Links 5/9/2025

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1. Antifa May 9, 2025 at 7:00 am

   Elder Abuse

   (Navy Captain and doctor Sean Barbabella says Trump is 6’3″ and 224 pounds. Just like NFL superstar W.J. Brown. Uh-huh. A lot of people in DC are actively committing elder abuse for their own benefit by letting Trump sit behind that Oval Office desk when he so desperately needs nursing care, not greedy politicians.)

   There’s no way Trump is six foot three, the same as A.J. Brown
   If you disbelieve what your eyes see, Trump’s two-hundred-two-four-pounds
   Trump wrote the report on his health exam, and released it to the nation
   Dr. Barbabella supports this sham in total abdication

   A Navy doctor swears two oaths—to heal and to uphold
   Backing Trump denies them both—perhaps he got some gold
   Perhaps the man was ordered to slip his own head in a noose
   Let Trump be weighed by reporters—let’s stop this elder abuse

   Trump’s open overt dementia means his schemes should be rejected
   A TV show faking reality is what got this fool elected
   The Pentagon, Congress, and press like to hang on his every word
   Talking 4th dimensional chess when Donald does something absurd

   Trump is not sane. His failing brain holds no strategery
   He wants to reign but dares not deign to prove his sanity
   Everyone is wondering what else he will destroy
   By blundering, and plundering the working hoi polloi

   The GOP—obviously—want Donald to survive
   They all agree to not decree Amendment Twenty Five
   But Donald’s going to come unglued—he’s closer every day
   This world will watch and well conclude ’tis madness on display

   The day that Donald comes unwound, and howls at all his flunkies
   Baying like a basset hound, his Cabinet of monkeys
   Will give Trump’s crown to J.D. Vance, give Trump a rubber room
   Then Vance will do a song and dance, and warfare will resume

   The GOP will then attempt to fix what they have wrecked
   But codes and clicks and empty tricks cannot repair neglect
   They’ll dig in tight and maybe fight to get back to free trade
   Then Dems will win, and they’ll bring in their usual charade

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   1. chris May 9, 2025 at 8:49 pm

      Can’t speak to the weight because I’ve only ever seen him in person when he was wearing a suit, but he is quite tall. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s lost some height since I last saw him, it was about 20 years ago. 6’3″ isn’t unreasonable.

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2. VTDigger May 9, 2025 at 7:16 am

   BCBS going to leave VT because of COVID: https://vtdigger.org/2025/05/07/financial-struggles-have-pushed-vermonts-largest-health-insurer-to-the-brink/

   Just another data point confirming the death-spiral of a once great place to live. Sad times.

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   1. cgregory May 9, 2025 at 8:42 am

      Vermont came close to inaugurating single payer, but the gov balked at a 17% payroll tax to fund it. Afterward, the Vermont Workers Center lobbied for a mechanism by which the tax would be based on the inverse of the ratio between the average pay of the bottom 50% of workers to the pay of the CEO. In the case of one of the big box chains, this was 0.017:1, while a typical mom and pop store operation might be .34:1. The inverse would have meant the big box employer’s share of the payroll tax would have been (hope my math is right) 26.15 times higher than the mom and pop’s share.

      This would have had the effect of giving the very underpaid big box workers a virtual pay hike and the mom and pop stores across the state a health care for all system costing one-26th of what the big box stores had to pay. And— bonus!— if the latter didn’t like it, they could leave the state, which would have been a gift to Vermont’s small businesses.

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      1. VTDigger May 9, 2025 at 9:54 am

         In a state the size of VT the insurance companies would have just walked away to make an example of them. Not enough scale to pull off SP healthcare I don’t think.

         Families that can are leaving the state in droves. Idiots at the statehouse drove the education system off a cliff because people wouldn’t give up their school even though it has 5 children in each grade. My town’s school has 100 children in the entire High School. And it’s a larger town.

         Beautiful state that no one can afford to live in. There is no housing. Period. Not like the vacancy rate is low, there is literally zero housing available. Too expensive to build more because of the nanny state.

         It’s going to be nothing but second homes within a generation I is my bet.

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         1. cgregory May 9, 2025 at 6:32 pm

            I don’t have the summary at hand, but back when we were pushing for single-payer I did a comparison of the Vermont economy with other countries’. It ranked somewhere around 20th in the world, even above “narco-ridden” Colombia, which itself has a better health care system than the US’ ranking of #37. The implication was if Colombia (and Indonesia, and Iceland) could do it, Vermont can.

            As for affordable housing for the middle class, every town in Vermont is charged with providing it for the $50K- $200K crowd. My town has a rental rate of 29% (three times the state historical average and 1.8 times higher than it was locally ten years ago). Our quota is 500+ families. Gonna be fun! At least, we’re going to have fun doing it.

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   2. Samuel Conner May 9, 2025 at 9:22 am

      I pull my hair out trying to understand why NPIs to reduce community CV transmission are so unpopular. People don’t want to be ill and they don’t want their health insurance premiums to go up. But evidently the desire to avoid these objective evils is eclipsed by the desire to not be inconvenienced by measures that would help to avoid them.

      Maybe it’s a kind of prisoner’s dilemma — cooperation doesn’t work well for the individual unless everyone cooperates.

      Maybe it’s worldwide “quorum-sensing”, analogous to what happens in mature bacterial biofilms — at some level below conscious awareness the human race perceives that there are too many of us and is adopting measures to reduce the population.

      I rather doubt that we will be able to muster collective will to deal with future challenges, such as climate disruption,

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      1. Five Golden Manbabies May 9, 2025 at 5:47 pm

         Most of people’s lives are spent being told what to do. Are they really all that eager to lose more control even if it’s for their own good? It’s not like seatbelts or drunk driving were given up easily either.

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      2. eg May 9, 2025 at 10:37 pm

         What I don’t understand is how our Victorian Era forebears were able to figure this out (the great public works which virtually eliminated the devastation of waterborne disease) and somehow we can’t do the same for indoor air quality?

         Into the bargain we’ve managed to find ourselves once more with a capital allocation process which wouldn’t seem out of place in a Jane Austen novel and with numbers of hobos unseen since the Dirty Thirties — “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” …

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3. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 7:19 am

   ‘NEW: Trump May Announce Gaza Deal With Minimal Israeli Input, Says Israeli Report
   A new report from Israel Hayom says U.S. President Donald Trump may unveil a sweeping Gaza agreement by the end of this week—one developed with deep American involvement but only partial Israeli participation. The deal is said to include provisions for ending the war, rebuilding Gaza, and redefining control of the Strip—potentially over Israel’s objections.’

   I don’t see how that works out. Trump put together a grain deal for the Black Sea that would get grain flowing out to the world again but then the EU said that they would never do what was necessary to make that deal work and it died a quick death and was never heard from again. Israel would do the same here and would kill any deal by having nothing to do with it. Trump could stop all weaponry & ammo going to Israel to force them to do so but Congress would never stand for it as it would be unpatriotic if not antisemitic. In any case, Israel will never want to back out of Gaza as it needs it too much. Not only for those lands but it would let Israel lay claim to those offshore gas reserves off Gaza which would help them pay for the enormous cost of this war. Without those offshore reserves, the State of Israel could very well be dead in the water.

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4. Mikerw0 May 9, 2025 at 7:21 am

   In some ways Trump’s reptilian instincts, while abhorrent, are admirable. Throw out that you might increase taxes on the wealthy, and close the carried interest tax loophole, knowing full well it won’t happen. Then wait for our PE/VC overlords to ‘bribe’ him to stop it. Whether planned, or not, this reads to me as yet another mob boss shake-down. Pay me tributes or sorry that I burnt your store down.

   I subscribe to the frog in the beaker school of human behavior. If the D’s had punched McConnell back in the face, yes I know they never would have, in his early days of manipulative power grabs it would at least have made it harder and slowed him down. What lesson has Trump learned throughout his life — try and get away with things and see what happens. Oh, no one will stop me so I’ll go further. Well, today no one will stand up to him. End of story.

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   1. Carolinian May 9, 2025 at 11:25 am

      I take it more as an attempt by Trump to pretend that his tariffs aren’t–per Michael Hudson–a disguised plan to cut taxes on rich people such as himself. As you say he knows Congress won’t raise taxes on the rich but the PR purpose is to deflect political opposition to his crazy scheme.

      The prob of course is that few people believe Trump any more and, since he won’t simply shut up, the mountain of lies grows ever higher. Whether the message is admirable or abhorrent the messenger is a mental mess with short fingers.

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      1. bertl May 9, 2025 at 9:07 pm

         Call me whimsical if you must but, given the rhetorical gifts of Lindsay Graham, I can’t help wondering if South Carolina has the largestest per capita concentration of synagogues in the world. If so, wouldn’t it be simpler, aware that President Trump has a gift for renaming geographical entities, to rename South Carolina “Israel” and decant all the Zionist currently living on the land of the Palestinians into the new US Israel and give back Palestine to the Palestinians. I’m pretty sure the Zionists will be pleased to have friendly neighbours at long last – as will the Palestinian people.

