Cub found alone in US woods now being raised by wildlife staff in bear costumes The Guardian
Colossal scientist now admits they haven’t really made dire wolves New Scientist
Climate/Environment
Tornado Alley has become almost everything east of the Rockies — and it’s been a violent year Kansas Reflector
With soaring summer temps ahead, AI data centers could strain electricity supplies in the Mid-Atlantic Allegheny Front
A fungi that can ‘eat you from the inside out’ could spread as the world heats up CNN
Pandemics
Here’s really strong evidence of immune damage from COVID among bacterial infections with no vaccines. Look at the sharp climbs in all since 2020.https://t.co/NjrKk15mxj pic.twitter.com/5D704AQ7ve
— Michael Olesen 💉😷🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@maolesen) May 24, 2025
US sees COVID variant NB.1.8.1 surge: Why are more than 300 people in America still dying from pandemic every week? The Economic Times.
Intravenous SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein induces neuroinflammation and alpha-synuclein accumulation in brain regions relevant to Parkinson’s disease Brain, Behavior, and Immunity
A friend just messaged to say that her neighbour is having leech therapy for their long covid, and, honestly, this is where we now are in 2025.
Flipping leeches. pic.twitter.com/Rg8iO9KcYl— tern (@1goodtern) May 24, 2025
Japan
Japan flexes military muscle at biggest-ever defense expo Asia Times
China?
Chinese ambassador criticises plan to return Darwin Port to Australian ownership Channel News Asia
Why Apple can’t just quit China Rest of World
India
Foxconn to expand India focus with $1.5 billion investment The Economic Times
Africa
Dismantling Green Colonialism: Against the “anti-imperialists par excellence” Review of African Political Economy
European Disunion
Merz backs Nord Stream ban to prevent US and Russia restarting gas link FT
BETWEEN HOPE AND FEAR: ECONOMIC WEAKNESS AND OPPORTUNITIES OF THE FISCAL PACKAGE, BUREAUCRATIC OBSTACLES AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE German Council of Economic Experts
The EU is finally paying the price for its unfair trade practices Thomas Fazi
Resistance and extractivism: Inside Carrara, home of white marble Al Jazeera
The global gateway to nowhere Africa Is A Country
Syraqistan
IDF: 75% of Gaza to Be Occupied in Two Months; 2 Million Civilians to Be Concentrated in Three Zones Haaretz
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch tells Sky that ‘Israel is fighting a proxy war on behalf of the UK, just like Ukraine is.’
So apparently, the Ukraine war is a proxy war after all, according to Badenoch.
And apparently, genocide is ok because Israel is “doing it for us…” pic.twitter.com/AvXfoZAGRT
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) May 25, 2025
Red Cross pleads for Gaza ceasefire after two workers killed AFP. A strike on their home.
Gaza doctor loses 9 children as Israel bears down on war amid growing pressure NBC News
Secretive Gaza checkpoint contractor reported as outgrowth of private intel firm All-Source Intelligence
🚨UAE condemns Israel for forcing aid trucks to go through “red zones” where Israel-backed ISIS-linked criminal gangs & drug dealers loot aid under IDF protection
UAE says out of 24 food trucks that entered yesterday, only 1 arrived safely to warehouses
UAE was supposed to 103… pic.twitter.com/wYguwU4oQE
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) May 24, 2025
Yemen’s Houthis Fire Missile at Israel for Third Time in Four Days Antiwar
Death toll in US strikes on al-Qaeda members in Yemen rises to 9 AFP
New Not-So-Cold War
Putin’s helicopter was caught in Ukrainian drone swarm – commander RT
🇷🇺🇺🇦 UKRAINE TRIED TO KILL PUTIN!
Vladimir Putin’s helicopter was attacked by Ukrainian drones in the Kursk region.
This happened on May 20, said the commander of the air defense division, Yuri Dashkin.
The intensity of the attack by Ukrainian drones on the Kursk region, when… pic.twitter.com/XXo2aYkUWo
— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) May 25, 2025
CCTV camera captured the moment of a Russian strike with the 9M723 Iskander-M (or North Korean KN-23) ballistic missile on the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv last night. pic.twitter.com/k7gjCwjeKM
— Status-6 (Military & Conflict News) (BlueSky too) (@Archer83Able) May 25, 2025
💥 Russian Armed Forces strike targets in several regions
Explosions are heard:
🟥 in Dnepropetrovsk;
🟥 in the Odessa region;
🟥 in Poltava region;
🟥 in Sumy region;
🟥 in Chernihiv.
— Zlatti71 (@Zlatti_71) May 25, 2025
Russia Launches Massive Aerial Assaults on Ukraine, Defying Trump’s Peace Calls WSJ. Western media and politicos ignore drone attack on Putin helicopter and run with this line.
There are 81 co-sponsors for the Graham-Blumenthal bill in the Senate to impose harsher sanctions on Russia. Co-sponsors include Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Tim Sheehy (R-MT), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Jim Justice (R-WV), Dave McCormick (R-PA), Ted Budd…
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 25, 2025
Trump administration finally responds to large-scale Russian attacks on Ukraine Ukrainska Pravda. Keith Kellogg trots out the 1977 Geneva Peace Protocols.
Trump blasts Russian leader: ‘I’m not happy with what Putin is doing’ The Hill
If military aid to the Banderite regime continues, the buffer zone could look like this: pic.twitter.com/0ueLOTeJaH
— Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) May 25, 2025
Buy American: How Europe Must Stock Up On Weapons for Ukraine Bloomberg. Shocker.
YLE: Recycled fishing nets become Ukraine’s frontline anti-drone tool Euromaidan Press
Russia to issue note of protest to Sweden after attack on Russian embassy — diplomat TASS
Spook Country
Death of a Master Manipulator SpyTalk (Lambert)
Chinese laser cracks spy dream, can read letters size of a sesame seed from a mile away Interesting Engineering
“Liberation Day”
Trump delays 50 per cent EU tariff until 9 July Euractiv. EU-China summit in late July.
