A Snout of Significance Nautilus
Is Peace Possible The Marginalian
My Father Prosecuted History’s Crimes. Then He Died in One. New York Times Magazine
Climate/Environment
Global Forest Loss Shatters Records in 2024, Fueled by Massive Fires World Resources Institute
NOAA predicts above-normal 2025 Atlantic hurricane season National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Scientists Find DNA Proof of Swine Feces in North Carolina Homes Sentient Science
Pandemics
After hospitalization for pneumonia, COVID-19 patients report lasting symptoms CIDRAP
And 1.2 million deaths is a HUGE undercount as well. The actual number when doing statistical analysis on excess deaths puts that figure way higher. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more than 2 million. Plus the TENS of millions disabled by this virus. And no one cares. https://t.co/wfARJolfkJ
— Chris Alvino (@ChrisAlvino) May 22, 2025
The possibility of aviation mechanics with brain fog is another reason I avoid flying now.https://t.co/vNHZdHqllM
— Michael Olesen 💉😷🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@maolesen) May 22, 2025
***
Deadly West Texas measles outbreak reaches San Antonio area San Antonio Report
More Texas children are getting vaccinated early against measles Texas Tribune
The Koreas
Aftermath Of Disastrous North Korean Frigate Launch Seen In Satellite Image The War Zone
U.S. Considers Withdrawing Thousands of Troops From South Korea WSJ
Japan
Japan and the Birth of Modern Shipbuilding Construction Physics
O Canada
‘Financial landlords’ driving up rent prices in Toronto faster than other types of landlords: study CP24
Old Blighty
Wild camping on Dartmoor is legal, supreme court rules The Guardian
UK agrees to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius in a deal it says protects a key US base AP
Africa
US Navy Super Hornets launched history’s ‘largest airstrike’ from an aircraft carrier — 125,000 pounds of munitions, admiral says Business Insider. On Somalia in February.
A US drone base in Côte d’Ivoire? The Pentagon in talks with Abidjan The Africa Report
Syraqistan
The Gaza health ministry just released a comprehensive list of the number of children killed in Gaza by Israel: 16,503
Infants under one year old: 916
Children (1-5 years): 4,365
Children (6-12 years): 6,101
Children (13-17 years): 5,124These are just the confirmed deaths pic.twitter.com/vPv1zDHHGl
— Sharif Kouddous شريف عبد القدوس (@sharifkouddous) May 22, 2025
‘Another layer of cruelty’: Israeli forces bomb Prosthetic Limbs hospital in north Gaza New Arab
No aid entering Gaza has reached starving Palestinians: UN The Cradle
Israel is carrying out a plan to destroy Palestinian society from within.
A thread 🧵 1/
Other than a tool to move the population southward as part of a brazen criminal displacement campaign, the starvation of Gaza has another insidious deliberate objective- pic.twitter.com/sTuc3f8gv3
— Yoav Litvin (@nookyelur) May 22, 2025
Moral Limits Dissent Magazine
How Microsoft Became A Hub For Israeli Intelligence ¡Do Not Panic!
Microsoft Bans the Word “Palestine” in Internal Emails Drop Site
Elbit Systems raises $512m on Nasdaq for production expansion Globes
Nvidia grows its Israel footprint with $27M office expansion in Tel Aviv Ctech
European Disunion
German troops start first permanent foreign deployment since second world war The Guardian
MEPs call on European Commission to cut Hungary off from EU funds Euronews
The fight for Hungary’s future: sovereignty or subjugation? Esha Krishnaswamy
EU imposes sanctions on two pro-Russian German bloggers DPA
The Black Chamber: Opening Europe’s Post History Today
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukrainian mass suicide drone attacks almost never achieve anything militarily
Sometimes they target oil, but mostly they’re PR for the West, a vain hope to destabilize Russia, and a pale copy of Russian air strikes
They also remind normies that Ukrainians are the enemy https://t.co/0vfYGW5qMj
— Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) May 22, 2025
Kyiv proposes EU partners help directly fund Ukrainian military under new model Kyiv Independent
Negotiations Are A Bridge to Nowhere, But the Battlefield is the Highway to Victory The Real Politick with Mark Sleboda (Video)
Russian Iskander Missile Strike Destroys Patriot Air Defence System Guarding Dnepropetrovsk Military Watch
Arms Race in Ukraine The New York Review
Spook Country
Woman shot at CIA headquarters after crashing into gate CNBC
Mr. Market
Significant Headwinds to Consumer Spending Apollo Academy. Useful chart:
Trump 2.0
Trump’s crypto dinner cost over $1 million per seat on average NBC News
A Crypto Billionaire Who Feared Arrest in the U.S. Returns for Dinner With Trump WSJ
Reporter: You guys are very proud of your record on transparency… on the president’s dinner tonight will the white house commit to making a list of the attendees public so people can see who is paying for that access?
Leavitt: The president is attending it in his personal… pic.twitter.com/oDkCdkN7kT
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 22, 2025
Chinese Firms’ Plan to Avoid Stock Delisting: Buy Trump’s Memecoin WSJ
***
Trump Is Turning Our Consumer Watchdog Into a Corporate Protector Eric Halperin, director of enforcement at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from 2021 to 2025, New York Times
What’s in the House-passed ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Stephen Semler
‘Call This What It Is—Theft’: Republicans Approve Largest Medicaid, SNAP Cuts in US History Common Dreams. Likely worse than theft.
1/ One of the most devastating moments in my book, There Is No Place for Us, involves Kara, a mother of four in Georgia, who works up the courage to seek therapy after years of homelessness, trauma, and struggle.
She calls Medicaid. She asks for help. And here’s what happens:
— Brian Goldstone (@brian_goldstone) May 22, 2025
MAHA
RFK Jr. Releases Much-Anticipated MAHA Report MedPage Today
Democrats en Déshabillé
The Real Path to Abundance Sandeep Vaheesan, Boston Review
The Supremes
Why the Supreme Court decision on firing independent agency heads is a big deal Can We Still Govern?
SCOTUS allowing the President to gut agencies designed to regulate corporations and protect workers’ right to unionize—while giving a pass to the Federal Reserve, a key conduit for Wall Street power—is a brazen display of corporate favoritism and deference to oligarchic control. https://t.co/ckDBclGpDB
— Daniel Hanley (@danielahanley) May 23, 2025
Split Supreme Court blocks first religious charter school in Oklahoma SCOTUS Blog
Antitrust
FTC Abandons Price Discrimination Case Against PepsiCo, Tells Main Street Businesses: “You’re on Your Own” American Economic Liberties Project
Police State Watch
Mahmoud Khalil permitted to hold newborn son for the 1st time despite government objections AP
Our Famously Free Press
The ADL is already exploiting the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers to demand more limits on free speech, specifically demanding Israel critics with the large platforms – such as @hasanthehun – be banned from speaking.
Can’t even wait 24 hours until demanding censorship. https://t.co/46Ehi4VWAH
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 22, 2025
AI
US House Passes 10-Year Moratorium on State AI Laws Tech Policy Press
Behind Silicon Valley and the GOP’s campaign to ban state AI laws Blood in the Machine. From May 16, but some useful detail.
***
You See? Generative AI is Bad At Doing My Job Lit Hub
Talking To Machines, Learning To Be Human: AI As A Moral Feedback Loop 3 Quarks Daily
Groves of Academe
Trump Admin Revokes Harvard’s Authorization To Enroll International Students The Harvard Crimson
after announcing that foreign students are being banned from Havard, Noem warns “this should be a warning to every other university to get your act together.” pic.twitter.com/m1agbxGVI6
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 22, 2025
Imperial Collapse Watch
America Is In A Late Republic Stage Like Rome Niall Ferguson, Noema Mag
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi imetatronink
Zeitgeist Watch
The age of radical message-board utilitarian terrorism Read Max
Class Warfare
“While some tariff actions taken to date have the potential to support workers… the reckless, untargeted, on-again, off-again approach to other tariffs, including those with our most significant trading partner Canada, threaten to swamp the positive impacts,” @AFLCIO says
— Josh Eidelson (@josheidelson) May 21, 2025
Can American Labor Law Be Renewed? Commonplace
Sanitizing the Psychedelic Revolution New Lines Magazine
On (the) Sublime Longreads
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Golden Dome
(melody borrowed from Take The Long Way Home written by Richard Davies and Roger Hodgson, and performed by the band Supertramp in 1979)
(Trump has given the OK to build a Golden Dome over America, a whole bunch of satellites ready to shoot down any missiles overhead. Except it won’t work, ever. The initial price tag is $500 Billion, but we all know that will go up and up forever.)
We’ll be safe from a UFO
Satellites zooming to and fro
We’ll build a Golden Dome
Build a Golden Dome
Chinese missiles are pretty good
We’ll protect everyone we should
We’ll build a Golden Dome
Build a Golden Dome
It’s the art of the steal—we’ve got no machinery
Cash for you and me Trumping down, Oy!