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         1. Carolinian May 9, 2025 at 11:18 pm

            Lindsey’s just channeling his dead pal John “bomb bomb bomb Iran” McCain. It’s a kind of seance.

            Albert Brooks did once suggest–I think it was on SNL–that the state of Israel and the Southern state of Georgia could switch places and save much trouble–back when one could joke about such things. These days Brooklyn and the ME nation seem joined at the hip. The Jewish portion of Lindsey’s constituency is rather small. Many who did live here couldn’t get out fast enough. Example: movie director Stanley Donen from Columbia, SC.

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5. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 7:35 am

   “Two-thirds of global heating caused by richest 10%, study suggests’

   Soooo if I am reading this article right, if something “happened” to the world’s richest 10%, then global heating would drop by two thirds. Is that right? I would be willing to go along with such an experiment as really, it would be all pros and no cons.

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   1. Polar Socialist May 9, 2025 at 7:55 am

      Can it be (at least partially) an artefact of the Northern parts of the globe being wealthier in general? And also some of that wealth being in dwellings that require both heating and insulation and thus being way more expensive?

      I mean, globally the richest 10% covers almost everyone in The West a.k.a. The Global North. Where I live the average price of a house is, I think, three times over the limit of belonging to the global 10%.

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      1. Mr. Rabin May 9, 2025 at 12:20 pm

         Ignores the efforts of the wealthy to spend money to be climate neutral, don’t you see?

         Saw this from Tiburon, in Marvelous Marin:

         Bluff Point property is back on market with 81% markdown

         “It includes about 2,000 feet pf shoreline and carries county approval for an 18,227 square foot estate, wich. includes a
         15,240-square foot CARBON NEUTRAL MAIN HOUSE…

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   2. Emma May 9, 2025 at 8:43 am

      Aside from the munitions used against them, the people of Gaza have used very little resources for the last 19 months. So maybe we can just swap out the populations of Gaza and the West Bank with the denizens of the Washington DC metropolitan area and see where that gets us in another 19 months.

      Next, we could swap out the population of Yemen with those living around Brussels. It’ll be a sacrifice for the Yemenese to deal with the gloomy climate and dull cuisine, but the Yemenese are a hardy bunch and are willing to make great sacrifices for the greater good.

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6. Stephen V May 9, 2025 at 8:00 am

   https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/08/who-broke-the-internet/#bruce-lehman

   Cory Doctorow’s latest with history and remedies.

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7. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 8:10 am

   “JD Vance says Russia has asked for territory it hasn’t won”

   Can’t work out if Vance is playing dumb or is just ignorant. He could have rung up the Russian Embassy to ask what the deal is here but is going with ‘they are asking too much.’ As I have mentioned before, the Russian Constitution will not allow Russian territories to be given up or negotiated away and for the Russians, those territories are regarded as occupied Russian territory. Not to worry as the Russians will take them over in the coming months but there is a chance that Russia may take over yet more Oblasts so we will see how Vance reacts to that development.

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   1. hk May 9, 2025 at 12:09 pm

      It does reveal something interesting about the “negotiations” by the parties involved, though.

      Why do you “negotiate”? Because there are things that hadn’t been won by one side yet, but are likely to be lost to the other soonish. So one side gives up some of what they are likely to win if they keep fighting and the other side gives up part of what they are likely to lose anyways. So the “gain” is what they would have lost in course of “fighting” for the inevitable outcome. But how obvious is this “inevitable” outcome to the politically relevant actors? In November, 1918, the inevitable outcome was obvious to the German leaders. It was not to large masses of the German people. So the myth of “stab in the back” could be birthed easily. Because of this, Germany, in 1945, had to be broken completely and thoroughly until the Allies had the possession of practically every inch of Germany–so there was no negotiation for the “outcomes” that hadn’t been won yet.

      Today, the problem is worse: how “obvious” is Ukrainian defeat? And even if it was obvious to the Ukrainians, what does Zelensky or his swell gang have to lose that is so obvious? Worse still, what does the West or US have to lose? Not much if anything at all in all these cases. So none of them really needs to negotiate. So, regardless of the Russian intent, the only solution to the war, I think, is that of 1945 (and 1815 and 1865): a Russian army in Paris, “Napoleon” stripped of every dignity and shipped off to modern day version of St. Helena, and all that.

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   2. ilsm May 9, 2025 at 1:47 pm

      One of these days Russian Federation is going to remind USA of the Melian Dialogue

      No cease fire and we take what we desire.

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   3. JohnnyGL May 9, 2025 at 5:23 pm

      That is a really loaded statement.

      Should Ukraine be able to claim territory it hasn’t won?

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      1. GF May 9, 2025 at 6:56 pm

         Or lost and thinks it still is theirs?

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      2. Mass Driver May 10, 2025 at 7:39 am

         If USA can claim Greenland, anyone can claim anything.

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8. PlutoniumKun May 9, 2025 at 8:20 am

   How the US Built 5,000 Ships in WWII Construction Physics

   Fascinating article – the part that is new to me about the Liberty/Victory ship project is near the end of the article – I didn’t realise just how inefficient the process of building them was, I’d always assumed that they were much cheaper to build. It seems that even at its height it took significantly more (wo)man hours per ship to make than equivalent ships in Britain.

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   1. Unironic Pangloss May 9, 2025 at 9:33 am

      anti-myth take on US war victories—-the US essentially brute-forced itself into winning its peer wars: Civil War and WW2 (industrial deluge overcoming early leadership short-comings), WWI (flood of new cannon fodder).

      Easy to do when the US de facto had infinite resources and labor.

      …not to diminish the near infinite individual acts of heroism, of course.

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      1. John Wright May 9, 2025 at 9:59 am

         And one can wonder if the US Civil War was necessary.

         Why was it necessary to preserve the Union?

         No other country had to go to war to end slavery.

         Let the South secede and the North may have been fine as the industrial revolution ramped up.

         The electronics company I worked for after leaving school has been sliced/diced into maybe 10 pieces over the years, all quite peacefully.

         Letting the USA South secede, peacefully, may have been a far better option.

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         1. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 10:21 am

            A problem here was that the Confederacy was an expansionist power. I may be wrong here but I believe that cotton, which the South relied on, tends to exhaust the soil that it grows in leading to a need for more lands and the Confederacy was determined to expand west and take in more States. Not only that but there were those in the Confederacy that had their eyes on Cuba as well. So for the Union and the Confederacy it was a case of ‘This continent is not big enough for the two of us.’

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            1. caucus99percenter May 9, 2025 at 10:49 am

               The government of the Confederacy missed its chance to seize Cuba and after losing the Civil War, withdraw there into exile — “pulling a Formosa” and becoming to the United States what the “Republic of China” (a.k.a. Taiwan) is to the People’s Republic of China.

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            2. John Wright May 9, 2025 at 11:14 am

               But did the USA South have the industrial means to accomplish this expansion?

               One can dream of expanding empire, but lack resources to do it.

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               1. hk May 9, 2025 at 11:38 am

                  I think that’s where analogues to “weak imperialist” powers, like Poland in 1930s or Ukraine post Maidan, or even Estonia today might be applicable. They peddle BS wrapped in phoney moralism and expect other powers to gift them the means.

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               2. deleter May 9, 2025 at 1:12 pm

                  The South wanted to expand before secession through their control of the US
                  government. The constitution gave each state 2 senators regardless of population
                  and counted 3/5 of the slave population in slave states for allocating Representatives in the House.
                  They pushed this power advantage too far and seceded from the Union as soon as the anti slavery Republicans were elected. They began seizing Federal arsenals
                  and opened fire on Fort Sumter so they were hardly innocent.

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               3. JBird4049 May 9, 2025 at 1:13 pm

                  Just before the civil war there were attempts or pilot programs to use slaves in factories in IIRC Birmingham and Richmond that were modestly successful.

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         2. Michael Fiorillo May 9, 2025 at 10:47 am

            Short of expropriation of the Planters property – the proper thing to do, morally and in the political long term – there’s somethingt to be said for this argument.

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         3. vao May 9, 2025 at 11:54 am

            “No other country had to go to war to end slavery.”

            Haiti.

            A revolution, followed by a war to boot the French (and the Spanish, and the British) out, who were trying to reinstate slavery.

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            1. Unironic Pangloss May 9, 2025 at 12:20 pm

               the US just replaced slavery with sharecropping (proto-neofeudalism).

               just saying.

               If I was the 1866 Union Despot, I would have expropriated all of the plantations and given ex-slaves a land grants.

               but of course, the Union did what many?/most? elites have done since time immemorial—-let the losing elites largely keep their status quo

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               1. GF May 9, 2025 at 7:04 pm

                  When Lincoln was assassinated the vice president was a southern slaveholder. Not much chance of giving away the spoils of war to blacks.

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         4. Wukchumni May 9, 2025 at 1:50 pm

            In 1987, $60 million face value in Confederate bonds were sold in the UK for $623k by Sotheby’s.

            We really can’t count on the Brits now, though…

            Who will back ‘the other side’ financially in the next Civil War?