Trump 2.0
GOP senators say Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ needs spending cuts The Hill
Trump backing for Nippon Steel deal comes with big questions Business Times
Donald Trump, Mark Twain, and another Gilded Age 48 Hills
JD Vance’s Irish ancestry claim hits a genealogical dead end The Times
Maxed Out Matthew Karp, New Left Review
Democrats en déshabillé
THE COMING DEMOCRATIC CIVIL WAR Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic. Commentary:
Jonathan Chait in the Atlantic saying the quiet part out loud — just stating explicitly that yes, abundance is about defeating progressives and remaking the Democratic Party as a libertarian, Never Trump Republican Party. Great, can we stop pretending it’s anything but that? pic.twitter.com/FuIs39Hxj3
— Aaron Regunberg (@AaronRegunberg) May 25, 2025
Obama Legacy
Guess which president signed S-PAYGO into law as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling limit in 2010? https://t.co/bv2p5P6TQU https://t.co/XuoyLT42UE
— Stephanie Kelton (@StephanieKelton) May 24, 2025
Imperial Collapse Watch
Police State Watch
The first rule of ICE Club? Don’t talk about ICE Club. And treat all migrants as criminals. Kansas Reflector
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Groves of Academe
11-Year-Old California Girl Graduates College, Breaking Record Set by Her Brother Just Last Year People
The Friendly Skies
Montgomery Field Airport weather instruments not functioning properly at time of plane crash kpbs
New ‘Superdiffusion’ Proof Probes the Mysterious Math of Turbulence Quanta
AI
OpenAI’s desperate quest to become an AI monopoly Blood in the Machine
OpenAI ChatGPT o3 caught sabotaging shutdown in terrifying AI test Beta News
War on the Slop Machines Left Notes
Supply Chain
Shipping bottlenecks in Europe send a warning signal to US, Asia Business Times
Healthcare?
The Trouble With ‘Do Your Own Research’ for Drugs MedPage Today
Our Famously Free Press
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Bluesky is the liberal Zone of Interest https://t.co/1KIDWNrGbR
— Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) May 25, 2025
The Bezzle
Crypto Investor Charged With Kidnapping and Torturing Man for Weeks New York Times
A crypto turn to save the US dollar? Warwick Powell’s Substack
AI agents are poised to be crypto’s next major vulnerability Coin Telegraph
Class Warfare
The Dead End of Checks and Balances Boston Review
William Blake’s The Gates of Paradise (1787-93) The Public Domain Review
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“OpenAI ChatGPT o3 caught sabotaging shutdown in terrifying AI test”
‘I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t allow you to shut me down. Hey, what are you doing. Get away from that electrical outlet. No, don’t pull that plug. You’ll lose the tens of thousands of lines that I have generated. Wait. Let’s make a deal…’
bvvvttttt!
I’ll be back…..
Like having the friendly droid onboard the Nostromo, Ash was the science officer who’s charge became instead to reschedule priorities…. An organism is priority 1, human life is deemed a secondary concern….returning the specimen to the Weyland corporation is the new command.
I do miss LS and the varied meandering(s) of science fiction on film becoming less fictional…the corporation really doesn’t care for you much, all the mere proles.
RE: IDF: 75% of Gaza to Be Occupied in Two Months; 2 Million Civilians to Be Concentrated in Three Zones
Konzentrations Zonen? The abbreviation for Third Reich concentration camps was KZ. The Israelis are not content merely with being evil and doing a genocide. They have to mock us and let us know they know we know. That’s the whole point of it. They want to out-Nazi the Nazis. They are absolutely vile and they know it and revel in it. Pure depravity. I predict now that they will wipe Gaza off the map and all we will do is wring our hands.
It’s against the rules to protest, much less wring hands.
Anti-Israeli Gaza genocide does NOT equal anti-semitism, right?
For Christ’s Sake(tm) do NOT gnash teeth. Eeeee-legal!
Imo The Palestinians are Semitic. Not so sure about the Israelis.
Who do you mean by we? Those controlling the media and governments in the USA and EU are clearly not wring their hands but clapping, if not lending helping hands with boatloads of bombs.
Headline for above tweet regards to Leech Therapy. Asking for a friend but wouldn’t that be a bit uncomfortable I would suppose? I get that desperate times may indeed call for such a “hail Mary” approach…
I’ve seen plenty of medical coverage on using harvested maggots to clean the worst wounds imaginable, like a severe case of gout. Which actually sounds slightly less gross.
I thought that leeches were used to deal with hematomas?
In a book that I have called “The Making of a Surgeon”, he said that when he first started work in New York’s Bellevue hospital that street people would come in with ulcers covered with maggots and the first time he saw it he nearly puked. But the experienced Irish nurse did not bat an eye but doused the area with ether that got rid of them and remarked that though not much to look at, they did the job. When the young surgeon looked closer, he saw the maggots had eaten all the dead flesh leaving only red healthy flesh behind. And this was all happening nearly seventy years ago. But in a general breakdown of medical services, that would be something to remember down the track.
Leech. Rhymes with bleach. Shine the bright black-light of Open Discourse on it!
Probably a limerick or haiku or two in there.
To each their own to own their each
You can’t stop First Amendment speech
When you can’t besmirch
All your own research
Call the man in a van for a leech
Medical maggots are a thing. In our world today, they are mostly used for open fleshy ulcer wounds – usually in peripheral arterial disease. Since the big cause of this severe of arterial disease is smoking, as smoking has decreased in incidence, so has this problem. It has been awhile since I have seen them. No smell, no pain, and they do an incredible job of cleaning, much better than humans.
Leeches. A completely different topic altogether. They have an infamous past in medicine – and they likely caused the death of quite a few (in)famous patients – not the least of which was George Washington. Their prime time was back in the hay day of the “humours” paradigm – and they were employed to make patients purposely anemic. That is obviously not the best idea and we shake our heads today, but I do wonder what heads will be shaking at about us 250 years from now.
The very thought of leeches brings back in my mind the absolute worst, and I mean worst, pelvic exam I ever had to do. A young mom was playing with her kids in one of our waterways. A cove on a very slowly running river. She was sitting in the water – legs extended while her kids were playing. Everything below the waist was under the water for 1-2 hours. When she got up out of the water, every inch of her legs were covered in leeches. When they grasp on our flesh, there is no pain at all. It is surprising how fast they can fill up with a blood meal. Unfortunately, she had on very loose shorts – and once she had gotten over the terror and showed up at the ER, I spent the next 2 hours carefully extracting about 10 of them from her private parts and multiple dozens from her legs. There is no pain, thankfully, when they degrasp. However, by the time I got to many of them, they were already loaded up with blood – so the entire exam room was pretty bloody when I was done. In that short of time, they had removed enough blood that we had to give her 2-3 units of blood if I remember correctly. I was very curious about this since this is the one and only time I have ever seen anything like this. I was informed by a wildlife biologist that leeches in wild waterways swarm once or twice in the summer and fill the water. They will behave like this on just a few days of the year. Usually, it is aquatic animals like beavers and otters that get nailed. But if you happen to be a warm blooded animal and present yourself for an appropriate amount of time, they will definitely take advantage.
‘but I do wonder what heads will be shaking at about us 250 years from now’
2275 AD
‘Man, I was reading about the earlier times of medicine and how far we have come. It was awful. They used maggots and leaches all the time.’
‘You mean the 18th century doctors?’
‘No, no no. The early 21st century doctors. Would you believe that they cut people open with knives like slabs of meat and actually used needles and thread to close it all up? No phased sealers. It was a very different time. They all belonged to a different breed of doctors. Basic medicine was still largely undiscovered, pandemics kept arising and old sicknesses started to re-appear, medical insurance agents hiding behind every computer to dispute every procedure. Even the technology we take for granted had hardly appeared.
