? Works for me. This dodge also gives you access to the whole thread, which the original site doesn’t if you’re not logged in.
Thanks for the tip.
It Works! / :)
> James Carville warns radical democratic socialists’ victories signal ‘end of the two-party system’
and
> Democratic Infighting Threatens Party’s Bid To Reclaim House Majority
The Overton window only shifts to the right apparently. It is a big tent and you ain’t in it unless you are a corporate tool like Carville. Dems could easily have a majority but the will give it away to the right because $30 Million is not enough for down home aw shucks Jimmy boy.
Jimmy boy is working hard to remain relevant. Except…. that train left years ago. Hillary’s now praising T’s Gaza plan. Follow the money. /smh
https://www.foxnews.com/media/hillary-clinton-breaks-democratic-critics-backing-trumps-gaza-plan-game-town
He mentions the “end of the two party system” like it was a bad thing. Unfortunately for him, the “two party system” died decades ago. Gore Vidal pointed that out in 2004, referring to Adams from the 1890s.
See: “Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. “We have a single system,” he wrote, and “in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses.””
The article claims Carville supports political pluralism (though not a multi-party system). a strong social safety net (though his boys Clinton and Obama worked to cut Social Security benefits and Clinton pushed through the welfare reform cut) and wants social insurance (but opposes Medicare For All). What he gives in speech his hands take back, just as the Democratic Party leader-donor class does.
That “Outraged reporter says Austin’s $125million public library is now being used as a filthy homeless shelter ” is none other than ‘Savannah Hernandez, a contributor for the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA’, a God(?) fearing, but apparently more human fearing, woman of the NeoChri$tian church.
When she is in that library washing their feet I will believe that she is a follower of Christ.
re: origin of 4th of July celebration
From 1995
Short text by Chomsky (via ZNet)
A Few Words on Independence Day
Noam Chomsky
Covert Action Quarterly, 1995
https://chomsky.info/1995____-2-3/
He ends with a quotation from a member of United Mine Workers on July 4th (below).
Commenting the idea of a national anniversary introduced under Woodrow Wilson by the Committee on Public Information (CPI) which became the country´s first state propaganda agency, initially calling the event “Americanization Day” because targetted to a large extent at indocrination of immigrants.
Only later it became the better sounding “Independence Day”.
“(…)attempting to set up a paternalism that will bring the workers of this country even more absolutely under the control of the employers, … strengthening the chain of industrial tyranny in this country. … [That is what lies behind these efforts] to sanctify and confirm oppression by waving the American flag in the face of its victims and by insidiously stigmatizing as unpatriotic any attempts they may make to throw off the yoke of the exploiting interests [that the organizers] represent.(…)”
re: Iran and Lebanon.
Remember this reporting originally after 9/11? Via Medium Magazine.
The Memo that Outlined U.S. Plans to Overthrow 7 Countries in 5 Years
A shocking revelation of a secret memo detailing plans for regime changes in the Middle East, driven by a small group of neoconservatives, before 9/11 reshaped U.S. foreign policy.
“In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, a narrative began to unfold that suggested the United States was embarking on a premeditated plan to destabilize the Middle East. This plan, allegedly formulated by a group of influential neoconservatives in Washington, was not widely known or debated publicly at the time. However, according to some high-ranking officials, there was a deliberate and strategic objective to change governments in seven countries within five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. This ambitious scheme, rooted in a vision for a new American century, has since been a subject of much controversy and debate.” (my emphasis)
https://information-warfare.com/the-memo-that-outlined-u-s-plans-to-overthrow-7-countries-in-5-years-4f9451a68f5e
What countries are still left to overthrow? Iran and Lebanon?
Those “five years” have stretched to 25 years and counting.
thanks for the link
re: obituary Susan George, political scientist (ATTAC, DiEM25, TNI)
by Walden Bello
Desperately Missing Susan
Susan George was an educator, an agitator, and an activist who also authored more than a dozen books.
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/desperately-missing-susan/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_George_(political_scientist)
George in 2004 on supporting John Kerry:
“(…) “we all thought [Kerry] had a very good chance, even though everyone admitted it was hard to get really enthusiastic about him…. The man isn’t the most charismatic ever to walk the earth. But at least he’s not a proto-fascist or a go-it-aloner, and that’s what we seem—apart from a last-minute miracle—to be stuck with now. With four years clear ahead of him and no re-election to worry about, I fear Bush and the ghastly neo- con/neo-liberals around him will now go on the rampage. They can continue with impunity their attacks on the Constitution and on hard-won freedoms…”(…)”
sounds familiar…
These data breaches have real consequences.