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            1. ambrit May 9, 2025 at 11:17 pm

               I suspect that the “Next Civil War” will be crowdsourced.

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         5. scott s. May 9, 2025 at 2:05 pm

            Chandra Manning’s “What This Cruel War Was Over” argues the thesis that in the north, the religious second great awakening in the early part of the century gave birth to the idea of American Exceptionalism — that the US government was uniquely ordained by God as a “shining city on the hill” and example to to the world. As such, an attempt to break that “Union” (which otherwise has to be seen as a pretty abstract concept to be willing to die for) was acting against God’s plan.

            In her argument, it wasn’t until the Union armies entered the south that the common soldiers came to see slavery as a detriment. Not so much to the slaves themselves, but in the effect they saw on the common southern white man. In her view it was this change in attitude that eventually led the northern elite to embrace emancipation as a war aim.

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            1. Jessica May 9, 2025 at 4:19 pm

               Northerners were afraid of what having to compete with slaves would do to workers in the North.

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         6. Jessica May 9, 2025 at 3:32 pm

            Those living in the upper Mississippi Valley needed control of the lower Mississippi Valley (New Orleans). That was a big issue as far back as the Articles of Confederation days. The trans-Appalachian settlers were adamant about this and suspicious that the east coast elites preferred forcing the settlers to operate through the older states on the coast.
            Much farther afield, one could argue that it was only with the Russian Revolution and the subsequent civil war that the emancipation of the serfs (1860s) was complete. Also, note that although they are always referred to as serfs, but the 1860s they had been reduced to chattel slaves. (Serfs are tied to the land; slaves can be uprooted and sold elsewhere.)
            Many nations abolished slavery in the 1800s under external pressure.

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      2. Carolinian May 9, 2025 at 11:30 am

         You could expand that to US history in general IMO. Our resources made us the once great nation and this was a common belief decades ago.

         Now the elites want to pretend it’s all about them.

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      3. Jason Boxman May 9, 2025 at 3:41 pm

         Interesting you mention that, an interesting book about World War 2 is actually called Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War.

         Argues that the Allies’ World War II triumph was due not to leadership, but to industrial capacity, demonstrating that Allied commanders were outclassed and incapable of using their numerical superiority efficiently

         It makes an interesting case. Also noted that Germany actually ramped down military production at the onset of war. Also a focus on rail and wheeled transport, as this is crucial for logistics.

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         1. Munchausen May 10, 2025 at 8:32 am

            That “demonstrative” claim is problematic, to say the least. Allied commanders were outclassed by whom exactly, and in what way? Not that outclassing Patton is hard, but Allies had many others, like Zhukov. Germans did outclass Russians in war crimes, lies, and size of their egos. They had to create a whole mythology of human waves and whatnot, in order to justify their humiliating defeat to those “savage Slavs”. If they really outclassed Allied commanders, then they would not have started a war they could not win in the first place (just like their modern day equivalents in the Slava Ukraine gang). As far as using numerical superiority efficiently goes, USA had less casualties in the whole WWII than Ukraine had so far in this gloves-on war that we are watching unfold live on TV. Sounds pretty efficient to me (though that efficiency is mostly due to letting Russians do all the work).

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      4. Kouros May 9, 2025 at 5:51 pm

         History Legends has a podcast describing the wasteful way the US replenished its troop loses in WWII.

         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJL-NzqIkUs

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   2. Revenant May 9, 2025 at 9:45 am

      Thank you, PK, for this comment. I thought I knew that story so I skipped the article. I am glad I read it. Fascinating.

      And how did British shipyards remain so efficient that US liberty shipyards rarely equalled them? A stable trained workforce rather than commodity labour? Something related to industrial clusters (the Clyde)? Or were they better managed than postwar decline would suggest and they adopted similar innovations in manufacturing, possibly earlier?

      Or is it just a measurement error, like so many things are!

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      1. vao May 9, 2025 at 12:02 pm

         This is also what puzzled me: how could the British yards be so efficient if they were not relying upon that massive rationalization based on pre-fabricated components that the shipyards in the USA had invented? In the end the British managed to produce ships using vastly less resources (man-hours) than the heavily Ford-like streamlined North American operations.

         The article gives just one hint: it states that the British workforce was much more qualified than the American one. But that is a bit too short for an explanation.

         It would also be interesting to know how Canada fared in naval construction compared to the UK and the USA.

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      2. PlutoniumKun May 9, 2025 at 12:43 pm

         Indeed, I’m still puzzling over that, its very much contrary to my assumptions. I would guess a lot of it comes down to the skill levels of the workers – in one of the footnotes it states that the plans sent by the British were very deficient in detail, as they assumed the workers would know how to fill in the gaps, so to speak. Building ships well is something that takes literal generations to learn how to do properly, but once the chain of knowledge is broken, its very hard to reconstruct (as Britain is now learning as it flails around trying to figure out how to build frigates). Even the 10 year break in German inter-war ship building set them back a long way relative to Britain and France.

         As it happens, I’ve just finished reading the book Shattered Sword by Parshall and Tully, an account of the Battle of Midway. I was intrigued to read in the appendices (yes, I’m nerdy enough about these things to read the technical appendices) about the costs of the Japanese aircraft carriers. The Akagi (the first Japanese fleet carrier) actually cost the same as three full contemporary Japanese battlecruisers, which in turn cost even more than a Royal Navy Nelson class Battleship built the same year (allowing for currency changes). The Japanese did reduce the cost by more than half in subsequent carriers as they got the hang of it, and started building smaller ones. It didn’t say it, but it did imply that that the Japanese spent a lot more on their vessels than the British, presumably due to their relative lack of experience and issues with getting suitable workers.

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         1. Polar Socialist May 9, 2025 at 1:31 pm

            Edward H. Lorenz, in his “An Evolutionary Explanation for Competitive Decline: The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1890-1970” (jstor.org) gives the credit mostly to unionized skilled workers in UK.

            Basically there were something like 80 shipyards in UK, which allowed the owners to hire and fire people as they had the need, while the industry still retained the workforce, as there was always a new job waiting in the next shipyard.

            Where the unions come in is that by preventing shipyards from using much automation and especially by forming skilled squads that were hired usually as a team to perform some specific task the shipyard owners did not need any middle management as teams managed themselves – and even trained the assistants.

            The unions also provided unemployment insurance thus allowing the skilled workforce to remain available even after short economic downturns.

            This way the UK shipyards could both accommodate client’s wished much better (no detailed drawings, no limiting machinery) and bill the client as the work progressed (no capital investment on the machinery or the workforce).

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            1. Martin Oline May 9, 2025 at 9:11 pm

               Thanks for this great comment.

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            2. PlutoniumKun May 10, 2025 at 3:58 am

               The comment about workers being able to shift jobs reminds me of a conversation I had with an old man in a pub in Tipton, West Midlands when I lived near there in the 90’s. The area is now decaying, but at one time post war there were no fewer than 10 active foundries on one street – mostly supplying shipyards on the coast (they were proud that the Titanic anchors were made there – hauled by horse and canal to Liverpool to be shipped to Belfast). He told me that word would spread about when Christmas bonuses were due in each foundry, so workers would swap jobs at precisely the right day to get double bonuses (they would call in sick for work on their ‘last’ day so they’d technically be working in two places).

               A lot of shipyards weren’t unionised however. I only met him as an old man when I was very young, but a neighbour growing up, a Somme veteran, had been driven out of the famous H&W shipyard in Belfast for union organising. The shipyard employed only protestants as skilled workers, when he (a protestant) allied with catholic casual labourers to do organising, he was given no choice but to cross the border to the Republic for his families safety. H&W was unusual however as a ‘stand alone’ yard – in Scotland and the north of England there were whole clusters of shipyards – something like 40 or 50 along the Clyde alone. In Scotland there was similar use of religious divides to prevent unionisation. The role of religion in British industrial life is something almost untouched by English historians and writers – they usually struggle to get their heads around how it affected daily life on the shop floor.

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         2. hk May 9, 2025 at 2:14 pm

            There are some odd issues in comparing costs: Akagi was itself one of those contemporary battlecruisers–it was converted from the hull of an incomplete Amagi class battlecruiser. So are we double counting the cost of the construction that already took place? Also, battlecruisers, bc of the powerplant, iirc, cost more than battleships. How do these compare? Lastly, since the Nelson class were new builds under the treaty regime, in a more austere fiscal environment, the circumstances would have changed compared to what were basically wartime projects with looser constraints. I’d say the better comp might be between the Hood, Lexington, and the Akagi, both as battlecruisers (projected cost for the latter two) and as carriers (the conversion of the Lexington would gove us a sense of what a conversion costs, ftom whoch baseline).

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            1. PlutoniumKun May 10, 2025 at 4:34 am

               Akagi was completed from the battlecruiser of the same name, Amagi was abandoned semi-completed due to earthquake damage so its costs were written off.