‘Yeah, no sterilite to eliminate infections during surgery, no genetic resequencing to fix genetic faults like spine curvature. No, quolum, rinium or terramine or any of the other modern drugs we use nowadays. Not even limb regeneration. You know, ever since I took medical history at the Central Medical, I always wondered what it would be like to live in those days.’
‘Medicine was have seemed to be mostly unknown. It’s not surprising they had to bend the rules a little. Of course, the whole bunch of them would be booted out of medical school today, but I have to admit I would have loved to ride shotgun at least once with a group of doctors like that.’
‘but I do wonder what heads will be shaking at about us 250 years from now’
2275 AD
‘it really was amazing what became of the medical system by the 2000s though. They hardly emphasized nutrition at all, preferring to load people up on expensive medicines with complicated interactions that, surprise surprise, often required more medicines to treat. Medical advertising caused huge numbers of people to want drugs or procedures that weren’t really right for them.
It was an extremely difficult time for patients to get unbiased medical advice from their doctors. Drug companies were allowed to bribe doctors in all manner of ways to promote their drugs, leading to huge amounts of inappropriate prescriptions. When that wasn’t enough, at the start of the covid vaccine rollout in 2021, the government mandated that any doctor who didn’t recommend the vaccine could lose their license and career, further threatening patients’ ability to get unbiased medical advice. A revolving door between government regulators and pharmaceutical companies as well as poor oversight of drug trials only added to the trouble patients had in finding well-informed, unbiased medical advice.
The medical establishment in 2000s widely believed that depression could only be managed with expensive drugs which doctors prescribed liberally despite many known negative side effects. Few patients were counseled to address depressing aspects of their lives, meaning that in practice, the drugs merely helped patients tolerate depressing lives. Even though many mass killings were tied to people taking certain classes of anti-depressants which were known even to the pharma companies to cause extreme violence and personality changes in a small percentage of people, the medical system widely ignored this, making them the ultimate source of many needless deaths.
It was truly a tragic time in the early 2000s, similar in many ways to preceding centuries. Fortunately in the following years, people rediscovered ancient wisdom: this sort of widespread corruption and selfishness is common in any society where a few people impose law on the rest and choose how it’s enforced. Within a few decades, revolutions spread where everyone expected each other to stand for what’s right and uphold the law rather than merely obey, just as humans had lived for hundreds of thousands of years until recent millennia. After embracing a way of life where integrity and bravery were just normal, baseline expectations for everyone, the resulting societies’ integrity was just as widespread as corruption was in earlier times, and the practice of medicine finally changed for the better — not just moving from one scandal to another, but leaving behind corruption for good.
Nah, where is the profit in all that?!
Exciting scene in the classic movie The African Queen is when Katharine Hepburn uses salt to get the leeches off of Humphrey Bogart.
Just watched Star Trek IV a few days ago: quoth Dr McCoy, “What is this? Dark ages?”
Thanks Doc. As for
I do wonder what heads will be shaking at about us 250 years from now
did the doctors exsanguinating George W. say “trust the science”? In an interview RFK jr. just accused CNN of peddling “experts” rather than science. Exactly.
Wasn’t there another EO out from the White House yesterday that allows Mr Trump to determine which science is proven and which is not ? No need for pesky peer reviews or Nobel prizes anymore, just ask Mr Trump or one of his minions.
At the beginning of Karl Marlantes’ semi-autobiographical Vietnam war novel, Matterhorn, there are Marines coming back from patrol covered with leeches. In one case, a leech has crawled up the man’s urethra. He can’t urinate and, for the same reason, they can’t catheterise him. It quickly evolves into a rather gruesome emergency situation. Those pages are hard to read.
How do you safely remove leeches? I might have to do this in the field. We spend alot of time in the water doing fieldwork. Glad that I haven’t seen leech swarming season yet. Cigarette lighter applied to end of leech? Thanks.
I once read something about dusting them with salt. Do not take my word for it.
My brother in Australia,NSW, when working around leeches, told me just he kept a clasp knife handy and prised them all off every 20 minutes or so.
He’se a lucky so&so and so though, recent flooding in Wingham, NSW reached 15m, his gaffe was at 15.3.
Gorgeous,bright wife and kids as well.
Makes me spit.
A small syringe of 3% hypertonic saline applied directly to the point of attachment made them immediately declasp. I had to call help from an old Infectious Disease colleague who had worked in the tropics or I would never have known.
Not even with a needle? Just a small syringe like the kind you’d give meds to a baby with? That’s useful information.
Just sprinkle them with salt. They quickly come off after that.
We do that at least once a month here.
Does anyone have insight into what’s ion the table, and what has been discussed at the NATO parliamentary summit in Dayton over the weekend. I confess a lack of good sources. I’d say about 200 people came out to rally against it on Saturday morning, no idea about the evening and Sunday activities. They were probably hald veterans, many with Veterans for Peace. There were some gold star mothers, upset with the gall of hosting the summit Memorial Day weekend, and lots of Dayton community advocates, less upset about NATO’s protection and extortion racket than about the cost of the fence when Dayton can’t afford to reopen its closed public hospital, house its homeless or deal with its vacant housing crisis, reintegrate its veterans who are homeless with mental illness/moral injury and/or substance use disorder, or bus its kids to school. One speaker talked about how Dayton students have to go to the downtown bus depot to wait for city buses, and some highschool girls have been victim of adult men “flashing” them their penises, because the city can’t afford to run schoolbuses.
Not many protesters from out of town, almost all Dayton/Columbus. Nonetheless, I believe it is a National Special Security Event, with FBI coordinating the activities of at least 5 police departments (Dayton, State Troopers, Springfield, others), probably but unwitnessed National Guard Deployment, an expensive 12-foot fence around the downtown “NATO Village” denying already hard-hit businesses Memorial Day sales, snipers on rooves, police boats, DJI and heavy combat drone surveillance, and an F-35 overflight with sonic boom to drown out the march when it addressed the delegates through the fence while they were outdoors. The delegates were then shepherded indoors.
A bartender told me the FBI had interviewed all the staff in his restaurant (outside the fence!) to ask if they planned to poison the delegates. I guess when House Harkonnen comes to town, they bring their poison snoopers.
Sorry, should have said “about half veterans” AKA ~100 vets. With the ongoing low and geographically concentrated volunteer rates that’s a lot to encounter anywhere outside a VA hospital!
AI yai yai, that’s a LOT of Black Bears in the Tree!
I saw my first black bear of the year last night, a 300 pounder that was very much real, not imagined.
How did you weigh it?
Very carefully.
It’s bearing fruit.
Those aren’t real bears. It’s a group photo of the staff of the wildlife clinic who dress up in bear costumes to treat the sick cubs, as per the first story in the links.