We spend our lives on the brink of a war with a foreigner
Sometimes we go too far, but we roll the dice
We’ll place our bombs at amazing heights
While we jack up the purchase price
We’ll build a Golden Dome
Build a Golden Dome
Nukes will orbit us endlessly
Round and round up where we can’t see
We’ll build a Golden Dome
Build a Golden Dome
There’s just no way to gauge profits receivable
It’s reprehensible, and there’s more, too
There’s a few missing links, and the whole thing is vanity
Oh, it’s a travesty—there can be no doubt
(musical interlude)
Donald Trump wants his Dome to prove that he’s royalty
Wants it on TeeVee, he wants his Dome, boy
We’ll need more engineers, so more foreign visas then,
All speaking Mandarin, to prep us for wartime
There’s enough cash to go around
There’ll be more when we shut it down
We’ll build a Golden Dome
We’ll build a Golden Dome
We’ll build a Golden Dome
We’ll build a Golden Dome
We’ll build a Golden Dome
We’ll build a Golden Dome
We’ll build a Golden Dome
We’ll build a Golden Dome
Build a Golden Dome
Golden Dome
Golden Dome
Golden Dome
Golden Dome
Golden Dome
Golden Dome . . .
Not bad, Not bad at all. How about this too-
‘In Normerica did Donald Trump, a stately golden dome decree’
(with apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
It’s Breakfast in America, and those aren’t Cocoa Puffs in your cereal bowl. They’re rabbit pellets.
And here I thought the “Golden Dome” was Trump’s head. Thanks guys!
‘Gilt Trip’
Didn’t Reagan already do this?
“Delta flight engine lacked oil when making emergency landing”
Yeah, that’s kind of a big deal. It’s a wonder that neither pilot did not notice the low oil pressure in the right engine. I suppose that the smoke coming into the cabin was the giveaway and it sounds like the flight attendants could not get through to them with their own warnings. I suppose that when the investigation is finished that they are going to have to completely rebuild that engine which itself is going to cost a mint. Hopefully somebody will remember to use the dipstick next time. :)
“It’s a wonder that neither pilot did not notice the low oil pressure in the right engine.”
Don’t the pilots have to go through a checklist before taking off? Doesn’t that checklist include an item related to oil pressure?
Somehow, this might be even worse than it looks.
A quick online search found the flight was delta 876 in February 2025.
The NTSB report is out and the issue was an oiling system failure, not lack of oil added.
The smoke in the cabin is a large indicator that oil was leaking into the compressor section of the engine where the bleed air is used for cabin heating and cooling.
The lack of oil wouldn’t cause smoke like that.
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/ntsb-releases-report-delta-flight-smoke-incident-february.amp
The exact failure or broken part might be found at the NTSB website/report.
Seems rather unlikely that Covid had anything to do with this incident
Thanks for that. That would certainly explain the smoke if it was an oil leak. Also explains why the pressure did not drop until it was already in flight. I still wonder if they will have to rebuild that engine though as it might have been starved of oil while working.
https://www.jalopnik.com/1861552/why-new-cars-dont-have-dipsticks/
I guess that happened with planes too. :)
Jet engines don’t have dipsticks they have sight tubes or something similar on the side of the engine.
IE a visible clear tube accessible via door on the side of the engine which is checked as per recommended intervals.
If it’s low enough they add oil.
You can find many YouTube videos showing it done on airliners.
For planes with piston engines they indeed have dip sticks.
The assassination of the 2 Israeli embassy employees and the aftermath kind of reminds me of a Jewish fellow named Herschel Grynszpan, killing a German embassy member in Paris in 1938, the Nazis using his act as a pretext for Kristallnacht, which occurred a few days later.
It’s all in reverse, of course.
As usual, Caitlin Johnstone captures my utter disgust at the hypocrisy as I watched the long opening segment about this on NBC News last night:
“So let’s get one thing clear from the beginning: two Israeli embassy staffers getting shot in Washington DC is less newsworthy than tens of thousands of Palestinians being killed in Israel’s genocidal land grab. It is less important. It deserves less attention. It is not the main story. Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the main story.”
Except that it’s not, of course. Not in our media. Not even close.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2025/05/23/thoughts-on-the-israeli-embassy-staff-killings/
I thought about the assassination of Wilhelm Gustloff, but your example is probably more applicable here…
Sucky name for a ship, as it turns out.
Funny thing nobody seems to remember Petliura, Gustloff, and von Rath.
Looking up Grzynspan’s story, I found that, when the Grzynspan family was being expelled from Germany, the mob was shouting “Juden Raus! Auf Nach Palästina!” There is a weird symmetry: what now? “Palästinensisch Raus! Geh aus Palästina!”
If I was a deity, I would bring all the Juden und Palästinensisch to Germany, and build a wall around it so that no one could get out. Also, a wall around freshly vacated lands in the Middle East, so that no one could get in.
Wuk, did you see Guy Christensen’s justification for the act?
https://x.com/VividProwess/status/1925757476537770381
An aye for an eye ain’t my bag, man.
Fair enough, but still..
Would a signature campaign make the US and Israeli governments stop the slaughter in Gaza?
I was one of a quarter million on the streets of San Francisco (a Quinn Martin production) in what i’d call a signature move, a few weeks before we invaded Iraq in 2003, and all presstidigitation could talk about the next day was a large plate glass window of a store that some hooligan had thrown a brick threw, move along nothing to see here, folks.
Be fair Wuk, without bricks there’d be no coverage at all. That truth from the 60s hasn’t changed, even as demo numbers have multiplied.
He’s not discussing Vietnam. 2003 was Iraq invasion. The MSM coverage of Vietnam protests was extensive; I was there in the streets.
Finkelstein said same thing yesterday on Useful Idiots
Trump Admin Revokes Harvard’s Authorization To Enroll International Students The Harvard Crimson
****”
I’m amazed at the stupidity and short sightedness of removing Harvard’s access to international students. Having the world’s best universities is a privilege (not a right) of the United States, and the administration is squandering that.
Having global elites at elite is also a mechanism to brainwash them into worshipping America. From a purely imperialistic perspective, it is advantageous for the US to educate global elites. Now I’m sure some of these will now just send their kids to Duke, Yale, etc, but this will likely encourage some of them to instead go to Nanjing or Heidelberg.
This also applies to currently enrolled students, it’s cruel and will trash the reputation of the entire American university system. Students that are already here should be permitted to finish their degrees.
I’ll state that I’m an academic with a poor impression of Harvard as an institution who in the abstract supports the federal government incentivizing reforms. But that’s not what this. I believe and assume that this is almost certainly due to pressure from Zionist mega donors. Bill Ackman for example has been regularly blasting Harvard and Columbia on his Twitter feed.
That’s more of America’s reputation being thrown onto the MAGA bonfire. I heard on the news that those students are only being given thee days to leave the country so I guess that they can be arrested on the fourth day as “illegal immigrants” or something. But three days? To pack up and sort your gear, to make travel bookings, close down your uni accounts and never get to finish your course at Harvard after spending all that time, money and effort. Bonus points because your career has just been derailed. You can bet that there are a lot of families overseas that are seeing this and thinking that sending their kids to Europe or Canada or China would be better as that would never happen there. But then to have Homeland Security Barbie say that they did this because Harvard was ‘fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist party on its campus’ is just making up a line of bs. There are over a million foreign students in the US contributing about $43.8 billion to the economy and most of those students are now wondering if they will still be in the US by the end of next week or whether the Trump regime will throw them out as well. Trump seems determined into making MAGA America into an international backwater-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/23/trump-harvard-international-students
Not a single member of my immediate or extended family (known for making trips to USA) wants to visit in near future. They’ve all reconsidered holiday plans there or even thought a lot more about where a flight might be diverted to and think “hmmm, if anything went wrong might our route get us diverted to USA?”
If answer is “yes” then that place is also blacklisted. Meanwhile I wonder how the major health outcomes conferences (ISPOR is the main one) are doing…..they have ancillary conferences elsewhere but the major one is always in USA and I’ll bet their sign-ups have cratered.
The collapse of American higher ed has been predicted for a while now and seems very over determined (high cost structure, poor pedagogy, demographics, reliance on full tuition paying students, poor standards, ran like sketchy investment funds…). Still, I don’t think anybody outside of the Heritage Foundation could have predicted how it’s going down. Trump just turned a generation of would be gusanos into haters. MAGS(atan)A?
Thanks. Around here there are some curious trends I perceive. I kinda thought the anti-EU thing might be strongest with food labelling but if anything, people I overhear are talking about “does it come from USA?”.
We all know and see Starmer aping Reform to try to keep nationalist votes……this could easily spiral into supermarkets boasting “not USA” and with a big Union Flag on the packaging. The Union Flag, for those paying attention, is being flown probably hundreds of times more often than when I was growing up. All a bit 1984ish/V for Vendettaish.
I don’t like the sentiment, but I see around here (in an area that tried to compromise with Thatcher, was dumped on the bonfire once it served its purpose in breaking the National Union of Mineworkers, and has since been ignored by everyone) a deep resentment and a desire to simply “stick it to the man”. Now we have BREXIT they’re looking for next target…..it’s the USA. I hear it at bus-stops and in shops that cater for the poorer people. People comparing notes, looking at labels on clothes, etc.