               I checked again to see if my memory was off in my quote above, and I see it was (at least I think so, I find searching for quotes again again very hard on ebook readers). I can’t find the original discussion in the book, just the reference in the notes at the end, but I see that I was incorrect to say it was three times the cost – the 90 million yen figure had stuck in my head as being for Akagi alone: The figures are somewhat confused due to the abandonment of Amagi. The book does say that the subsequent smaller fleet carriers cost around 40 million yen (in 1930’s prices, I’m not sure how they compare to 1922 prices). I think the reference to the 90 million as including a later refit is contradicted in the main text, where it says this cost was very substantial and additional, so a ‘not’ may be left out in the notes.

               To quote (abridged) from the notes to the book I referred to (which is also used as Wikipedia’s source for Akagi):

               As originally laid down, Akagi and Kaga were to have cost 24.7 million and 26.9 million yen respectively (i.e. as Battlecruisers). Each had completed roughly a third of their construction cycles before work had been suspended on all capital ships…. as a result, these two ships had likely consumed about 8 million yen apiece before work was stopped. In 1922 the Diet voted the staggering additional sum of 90 million yen to complete Akagi and her sister, Amagi (and later Kaga), as aircraft carriers. As a result, it is likely that each of the two big carriers of CarDiv 1 cost roughly 53 million yen ($36.45 million) to complete. This figure does include the very substantial sums later allocated to refit and modernise each of the vessels in the mid-1930’s. By way of comparison, HMS Nelson, built in 1922 at a cost of £7.5 million, cost about 47 million yen in adjusted 1928 prices.

               Reply ↓
      3. scott s. May 9, 2025 at 2:51 pm

         I would put it to production tolerances. I was managing a shipyard project when CAD was first being introduced. Prior to CAD, all piping systems less than 1-1/2 in were “field run”. The trades would configure the piping on site. With introduction of CAD, the draftsmen had to place all that piping and electrical into the drawings. The CAD was designed to 1/16 inch tolerance. It wasn’t clear to me how to expect the trade, for example, to place the standoffs for a light switch on a bulkhead to that accuracy.

         All that CAD work required a lot of manhours, and the CAD operators had to be supervised and their work signed off on. I’m assuming today we’ve solved all that but at the time it wasn’t so easy. (IIRC the first big CAD project in the Pascagoula yard was the entire deckhouse for the LHA class amphibious carriers.)

         If you’ve been in a shipyard and seen shipfitters beating steel plate into alignment you can get an idea of what can waste time. At that time complex weldments for machinery foundations could be fabbed in the shop but they still had to be placed into the hull. I was watching a YT vid where they were prepping the foundation/bedplate for the main propulsion diesel on a large containership and it’s incredibly accurate.

         Reply ↓
         1. ambrit May 9, 2025 at 11:51 pm

            I can relate that to times in my plumbing career when I had to constantly run to the job Quality Control officer to get “approval” for shifts in the courses of piping along hallways in commercial projects. I’m speaking of water, drains, vents, and medical gasses. This all had to coexist along with the electrical conduits and the heating and air conditioning ductwork. A CAD drafter does not realize that 1/16″ tolerances are very difficult to manage in the real world.
            As an example; I once barely stopped a gung ho plumber from cutting a hole in a bearing steel beam that would have been over a half of the beam’s width. As with wood construction, the materials have very tight tolerances that one has to take into effect. That over a half of the width cut out would have fatally weakened the main steel beam holding up a twenty foot by thirty foot section of the main roof of a hospital wing. All this because the drawings showed an electrical conduit and a plumbing vent occupying the same space. The plumber was going to solve the problem by moving his vent pipe into the roof space. Alas, there was this pesky steel beam in the way….
            The epilogue to this was that the ‘offending’ plumber was moved to another section of the job and I was royally reamed out by the Job Site Manager for slowing down the job. My Yard Foreman quietly asked me to “grin and bear it” for the sake of the sub-contractor plumbing company’s “in” with the Main contractor.
            I never did mind a big, blustery, pain in the arse Foreman; as long as he, or she, there are those on jobs too, wasn’t also stupid.
            I had a smart Plumbing Foreman on a commercial job in Tuscaloosa once. When I screwed up one time, he pulled me to the side and quietly asked me if I wanted him to chew me out right there or to wait until after the end of the work day. I chose later and he did chew me out later and then offered me a drink afterwards to “get the bad taste out of your mouth.” I enjoyed working for “Chuck” and learned a good bit from him.
            At the other end of the spectrum was the “Good Old Boy” Job Foreman on a school remodel in Gulfport, Mississippi who tried to BS the quite well dressed woman architect who had come out to survey the job a few weeks into the project.
            After a particularly egregious example of “mansplaining” the woman turned to the Foreman, I was ten feet away from them at the time and saw and heard it all, remarked to him in a quiet and demure voice: “Who do you think you’re sh—ing? I designed this job, and I did a lot of the drawings myself. It’s also not my first rodeo. I suggest that you stop trying to blow smoke up my a__ and just answer the questions when I ask them. Got it?”
            He turned red of face and kept quiet for the rest of the inspection.
            What really worries me is, AI CAD drawings. Ever try and build a hallucination?
            Stay safe and always read the architecturals pages first.

            Reply ↓
            1. The Rev Kev May 10, 2025 at 12:15 am

               Last year in an Asia Times article I was reading how they used an AI to lay out where all the electrical cables should be laid out in a new ship based on what it had learned ‘studying’ previous designs. I wonder if the had a regular electrician go over those AI plans just to make sure that that it was all AOK.

               Just went looking for that article and found that they did use human guidance to correct any errors-

               https://asiatimes.com/2023/03/ai-warship-designer-accelerating-chinas-naval-lead/#

               Reply ↓
            2. skippy May 10, 2025 at 12:21 am

               “What really worries me is, AI CAD drawings. Ever try and build a hallucination?” – bawhahhaha

               Even before that mate … a good mate of mine that is now a site sup for multistories and industrial stuff started out as a CAD monkey, found out the hard way that it was just another Jefferson nail shack. Went back on the tools as a chippy/painter, got the guts and due to high HS scores got a cadet ship for a big building mob. I personally vouched for him in a phone call and noted that he was acute in his knowledge abilities yet flexible in other areas.

               Called me one time some years ago when he was still wet and concerned about how some CAD boys totally screwed the specs to make the management/C-suite chuffed. 25T floating slab for a vibrating machine that ran 24/7 totally out of spec- rebar/concrete mix. Told him to pass it up and let them own it, document everything.

               Reply ↓
               1. ambrit May 10, 2025 at 4:52 am

                  “Document everything” is best practices for big jobs. H___, best practices for any job. Plus, keep multiple copies if you expect “trouble” coming. (Hide one copy off site if you can.)
                  When Middle Sister went to work for Hallmark cards as a designer, later project manager, etc. etc., she had worries about infighting in the office. (The place was, and apparently still is, a nest of vipers.) When she voiced her concerns to Dad, he sent her his copy of “Dirty Tricks for the Office.” (He got that book when he went to work for the City as an inspector.) She soon sussed out a particularly nasty trick one of her “rivals” for promotion was playing on her. He was planting incriminating ‘evidence’ in her electronic files that suggested that she was doing something “shady.” (No thought about how plain dumb someone would have to be to keep such records in the first place.) Dad hooked her up with a computer boffin he knew, (a professor at a Florida college no less,) and they turned the tables on the evil sod.
                  Dad knew the man from playing against him every Thursday evening at a Miami Beach bar, (really, a bit of a dive,) that Dad had convinced the owner of to install chess tables in the back. Mom would go with him sometimes and remarked that the place was packed on Chess Night.
                  When Dad passed into the Void, his buddy Timmy threw an Irish Wake for him. It was the most diverse crowd I ever saw in a drinking establishment. The bloody State Steward for the Municiple Employees Union showed up. So did a bunch of politicos, shady lawyers, and street girls. I passed out from drink a half way through the night.
                  Life is stranger than is dreamed of in our philosophies, fer sure.
                  Stay safe and always read the plans first.

                  Reply ↓
   3. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 11:05 am

      There is a chart showing ‘Allied Ship Losses’ which needs a bit of an explainer. You can see a rapid increase for early 1942 and there is a reason for this. At the beginning of the war the u-boats had a lot of success sinking ships as the convoy system was still being developed.They called this the “Happy Time” but then it became harder to sink ships. When the US entered the war the US was slow to use the Convoy system and German u-boats got a lot of kills patrolling off the US coastline and they called this the second “Happy Time” as they sank individual ships. You had people on beaches and in small towns watching ships being blown up and burning just off the coastline and it was bad. And that is what that chart was showing.

      Reply ↓
      1. ambrit May 10, 2025 at 12:01 am

         Our neighbour to one side of us when we moved to Miami Beach had lived through that time. She related to the folks once of sitting on the terrace of a beachside bar in one of the hotels and watching a U-boat sink a freighter two or three miles offshore, with the deck gun she insisted, and a bit later the crew rowed to shore in the lifeboats.
         There is a sunk U-boat just offshore of Miami Beach that was a popular dive site.
         My favourite tale is of the U-boat that supposedly went up the Mississippi River, it is quite deep in it’s lower reaches, as far as Memphis, Tennessee.