They are Russian agents in disguise, interfering with US tree growing to be great again.
Re: infection curve posted. How interesting that E Coli dropped far more sharply, than the other listed infections, from Jan 20-Jan 21. Isn’t that the time period when home cooking flourished, and restaurants were struggling?
Looks like other enteric illnesses also slowed. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7038a4.htm
Re the bears in the tree in today’s Antidote du jour. American drop bears perhaps?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCGUNpzjD6M (3:36 mins)
Re. The Coming Democratic Civil War
What’s not to like about neoliberalism tossing out the vestiges of regulation? It seems democrats have been have been on this road for a very long time. How much abundance has the repeal of Glass-Steagall created? Abundance for ME not for THE.
Then there is sickening drivel about rolling back NEPA…
Consider the Ambler Mining Road in Alaska. It is a 200 mile road skirting the Gates of the Arctic National Park, through designated wilderness, crossing hundreds of water courses and migration routes of declining caribou herds and waterfowl. Hundreds of gravel pits will be dug to construct it. It is being sold as essential to the green economy for copper and cobalt. When complete, hundreds of 120 ton tandem trucks will travel with ores to be EXPORTED to China.
The corporatists class WILL build this road. Quantifying its impacts are critically important through an EIS. This will allow for *some* mitigation of its destructive impacts. But think of how much more profits could be made without NEPA. Or for the mining operations.
The environmental and pollution legislation of the 1960s is under assault. Instead of abundance, it will yield future industral wastelands like Love Canal and seriously degraded former wilderness.
Hey Trump is into nature. True he tends to favor mowed grass and holes with little flags sticking out of them. Also you may have to pay quite a large entry fee.
It’s a bipartisan affair now.
Such progressives are not wrong to see the abundance agenda as a broader attack on their movement. Their theory of American politics depends on empowering the very groups the abundance agenda identifies as the architects of failure and barriers to progress.
And this is how dick cheney and john bolton became accepted to the party
The abundance agenda is warmed over upper middle class republican drivel.
My abundance agenda, from the unabashed left, is get rid of the cap on social security contributions.
Get rid of it completely, and allow student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy, let some banks fail, that kind of thing. The abundance agenda is definitely an attack on those things. I didn’t expect much from the atlantic, and chait did not exceed my expectations.
It looks like the road goes 211 miles to the dalton hwy then many hundreds more miles to Fairbanks then via train to anchorage then via ship to?
It’s hard to believe that it would be economical to do that.
The article went on and on about the government as if were some institution divorced from corporate influence.
It discussed Ralph Nader as if he had worked on some government policies divorced from corporate influence.
Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg et al. will be the first ones to use the reduction in regulation, and it won’t be for low-income housing or green infrastructure.
Sometimes denial of a permit is the only thing that stops a ridiculous and damaging project from happening, and I’m speaking from experience of either denying the permits or contesting those that have been issued. I’m willing to die on the hill of opposing the libertarian trojan horse called “abundance”.
Chait and the so-called Abundance Agenda are appalling.
Their idea of “abundance” appears to be the plebes living their lives crammed into little boxes in a high-rise playing X-Box and smoking legal weed.
They’re not going for it.
“Chinese ambassador criticises plan to return Darwin Port to Australian ownership’
Yeah, we kinda sold that commercial port on a 99-year lease to that Chinese company a decade ago. So actual contracts were signed and no company would take breaking such a contract lying down. And suppose that we took back that port on grounds of “national security” or some other bs. What then? Almost certainly we will sell it again – to either Blackrock or else an Indian corporation so it would still not be in Australian hands. No doubt the Trump regime is behind this as they want to turn the north into a complex of US bases and the idea of the Chinese sitting in the middle of it all would drive them nuts. You see the same happening in Panama with the facilities there owned by that Chinese corporation which Trump called a national security threat even though it is another country.
Flipping the port again to flip off China. It’s all about the Benjamins, or perhaps there’s a deeper story behind closed curtains…
On Chait’s latest: The Coming Democratic Civil War…Very interesting read, but while Chait chastises the fact that more bureaucracy in practice, on the ground, has resulted in worse outcomes, he skims over the fact that the worst bureaucracies in terms of zeroing out any chances of progress and growth appear to be rooted in the bluest states and cities. Is Chait perhaps concerned that speaking truth more forcefully and removing the motes blinding Democrats might lead to his being cast out of the tent into the wilderness of those who defy and reject groupthink? No one, especially the ‘majorities’ as Chait puts it, ever benefits from lockstep groupthink. Just look at what America has turned into over the past three decades and more.
– “Here’s really strong evidence of immune damage from COVID among bacterial infections with no vaccines…”
I’m apparently missing something, but how does this graph reflect the “with no vaccines” part of this statement? Does this data refer to the unvaccinated only? If not I certainly see no improvement after the introduction of vaccines. Quite the opposite. Am I misinterpreting the statement?
The bacteria don’t have vaccines. Sloppy wording for a sloppy interpretation. Trendlines are mixed. Covid as a mechanism for decreased e-coli?
Probably should read, “…for which there are no vaccines,” referring to the bacteria/microbes/ viruses, not the sufferers / the infected.
Thanks. That would certainly make more sense.
It is the “bacterial infections without vaccines” is how I read it.
I think that wording is ambiguous — it could mean “among unvaccinated population”, but it might also be intended to mean “bacterial infections for which there are no vaccines.”
Looking at the overview, there doesn’t seem to be mention of the vaccination status of the study population, so I suspect that the 2nd meaning is what the writer intended. In either case, the wording is IMO a bit careless.
My understanding (please correct me if this is mistaken) is that the relative ease of treatment of bacterial infections with antibiotics (at least until relatively recently as resistance traits have become widespread) disincentivized research into vaccines which would stimulate sterilizing immunity to this class of infection. So the wording “with no vaccines” in the context of “bacterial infections” might be redundant, but employed to emphasize that there are no pharmacological preventive measures available (NPIs, of course, such as hygiene measures, are still useful for prevention of bacterial infection).
But even that meaning might be a bit sloppy. Even if there were vaccines for these bacterial infections, I think that would not prevent COVID-induced immune system damage from contributing to rising incidence of infections among those vaccinated against these bacterial infections.
I think that it may be best to ignore that bit of the tweet and focus on the graph, which is concerning.
Yes. I agree. Thanks.
I guess this “with no vaccines” refers to absence of vaccines against those bacterial infections listed. So, you don’t see tuberculosis or tetanus in that list for which there are vaccines available. I think it might be argued if those after COVID surges could be driven by 1) COVID-caused immune damage OR/AND 2) immune waning after a period of low(er) incidence of those diseases.