Plus there are elements among the oldest generation that “you yanks usurped us in running the world”. It was never “a thing” for decades as we rode on US coat-tails of prosperity and got to punch above our weight but now we are “expendable”, comments about “late entrants to the war” are things I hear more often. It’s not pleasant in tone but it’s there and not yet being picked up by media. As recently as 1997 we had the National Front (blatantly and unabashedly UK fascist party) fight general elections around here. They haven’t gone away.
I live in Canada. My two closest grocery stores have a maple leaf tag below any Canadian produced product. Apparently the consumer is left to read the label to determine if other products are from the USA. Fruits and vegetables have always had place of origin on the signs so it’s easy avoid any from the USA.
I have heard reports of people replacing US packaged goods upside down to indicate US origin but I have not seen it myself.
A store near where I reside in Victoria, BC has Terra Delyssa sunflower organic 3 litre oil on sale this week but I don’t want to purchase anything that comes from the USA.
Does this product come from the USA. Thank you.
This trend aligns with many other acts of seeming abandon… it’s not that the mechanism to secure elite conformity (education) has merely degraded, it’s that there is high confidence in the mechanisms they have developed to replace it. Sort of like ‘The Constitution’, or ‘Privacy’.
1960 brought us the “best and the brightest” and, ultimately, Vietnam. 2025 is giving us the dumb and the dumbest and ultimately ?????
Noem don’t forget once boasted about shooting her own dog because it misbehaved. Now she seems to be in a competition with Bondi re who is the bigger bad ass. Trump of course is the one tolerating and encouraging this because every bully needs a gang.
Not that we should feel too sorry for Harvard as others have pointed out. But while a large section of the public clearly wanted to stick it to the elites by electing Trump they surely didn’t want to then fall victim to even worse elites. The 60s showed that being educated doesn’t make you a good person. Seems being uneducated doesn’t work for that either.
‘Galligula’ will be remembered for utterly dumb stuff, such as his Roman predecessor’s 4 year reign that went something like this…
Watch out for that Praetorian Guard!
America should be lucky to get a Claudius.
USA already had its Marcus Aurelius. We are now stuck with Commodus and we have the Barracks Emperors and the Crisis of the Third Century to look forward to!
And see the NYT article “The Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement”, archived at https://archive.is/20250519004619/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/us/project-esther-heritage-foundation-palestine.html
This article shows how much work was done previous to the election of Trump to prepare to bypass speech protections by insisting that everyone not conforming is a supporter of Hamas and should be treated as a terrorism supporter. “Project Esther” is a breathtaking attack on freedom of speech and on rational political discussion.
Its just the neoliberal jackpot distribution coming for academia mate. Decades of administrating them as for profit business has white anted them, vulnerable to political ideologically driven purges from the likes of the Trump administration.
I mean when blokes like Mike Johnson says stuff like “The Lord told me “very clearly” to prepare to become “Moses” publicly … whooboy … its like he never read – Jeremiah 14:14. But hay, when has that ever stopped some using deity to bolster their authority over the masses.
As a side note to the over all condition in the US my 26 yr old daughter traveled there with her long time boyfriend post living/working together in SE1 London. Stayed with family in an old colonial home on the banks of the Hudson, did NYC, then to San Fran and down to Joshua tree. She said she really liked it but, was shocked at the amount of poor/homeless people everywhere. Never imagined growing up in a nice suburb just south of Brisbane, watching US media and travel stories by others that it could be so confronting.
I don’t know about others but I can smell the purity purge from halfway around the orb …
not defending Trump…..
but when Harvard is exporting the likes of Mark Carney, Boris Johnson, Trump is doing the world a favor, lol
not defending Harvard ….
But a llittle more regard for the evidence of reality is probably in order.
And it’s almost comically self-evident that Boris Johnson never went anywhere near Harvard, developed his upper-class British prat act exclusively at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied Classics (!), and probably has some disdain for the place and for many Yanks privately, as you will increasingly notice many overseas do now the US empire is collapsing and they cease to find it expedient to be polite.
(With apologies to Yves and Henry Moon Pie et al. for the joke about the Johnsonian worldview)
Harvard = the Oxford rejects’ rejects!
[Cambridge was founded by scholars drummed out of Oxford (allegedly after Bacchanalian rioting against the townies) and a few centuries later Matthew Harvard was an Emmanuel College graduate and some kind of dissenter who left Cambridge, England for the Puritan delights of Massachusetts.]
Sure but the question begging is to be replaced with what? As I noted above WRT Speaker Mike Johnson one has to ponder the blow back and purge of all the Idpol diversity sinners, so the right sorts[tm] can pontificate to the masses.
I mean just look at all the insane level of ideological terms/jargon being deployed by the Right Wing, Marxists, Commies, Socialists, non believers, and Trumps call for a Calvin-esque solution to everything. The wealthy are the Chosen People to administrate society and everyone else is not in deities light.
I know you’re half-joking but this is going to impact a lot more than Harvard. The Rev Kev nailed it, above:
Imagine you are one of those million high-achiever students looking to boost your career with a B.A. from some august USian university on the top line of your CV. But now there is the real possibility that your plans may be derailed, all the years of prep spiraling in limbo, and you’ll end up in some Kafkaesque detention center because you once dared to comment on your social media that the genocide in Gaza is wrong.
What to do? Well, the market for Higher Education is global, and there are many other institutions of higher learning around the world that you could choose instead.
If Trump & Co. want to tank the academic-industrial complex — not to mention the local economy in dozens of college towns — they are doing a great job.
Then: Ivy League
Now: I.V. League
This brings to mind a license plate cover I saw last week: UCSB (top) and I.V. League (Bottom).
Locals get it. Univ. Calif., Santa Barbara is adjacent to the (boisterous) student housing enclave Isla Vista.
It’s about one set of oligarchs smashing another set’s base of power. The concerns about the greatness of American universities does not even factor for the Trump side.
I believe that it doesn’t factor, because I believe they’re not aware.
All American oligarchs benefit from the Ivy League system, it’s the base of power to all of them, though I’m sure many of think they’d be oligarchs even if they had been born in a central American jungle.
Lastly, this is almost certainly about vindictiveness from Zionist donors. I think that they want to take revenge against the student protests. In the short term it’s perfectly rational. But, they to ultimately derive their power from the American empire.
Trust fund kids, like Donald Trump, do not need Harvard, they get their jobs and fortunes from daddy.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/02/trumps-small-loan-from-his-father-was-more-like-60point7-million-nyt.html
And yet Trump nonetheless attended the Wharton school
Maybe. I speculate that what is probably going on is that the prestige of Harvard and the Amrican University system accrues to one set of oligarchs, but works the power of another set (the ones which Trump is part of). In other words, one set of oligarchs benefits at the expense of another. So not only does destryoing Harvard hurt the other side, it removes a threat from the Trump side.
To be a bit less abstract, consider the conflict between local/resional oligarchs (the gentry) and the internationalist oligarchs (like Elon and Gates) . I’ve seen discussion around here about Trump being the spokesperson for the Gentry. Think of Harvard as a prestige generator for the internationlists, even more to the point, think of it as securing and expanding the power of the internationalists by replicating their values. Now suppose the gentry see this as a threat, Harvard and the university system in general, as increasing power for the internationalists while dimiishing the power of the gentry. If the gentry are primarily concerned about their own power, and they are, then they have a strong interst in smashing Harvard and the university system in general. The gentry would thereby smash something beneficial to their competetors, as well as instituions that are dragging their power down.
That is, this is not about making America great again or doing what’s most beneficial for the country, it’s about one group securing their power whatever the cost to everbody else. Better to rule the ash heap then serve in the utopia if you will.
But I could be wrong.
I don’t think it is this at all. It is that being educated has become feminized. In 1995, the % of new college grads by gender as a percent of their pop was almost equal. This from Rajiv Sethi in a new post:
Yet women still want to marry up and men are not happy being married to a woman who out-earns him (lotta studies confirm this as a general pattern). And studies find that higher earning men are more likely to get married, while high earning women less so.
Education is not a perfect predictor of earnings but there is a decent correlation.
… and the skew is very apparent on my local college campus where females outnumber males by a 60/40 ratio. Commencement is just a few hours away here on the California coast and the degrees conferred will mostly be awarded to women.
A quibble on the use of the term internationalists. That is a term that I find among self described socialists, as in workers of the world unite….
The term globalists might be more apropos, as in we can move our capital wherever we want.
But maybe that’s just me.
It’s not just you. Way back in my youth the internationalists called it solidarity when they helped people in other countries to fight the globalists taking over their natural resources.
Thiel and his ilk have long (arguably since 1996 for Thiel and Sacks) been on a crusade to destroy the university system.
“I believe and assume that this is almost certainly due to pressure from Zionist mega donors. Bill Ackman for example has been regularly blasting Harvard and Columbia on his Twitter feed.”
I think you’re right. One of the things I found most surprising while perusing the Harvard Class of 1975’s Red Book was the number of condemnations of anti-Semitism in the reports. So far, I’ve run across one report that showed concern for the Palestinians or those who expressed solidarity with them.