         Reply ↓
   4. Carolinian May 9, 2025 at 11:50 am

      Nothing beats experience? A key point of the article is that the US was trading speed for cost because so many ships were needed quickly. Also the shipyards had stopped making cargo ships as so many were left over from WW1.

      And so companies that had never built ships were brought in and pioneered speedy techniques that eventually turned out a ship in a couple of months as opposed to the UK many months.

      Reply ↓
   5. hk May 9, 2025 at 12:22 pm

      There was something in comparative physiology from some decades agp (that could very well be out of date now) that claimed ectotherms (cold blooded animals) are much more efficient, wrt energy consumption, than endotherms (warm blooded animals). FWIW, that makes an intuitive sense–keeping the body warm at all times, even when unnecessary, does seem very inefficient. But, by the same token, endotherms are everywhere while ectotherms are confined to narrow ecological niches. (Which, again, makes sense–being an ecological niche specialist is more “efficient”–you are also more likely to go extinct…)

      Reply ↓
9. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 8:25 am

   “The Russians Remember the Great Patriotic War, the US Does Not”

   ‘At the start of World War II in 1939, the population of the United States was approximately 130 million people. By way of comparison, the population of Russia and Ukraine (where the bulk of the battles with the Nazis were fought) was 150 million (110 million Russians and 40 million Ukrainians). In other words, Russia lost 20% of their population in World War II, while the US, in the war with the Nazis, lost .1%. So here is the question… How would Americans have reacted after losing 20% of their population in a war with Germany’

   I think that it is worse than this. Imagine if Japan had invaded the west coast of the US and had taken nearly everything up to the Rocky Mountains. And most of those millions of American deaths had occurred in this occupied area. Every city and town smashed or burnt, anything of value stripped or stolen and sent back to Japan, massacres everywhere you looked, American guerrilla fighters striking back leading to reprisal murders on the civilians of any town near such an attack. Now how would Americans have reacted to that after the end of the war.

   Reply ↓
   1. caucus99percenter May 9, 2025 at 10:41 am

      As things deteriorated, the baser instinct might well have been to take it out on the Japanese-Americans in concentration camps like Manzanar, abusing and starving them or simply killing them piecemeal or en masse, the way Israel is treating Gazans today. Even though the vast majority of the people sent there were loyal American citizens, in no way responsible for imperial Japan’s predations.

      Reply ↓
   2. Offtrail May 9, 2025 at 7:04 pm

      A better comparison would be up to the Mississippi.

      Reply ↓
      1. ambrit May 10, 2025 at 12:04 am

         Like in Phillip K Dick’s novel “The Man in the High Castle?”

         Reply ↓
10. Christopher Smith May 9, 2025 at 8:31 am

    “FBI opens formal investigation of NY Attorney General Letitia James”

    How dumb do you have to be to lie on a mortgage application after making an enemy of the President? I have come to the conclusion that elected officials cannot help themselves.

    Reply ↓
    1. Randall Flagg May 9, 2025 at 11:48 am

       And let’s not forget, “No one is above the law!”

       I hope that continually gets thrown into her face since she and so many others used it non stop.

       Reply ↓
11. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 8:35 am

    “Gates on Musk: ‘World’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children’ ”

    Bill Gates demands to know who the hell Elon Musk thinks that he is. ‘Killing the world’s poorest children? That’s my job.’

    Reply ↓
    1. jo6pac May 9, 2025 at 9:58 am

       Nailed it on gates

       Reply ↓
12. Es s Ce Tera May 9, 2025 at 8:46 am

    re: Pope Leo XIV heralds a renewal of Catholic social justice Unherd

    In my view the author makes too much of the name, Leo, and not enough of the fact that this pope is of the Augustinian order. Choosing a charism is choosing how you are called to serve God or, as many believe, being chosen by God to serve in a particular way. Expect to see a pope influenced by Augustine’s City of God, or by Augustine’s particular theological frames and leanings.

    And this is important, might be a cause for concern. A Thomist might see creation as God’s heaven on earth, which we are to care for, and our role is as stewards of the earth, nature as the book written by God. An Augustinian might see creation as merely a passing on the way to something greater, to an otherworldly heaven, and the earthly City of God is and always will be human, broken, sinful, only God’s grace can save it (as opposed to us actively trying to care for the earth).

    I think this pope, however, is known for his views on climate change, which is a relief. I’m happy with the choice, I think a majority of the church sighed in relief, most want a progressive pope, but I still have a nagging doubt on how the Augustinian aspect will play out on the environmental front.

    But yes, a Leo and an Augustinian would put much emphasis on caring for the poor and trying to mend what is broken about society.

    Reply ↓
    1. Smith, M. J. May 9, 2025 at 11:56 am

       I have a dream: After the Popemobile is refurbished as a mobile health clinic, Leo XIV should personally deliver it to Gaza, and act as its driver for a month.

       This would not only perfectly fulfill Francis’s final bequest, but also ensure that the Israelis will not blow it to smithereens on arrival, as they do for Red Cross/Crescent vehicles. It might also serve as partial atonement for the Church’s disgraceful silence during that other genocide eight decades ago.

       Reply ↓
       1. Es s Ce Tera May 9, 2025 at 1:16 pm

          Remember what happened to Christ? That’s what the Israelis would do to Leo XIV if he tried that.

          And what they’re currently doing to the Palestinians.

          Reply ↓
          1. Smith, M.J. May 9, 2025 at 3:27 pm

             Not sure that today’s Israelis would want to repeat the Sanhedrin’s mistake. Either way is a lose/lose situation for them. Do nothing and suffer a severe PR hit isolating yourself even more from the rest of the world. Assassinate the American leader of 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide, and you invite military retaliation from your former allies.

             Whatever the Israeli response, I can think of no other action by this pope that would do more to help the Palestinians. Can you?

             Reply ↓
             1. ambrit May 10, 2025 at 12:07 am

                Declare a new Crusade to free the Holy Sepulcher from the clutches of the vile unbelievers?

                Reply ↓
       2. Alex Cox May 9, 2025 at 2:26 pm

          Good idea! If the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury would go to Gaza and stand in solidarity with the suffering, the world would be an entirely different place.

          Reply ↓
          1. Revenant May 9, 2025 at 7:49 pm

             After my experience at the VE Day service yesterday, which ignored fascist Ukraine and genocidal Israel, the Archbishop of Canterbury can go there and stay there. The Church of England is Eyeless in Gaza.

             Reply ↓
       3. Smith, M.J. May 9, 2025 at 3:44 pm

          H/t Sam Husseini

          https://www.globalresearch.ca/new-pope-go-gaza-now/5886462

          Reply ↓
       4. none May 9, 2025 at 4:00 pm

          The Popemobile being converted is one that was already somewhere in the region (maybe not Gaza specifically). It’s not being delivered from Rome or anything like that.

          Reply ↓
    2. Harold May 10, 2025 at 9:16 am

       The Augustinians were associated with intellect and science. They initiated the Italian Renaissance. The poet Petrarch, “the first modern man”, was associated with the Augustinians. Luther was an Augustinian. May not be a bad thing that Francis & Leo are Augustinians.

       Reply ↓
13. Lieaibolmmai May 9, 2025 at 8:58 am

    “Pope Leo XIV heralds a renewal of Catholic social justice”

    I am very happy about the conclave choosing Pope Leo XIV and may go back to the Catholic Church as a result. I knew the Pope Francis was dying and I was waiting to see what direction the church was going to take with the new Pope.

    Reply ↓
    1. Colonel Smithers May 9, 2025 at 9:17 am

       Thank you.

       This may be of interest: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/05/09/pope-leo-xiv/.

       Reply ↓
       1. Revenant May 9, 2025 at 7:52 pm

          Lol, Rerum Novarum does not mean “if Revolutionary Change”, it means ” Of New Things”.

          One has to wonder about Richard Murphy sometimes!

          The rest of his article is OK after that initial faceplant.

          Reply ↓
14. upstater May 9, 2025 at 9:08 am

    Brooklyn College demonstration opposing Zionist genocide ends with police violence:

    “It was unclear what prompted the officers to move in aggressively”

    Perhaps police commissioner Jessica Tisch has the answer?

    Reply ↓
    1. cyclist May 9, 2025 at 1:29 pm

       More NYC police overreach (not Gaza related): https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/05/06/as-nypds-criminal-crackdown-on-cyclists-expands-it-grows-more-absurd-victims

       Reply ↓
15. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 9:26 am

    “Trump says 10% is floor for tariffs; ‘Some will be much higher’”

    I think that we are going to be in need of a new measure to judge the impact of Trump’s tariffs. You have, for example, obtuse ones in other fields like the number of Noble Prizes won by Americans to show what lead the US has in science. So I would put one together to show the number of contracts Americans have signed with the corporations, institutes, governments and businesses of overseas nations. I would suspect a decrease in the number of contracts signed as having business dealings with Trump America is just too complicated and too much hassle to deal with. In business you need certainty, not weekly chaos. You have had this for years now with overseas banks not happy dealing with any American accounts due to the laws that they have to deal with to satisfy US legal requirements lest they fall afoul of ferocious American penalties. But this new measure would look at all commercial relations to see if the number is increasing or decreasing. I would suspect the later.