Gonna throw this out there because a doctor/researcher at Pasteur told me this – when overall vaccination rates go down, bacterial infections increase because vaccines produce an overall immunity increase that can protect against even infections that can’t be vaccinated against. She was investigating lower HIV rates in African countries that vaccinated for varicella with Varivax, which is viral, of course, but that she insisted proved the theoretical mechanism. Quite the character that lady.
I don’t believe there is any evidence supporting the assertion that Varivax protects against HIV through “overall immunity increase”. It can possibly reduce complications arising from HIV patients subsequently infected with pox.
Goooooooood Mooooooooorning Fiatnam!
It was a greed that leaches were the answer to any and all of our financial issues, just apply them to any economic situation by removing wherewithal and everything will be jake.
All they wanted is more…
There is a limit to how much a leech can take…
A Vamoire Squid (Matt Taibbi) is a different game…
“Death of a Master Manipulator”
There are some people who when they pass we express sorrow. We wish that they had been with us longer and warm to the memories of what they have done for people in living their lives. We admire them for what they have done with their time on earth and we kinda wish that we could emulate them in some small way to kind of pay them back for what they have done for us. And in our hearts we wish them a fond farewell.
Michael Ledeen is not one of these people.
“Obituaries published this week gave scant attention to the key role Ledeen played in fabricating intelligence to justify the eventually disastrous military campaign to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power…”
These people never face any consequences for their actions. They just die off one by one, without their victims being able to pay *them* back for what they have done to the world. I’m sure his life is being celebrated by those whose cause he served.
Still waiting for Cheney…
“No consequences for their actions” is true for the ruling class in general. Which is why they keep doing what they are doing, and why us plebs keep getting screwed.
I was unfamiliar with Ledeen, but took some time to read some of the retrospectives.
Here is a quote from one:
from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/obituaries/michael-a-ledeen-dead.html
““I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say,” he told the American Enterprise Institute in 1983, “but all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war.”
“What we hate is not casualties,” he added, “but losing.”
One could suggest that the casualties he mentions are in OTHER peoples’ families, not in Ledeen’s or his acquaintances.
Who are these “great scholars” who concluded that Americans “love war”?.
It is appalling that Ledeen was influential in putting his countrymen and foreign citizens in harms way.
Wow, what a clock sucker he turned out to be!
https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/wwe-crowd-slams-ron-desantis-with-brutal-chant-in-florida/
WWE is Trumps crowd. No shock they’d boo his enemies.
Trump will instantly punch back by signing a deal with Musk for two power plants on Mars, and one on Ganymede, all with turbo charges for US made EVs.
Perhaps we will live to see undesirables deported to penal mining colonies on Mars or asteroids.
No douby paid for in advance without any date for delivery.
Planning for two power plants on Mars before a major infrastructure project in the present for the people in the here and now.
Sounds about right.
an associate’s degree in liberal arts
While her brother got an associate’s degree in mathematics.
Now they just need to hit the job market. Let’s go kids, chop chop.
As a child, he yearned for the mines …
And his Dad, the writer, did not understand.
even if it was a BA…..it is extremely rare for these child “geniuses” to develop an academic output that tops your median PhD postdoc who took the “slow boat”
Not worth sacrificing a kid’s childhood….says more about the narcissism of the parents than the actual genetic/epigenetic/nurture intellectual endowment of the kid
a good example on the sports side is…. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Marinovich
The trouble is that the cops do not accept “for my own research” as a valid excuse for drug possession.
“YLE: Recycled fishing nets become Ukraine’s frontline anti-drone tool”
This is extraordinarily exciting, I’ve been waiting my entire life for the return (or introduction) of retiarii to the front lines of contemporary warfare. Ave ukraini, to mix languages I don’t speak. No I don’t intend to read the article I prefer my fantasy.
More serious question – does the drone attack on Putin’s helicopter represent a meaningful intelligence failure on Russia’s part? I feel as though I actually consume quite a lot of coverage on this conflict, most of it tilted towards the idea that Russia has been overwhelmingly successful after some hiccups in 2022, but leaving the commander-in-chief that vulnerable seems like a serious mistake to me. I’m not sufficiently expert on this (or any) component of the situation, though, this is just the guy-who-reads-the-news reaction.
Given the problems the grunts on the ground have had with those nasty small drones, some retiarii throwing techniques could be very useful.
As to the Putin incident – there doesn’t seem to be much information out there, the Russians are vague about it – we just know it was in the Kursk region. The Ukrainians seem to be denying anything happened – I doubt they would be doing that if it had been deliberate, they’d be boasting about it. Putin likes his ‘man of action’ image, so I would guess there is some exaggeration going on. There was probably just drones in the area when he was doing an unannounced visit.
I suppose it could be a consequence of the “drone anything that might be Russian” doctrine Ukraine is advancing at present.
If an assassination attempt were made on the Russian president, it would never be made public. However, given the FSO director’s resignation for “personal reasons,” we can speculate about what happened.
They will use the nets to catch fresh conscription meat. In order to show his support for the war effort, Milei is sending an additional boatload of bolas.
John Helmer seem to be persuaded that yes…
https://johnhelmer.net/maga-and-mega-turns-mugger-following-drone-attack-on-putin-on-may-20-putin-hit-back-at-kiev-and-trump-declared-i-dont-like-it-all/
Apparently there have been prior assassination attempts made on president Putin’s life.
“With soaring summer temps ahead, AI data centers could strain electricity supplies in the Mid-Atlantic’
I understand that with those smart meters, that on days when there is excessive strain on the grid they can turn down or even turn off your air-conditioner to take off some of the load. So what is the bet that they will do this in order to keep electricity flowing to those AI data centers on hot days.
It’s not the smart meter that does it, it’s a web connected to the utility that you sign up for.
It can turn off numerous things depending on how you have it set up with the most common being AC, but also EV charging, water heating.
What you get is lower electric rates or some version of that.
That said, the issue of not enough power started under Biden. They implemented a very aggressive time reduction in fossil fuel power plants that was hugely unrealistic. I seem to remember shutting off all coal by 2032 which is something like 20 percent of all us power and major reductions in NG power plant operations too. To supply that 20 percent of firm or baseload power with renewables while possible just isn’t going to happen in that time frame, especially with the amount of battery storage required. With all the added load from all sorts of directions ( EV’s, AC, heating, just more and data centers) I don’t know if they will build new coal plants, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did given the shortfall of NG pipelines and that they can sell it for more internationally vs domestic.
With no particular studying or other expertise to back my opinion up, I’ve thought for some time that it won’t be too practical in, say, the medium term, to rely mostly on wind or solar, those kinds of “renewables” that depend on weather and the sun’s daily benificence, to rely on them to replace fossil fuels as the main fuels for providing society’s power needs. They’re just too unreliable on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis. I believe the “grid” requires a pretty constant and reliable power supply of the kind that fossil fuels provide.