This report specifically mentions Ackman as part of a long list of indictments against Harvard:
Another fascinating essay from this site. One of the oddities about Japanese shipbuilding is how small some of the shipyards are in traditional ship building towns like Kure and Imabari. Some seem smaller than the ships they are building – tiny in comparison to the shipyards of Korea or China. A few years back I was cycling the Shimanami Kaido, a bike route that links together the many small islands of the Inland Sea via huge suspension bridges. From some of the bridges you can look down directly into the shipyards below – some yards snuggle comfortably beside tourist beaches. The secret seems to be the use of the inland sea as a convenient waterway for hauling pre-made sections of large ships from yard to yard before being finally assembled at one of the big drydocks in somewhere like Osaka.
The article did indirectly answer a question I’d always wondered about. After the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 nearly all sides tried to find some way around the Treaty provisions except what seemed to me the obvious one – build new ships in chunks, ready to be slotted together as completed vessels in the event of war. But it seems the technology to do this simply wasn’t ready.
In the US at least, there was a side effect with the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Up untill then ship designers were getting sloppy and if an engineering design solution meant several more tons added to the weight of a ship, who cared? Kinda like computer program designers these days. But when that Treaty came into effect they could no longer do that. Everything had to be designed with minimum weight which meant that ship designs became more efficient. The net effect was that the US battleships of WW2 were more efficient in design that if there had been no treaty at all.
I’d read something like that about the Bismarck. Withoit experience that the former Entente powers had under the treaty system, Germans built the Bismarck with a lot of wasted weight, that somethingbat least as capable could have been built for thousands of tons less.
Union accuses eBay of closing TCGplayer office in Syracuse to keep the company ‘union free’ syracuse.com archive
Local Start-up in 2008, sold to eBay in 2022 for $295M, voted to unionize in 2023, no contract, now shuttered 2 years later. A rather common playbook.
Out in the West Texas town of El Paso
Measles infected a never vaccinated girl
Flat red spots would appear on her face, a patina
Contagion was in play and a blotchy rash would unfurl
Blacker than night were the aims of the preventable malady
Wicked and evil while casting a spell
Contagion was in deep for this Morbilli maiden
Measles tried to infect the vaccinated, but in vain I could tell
One night, a wild young cowboy came onto a plane
Wild as the West Texas wind
Dashing and daring, an airborne disease he was sharing
With wicked infectiousness, this America that I loved
So in anger
Measles challenged his right for a rash decision
Down went his hand for the seatbelt that he wore
The infection challenge was answered in less than a heartbeat
The handsome young stranger spread contagion on the floor
Just for a moment, he stood there in silence
Unaware of the foul evil deed he had done
Many thoughts raced through my mind as I stood there
I had but one chance and that was to run
Out through the back door of the Boeing I ran
Out where my parachute unfurled
I caught a lucky break, Measles looked like it could run
All over the cabin and away it did ride
Just as fast as I
Could after leaving the West Texas airport of El Paso
Landing in the badlands of New Mexico
El Paso, by Marty Robbins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWm5WErkffQ
>>>>The possibility of aviation mechanics with brain fog is another reason I avoid flying now.
oh my, exhibit #39249 of folks with a UKR emoji having awful takes (and social media algos propagating fear-centric engagement)—–lots of reason not to fly, safety is not one of them—-as nothing is risk-less.
100% guarantee that more people will die on their summer vacations anonymously on the road (with only a 4 paragraph reference in the local paper) than by flying—even with the Rube Goldberg pile of poop (compared to the ideal) that is the current aviation infrastructure.
“The False Flag”
fools us all the time …
Langley and nervous security guards–
Shooting a woman when she didn’t even breach the gate? Ashlee Babbit II.
The story remind me of something that happened to me around CIA HQ in the late 70s. My spouse and I were living in DC but preparing to hit the road in our van to find a less crazy place to live. As part of that preparation, I bought a tarp and some clamps so we could rig an overhand off the van for some extra living space when camping in the rain or hot sun. Now I suppose I could have parked the van on the street outside the house, but it was a very buttoned-up neighborhood, and I didn’t want to upset the neighbors, so I stopped at a park I saw that was close to where I purchased the new rigging..
I set to experimenting with various configurations when a half dozen black vehicles of various shapes and sizes pulled up and a bunch of guys in suits popped out. Here I was, in my state of complete alienation with long hair and a full beard, working on my van in a park that turned out to have a view of Langley. At least they were willing to converse before shuttling me off to some dungeon somewhere, and they realized I constituted no threat, so after telling to get the hell out of there, they let me go without putting any bullet holes in me. Things are worse now.
This tell of tale comes about 15 years ago en route to Mt Cook NP in NZ, when I spied an open gate for a NZ Army Camp near Lake Pukaki, and relying on my dumb American bona fides, figured I could talk my way out of any fix I might find myself in, and in we drove about 1/4 of a mile, when a not too worried about our existence there member of the NZ military in uniform, kindly told us we had to turn around, and that was that.
My big run in with the authoritarian state was back in 89 when moving to washington from boulder I got stopped in montana for going 80 in a 55 and as the gestapo waiked up alongside the car I had to prepare myself for incarceration, or worse…
“Sir, you have exceeded the daytime speed limit in montana, you’ll need to pay me $5 now, or I’ll follow you to town so you can go to the bank?”
Scarred me for life…(/s)
My favorite run in with the police came before the turn of the century in Glendale Ca. well known for driving infraction revenue, and I pulled a illegal U-turn on Central Ave and a motorcycle cop was on me like Evel Knievel over 30 busses and pulled me over pronto, and never was anybody so dead to rights as yours truly, hell I even looked guilty.
‘License and registration please’!’ he practically barked at me as I meekly handed them over, almost wanting to confess there and then!
About a minute later he comes back and asks how long i’ve been living at the address on my driver’s license and I tell him 3 years, and he says, that’s the house I grew up in!
So I play the nostalgia angle as much as I can and he lets me off scot-free, ahhhhh.
Do that in Nevada and Troopers don’t even blink. The rural road (US Hwy. 50, 93, 95) speed limit is 80mph! Exceed that though and the fine is $1000!!!!
Security contractors from a semi-secret Social Security Administration printing facility on the edge of North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park drive or drove people away from nearby ’empty’ rural-type woods and fields the Federal government doesn’t own or lease and can’t even see from their facility. I’ve wondered if there are hidden cameras watching the roads. There is Duke Energy infrastructure in the area, but I don’t think that that is a sufficient explanation for their possessiveness. I contacted Duke Energy and they didn’t have a problem with my being there. Just walking along the public road might bother the SSA. I think local government gave the facility economic aid, and I wonder if a long-standing road was cut in part for the SSA, though there was also a railroad crossing that the government probably wanted to remove. The SSA’s thugs or mercenaries, rumored to be heavily armed, don’t have police power, but I expect that the forces of the state would take the mercenaries’ side. It did surprised them once when I knew the name and number of someone in charge and had them on the phone. A few miles away Durham sheriff deputies harassed me on a roadside bordering public gameland one spring afternoon, maybe on a weekend. I don’t know if they thought I was ‘suspicious’ or if they had been called. I could be accused of trespassing in the first place, but everything is open to the public in the second and I was there in broad daylight, not that it is closed at night. I wasn’t at either place for an illegal purpose and I have tried to explain. In 2025 the State is or was quietly considering imposing a fee to access the gameland, managed by NC but owned by the Federal government.
While I’m commenting, I want to mention that I usually have problems accessing Naked Capitalism. Things freeze or crash. A newer system here might help, but I’m probably not the only person it happens to.
I heard that they were breaking down the doors of congress and she was shouting “go go go!!” — military style.
“EU imposes sanctions on two pro-Russian German bloggers”
I thought that they all did this years ago. Alina Lipp’s name I recognize and her story was featured in NC during the early years of the war. She was at the front covering the war and was gutsy about it. The German government was up in arms back then and was threatening her with a cold, dank prison cell when she returned to Germany and all sort of other punishments. I think that they might of stolen any money that she had there and maybe leaned on her family. You know – all those European values that we keep on hearing about. But Wikipedia does the same and her entry begins saying-
‘Alina Lipp is a German social media influencer and self-described independent journalist. She is known for spreading pro-Russian disinformation about the Russian invasion of Ukraine online, including on YouTube and Telegram.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alina_Lipp
Alina, your my kind of gal.
Yep, they have been going after Alina Lipp for a while. Her mother had to leave Germany.
https://xcancel.com/pharma_portulas/status/1559300856289296385
https://www.visiontimes.com/2022/06/26/alina-lipp-german-journalist-charged-bank-frozen-ukraine-reporting.html
That is disgusting that. Going after her mother and freezing her mother’s money. That is probably Robert Habeck’s doing. Twenty years ago the idea of Russia being a sort of bastion of freedom providing refuge to those fleeing persecution would have seemed bizarre. No longer. There is Edward Snowden. Vanessa Beeley. Tara Reade and the list is getting longer. What an age we live in.
The last I heard Eva Bartlett, a Canadian journalist, was living in Russia but I think that was more from worry about Ukrainian assassins.
The article linked contains a brilliantly scornful quote from Alina Lipp.
“It’s a good thing we haven’t had any property in Germany for a long time,” she had written a few days earlier, adding they would return to Germany “if at all, on a tank.”
German troops in first outta Germany deployment. The Guardian.