    Reply ↓
    1. bertl May 9, 2025 at 9:33 pm

       Yes. Trump has done to the US what the EU has done to its member states. China and Russia seem to come out ahead every time. Western supply chains became inflexible for purely economic reasons – always go for the lowest price without built-in redundancy – which made supply chains inherently inflexible. China and Russia are more concerned with developing relationships and placing orders with competing suppliers which means that their supply chains are highly flexible because of a high level of redundancy. What is interesting is that, according to a former Russian student, when the SMO began, the Russian government didn’t realise that they possessed this strength, both as buyer and supplier, whereas the EU and the US did not and still don’t.

       Reply ↓
16. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 9:43 am

    #sports desk

    The NFL announced that they will be expanding to include the first ever international franchise, based in the Philippines.

    The new team will begin play in 2026, under ownership of Donald J. Trump. The team will be called the “Manila Folders.”

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 9:50 am

       Lemme guess. As there is another country involved, you will no longer have the final Super Bowl game but the final World Super Bowl game.

       Reply ↓
       1. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 10:25 am

          Halftime show: Nick Cave and the Cavemen.

          Reply ↓
          1. ambrit May 10, 2025 at 12:09 am

             Will the Angels weep?

             Reply ↓
       2. Henry Moon Pie May 9, 2025 at 6:56 pm

          It’s going to be the Golden Bowl now. It’s only fitting for a Golden Age perched safely under a Golden Dome (and we ain’t talkin’ Jerry’s grounded spaceship in Dallas).

          Reply ↓
          1. mahna May 10, 2025 at 8:44 am

             In Trump’s world everything is golden, cards, domes, toilet bowls, not to mention the showers.

             Reply ↓
    2. Michael Fiorillo May 9, 2025 at 10:50 am

       Trump has already been deeply involved in the demise of one football league (the USFL).

       Would that he help bring down the NFL.

       Reply ↓
       1. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 10:56 am

          Yes, I had forgotten that episode. Was it the N.Y. Generals that he owned? They signed Herschel Walker to a big contract, IIRC.

          Trump at one point was mentioned as a bidder for the Buffalo Bills, my beloved hometown team, after Ralph Wilson passed.

          Whew … I dodged a bullet there, at the expense of the nation. At least I have a decent team to root for, if not a country.

          Reply ↓
          1. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 11:02 am

             Correction – it was the New Jersey Generals.

             https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/13255737/five-things-know-donald-trump-usfl-experience

             Reply ↓
17. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 10:25 am

    “Trump Speaks With Zelensky, Calls for ‘Unconditional’ 30-Day Ukraine Ceasefire”

    Trump still talks about maybe walking away but nobody believes him anymore. He has bolted the US to the Ukraine for at least the next ten year or more. So now he want Russia to lose the war thus he is calling for an unconditional ceasefire for 30 days. The Ukraine will not honour it but Trump will never call them out on any attacks that they launch like he never called them out on the Ukrainians attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure during that 30 day truce. And by the time the 30 days is up Trump will demand that it must be permanent now with NATO, errr, European troops going in to secure the Ukraine while they re-equip and retrain the Ukrainian army. You can guess the rest. But Russia knows all this so is not buying it. Trump has just said that he will ask China to help with negotiations. By that I think that he will offer tariff relief if they get the Russians to stop the war. Well Xi has just dropped the hammer on Trump about this. ‘Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for the root causes of the Ukraine conflict to be eliminated as a way to achieve a lasting peace’

    https://www.rt.com/news/617100-china-russia-ukraine-xi/

    Reply ↓
    1. nyleta May 9, 2025 at 6:13 pm

       NOTAM issued for Kapustin Yar for after the solemn remembrance. US embassy in Kiev warning of possible air strikes. Is Mr Trump still going to let himself be isolated in the Middle East with wars breaking out in all directions ? He should stay home and send underlings.

       Reply ↓
    2. bertl May 9, 2025 at 9:37 pm

       Well, President Trump has always been a bit of a joker, albeit with a liitle bit of a mean streak, but this time he is really Trumping it up to the max.

       Reply ↓
    3. SocalJimObjects May 9, 2025 at 11:08 pm

       Will Trump pull a Red Wedding during his upcoming meeting with Putin? Or perhaps Zelensky and Netanyahu will collaborate on a big stunt eliminating two birds with one stone?

       Reply ↓
18. AG May 9, 2025 at 10:25 am

    re: Covid study Greece

    The study about Covid in Athens hospitals, from April:
    Deaths “due to” COVID-19 and deaths “with” COVID-19 during the Omicron variant surge, among hospitalized patients in seven tertiary-care hospitals, Athens, Greece
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-98834-y?error=cookies_not_supported&code=fae88ed0-6a95-486e-a53a-6030af47b22c

    It´s discussed in Germany only now. So sorry, if this is duplicate info.

    Abstract:

    In Greek hospitals, all deaths with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test are counted as COVID-19 deaths. Our aim was to investigate whether COVID-19 was the primary cause of death, a contributing cause of death or not-related to death amongst patients who died in hospitals during the Omicron surge and were registered as COVID-19 deaths. Additionally, we aimed to analyze the factors associated with the classification of these deaths. We retrospectively re-viewed all in-hospital deaths, that were reported as COVID-19 deaths, in 7 hospitals, serving Athens, Greece, from January 1, 2022, until August 31, 2022. We retrieved clinical and laboratory data from patient records. Each death reported as COVID-19 death was characterized as: (A) death “due to” COVID-19, or (B) death “with” COVID-19. We reviewed 530 in-hospital deaths, classified as COVID-19 deaths (52.4% males; mean age 81.7 ± 11.1 years). We categorized 290 (54.7%) deaths as attributable or related to COVID-19 and in 240 (45.3%) deaths unrelated to COVID-19 In multivariable analysis The two groups differed significantly in age (83.6 ± 9.8 vs. 79.9 ± 11.8, p = 0.016), immunosuppression history (11% vs. 18.8%, p = 0.027), history of liver disease (1.4% vs. 8.4%, p = 0.047) and the presence of COVID-19 symptoms (p < 0.001). Hospital stay was greater in persons dying from non-COVID-19 related causes. Among 530 in-hospital deaths, registered as COVID-19 deaths, in seven hospitals in Athens during the Omicron wave, 240 (45.28%) were reassessed as not directly attributable to COVID-19. Accuracy in defining the cause of death during the COVID-19 pandemic is of paramount importance for surveillance and intervention purposes.

    Reply ↓
19. pjay May 9, 2025 at 10:26 am

    – ‘German companies assume responsibility for Nazi rise to power’ – RT

    I don’t question this historical claim. But in the current German context this confessional reminds me of a bunch of corporate execs admitting to their “white privilege” in a Robin DiAngelo seminar. It certainly serves a similar political purpose. Admit your collective guilt and keep those right-wing racist proto-Nazis out of power! Of course it also provides cover for enforcing silence on Israeli genocide. Never again!

    Reply ↓
    1. ambrit May 10, 2025 at 5:04 am

       And what about the Wall Street companies that bankrolled the NASDAP in the 1920s? The Fuhrer and Company posed as the best “insurance” for the bankers to hold the Evil Commies at bay.
       My “favourite” is IBMs role in facilitating the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. (They supplied the machinery, through a German subsidiary, that made the identification and “collection” of the targeted peoples feasible.) Then IBM sent employees along with American troops into Germany at the end to secure and protect the company’s physical plant “investment.”
       It is no wonder that C S Lewis portrayed H—, in “The Screwtape Letters” as a vast, soulless bureaucracy. He understood the “banality of Evil” before Arendt coined the phrase.
       Stay safe. Think for yourself.

       Reply ↓
20. Quintian and Lucius May 9, 2025 at 10:47 am

    El Presidente del Norte’s apparent oscillations on every conceivable policy issue (sans perhaps immigration) are so regular as to be viable for use in an ostentatious, guillotine watch-eligible timepiece. This movement (gently, and perhaps not materially on a moral level) away from Israel resembles exactly the movement away from Ukraine that the administration seemed to be conducting just days ago, only to return today to a bellicose Zelenskyyite posture because some dubious investment deal’s been agreed. So what exactly is it Trumpomundo wants from Israel? Investment properties (mostly “vacant” lots, or fixer uppers consisting largely of debris, some of it organic) in the carthagized Gaza strip? Or is this just so much big-boying directed at Bibi (has Trump given him the “little” label yet or did he stop doing that after his first term)?

    Anyway some of us never learn our lesson; there’s a petite, desiccated angel of optimism in me that gets a little color in her cheeks whenever dear leader does anything even approximating the right and moral thing; of course her opposite the tremendous cynical beast demands to know how one single Palestinian will be helped by this performance and is answered with silence.

    Reply ↓
    1. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 10:53 am

       Just thinking that as far as the Gaza strip goes (or went) the level of toxic substances in the ground from 18 months of non-stop bombing, fires, lead from bullets, and possible use of banned chemical weapons by the IDF may have rendered the environmental cost of cleanup so high as to render it essentially “worthless” to any developer.