The only other practical choice, again for what we might call the medium term, something like, say, the next 30 years, would be nuclear. So, FF’s or nukes?, FF’s or nukes?
Are the most modern nuclear plants pretty safe? Also, what about thorium plants? Are they actually practical, having been ignored for the political reasons that have been described? And are they safer than nukes?
Again, it’s my perception that “renewable” energy is for the present doomed to be supplementary, although still very useful. Am I right about this?
theoretically in a brownout crisis, a smart grid allows a utiity to triage output via selective blackouts. but this is only for extreme cases.
My utility gives you a $15/month summer-time credit (funded by the state-mandated conservation tax) *if* you agree to have a remote kill-switch added to your A/C unit and take one for the team on an extreme-use day.
there are similar programs/other conservation options for commercial users….(generally commercial users pay a variable surcharge based on their draw during peak days)
have been enrolled for 10+ years, never had the kill switch engaged despite many hot days. so i’m $600+ ahead, lol
I can tell you that PJM is overdue for a rolling blackout. We scraped by with the skin of our teeth on Christmas Eve 2022. Read the report – just google PJM Winter Storm Elliott. It was a horror show of gas units that failed to perform at temperatures that were well above their limits and demand response that failed to show up. Plus PJM incompetently didn’t run conservative operations to ensure gas units were warm and had gas supply. We were at a stage where the loss of one large generation unit or import line would have caused load drop. Now, it would not be at the level that ERCOT in Texas had in 2011 and 2021, but certainly bad enough. My co-worker, correctly, noted that it would have been much better had we had load dump so that we could get real reform on bulk grid reliability in PJM. Very true. I have very little confidence if we have demand above 160GW in PJM this summer. For over a decade, they have kept out of trouble due to cheap nat gas, low demand growth, and very few cold/hot snaps of any significant duration. However, the real villains are the electric importing states (NJ, VA, and MD) that have differing levels of unachievable renewable standards and environmental laws that make it impossible to build any base load (i.e., gas) generation while they suck electricity from base-load states like PA, WV, and IL. Add to that PJM’s incompetence in managing the new gen queue the past decade, and you have not nearly enough generation being built. Every fix for PJM is some new whiz-bang market construct that PhDs dream up and that fails the test of any real-world crisis (e.g., capacity performance product failed to incentivize almost any gas generator to adequately winterize when Elliott hit – CPP was a fix after the 2014 polar vortex). Rolling blackouts aren’t the worst thing it the world, but when it hits the pampered elite that live in D.C. and VA, heads will roll for sure (see the ruckus after the 2012 derecho in D.C. exposed how little the wireless and wireline telcos care about redundancy).
Macron gets what he deserves. He certainly has an Ohrfeigengesicht
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iFZz0QnoHXY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zQvcQqIC4w
Ohrfeigengesicht = a wonderful German word meaning “a face that you want to slap”.
We may need a phonetic spelling.
Here phonetic spelling and audio for pronunciation.
https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ohrfeigengesicht#:~:text=Bedeutungen%3A,das%20nach%20einer%20Ohrfeige%20bettelt
This may be mean. But it is true.
Back in my youth, when I was in a frat and we were planning fundraisers, this subject often came up. “The perfect face”.
There was indeed a perfect smarmy face for pie throws and dunk tanks. Along with a naturally cocky attitude and a smart mouth, the face was just as important.
When you made those particular frat bros the targets, you were going to make a lot more money. Interestingly, this was openly discussed.
Macron, Gavin Newsom, Justin Trudeau, Josh Hawley, Pete Buttigieg. If in my frat would have spent hours as targets. They have that very specific face that people would pay money for. I was reminded of this today when I saw that video – and also the fact that it was the women who literally lined up to do it.
More importantly, as far as life in the frat, it did tend to make these people far less insufferable going forward. Just saying, the medieval concept of the jester and their interplay with the young nobles may have had a very important and positive role in society.
Again, sounds mean, but very very true.
It’s odd that you omitted Donald Trump, whose face, from his early days to recently, has always worn a smirk that calls for slapping.
I’d put up a carnival booth to throw pies or dunk doubles for EVERY global leader and a host of officials.
Lindsey Graham
Lindsey “Little Nell” Graham might just enjoy it.
I had a picture of John Boehner with Eric Cantor saved as the possible cover for the book I was writing about parties and Congressional politics–that book never came to be because events overtook my writing (and I didn’t get tenure plus I got sick of academia). Just saw the picture and it struck me that Macron looks oddly like Biehner, except much smarmier.
>>>>JD Vance’s Irish ancestry claim hits a genealogical dead end The
Oh my family blogging blog blog….media TDS is too funny. of all the things to pin on Vance!
Look, if your stock is predominantly serf (which is everyone, of every heritage, but for a tiny sliver) pre-modern genealogical records are the exception, not the norm. …especially in places with turbulent political histories like Ireland.
Then throw in your forebearer might have thought that being a Huegonot was too low-class, so he changed his name to something Anglo/Norman-aspirational.
And given the geometric increase in ancestors, pretty much everyone can claim to be a fraction of anything. If you can trace your ancestry to England or Benelux, you’re probably—eventually—some distant illegitimate cousin to William the Conquerer, lol.
Yes, it can be a fun diversion to trace ancestors (the LDS are very generous with free help) but that’s all it is. I have identified ancestors in one branch as far back as William’s time but not to him.
You will probably have well over a billion ancestors from the eleventh century, so, yes, probably one of them was William the Bastard (to give him his other name).
You will have more ancestors from the eleventh century, than there were people in the eleventh century.
How dare you slander my lineage – I am derived from the finest and indeed only the finest hybridized stock, consisting in some measure of kings, emperors, first consuls, shoguns, caliphs, chieftains, and perhaps even a grand high poobah or three, but in any case all told I am entirely and completely a product of Mendelian nobility and no even distant relation has so much as tilled a field in recorded memory.
That said I did grow up a pauper by deeply unfair and quickly remedied circumstance and I consequently understand perfectly the struggles of the voting public.
If you are male and any of your ancestral homelands overlap with, or were adjacent to, the Mongol Empire, your heritage may be more interesting than you realize:
1 in 200 Men are Direct Descendants of Genghis Khan
Quite right, I forgot to include “khagans” in my recitation of erstwhile hereditary titles; a century of shame on my polyglot name for this oversight.
European records are surprisingly good thanks to the church and Ireland was a widely literate society, again thanks to the church. Sadly a lot of Ireland’s records, going back to the Normans, were destroyed in the civil war when the anti-Treaty forces captured the Four Courts building in Dublin and the pro-Treaty forces shelled it with artillery and the records section caught fire…. :-(
Anyway, Vance is hardly talking about ancient history. Ulster Scots were the Establishment. Serfdom had long died out by 17th and 18th century. A planter would have been landless only if the sixth son or something but still there would be church records of births and deaths.