The photo up top in the article doesn’t inspire confidence. The soldier in the foreground is overweight, and the three soldiers rightward in the photo are all, errr, rather plump indeed. I’m seeing some straining at their uniform blouses, and it isn’t their big pectoral muscles.
These are the fierce fighters who are going to go to Moscow?
And then what happens when they meet the famed Lithuanian mega-dumpling, the cepelinas? The name derives from zeppelin, so they may have some military uses — but I doubt it.
Recipe in Lithuanian for those of you taking part in the ReArm EU program and increasing your calorie intake before the Russian invasions:
https://derlingas.lt/receptai/cepelinai-neatsiejama-lietuviskos-virtuves-dalis-6-gardziausi-ir-laiko-patikrinti-receptai
Tasty photos!
A reminder: The G family is from Vištytis on scenic Lake Vištytis. I have checked the Wiki sites — when my grandfather was born (then it was the Russian Empire), the town had 4,500 inhabitants, a Catholic church, a Lutheran church, and a synagogue. The town now has some 600 inhabitants, and the Lutheran church and synagogue are gone. So I understand why the Lithuanians are jumpy — talk about bad neighbors.
A reminder to the reminder: Arming a small, flat, defenseless country to the teeth is not the road to peace. As Barbara Spinelli pointed out recently in an essay: These armaments are Chekhov’s pistol, subject to the plots in a Chekhov play. The pistol will go off, inevitably.
My grandfather was from Kazlų Rūda, just down the railroad line between Kaliningrad and Kaunas from Vištytis. A second cousin lives there with his family. Like most of rural Lithuania it is also depopulated. When I was there in 2018, the US Army was having major exercises there probably to practice cutting off Kaliningrad. I wonder if the cemetery of Red Army soldiers has been bulldozed; I estimated 320 dead, most in common graves,
The rabid nature of the Baltics clamoring for war is disconcerting. My cousin’s sons were in a youth paramilitary group of the infamous Lithuanian Riflemans Union in the early 00s. One works for “the Lithuanian KGB”. The grandchildren are probably doing that now.
One wonders in the revanchist Merz dreams of reclaiming East Prussia with his pudgy army.
PS Cepelinai are great but certainly are belly bombs and very labor intensive.
The Baltic trio has awful demographics.
When I first moved to USSR/RU in 1991, I was fresh out of MBA school and keen on statistics: the Baltic trio had a total population of about 8m — 3.7m Lithuania, 2.7m Latvia, and 1.6m Estonia.
Today Lithuania has 2.9m, Latvia has 1.9m, and Estonia has 1.4m. 6.2m total. Quite a decline in 30 years! Not a great advertisement for neoliberalism and EU/NATO membership, assuming that one actually values human life.
Don’t forget that about one million of those 6.2 are ethnic Russians they are trying hard to get rid of.
Five years or so I toured the Estonian countryside with friends and found out it’s basically an empty space. Almost everyone capable has left for the cities or even foreign countries. Mostly only old people left, and any young family still living in the villages, you can bet that dad is working in Finland the weekdays ferrying over Sunday nights and Friday evenings.
Wow, TIL Hawaii probably has a higher population than Estonia.
Those are all giants compared to Montenegro.
Paging George Washington, please appear on the Lincoln Memorial and opine about foreign entanglements.
(of course 1930’s-era German Mustache Man had to ruin American isolationism a/k/a keeping our literal bloody hands to ourselves)
If I ever go on Lithuanian Wheel of Fortune, gonna buy me a vowel, the ‘I’ please.
Nearly 80 years to the day of the last Germans on deployment outside the fatherland, its that damned Fourth Turning thing once again.
Next up on the agenda comes in the first 10 days of August…
Because Balkan does not count as deployment, but combat excursion.
Umm, Afghanistan? (And the Balkans,too…)
DJG: The soldier in the foreground is overweight, and the three soldiers rightward in the photo are all, errr, rather plump indeed.
Success is a poor teacher. The German “industrial miracle” is now receding into history and — as you likely know, but others won’t — Germans work the least hours of any European population, according to OECD data.
Also contrary to stereotype, the poor Greeks and the Italians work the most. I’m in London currently and the latter are everywhere, and while it’d be a mistake to claim the place would break down without them — London would just import a different population — the Italians here are an asset and a big improvement on, say, the Poles, who they seem to have replaced since the last time I was in this city.
It makes me a little sad that they have to come here, based on the conversations I have with them about the economy back in Italy and the fact that I always found Italy a great country on my visits there. Most of the ones I talk to seem to profoundly dislike Meloni, too
Michaelmas: Yep. The work ethic in the Undisclosed Region is phenomenal, and it’s considered a great compliment to call someone a “great worker.” The Piedmontese make jokes about nonna’s ability to produce thousands of ravioli al plin per hour.
The first issue for most (younger) Italians is low Italian salaries. I find that Italian wages are appallingly low — and a friend of mine from the Netherlands commented on low wages recently.
Thirty years of wage stagnation don’t help matters, either.
The second issue for younger Italians is years of government neglect in job creation. The current regime of wage & hours laws is not good. There will be five referendums on 8 / 9 June — four about repealing the neoliberal “Jobs Act,” and one to ease the path to citizenship.
Italians also believe that Italy is the most bureaucratic country in the world. My response is: Have you ever dealt with bureaucracy in the US of A, the very capolavoro of bureaucratic structures and thinking?
I wonder if the current disaster of U.K. politics, the tariff wars, roundups in the U S of A, and the fact that Italy has escaped (at least for now) some of the dire new symptoms of climate change will send them back. The “fuga dei cervelli” is definitely an issue in Italy.
@ DJG –
Yes, everything you list as an issue is exactly what Italians In London tell me.
DJG: I wonder if the current disaster of U.K. politics … and the dire new symptoms of climate change will send them back.
I’ve gotten around more than most people, including some commenters here from the UK, and I would note that: –
[1] The city-state of London currently appears to be fine and in fact booming, though this is in contrast to many smaller UK cities and towns, which a half-century ago still had manufacturing to provide employment and now have nothing but a Lidl supermarket or an Amazon fulfillment center and, additionally, populations straight out of the Mahgreb and southwards dumped in them;
[2] People everywhere are always inclined to ‘the grass is greener’ syndrome and in the UK there’s plenty of that, with the myth of the affluence of the imperial past or some other imagined time or place. In reality, I was surprised to discover when I actually looked at the UK’s figures recently, it’s the world’s fourth largest exporter when services exports are factored in, so maybe things aren’t as dire as is assumed;
[3] As regards the disaster of UK politics, Starmer and Labour are doubtless a betrayal of the party’s history and if you believed Jeremy Corbyn and co. were astute enough to have a hope in hell of beating the UK establishment you’re particularly bitter. Likewise, if you’re an EU-loving Remainer still angry about Brexit.
Nonetheless, awful and Tory-lite as Starmer and co. are, they are not the real Tories. So they’ve had room to move to make trade agreements with the EU, US, India, and China, not having the history of playing silly buggers with those entities that the Tories did. They also aren’t quite as moronically committed to market ideology, at least to the extent the Tories were, so they can do things — however unwillingly — like nationalize British Steel and the railways when this becomes the least-worst option.
Starmer’s Labour also didn’t compete to fellate Donald Trump when he got elected in the US, as Farage (Reform) and Badenoch (Tory) initially did before they saw how much the UK public dislikes him. Or indeed as Meloni is still doing in Italy. So while I understand plenty of people like Terry Flynn here having complete contempt for today’s Labour — hard not to — when I look around the world, and especially the West, after 40-plus years of neoliberalism the politicians are robotic neoliberal scum everywhere. Granted: Tory-lite Starmer Labour are awful, too, but arguably not quite as awful as in most other places and certainly not as awful as the Tories have been (as yet, anyway).
And as for the threat of Farage and Reform, when most of the country learns he wants to nationalize the NHS, the urge to burn the whole thing down by electing him in 2029 may be less of a threat than some think. It might be depressing — it is depressing, actually — but a couple of lines from Beckett may apply as regards Labour staying in power —
ESTRAGON: I can’t go on like this.
VLADIMIR: That’s what you think.
Granted, too: in the long run, what can’t continue indefinitely, won’t continue. The world is a tinderbox and there’ll be a global crash soon. But, so to speak, London doesn’t have to run faster than the bear — I’m in London so speaking selfishly now — it just has to run faster than most other countries so that when the rich fleeing those countries park their money it’s in the City and the City’s outlying tax havens.
Thanks for such a nuanced reply. I noticed that Farage et al were making statements intended to appeal to “old school lefties” about nationalisation in latter stages up to recent local elections.
They’ve announced who in Notts is running their “mental health/autism” drive…..I had a quick look and nothing looked “suss” about the charity they were pivoting off, who knows if it is or is not. (Though choosing an autism charity whose name is a parody of a film is automatically gonna make some of us suspicious).
People at the moment are really puzzled.
Central London is another world, DJG! Everything works. Even the council houses are nice! We’re looking at moving into a Lutyens designed social housing project because we’re going to spend more time in Town, with the sale of the farm and son #1 having passed the exams for a very demanding school (but sadly not the scholarship exam!).
But it is not the rest of the UK. Even Devon is not the rest of the UK. A visit to Terry’s Nottingham would disabuse you of your optimism….