       Perhaps Trump finally figured that out?

       As far as Ukraine, what Trump is doing is negotiating with himself, or “thrashing.” That’s what people do in hopeless situations where they have no good options.

       Reply ↓
       1. vao May 9, 2025 at 12:50 pm

          Do not forget rotting corpses, burnt synthetic materials, the seawater Israelis used to flood Hamas tunnels, and the systematic destruction of agricultural land. By now, groundwater in Gaza is probably unusable for all types of consumption — domestic, agricultural, and industrial.

          Anyway, Gaza will not be developed as a real-estate moghul like Trump envisions, but only set up as an off-limits enclave with the minimum necessary infrastructure to sustain the exploitation of off-shore gas fields. Nothing more.

          Reply ↓
          1. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 1:21 pm

             It could also be re-purposed as a giant open-air prison to hold all the immigrants and other “undesirables” that Europe and the US want to deport.

             Fence it off, use tech like drone swarms and remote-controlled machine guns to mow down anyone who tries to even approach the perimeter.

             Bibi would probably sign that deal yesterday.

             Reply ↓
             1. vao May 9, 2025 at 3:06 pm

                Too risky, because of the many tunnels that the “inmates” may repurpose for untoward uses.

                Restoring Gaza and refurbishing it (whether as a prison, a seaside resort, or a settler paradise) will prove so onerous and require so many resources that it will not be done.

                Israeli will just clear some space at the end of the Netzarim corridor, build a small harbour, install a pipeline terminal, erect some prefabricated houses for the on-site technical personnel, and enclose everything else behind a wall. This also fits the colonialist mentality of the Israelis: evict the natives, raze everything to the ground, and then engage in extractive exploitation with no intent to set up an environment suitable for living.

                Reply ↓
21. Tom Stone May 9, 2025 at 11:08 am

    It seems to me that allowing NAZI’s and AZOV types to participate in the “Liberation Day” parades is entirely appropriate in both the UK and the USA.
    Look at the ICE video in today’s links, then tell me I’m wrong.

    Reply ↓
    1. Quintian and Lucius May 9, 2025 at 11:28 am

       In fact on a second watch that video seems to evoke the same energy as some of those mobilization skirmishes in Ukraine, only the objects of the sentence here are women and children rather than young men. What morbid symmetry.

       Reply ↓
22. Tom Stone May 9, 2025 at 11:35 am

    I did a quick read of the CFAA ( Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) and putting people on the SS Master Death List that you know are alive looks like a clear violation, not that I expect any of Elons Evil Elves to be prosecuted for their crimes.
    Perhaps one of the Lawyers in the Commentariat can weigh in?

    Reply ↓
23. Jason Boxman May 9, 2025 at 12:03 pm

    Camryn Kinsey on Fox News begins to freeze and stutter her words before passing out on air and the host just carries on with the show is very 2025.

    Just stops talking and falls over.

    Maybe this happened sometimes pre-COVID? I dunno. Are we just seeing more of it because people are looking, or is this really happening more?

    Doesn’t bode well if the latter, particular for pilots, long haul truck drivers, anyone that drives an automobile, and so on.

    https://x.com/acrossthemersey/status/1920845526355870151

    Reply ↓
    1. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 7:47 pm

       Thud!

       In all seriousness I hope that young woman is OK.

       Reply ↓
24. Expat2uruguay May 9, 2025 at 12:37 pm

    “Washington” is so worried about Burkina Faso’s new revolutionary “leader” that the Mint Press doesn’t even put his name* in the headline!!
    *IBRAHIM TRAORÉ, 37-year-old PRESIDENT. (Now if I could only define “Washington”, but I digress)

    This 15 minute video from one month ago gives the best introduction to some of the range of projects that Traoré and his government are spearheading. (heh)

    https://youtu.be/TUD1fouJ2ho

    I predict that if he is not assassinated (18 attempts to date), then we here on NC are going to be talking a lot more about this revolutionary “leader” and what he’s doing to scare “Washington”. Also, keep in mind that his successes will be a model for other countries in Africa, particularly since he is a foundational leader of the Alliance of Sahel States

    Obligatory Wikipedia link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_Traor%C3%A9

    Reply ↓
    1. Balan Aroxdale May 9, 2025 at 2:58 pm

       Interesting, though the space program may be a bridge too far.

       But where is Burkina Faso going to get the money needed for all these developments? I’m assuming China and/or Russia? Note this isn’t the first time a post-coup African leader has taken out loans and promised industrial development and modernization. But still it is at least ONE example of a country actually talking about industrial development vs succumbing to the end as is done in the west nowadays.

       Reply ↓
       1. Polar Socialist May 9, 2025 at 3:27 pm

          I think Traoré is nationalizing the gold mines one by one, which could technically double the government revenue. Burkina Faso is also quite rich in manganese, zinc, lead, copper, nickel and limestone, but I’ve understood that the main priority is now national food security/independence.

          If that succeeds, Burkina Faso can in principle quite easily pay most it’s debts. They also likely will get rid of the Françafrique, which is pegged to Euro and thus works against development and economic sovereignty in West Africa. It’s also very difficult to estimate the real status and the trends of the local economy, if the currency is stabilized externally from Europe.

          Reply ↓
25. Sub-Boreal May 9, 2025 at 1:20 pm

    File under “Enshittification Watch”:

    Though retired, I still get some emails from my former academic employer, and today we were told that because Zoom is going to triple its licensing fee, the school is switching to MS Teams. While I hate seeing any more revenue going to Bill Gates, they probably had no choice.

    Reply ↓
    1. Acacia May 9, 2025 at 10:38 pm

       Relatedly, MS recently sh*tcanned Skype, and all users are being told their future is on Teams. -_-

       Reply ↓
       1. ambrit May 10, 2025 at 5:11 am

          With MS, our “future” appears to be on Linux.
          I’m getting good and tired of enduring constant “nudges” to upgrade to Premium, sign up for “notifications,” put all of our information “on the cloud,” and install all of the Predatory Apps out there.
          I remember when computers were supposed to make life easier for us all. Ah, such naivety, such innocent times.
          Stay safe. Always clear your caches.

          Reply ↓
26. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 1:35 pm

    He’s Jerkin’ all our chains, gang

    (Sung to the tune of “Chain Gang” by Sam Cooke)

    Uh! Fore!

    (I hear someone sayin’)

    uh, ah! uh, ah! uh, ah!

    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang
    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang

    All day long he’s swinging … “uh!” “ah!” “uh” “fore!” “uh” “ah!” “uh!” “ah”
    (Don’t you know)
    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang
    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang

    All day long he golfs so hard, ’til the sun is going down
    Working on the fairways and sand traps, and wearing, wearing a crown
    You hear him moaning about unfair trade
    Then you hear somebody say ..

    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang
    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang

    Can’t you hear him tweetin’ – hmmm, I’m goin’ home one of these days, I’m going home
    See my woman whom I love so dear, but meanwhile, I’ve got to gaslight here

    That’s the sound of the Don, jerkin’ all our chains, gang
    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang

    (all day long he’s sayin’)

    Ah my work is so hard, oh give me my 9-iron, my wrist hurts so bad … .
    Whoa, my my, my work is so hard ..

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBn5aIfZElE

    Reply ↓
    1. Martin Oline May 9, 2025 at 9:18 pm

       Very inventive and quite insightful, I like it.

       Reply ↓
27. Lefty Godot May 9, 2025 at 2:05 pm

    India defends missile strike that killed civilians in Pakistan by “claiming they killed only ‘terrorists,’ not civilians.” So, India and Israel, twins separated at birth?

    Reply ↓
    1. AG May 9, 2025 at 2:18 pm

       Thats what Craig Murray would argue…

       Reply ↓
    2. Jessica May 9, 2025 at 5:30 pm

       Convergent evolution

       Reply ↓
28. AG May 9, 2025 at 2:19 pm

    re: Germany – AfD countering discussion over ban

    BERLINER ZEITUNG
    machine-translation

    “Hands off citizenship”: This is why AfD politician Krah breaks with nationalist ideas
    After the AfD was classified as “certainly right-wing extremist,” Maximilian Krah surprisingly calls for a reversal of remigration. This is a strategic consideration.
    https://archive.is/xVEFm

    Reply ↓
29. Unironic Pangloss May 9, 2025 at 2:36 pm

    >>>>US universities are recruiting Indian and Nigerian students to replace Chinese. It’s not working.

    The US has too many diploma mills. There I said it.

    And while in my ideal world, every 19 y.o. would be LARPing “Dead Poets Society” the real world is not like that….and the median 19 y.o. high school graduate is not ready for a rigorous liberal arts education.

    Community college and vocational training is the best for everyone.

    But there are too many PMC jobs rolled up in the diploma mills—hence this constant need to find gullible full-paying, non-US students.

    YMMV

    Reply ↓
    1. Balan Aroxdale May 9, 2025 at 3:01 pm

       >>>>US universities are recruiting Indian and Nigerian students to replace Chinese. It’s not working.