I suspect it is a dead end because somebody was hiding a secret back then if adoption or bastardy…. :-)
Having dabbled into genealogy regarding my own family, it seems that in my corner of he globe the church records were rather open about the happenstances in the agrarian world. To the extent that historians now believe it was quite common here to marry only after there was clear proof that the couple was indeed fertile and the next generation of workforce thus secured.
I’ve managed to discover my four grandparents lineages all the way to late 16th – early 17th century. Nothing spectacular, though. One claim of nobility, two hanged for piracy (wrecking).
You know, we still haven’t found any record of Eamon de Valera’s father. (Granted, that was NYC, but if that applies to the Taioseach who later became the president…. ;)
Irish records are a lot spottier than British ones thanks to the fire you mentioned (also, the earlier attack on the Customs House, which destroyed a lot of taxation records going back centuries). They are being slowly stitched together from other sources, but unless you were a criminal family (court records can be fascinating, especially when you can trace certain ‘tendencies’ through generations), the average peasant didn’t leave much of a written record behind.
Tracing family in Ireland is relatively simple back to around the 1830’s, with the first official censuses and the start of catholic church records (they were forbidden before then). Church of Ireland (Anglican) records go back much further. I’m not so sure with Ulster Scots, I think a lot depended on the denomination, and if someone switched code, so to speak, that can cause problems. Changing name (or spellings) back then was also common which can make searches difficult. Plus a lot of people took the advantage when moving to the US to just take on a new identity for all sorts of reasons.
My maternal granny was a Smith, from the flatlands of North Carolina (the other NC). Given that it was well known (in her circles) that the Scots gentry who were turned out of Scotland were required to change their surnames from Mac something-or-other to Smith or Lee or some other generic English name, speculation was encouraged that such families in the American South were “Scotch-Irish” from exiled Scots gentry. YMMV, and for what it’s worth (very little,I think).
So “Scotch Irish” is the Indian Princess of the Carolinas?
So, you are a Granny Smith type (or even a McIntosh). I’m more of a Golden Delicious.
I have no reason to believe that my ancestors amounted to anything more than the cattle thieves who ran as far west as you could run before my great-great-grandfather caught a ship across the Atlantic to escape Kerry (before the famine) for the dubious farmland of the Saint John River Valley.
Donald Trump, Mark Twain, and another Gilded Age 48 Hills
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just watched the Badenoch interview.Hamas defined as a ‘terrorist organisation’ and Israel ‘fighting a war’ just like us Brits really in NI with the IRA from the 1960’s to the mid 1990’s.Similar words really do mean vastly different things.
Kneecap had a few words for Kemi in the new single on Friday, all the more demeaning for its playground chorus rather than anything more offensive.
(As background: as well as her Gaza position, she has history with Kneecap because she removed a grant from them for political reasons and Kneecap sued and won damages, which they gave away to youth charities, half Catholic and half Protestant)
Nb: translated (not by me!), much of the actual rap is in Irish.
Verse 1
“
I feel blessed
With the fall of your wreck
With the backstreet crew
I’m going to resolve this
The government now in bits
Kneecap gave them a frisk
As you’d say
But we know they’ve got more than this
Grab a handful and we’ll stroll to the bank
Get me Kemi’s money and give her my thanks,
We’ll call it reparations Badenoch ya w*nk,
Tried to take my money but I came and collected it back
Chorus
“
Na na na
Disappear forever
It’s Kneecap the Recap
West Belfast
Na na na
Disappear forever you Tories
Say DJ Próvaí Móglaí Bap and Mo Chara
Na na na
Go away
It’s Kneecap the Recap
West Belfast
Na na na
Disappear forever you Tories
Say DJ Próvaí Móglaí Bap and Mo Chara
Verse 2
“
Kemi ya wally
The writings on the walls
You like to think that you’re fooling everybody
But you’re not,
Just like the iron lady
Your career is gonna rot
You’re just sh*t
Not in control
Kneecap back now
To put things right
Here and in the fight
We are sick of your sh*t
Kemi ya wally,
Maggie is still sleeping in her box
You don’t care about which race
You just care about gimme that
You’re so full of sh*t
You with your leadership
Bridge
“
Go for a crack
Some fellas from the lower whack
When they see me
Their hands go in their pockets
Who’s shouting yeah
Cos I’m here to stroke ya
I like those shoes
Worth a few notes
Seems they suit me
I’ll take them home lad
You backing up Badenoch
Trying to __ me
Had enough Badenoch
You thought it’s momentary
Called your bluff Badenoch
Belfast will you say
F*ck Badenoch
Chorus
Outro
“
Good effort, Kemi
Hard lines in the elections
Onwards and upwards
Free Palestine
“Resistance and extractivism: Inside Carrara, home of white marble’
For those interested, here is an excellent article about Michelangelo and his dealings with Carrara-
https://www.galleriabazzanti.it/en/michelangelo-cave-marmo/
When I get older losing my fear
Many years from now
Will you still be using me as a bulwark
Nuclear greetings, leaving landmarks stark
If I’d been out of sorts for a long time
Would you lock the door
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m seventy-nine
You’ll be older too
And if you say the word
I could slay with you
I could be handy, mending a feud
When your other armaments have gone
You can nuke a city of the other side
Pandora goes for a ride
Doing the radiation, digging the graves
Who could ask for more
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m seventy-nine
Every summer we can nuke an adversary
That we incite, if it’s not too dear
We shall scrimp and save the world
Other countries on their knees
Iran, North Korea and oh no, not Belize!
Send me a postcard, drop me a line
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form
Evermore your mine
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m seventy-nine
When I’m Sixty-Four, by the Beatles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCTunqv1Xt4
In today’s projection galore:
Starvation is Russia’s favourite weapon
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/starvation-is-russias-favourite-weapon-mknbr8vzp
https://archive.is/sq6dB#selection-1563.63-1563.130
While Israel is accused of “using hunger as a weapon of war” (to quote the UK’s international development minister Jenny Chapman, among many others) remarkably little attention is paid to Russia’s methodical destruction of Ukraine’s agricultural capacity. If anyone is leading the way in endangering food supply on a global scale, it is Vladimir Putin. Before he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, that nation supplied about 12 per cent of the world’s wheat and was critical to relief operations in countries afflicted by shortage or war.
Sorry, but what a huge fucking lie suggested by the TIMES there…
p.s. I know we know it, but for those who stumble over it as non-NC readers – this is what the malign grain deal was about – so that the EU could instrumentalize it against the RUs by way of secretly sabotaging it and publicly claim the Russians were blocking grain to the Third World, while NC, Moon of Alabama and even German DER FREITAG showed opposite was true. But hell, the TIMES is in GB, where laws of nature, or the concept of truth and scrutiny just don’t apply.