Big Serge says he is going to be doxxed from a Substack breach. Also explains his absence these months.
The best WW2 strategic, operational, and tactical posts I’ve ever read.
Happy 250 Birthday, America! using Department of War jets (rather than say drones) that the US no longer has the industrial capacity (absent rare earths to replace) to paint 250 in the sky for a seconds is appropriate for a revolutionary country that exploded the GINI coefficient by its war for independence, as financial mismanagement of the early years (hyperinflation) fell disproportionately on the common, non-voting poor – so Trump and Biden led GINI explosion is fitting too. The recovery time from the war of independence for its non-elite citizens was many, many, many decades – lifetimes, actually.
AI, according to twatter.
re: Trump & Hollywood
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
Trump Made Millions From Hollywood Last Year
A disclosure form reveals a $10.7 million fee for ‘Melania,’ legal settlements and a residual from ‘The View.’ It also suggests that he tendered shares in Warner Bros. Discovery to Paramount last year as it battled Netflix.
July 1st
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/trump-hollywood-money-melania-warner-bros-tender-1236634351/
That call out of Nancy Pelosi during that State of the Union speech was a challenge.
When he leaves office, he’s going to start another reality show: Trading With the Politicians.
Expect it to rival Dancing With the Stars.
The Revenge of the Philosophy Majors (NY Times)
Holy fk. How about the morality of stealing all of the world’s knowledge and selling it back to everyone.
Epistemology and word matching inference are not compatible, not considering hallucinating.
About 10 years later to pursue the “basics”.
Use media-downloader https://github.com/mhogomchungu/media-downloader to grab the video, and watch it then. Just paste the X link into m-d, and it will find the video.
xcancel.com also works and you can just edit the URL, although it’s a bit slow. It is deterring me from clicking through on x.com links though.
I suppose if you are going to have an everything app you have to force everyone into it. Not complying.
There are various browser addons that automate xcancel, such as https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xcancel/
Kathleen Tyson
@Kathleen_Tyson_
This is brilliant and should be studied by central bankers everywhere! Peoples Bank of China was the first to deflate a massive, leveraged housing bubble without a single quarter of economic contraction or loss of growth momentum in the real economy.
A success for the history books.https://x.com/Hedgeye/status/2073733022919045621/photo/1
I guess this is what they needed that revenge for.
Ah, yes, Pareto efficiency: The holy relic that schools of public policy enshrine like splinters of the True Cross, to explain why taxes can never be raised on the rich.* (I had to Google “infinite ethics.” According to the AI Overview (i.e., what it deserves), it is “the branch of moral philosophy investigating the ethical implications of living in an infinite universe or dealing with infinite populations.” GROAF.)
*There was always a certain air in my particular (middling) program of: “As future enforcers of neoliberalism, you don’t have to know a lot about this, except that it’s unquestionably true.”
I really did click to post this as a reply to Jason Boxman’s 1:13 pm comment.
file under South of the Border: Christian Parenti article in CovertAction Magazine.
Cuba’s Real Crime in the Minds of American Elites
By
Christian Parenti –
June 18, 2026
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2026/06/18/cubas-real-crime-in-the-minds-of-american-elites/
Jimmy Dore interviews Christian Parenti.
The Real Reason U.S. Wants To Crush Cuba!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtfqeN0-ZBw
The Mafia wants their island back again?
Rev, Meyer Lansky got the press, he was the money man for the New York Mob, the MAFIA, however Murray “The Camel” did the same for “The Outfit” which was based in the Midwest.
They had plenty of fingers in the Cuban pie.
There was some overlap, but “The Outfit” was more ethnically diverse and one of its biggest power centers was Kansas City…run by a Democratic Political machine.
Does the name “Harry Truman” ring a bell?
There’s so much people have forgotten about how rotten the practice of American politics in the past has been.
https://flatlandkc.org/news-issues/a-sordid-history-of-kansas-city-election-fraud/
2 things ive watched today in my down times:
Karen Kw$%#@kowski on Mario(who is growing on me):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42dZ1qcMwbA
aqain this Einar guy again…second time ive come across him, and i think he’d be welcome around my fire out here at the bar:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOwhywVm0kE
so, for those who arent too far into cups, or doing things on this day,lol.
(everybody i know is biting the dog that bit them,lol)
looks like Yves finally got a day off, maybe?
…have that far and wide, if the metaphor points up, and you would have change, whatever….