       Hard to sell university tuition when your biggest education stories are about how many students heads your police are cracking in.

       Reply ↓
       1. wol May 9, 2025 at 3:39 pm

          Upside Down World (cracked heads)

          YouTube short: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Bdkg4l-A3vE

          Reply ↓
30. Alice X May 9, 2025 at 3:25 pm

    >Budget increases vs cuts – Polygraph

    So I just eyeballed the graph but it looks like $151b in cuts vs $160b in increases. A shell game? The grift is in and you can see the winners and losers.

    The piece delves into some additional detail.

    Corporate Welfare™ over social welfare with more social control, what was old is new again, and augmented.

    Reply ↓
    1. ambrit May 9, 2025 at 10:51 pm

       That’s why I anticipate the return of the old Union Bombers. Not the semi=crazed loners like Ted Kaczynski, but the more organized “disruption experts” like the Steel Workers Union of the turn of the Twentieth Century.
       (Kazynski is reputed to have been one of the “experimental subjects” of Operation MKUltra. So, that was a case of ‘blowback’ being a b—h.)
       The real Unions were much more “confrontational” than theory admits to today.
       America will take an entire generation to recover from the damage this Administration is doing to the social fabric of the nation. (And I speak as an early supporter of the man. I knew he was a bog standard Republican, but didn’t expect such reactionary fanaticism from his regime.)
       America was born from bloody revolution. It will have to be reborn the same way.

       Reply ↓
31. amfortas the hippie May 9, 2025 at 4:39 pm

    adjacent to wolfgang streek’s thing:
    https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii152/articles/ross-douthat-condition-of-america

    i like Douthat, as far as “conservatives” go.(ie: he’s among a peck of them that are welcome around my fire, to jaw about stuff, eat and partake of their preferred inebriant)

    Reply ↓
    1. amfortas the hippie May 9, 2025 at 6:23 pm

       and, adjacent to that:
       https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii152/articles/ed-mcnally-instruments-of-empire

       which hits my priors…dad was in the dia, in image analysis, during the last term of LBJ(65-late 69…nixon made for increased paranoia in DC, so he went to work for nasa/jsc)…a time he never talked about but twice.
       because “they made it clear that i would never, ever talk about any of that…”|

       Reply ↓
       1. AG May 9, 2025 at 7:08 pm

          thanks for the recommendations!

          Reply ↓
    2. AG May 10, 2025 at 6:40 am

       Reading Streeck with hindsight makes matters even more insane.
       “(…)
       All in all, between January and June 2024, more than three million people took part in about 1,200 anti-AfD demonstrations across Germany.
       (…)”
       I know not a single German personally who was critical of these demonstrations.

       Considering how shockingly this country has changed in 30 years (it always has been a rather odd place) hypocrisy of such scale “(…)200,000 people demonstrated for ‘diversity and democracy’ and against a Rechtsruck (shift to the right)(…)” is sickening.

       And this is German intellectual life in a nutshell:
       “(…)a pro-democracy government-funded non-governmental organization named Correctiv(…)”.

       I remember around 2014 I was preparing a lecture at my college about sources and organisations for investigative journalism. I was handed an initial list (which I subsequently ignored) with a “CORRECTIV” on it. I had never heard about them (focused more on USA), but reading the name I immediately sensed this was a fishy, deeply dishonest undertaking.

       Reply ↓
32. Tom Stone May 9, 2025 at 5:30 pm

    I had an interesting conversation with a neighbor earlier today.
    Vivienne is in her late 60’s or early 70’s and you cold use her picture to illustrate what a moderate Republican Woman in her 60’s looks like.
    Always perfectly coiffed hair, perfect (low key) makeup, always color coordinated, always erect posture and always courteous.
    We talked about a few neutral subjects and then I asked how she felt about Musk and DOGE.
    She said “Whoever kills Musk will be a bigger Hero than Luigi Mangione”.
    At first I was surprised and then I realized that she is an old fashioned Conservative and probably not anomalous among traditional Republicans.

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 6:34 pm

       As a young woman she probably voted for the Reagan Republican party in the 80s but now no longer recognizes her party anymore. I suppose that a lot of older Republican voters feel the same way.

       Reply ↓
33. Alice X May 9, 2025 at 6:40 pm

    Lest we forget, the complete blockade of Gaza resumed on March 2. There has been nothing inbound since then. No food, no water, no medical supplies, no fuel…nothing. What ever capabilities they have had has been bombed into rubble.

    Gazans are starving to death, and I weep to no avail.

    Reply ↓
    1. Frank May 9, 2025 at 9:21 pm

       It’s painful to read about this extermination campaign.
       Especially since the individual reader can do precious little to stop it.
       It makes me feel sick.

       Reply ↓
34. AG May 9, 2025 at 7:31 pm

    Since Taibbi addresses the subject again:

    “(…)
    Ben Kawaller yesterday wrote about the phenomenon of activists refusing to engage with potentially hostile media. Once, I believed journalists should never do the same. I thought reporters should always engage, even if you know you’re going to take a beating. Now, I’m not sure:
    (…)”

    here is Kwaller´s piece:
    https://www.racket.news/p/i-tried-to-cover-a-may-day-protest

    From my own long ago experience – when Patriot Act had just been introduced and its German counterpart I tried to do something not dissimilar to what Kwaller did. My experience was the same.
    Almost 25 years ago.

    And my personal sympathies ran very much with the antifa subject of my project.

    Due to various reasons, including this hostility, I ended up never going through with my thing. Yes I was pissed.
    Only later I understood that I would have had to really introduce myself well before doing my project and gain their trust (actually that´s the professional way to do it).

    Antifa felt under siege and in a permanent state of emergency – in fact understandably so. They suspected everyone. That this would include me was of course unbelieveable from my POV as someone who too had had his encounters with the police.

    But now back to here and now – what about the 90% of the MSM? Those are NOT Antifa leftists.

    Taibbi and Kawaller are surely aware that they could never in their life do a sincere documentary about the NYT or the WaPo or with CNN. And if they would be allowed the generic responses they would receive would be so embarrassingly pointless that their entire project would turn into a joke.

    The empire is the enemy here. To pick on leftists of whatever staunch position is still somehow missing the forest for one simple tree.

    Taibbi does tend to recreate a false bias if one looks at the bigger picture.
    The discourse has moved so much to the right with Reagan.

    They complain about Antifa not wanting to talk to them. So what?
    These people have zero power. No money, no arms, no force, no government agency. Nothing.

    Pick a fight with Pentagon, with the Times, with the White House, with DHS, NSA, STRATCOM, FBI, CIA.
    Or those huge corporations he wrote some of his books about. Those entities haven´t disappeared.

    Don´t complain about the Deep State and then spend your time bickering with some (pseudo)leftists who nobody cares about except some petty FBI agents.

    This journalism is not gonna change anything and it is not enlightening. It might offer an “experience” as in going to the movies or reading a novel. But nothing well worth “political power analysis”.
    There is no such thing as “neutrality” in communication.
    Taibbi should know that…

    Reply ↓
35. AG May 9, 2025 at 7:48 pm

    re: India – Pakistan War

    On the Brink?
    by Tariq Ali

    03 May 2025
    https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/on-the-brink-2

    Reply ↓
    1. Alice X May 9, 2025 at 10:14 pm

       Thank you! Reading now…

       Reply ↓
    2. Jason Boxman May 10, 2025 at 12:35 am

       India and Pakistan Escalate Attacks to Military Bases

       Pakistan accused India of launching air-to-surface missiles that targeted at least three bases. Soon after, Pakistani officials said retaliatory action against Indian bases had begun.

       Reply ↓
36. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 8:54 pm

    Anybody remember how the Sycamore Gap tree in the UK was cut down in an act of mindless vandalism? They got the two goofballs that did it and they were not a bunch of kids but two men in their 30s who did it for a laugh and now they have been found guilty. They tried to lie their way out of it but they were filming what they were doing. Morons, the both of them-

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/may/09/two-men-found-guilty-of-felling-sycamore-gap-tree

    Reply ↓
37. skippy May 9, 2025 at 9:00 pm

    Everything is Bertrand Russell quote – “First, they fascinate the fools. Then, they muzzle the intelligent.”

    Just watching close family and friends back in the US over the time I have been in Oz [95] is just surreal. Absolutely no self introspection as the US can do no wrong as its citizans, not in the Financial Elite, get ground down. Always put down to an existential threat or ones own personal failings as rational economic agent.

    Even my own 11 mo younger brother who served in both the Army and Marines, as a tech sort, now has one of those American flags morphing into a Israeli flags as his FB avatar. Worst he has now hyphenated his last name to include our passed away, long time ago, Jewish step dad/grandfathers name onto our birth fathers name. A. it has political/social clout in the state he is living in. B. Can now seamlessly claim title to both S. Baptist and Jewish theology for the big win. Big long time fan of Musk and Trump so they can purify the nation and dominate the world.

    BTW all my vast contacts in Oz are aghast at what is going on over there, most have visited/worked/have close friends and family there. As it said over here – lost the plot …

    Reply ↓