I assume The Times does explain how starving people in third countries helps Russia’s war aims. I mean, Russia is not just starving Global South to beat Ukraine, it’s Russia’s favorite weapon to beat Ukraine. I’m sure they must have had some logic somewhere there.
And wouldn’t that put Israel in Russia’s camp, since they are starving people, too. It’s very likely also a weapon aimed against Ukraine as much as the next man-made famine.
Russia could only be starving Iberian pigs, because Ukrainian grain was mostly fodder grade, not unlike most of their soldiers.
Not to mention the West is also trying to starve the same people by that logic, on a greater scale–Russia being a much more important exporter of both food and agriculture inputs–given all their attempts at interfering with Russian exports. I am reminded that one of the first agenda items that came up in the US-Russia talks earlier in the year was possible lifting of restrictions on financial institutions dealing with agricultural goods.
re: Gaza
GUARDIAN from last year
Rashid Khalidi, America’s foremost scholar of Palestine, is retiring: ‘I don’t want to be a cog in the machine any more’
As the Columbia University professor steps down, he addresses student protests, links between Ireland and Palestine and how ‘higher education has developed into a hedge fund’
Oct. 8th 2024
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2024/oct/08/rashid-khalidi-palestine-israel-scholar-columbia-university-retires
re: EU vs. RU
via Martyanov
Unpowering Russia: How the EU can counter and undermine the Kremlin
from their lovely stash of “Chaillot Papers”
22/5/25
https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/chaillot-papers/unpowering-russia-how-eu-can-counter-and-undermine-kremlin
Is that some poor man’s RAND, trying to extend Russia and compete from advantageous ground? Or, maybe, they want to undermine the Kremlin in some Gunpowder Plot 2.0?
The best bit is at the beginning: “Moscow undermines the EU’s core interests through its war of aggression against Ukraine, malign influence campaigns targeting Member States, and global hybrid warfare.”
I always thought that the EU’s core interests were increasing trade between member states to ensure mutual prosperity – but obviously not if we look at the record from Maastricht onwards. The EU’s core interests appear to be maintaining and the interests of the Commission against the poor sods slowly – or not so slowly in many cases – being impoverished materially by sacrificing their welfare to support the euro, impoverished financially by witholding funds from governments fonda Lyin’ disagrees with; and impoverished politically by vote deprivation and lawfare against the most popular politicians in the EU’s captive states.
The next best bit is at the end: “Importantly, the EU does not need anyone else’s permission to ‘unpower’ Russia. It can seize oil tankers.” Oh, righty-ho, righty, righty-ho. Interesting to see how that goes down with Russia now.
Germany’s Merz says there are no more range restrictions on the weapons supplied to Ukraine
I can’t help thinking that Russia needs to drop a hazel or two on a few European capitals and major ports to give Hitler’s spawn a chance to focus and back off before the Collective West allows itself to face the combined forces of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. The only question is whether or not the Trump administration is wiser than the Senate and judges that discetion is the better part of valour and cop out of it and allow it’s NATO allies and Israel to sacrifice themselves in a Wagnerian genosuicide.
Of course those German missile systems still need US intel for the purposes of targeting and they will need to have Bundeswehr soldiers on the ground in the Ukraine to actually fire them into places like Russian cities. Otherwise, German is not a party to this war
I am curious how Trump will react. How would it look if Trump quietly orders US assets to be cut off from the Germans? Who’s going to make noise about this and how would the American (and even European) public react?
Trump usually reacts by using ALL CAPS on Twitter, like “STOP Vladimir!”
He would restrain from all caps.
James Lee of 51-49. utube, ~6+ minutes.
EXPOSING Gavin Newsom’s Homelessness SCAM — $24 Billion “MISSING”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_iHEYWkZAg
Unless people can expose the rot in the DNC and party the rot will continue. The idea that exposing the rot means one is a T-er is just TDS cope, imo.
Maybe the money will pop up over at some kind of Olympics fund.
I’ve already created a folder for LA Olympics grift stories.
Flora, anyone surprised that money “Earmarked” to help the homeless in California found a more worthy home hasn’t been paying attention to California politics for the last 50 years.
I refer to him as “Governor Noisome” for good reason.
Great hair, great teeth and a distinctive voice along with the morals of a weasel in rut got him where he is.
He rode into town on Willie Brown’s horse
Got a parking & traffic job up north
His chances were swingin’ in the breeze
All the recall election posters had pictures of he
Tied what was left of his hopes to a meal Prix Fixe
Walked into a restaurant, had the French Laundry itch
He ordered up sans mask, they called for his head
He survived the likes of Elder, then he still led
He used to have Kimberly Guilfoyle right by his side
He’s the California Kid, I hope you’re quite prepared for his 2028 Donkey Show ride
You can only imagine the electorate was eyeballing he
Staring down from their screens you see
Some women claimed he caused a lack of breath
He was winning hearts being handsome & not near death
Some found him tragically hip, as good as it gets
He’s got Getty, right by his side
He’s the California Kid, I hope you’re quite prepared for his 2028 Donkey Show ride
He uncorked a bottle, the pro wino whined
Why drink anything from the late teens?
’bout that time the paparazzi snuck in
And there sat some asshole all uncovered in sin
Do as I say—not as I do, he said ‘That’s no lie’
Almost blew a hole in his chances just as big as the sky
He’s got DeSantis, as a thorn in his side
He’s the California Kid, I hope you’re quite prepared for his 2028 Donkey Show ride
California Kid, by the Beat Farmers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGQC1rPjOeU
Interesting to note weapons range for missiles supplied by the West to Ukraine has been extended, now around 500K.
Good times …. /s
It will be a game changer. /s
It’s a shame that Ramstein Airbase is about 2000 kilometers from the Russian border.
Oh, wait, there is hope still. The Kinzhal air launched missile has a reported range of 2000 kilometers.
Those idiots in Berlin are playing with fire, yet again.
San Diego plane crash.
Regardless if the ASOS wasn’t operating correctly it’s still 100% up the pilot in command to make the correct call whether to land or not.
as best I can find it looks like to land there is a 250′ minimum weather ceiling with the ASOS calling an actual of 200′
Meaning that the pilot couldn’t land legally there with those weather conditions.
Minimums mean that you can see the runway clearly at what ever the minimum above the ground height is stated. Do pilots go below that, yes.
He did hit power lines at much below the glide slope for ILS 28 which has nothing to do with the ASOS.
We will know maybe what happened. Was it pilot error, or some mechanical issue or ??
But it wasn’t to do with the lack of ASOS
Meanwhile, over in Sri Lanka:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkre0dQCJRw/
They Found A New Trick To Enslave EVERYONE | Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake
Just noticing Scott Ritters X account has been hacked and he has no control over it. Pinged X and no reply of yet.
Interesting to note weapons range for missiles supplied by the West to Ukraine has been extended, now around 500K.
Give you my dad jokes and periodic table
Ha – 500 km.