Starmer is awful. Labour and Tory alike have led the country to neoliberal ruin. Oleaginous oik Wes Streeting and his bat-winged sponsor Blair are trying to privatise the NHS anyway. I would prefer a socialist version of Reform but you take the Rupture where you find it and I will risk the NHS and vote for them against the Uniparty. Over goes the table and the cards land where they may….
The Italians in London like the (world) food, culture and increasingly the climate. They also like the commercial amd social dynamism. There are advantages to Imperial primitive accumulation and high finance and incorrigible Liberalism: London feels like a place from which the rest of the world can be summoned or conquered within the week.
I worked for ten years for an Italian company (15k staff, EUR 6bn market cap) in the London office and it was a prize posting for Italians. Italy by contrast is stagnant, when they tell it (it is however fabulously bourgeois and bourgeoisly fabulous – I was astonished by how well kept Bergamo is the other week).
You are right about the low wages in Italy though. The Italian company tried to pay wages like that in the UK and got a shock. Brilliant Italian graduates, Oxbridge equivalents, work for a pittance at home and cannot increase wages by moving domestically because of the oversupply of labour. The Italian company paid higher wages eventually but still complained every year that UK staff turnover was 10x Italian rates (30% not 3%). They considered it disloyalty but it was really opportunity!
Revenant: .…but you take the Rupture where you find it … Over goes the table and the cards land where they may….
Yes, that’s what the Americans thought.
Good point, well made.
Terry had better set up his political party sooner rather than later!
Do they make flambé cepelinas for the Germans?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hindenburg_disaster.jpg
From what I can see of the epaulettes on that picture, that’s a couple of senior NCOs (~Stabsfeldwebel) and at least a Major in the foreground. Don’t know if they are meant to fight anything. I heard they had some trouble finding enough meat/fools to fill that tripwire brigade.
The cepelinas are not looking like mega-dumplings though. From the picture it looks like the soldiers have already a lot of experience with the different german versions of dumplings. One of them is the sweet southern german version called Germknödel (steamed yeast dough with additions, for size comparison there is a glas of beer in one of the pictures).
oh yeah that germknodel looks really healthy…especially if you are trying to put on a couple of extra inches of fat to help protect yourself from the dreaded russian winter…
Some years ago waiting for a flight out of El Paso, a number of German soldiers were waiting in the area.
I was impressed with their appearance! All tall and lean, apparently infantry.
Ft Bliss is near ElPaso.
Nope. Offcially they are “sending a message to Moscow”.
But honestly, the German media has been pointing out that these soldiers will be wiped out in the first hours of the conflict with Russia. So, they think there should be more of them in the forward positions, because Russia will also destroy all the logistics hubs during those hours. Or something like that. The logic is so weird I may have misunderstood some of it…
Or maybe the one thing NATO has learned from this war is that one is supposed to send troops to a Russian meat grinder brigade after brigade because Russian society is about to collapse any minute now.
“The photo up top in the article doesn’t inspire confidence. The soldier in the foreground is overweight, and the three soldiers rightward in the photo are all, errr, rather plump indeed. I’m seeing some straining at their uniform blouses, and it isn’t their big pectoral muscles.”
…and three of the eight who are pictured are wearing glasses. I’d always thought that good eyesight was a pre requisite for an active military man…
Interestingly, I remember that, in the 1980s, many GDR-instructors and advisors sent to countries such as Angola were derided as “dickbäuchige Brillenträger” — pot-bellied glass-wearers — by the FRG press.
The key to getting a Guinness World Record is comming up with an achivement that no one normal would even think of trying. There were more competitors for making the World’s smallest bicycle than for bombing-innocent-people-into-oblivion-from-an-aircraft-carrier niche.
Did I miss the declaration of war of Somalia? Was this bomb dump for demonstration purposes only? On the other hand, must have been quite a collection of malefactors to warrant such an extravagant use of ordnance? What did it cost the American taxpayer or is that an impertinent question? And for the rest of it, I paraphrase the immortal Bugs Bunny: What a bunch of moro(o)ns.
It was done just for PRACTICE. ;)
An Air National Guard F-16 squadron operating from a well organized pre-flight/combat turn section of taxiway can generate close to one hundred sorties in a daylight period.
USS Truman getting 16 sorties off in a day is routine training Saturday for a national guard drill weekend.
The specified number of attack sorties per daylight cycle from a carrier is closely held secret.
The specified number of attack sorties per daylight cycle from a carrier is closely held secret, that can be estimated by dividing 125,000 pounds with an average combat load.
The esteemed Jen C. Pan, who I know mainly as a journalist at Jacobin engages in an interesting interview with Joshua Citarella, who is a smart guy and artist.
Both of them are real leftists — and leftists do in fact exist, as she points out.
She is great with facts and stats, and he’s good on history. Both are witty.
Worth your while:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BitMUHgyJEI
Some of the information on DEI turned my head: It is a thoroughly private program — the “human resources” department on stilts — and serves mainly to shore up the business class and its goals. Note the quote about union busters who also do DEI consulting…
Thanks!
re: Pan’s JACOBIN interview on the above YT link
As to Germany, one point of critique, the anti-68 argument.
This has been around since the late 1990s.
Conservative pundits and media then introduced this false and malign narrative that 68ers are root cause for all kinds of bad things.
Now Pan and many others, whether left or right, pick up this baton in a sense and grant it credit that it doesn’t deserve.
Those forces that enabled the emancipatory benefits of 68 have mostly been side-lined in the world that followed. 1980s destroyed much of that social power and sphere.
What has remained in party structures are mostly people who were careerists or never at the heart of 68 (best known parody example former German SoS Joschka Fischer who had no clue and mostly liked the violent part of political movements.)
In fact 68-scholars like the now dead Oskar Negt, or Wolfgang Abendroth (more radical, died 1984) and their peers were defending 68 on the basis of a labor movement as demanded by Pan.
There are countless scholars who made up rank and files of 68, prepared it, worked along its lines.
But those people are not the ones identified with 68 or talked about today.
In fact most of them are simply dead by now.
Here a few names for instance who were affiliated with an organisation which is meaningless today:
“Association of Democratic Scientists”
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bund_demokratischer_Wissenschaftlerinnen_und_Wissenschaftler
Of course add to that the various schools at the Classic German universities Marburger Schule, Frankfurter Schule (the only one known today), Göttinger Scbule, Freiburger Schule and so on, labour unions and their branches in labour representation in German companies.
Those people were very well aware of working-class. Especially since most of these teachers who had survived Third Reich had been Communist or serious Social Democrats or Catholics as in The Centre Party of 1920s.
In fact 1968 was the second part of the pre-1933 Weimar struggle.
But I doubt many people today would look at it this way, due to the Cold War split which was instrumental in demonizing the 68ers after 1990.
68 was a genuine and extremely important attempt to spread working class issues into more distant spheres also in response to some systemic changes. Pan at least in this one quip makes the mistake to let one be played off against the other. But that´s exactly what corporations were aiming at and what helped hollow out political potent left.
Almost none of these people who really did the work matter in any public discourse today about 68. What we look at today instead is a faked, hijacked version of 1968.
One can and must talk about the right tactics and strategies.
However, as important as that in any historical analysis the outside hostile forces of capital should be addressed as the true target. Since those forces regarded 1968 as Enemy #1.
p.s. in the last 3 minutes Joshua Citarella gives it away.
What on Earth are “advanced nations”. And how can he seriously warn about the rise of right-wing voters who formerly were “labour” voters after an hour-conversation with Pan that the parties that represented labour have abandoned it. Just because the Left parties gave up labour ideals the desire for and necessity of those haven’t disappeared. But of course, if the wrong party picks up labour suddenly the people who vote for the same policies are suddenly potentially fascist.
With this attitude naturally nothing will change.
Wondered what the antidote was named, and of course Unicorn Lizard was what I was thinking, but alas no, a Pinocchio Lizard!
Drop down and give me 20, mister!
“Sic Transit Gloria Mundi”
The times they are a changing. Can’t attack Russia. Can’t attack China. Can’t even attack Iran. They shoot back and as always, incoming has right of way. Attacking Yemen was simply embarrassing as they did not quit so the US agreed to call it a draw. can the US even mount large scale invasions like they did twenty years ago? Maybe that is why they have not invaded Venezuela. Anybody remember what Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute once said?
‘Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.’
So maybe those days are gone and probably just as well. In passing, the title of this article is incomplete so here is the full one-
‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi. Tuesday’s Usually Worse.’
When US invaded Iraq in 2003 it had been softened up in 1991, had endured years of sanction, and blockade and had its skies patrolled by US.
US took the cities and lost the war. Now Iraq is closer to Iran while its Sunni minority are recruited to AQ.
Shock and awe is a media program.
Expensive terrorist activity.
Re: “The age of radical message-board utilitarian terrorism”
I was an avowed “anti-natalist” or “efilist” (didn’t know either word, doubt the latter existed then) when I was a few years younger than the kid who blew himself up in a fertility clinic. That philosophy in me didn’t have the genealogy that Max describes in this piece (only Benatar I’m familiar with is Pat) and instead just came from a heady mix of Buddha, clinical depression and puberty. I couldn’t have even named a utilitarian philosopher at the time even though I knew something like utilitarianism is what I was thinking. I differ with Max in that I think classifying this particular form of terror – far more than the others lumped in – as essentially proceeding from a nihilistic worldview is fairly reasonable. It results from a fundamentally negative state of mind (such as that brought about by depression), a grasping for something ideologically coherent in a deeply incoherent world, and the inability to avoid following an idea to its first (or last, if you like) principles. What it can’t be understood as is a movement. Taxonomically, describing it as “radical utilitarianism” is fine, but I don’t believe that should suggest a real continuity of thought let alone unity of ideological purpose among its adherents; its only axiomatic dogma is that to exist is to suffer, which isn’t exactly an uncommon or peculiar observation (see, again, Buddha). It must instead be understood as nihilism because the kind of mind it arises in is almost an ideological blank slate, absent of or lapsed from religion, and rendered malignant by sheer chemistry; it’s the ad absurdum of “life sucks and there’s no meaning” with a liiiittle droplet of (strangely enough) fellow feeling to expand the idea such that it’s now rendered “life sucks for everyone forever“. It’s the ideology of a nihilist suffering from pathologized empathy. If America’s spookverse wants to keep an eye on young people suffering this peculiar condition, I suspect it will be rather more difficult than keeping track of the viewers of a few obscure youtube channels.
> came from a heady mix of Buddha, clinical depression and puberty.
Buddhism in the West now is all about nihilism and escape and soicopaths are using it as a means to stuff down compassion and empathy so you can meditate your way though coding 18 hours a day at google.
Enlightenment is only supposed to get rid of our clinging to the self, you cannot annihilate the self since there is no self and no not-self. Enlightened, there is still pain, but no suffering, this is a great liberation. It is not pain we want to avoid, but the suffering, and all of our suffering arises from the ripping away of what we are holding too tightly.
These anti-natalists are being driven by the same thing that is driving the internet; sociopathy. AI is sociopathic. Billionaires are sociopaths.
These kids are looking for religion and spirituality and they are being fed a brand of religion that is socioptahic.
Time to rebuild the Church.
I wasn’t exactly consuming the procapital watered down Buddhism at the time, I was really just spending every day at the library and reading anything about old religions I could get my hands on, but I’m not going to pretend that as a teenager I was correctly interpreting or pursuing anything resembling enlightenment, and more generally I think you’re right about the function of Buddhism in the west, as everything is in the service of the great linegoupmachine, c’est la vie.
Where I disagree with you is on the sociopathy bit. I truly, deeply disagree with that. My anti-natalism as an idiot youth arose because I was perpetually heartbroken about the suffering in the world. Again, this was a depressive symptom; it’s not as though I’m less aware of it now, I just have better coping mechanisms and a healthier neurochemical stew – but if I’d been sociopathic I would’ve just been garden variety suicidal, I suspect. I cared about everyone and everything all the time unto misery. That’s what birthed the ideology.
I made a comment that was lost.
Briefly, I was not saying you were a sociopath. Empathic Disequilibrium favoring emotional empathy, can lead to states like ours. Cognitive empathy favors the outcome of sociopathy.
Oh I see the distinction you intended to make, I understand it now and actually perfectly agree with you.
I recall an exchange I had with a Buddhist teacher from Tibet. I raised the concern that the Buddhist teaching of non-ego could be and probably was being misunderstood in the West in a way that reinforced self loathing, what to my mind is a rather widespread phenomenon in Western culture. He seemed genuinely puzzled by my proposition and asked something to the effect as to how a person could come to hate himself. Something along the way has become lost in translation.
Not the only cross-cultural misunderstanding. I remember reading an account of a recently arrived Tibetan monk leading an American group in a metta meditation (intended to inspire feelings of universal love by first focusing on an individual love). When, as was traditional in Tibet, he exhorted the students to think of their mothers, he was astonished by the reaction. Most of their faces contorted with rage, and several broke into angry tears.
I’m currently reading a book on Zen Buddhism by French psychiatrist, Hubert Benoit, published in 1950. He likens humans to centaurs, the horse representing the body, and the human portion the mind. A nihilistic world view, toward which admittedly I have often gravitated, that finds final expression in self destruction is to show gross disrespect for the horse you rode in on.
Pithy indeed – but if you see the final centaur as a syncretic construct of its environment, then the horse in your example is a sickly, nasty old nag who’s as liable to bite as lick the hand holding out a sugar cube. I believe this is something along the lines of what Lieaibolmmai was suggesting with the received sociopathy of a spiritually derelict world.
The Sufis also used the beast and rider image, though the mount was more often a donkey. The teaching being that the animal needed to be tightly disciplined by the intellect/spirit.
Like you, I came to feel that this formulation no longer works for us. It presupposes a relatively uncomplicated set of strong physical appetites that need to.be kept in check. Whereas, our physical appetites are often so sicklied over, so diverted into sophisticated mental/emotional pathways, that they are hardly recognizable.
So, before any discipline takes place, we need some work of disentangling.
I am often reminded of something I once heard a wild Japanese healer say. Before beginning a treatment, he advised, it is essential to ask the body to forgive the person for what the person has done to it.
Not a bad practice to apply to oneself.
I just caught COVID living in this tourist town. Started with a night sweat which I never get. Felt fine for a day, then my upper nasal passage was very raw. My signal to start pounding zinc and menthol lozenges. Next day, some fatigues and aches, no fever. Only a sore throat when I wake up in the middle of the night and my mental; illness ticks up a bit (more closed eye visions).. Seems like three days later it is in its way out.
What clade happens to be going around? Anyone know?
Also, I did not know there was some research on menthol shortening the COVID experience.
i’m so humbled and enlightened by the commentariat it’s impossible to thank you all enough – an oasis of understanding in world of environmental and political degradation – you’ve taught me the importance of the little things and to appreciate a laugh at the irony of it all – and one question i have for AliceX is, what is your musical instrument?
JB – violin, guitar and piano (just putting the violin down to write this as my computer reads these comments), professionally the first two (well, mandolin also, I can always pick that up easily). I still practice eight hours a day as I did my entire life but I haven’t worked in a long time. My technique was always greater than my mind so I was never a truly great musician, though I passed enough to survive. I can only imagine what more I would know if I had read the books I meant to with that time…
:-)
Seriously impressed here.
He don’t plant ‘taters
An’ he don’t plant cotton
And ‘dems dat plant ’em
Is soon forgotten
‘Dat ‘ole man river
He just keeps rollin’ along
forget about humbled and educated, now just shamed that i only practice my guitar a couple of hours a day trying to learn songs from the American songbook – one of the drummers my guitar teacher plays with is Gayelynn McKinney and she drums on his two CD’s – of course you know her and who her Dad is since you are a Detroit musician – you mention mandolin, i still have my grandfather’s Gibson mandolin which is now 100 years old and try strumming it every now and then – the small neck and fretboard is a challenge but a lovely sound – our view of the past is always 20/20 – surely you are a marvelous musician – fretless stringed instruments always fascinate, the competency without frets leaves me amazed – thank you for sharing – jb
the 1920’s gibson mandos can be highly prized
and they can even exceed the prized violins of the era
keep it humidified in the winter
no matter who cherishes it
ax
since you play the violin it must not be a big jump to the mandolin, they’re both tuned the same aren’t they – my dog has fleas – jb
the left hand does the pitch
the mind must be adjustable to the accord of the instrument
the jump between the guitar and the mandolin is steep for the left hand mind
the right hand executes the articulation
the jump between the violin and mandolin is steep for the right hand mind
best in one way to play all three
which happens with those who might commit the time
and assume you accepted the challenge as a unique learning opportunity – surely you are a gifted musician – thank you for the observation, much appreciated – apparently a night owl – hoots to you!
Drove up to my cabin in Mineral King and was pleasantly surprised to see an approx 120 year old apple tree along the road in quite the bloom on branches I don’t remember being so prominent in floral display, looks like the wedding veil on a blushing bride.
The leader which previously was the main source of fruit was cut off during one of the National Park’s efforts at keeping limbs away from the road 5 years ago, the cutters oblivious to what they wrought.
re: AI
If you remember the yellow covers of the For Dummies books – Windows 95 For Dummies, Linux For Dummies, etc – you’ll understand my analogy.
AI is the digital version of Topic For Dummies. The difference between the printed Dummies books and AI is that the Dummies books instructions and explanations were correct. There was a table of contents, notes to the text, and a reference index. The person reading had cross-referencing material.
None of that is true with AI. With AI one is told over and over the AI output is correct, but often it is not. (I really, really don’t want my lawyer or doctor or dentist educated to rely on the digital For Dummies AI as a good reference source. It makes up nonexistent books, nonexistent court cases, nonexistent things of all kinds.)
AI is a clever mimicry using cut-and-paste and fill in the gaps with something or other. It’s useful in some tasks, not so much in other tasks. / my 2 cents
The self-reinforcing bias of overconfidence induced by shoddy AI is really dangerous. It’s like that really annoying kid in middle school who thinks he knows everything, but is really quite stupid. But he’s a bully so nobody tells him to STFU.
Those who rely on AI are an example of the Dunning Kruger effect writ large – the cohort who are so stupid they don’t even know they’re stupid.
Ask AI to complete an assignment, and check the answer by asking AI if it got it right…
Things that people overestimate in others: both how smart the other gal really is; and how stupid the other gal really is.
You may tell yourself—it’s so blindingly obvious, can’t you see that this is AI barf prose; the other person may be thinking—-this ChatGPT is the best thing ever—it got me a promotion at work (cuz her boss is even dumber).
Sex For Dummies too. :)
Nice joke!
(checking Amazon…)
There is indeed a “Sex for dummies” book in the series, written by Dr. Ruth Westheimer!
Thanks for the essay on Kathleen Lonsdale. It is good to be reminded of someone “speaking truth to power”.
Global Forest Loss Shatters Records in 2024, Fueled by Massive Fires World Resources Institute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Another fire in a locale you’d never think would burn like the dickens in May under the old auspices of the climate we once knew, this one on the east side of the Sierra on the shores of Mono Lake on Highway 395, not far from where High Plains Drifter was filmed, for those of you playing along at home.
https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2025/5/22/inn-fire
The Depravity, brazen corruption and stupidity of the American political class and the elites they serve is astounding.
How much longer before things come completely apart?
The AI bubble looks ready to pop and Covid is continuing to mutate and continuing to damage the population at an increasing rate.
My guess?
Within 2 years.
depending on how you measure it…….the end-stage Franz Josef Austro-Hungarian Empire held things together for decades, the Ottoman Empire for centuries.
FWIW-IMO things in the EU and/or UK will fall apart before the US
Would you like to ride in my beautiful crypto balloon?
Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon?
We could float among the stars together, you and I
For we can fly (we can fly)
Up, up and away
My beautiful, my beautiful virtual balloon
The world’s a nicer place in my beautiful balloon
It wears a nicer face in my beautiful balloon
We can sing a song and sell @ Mar-a-Largo for the camera shy
For we can fly (we can fly)
Up, up and away
My beautiful, my beautiful balloon
Rights suspended under a kangaroo court canopy
We’ll search the influencers for a star to guide us
If by some chance you find yourself losing hope
We’ll find a cloud to hide us
We’ll keep the moon beside us
Wealth is waiting there in my beautiful balloon
Way up in the air in my beautiful balloon
If you’ll sign right here we’ll chase your dream across the sky
For we can fly (we can fly)
Up, Up and Away, performed by The 5th Dimension
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKkNlwpajNk
RT has history and details of the shenanigans going on in Chagos.
https://www.rt.com/africa/617999-uk-not-return-chagos-archipelago-mauritius/
Given the current situation in the Middle East, there is speculation that the US might utilize the aircraft stationed at Diego Garcia for a potential nuclear strike on Iran. National Interest noted that by December 2024, the US had successfully completed a significant upgrade of the B61-12 nuclear warhead, which cost $9 billion.
Whether the B61-12 would specifically target alleged Iranian nuclear facilities remains uncertain. However, it is known that “support for nuclear-capable military platforms is a key function of Diego Garcia,” according to a report from the Lowy Institute.
The situation with the Chagos Islands demonstrates the reluctance of Western powers to relinquish their colonial past, which allows them to maintain control over formerly dependent but currently sovereign nations. Losing control of the Chagos Islands would be too painful for the geostrategic ambitions of the UK and the US, which seek to uphold global hegemony at the expense of the interests of the native inhabitants of the formerly colonized states. Diego Garcia is a clear example of post-colonialism which is pulling the world back into an era of oppression, subjugation, and international inequality.
re: Israel
USEFUL IDIOTS Podcast
Norman Finkelstein Reacts To Israeli Embassy Shooting
Why the shooter did it, how the media is covering it, and what everyone SHOULD be focusing on instead
https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/norman-finkelstein-reacts-to-israeli
re: Romanian “elections”
As someone who doesn’t read SPECTATOR I came about this short comment as a translated guest piece in German rightwing daily DIE WELT. Which shows how awful the situation is by now as I have to look into traditionally more rightwing publications like DIE WELT or POLITICO or CICERO to get a more serious assessment.
THE SPECTATOR
Democracy dies in Romania
by Neil Clark
19 May 2025
https://archive.is/kNh5Q
From America Is In A Late Republic Stage Like Rome
So Ferguson thinks Biden lost in part because of his foreign policy? Huh? Perhaps due to some lost votes because of Biden’s support for genocide, but I don’t think that’s what he means here.
Well, it surely ain’t gonna be a missile strike! North Korea understands the lessons of Libya, Yemen, Iraq, and elsewhere well.
Nothing is learned, nothing forgotten! And who is this “progressive” side of which you speak?
What a strange interview.
Vastly overstates the importance of this technology, and there is no “quantum” anything.
So China is Russia’s sponsor in this? This isn’t in evidence.
Wowzers.
I dunno if I can read any more of this.
Although he understands the distinction about LLMs.
If AI is “not LLMs” part of data science, this isn’t new. Using machine learning at scale is new, but it doesn’t automatically provide valuable insights, even with more compute thrown at it.
2x LRB book reviews:
1) “Mondrian: His Life, His Art, His Quest for the Absolute”
by Nicholas Fox Weber
R-r-r-r-r-uh-h. Huh! Pang
by Clare Bucknell
22/5/25
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n09/clare-bucknell/r-r-r-r-r-uh-h.-huh!-pang
2) “The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick”
by John Bleasdale
Cool Tricking
by David Thomson
22/5/25
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n09/david-thomson/cool-tricking
On the bright side…
went to the dentist and both the hygienist and dentist were sporting n95s.
It seems strange that the president of the Ivory Coast has not directly addressed the rumors of his coup, even though he apparently attended a meeting. The rumors have persisted for 4 days and the government is just ignoring them?
There’s a presidential election in October.
Hmmmm this video has racked up 18,000 views in 2 hours. It argues that regardless of whether or not there has been a coup, a change of attitude has crystallized in much of Africa and the diasporia. The commenters call this the best channel in Africa, and it’s totally independent.
https://youtu.be/WdOr0NgJTQQ
Thanks for this Expat2uruguay, and the other comments you’ve added about African issues recently.
man, i finally read the whole nyt thing on “project esther”.
how is all that not just a blatant and systematic violation of the First Amendment?
on speech, religious, right to assembly, and right to petition, grounds?(did i miss any,lol?)
i hope whatevers left of the aclu, et alia is gearing up for a fight…and i sincerely hope that theres still a little bit of spine left in the judiciary branch, somewhere.
“support our pseudonazi pets or get thrown in the slammer” is about as unamerican a thing as i can imagine.
Central London is another world, DJG! Everything works. Even the council houses are nice! We’re looking at moving into a Lutyens designed social housing project because we’re going to spend more time in Town, with the sale of the farm and son #1 having passed the exams for a very demanding school (but sadly not the scholarship exam!).
But it is not the rest of the UK. Even Devon is not the rest of the UK. A visit to Terry’s Nottingham would disabuse you of your optimism….
Starmer is awful. Labour and Tory alike have led the country to neoliberal ruin. Oleaginous oik Wes Streeting and his bat-winged sponsor Blair are trying to privatise the NHS anyway. I would prefer a socialist version of Reform but you take the Rupture where you find it and I will risk the NHS and vote for them against the Uniparty. Over goes the table and the cards land where they may….
The Italians in London like the (world) food, culture and increasingly the climate. They also like the commercial amd social dynamism. There are advantages to Imperial primitive accumulation and high finance and incorrigible Liberalism: London feels like a place from which the rest of the world can be summoned or conquered within the week.
I worked for ten years for an Italian company (15k staff, EUR 6bn market cap) in the London office and it was a prize posting for Italians. Italy by contrast is stagnant, when they tell it (it is however fabulously bourgeois and bourgeoisly fabulous – I was astonished by how well kept Bergamo is the other week).
You are right about the low wages in Italy though. The Italian company tried to pay wages like that in the UK and got a shock. Brilliant Italian graduates, Oxbridge equivalents, work for a pittance at home and cannot increase wages by moving domestically because of the oversupply of labour. The Italian company paid higher wages eventually but still complained every year that UK staff turnover was 10x Italian rates (30% not 3%). They considered it disloyalty but it was really opportunity!
What gets me Revenant is the terms that do ridged ideologues L/R heads in and then its a bear pit with the masses dragged all over the shop. Rather than socialism et al why is it not possible for terms like dualism/pluralism in having Gov run basic services and then the market can do its thing with out running society into the ditch in its exuberance for personal profit.
Meanwhile Russia and China just keep making a mockery of it all, best the West can do is slather everything with more Bernays sauce. Like gaslighting the masses will fix everything.
Thank you for posting the Dartmoor link.
The best part of the decision is that the Supreme Court insisted anybody trying to abrogate a right of the public in future by suing an entity with delegated legislative power like a national park must join the Attorney General to the suit so that the public is represented rather than merely discussed.
The writer of the “Zeitgeist Watch” piece seems to be unaware that critiques of human life as an unqualified good existed for several millennia before people built telephone networks and digital computers, and then decided to connect them, in something called the Internet. The insecurity of the philistines, their unwillingness to accept that they have won, their uncompromising intolerance of any doubt, however inconsequential it will necessarily be, is truly something to behold.