Links 8/1/2026

Dear patient readers, Because things on the Iran war front, at least as of this writing, seem to be at the simmer rather than full boil level, you are getting a supersized Links with a generous Iran War section rather than an Iran war post. The (super)natural history of haloes Sacred Images Project (Micael T) How To Be a Little Less of an Idiot AporiaLab (Micael T). Um, as I understand it, Theravada Buddhism is not compassionate. Beggars on the street should not be helped because they must be there to work off their bad karma. Should We Be Well-Rounded… or Hyper-Focused? Anya Leonard What’s the point of academic freedom? Unsafe Science (Micael T) Sales Are So Low, California Wineries Are Burning Their Vineyards New York Times (resilc) Lab-Grown Meat: Separating the Science From the “Yuck” Skeptic (Micael T) Climate/Environment New Mexico’s clean energy success story Yale Climate Connections How El Niño could be the next big supply chain nightmare Weather Channel Gironde wildfires: what the logistical challenges behind the mass evacuations tell us The Conversation China? China’s factory activity unexpectedly contracts in July on demand slump, typhoons CNBC AI boomtowns worsen divide in China’s split-screen economy Japan Times China expresses ‘serious concern’ over latest US trade restrictions Jakarta Post In most countries, earning a PhD means writing a dissertation. Hundreds of pages of theory, research, and citations that very few people will ever read. China decided to try something different. Under a law passed in 2024, select universities can now award engineering… pic.twitter.com/JAyQh65hE6 — Mike Netter (@nettermike) July 26, 2026 Japan Bessent and the Fed help Japan reverse months of yen losses Japan Times Japan quake death toll hits 35 as auto and chip factories suspend productions Channel News Asia Koreas AI reckoning makes South Korean economy run for cover Asia Times North Korea says NATO fuel plan shows alliance preparing for war Reuters India Graham sanctions bill has bite. Trump will use it to terrorise India Indian Punchline Africa Child soldiers recount horrors of Sudan’s war and presence of Colombian mercenaries Associated Press Nigeria’s Banditry Crisis Worsens Eurasia Review Fastest growing Ebola outbreak is worsening hunger in eastern Congo, UN agency chief warns PBS Ghana hit by nationwide blackout as power plants fail BBC Libya electricity blackout protests expose country’s failing grid Aljazeera Cannibalism as a Policy Challenge Small Wars Journal O Canada South of the Border ‘To play God’: How US pressure has shattered Cuba’s healthcare Aljazeera Vultures Circling the Rubble: US Troops and Businesses Descend on Venezuela Venezuelanalysis (Robin K) European Disunion Europe makes trillion-euro bet to revive its battered industry Reuters About 60,000 migrants arrive in Ceuta in 24 hours, Spanish territory’s leader says BBC I’m sure this is nothing. Just a coincidence. https://t.co/apQXBOsr4v — Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) July 31, 2026 Holy shlit. This is real. He literally said it aloud for the whole world to hear. And still the disgusting bought and paid for shills will pretend like this is an “organic invasion” and not a literal Zionist military operation against a country unwilling to submit. https://t.co/4pVYg1C2MZ pic.twitter.com/RVRWdawZpD — Mel (@Villgecrazylady) July 31, 2026 Absolutely – this is the most dispiriting thing about the whole episode. https://t.co/bJ8i8KY0aO — John O’Brennan (@JohnOBrennan2) July 31, 2026 Spain’s migrant crisis triggers Italian call for EU travel restrictions Financial Times BREAKING: 🚨 Italy suspends Schengen Agreement, closes air and sea borders with Spain. https://t.co/8P0OS0oQyn — TRENDING ➞ 911 (@911NewsBreaks) July 31, 2026 Old Blighty Rajiv Menon KC: Contempt of Court Proceedings Garden Court Chambers. Important, actually appalling. Burnham promises ‘pragmatic’ approach to North Sea oil and gas Guardian Israel v. The Resistance Prof Marandi SLAYS the Dershowitz creature. Worth watching and learning… https://t.co/2yxjZZ0RXn — HealthRanger (@HealthRanger) July 31, 2026 Ben Gvir’s crocodiles are the latest weapon in Israel’s animal warfare on Palestinians Middle East Eye Why Are the Turkic States Drawing Closer to Israel? MultiPolar Press (Micael T) Turkey urges Iran to halt attacks on Kurdish groups Middle East Eye Iran War US Iran War Briefing: Joseph Goebbels (Sen Tom Cotton) Daniel Davis, YouTube. Good for Davis. And a companion talk: IRAN WARHAWKS: THEIR FATAL LOSING STRATEGY * * * Trump forced to pause military strikes even as Iran pounds American targets | Janta Ka Reporter YouTube. A good short recap at the top of the latest on US v. Iran attacks. ⭕️ President Donald Trump offered no clear path back to the memorandum of understanding with Iran, saying, “We just want to win,” while signaling the renewed war could continue. His remarks on the war on Iran cabinet meeting this morning: ➤ “We’re trying to be as nice as you… https://t.co/1xHb8ENpVh — Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) July 31, 2026 BREAKING: CENTCOM PLANS MASSIVE 2-WEEK BOMBING CAMPAIGN – w/ Col. Larry Wilkerson Mario Nawfal, YouTube Trump Mulls Strikes on Iran’s Oil and Power Infrastructure Larry Johnson. We pointed out that Iran’s doctrine, as revised in January 2026, now allows for pre-emptive attacks. Note Iran has already been doing this with its strikes on Iraqi Kurdistan. — OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) July 31, 2026 Pentagon Seeks $18.2 Billion in Iran War Funds for Interceptors Bloomberg The Trump Administration has utterly lost its mind: BREAKING: The US and Israel are discussing a full +5900km land blockade of Iran, with the plan requiring cooperation from Iran's 7 neighboring countries Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan to close border crossings, per Telegraph. This confirms… — The Hormuz Letter (@HormuzLetter) July 31, 2026 President Trump continues to buy into the pipe dream of “maximum pressure”. First with sanctioning as much as humanly possible with Iran. Then bombing their steel, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, and manufacturing plants. Then by imposing and blockade… oops, we removed it, sike,… — Brett Erickson (@BrettErickson28) July 31, 2026 * * * War On Iran: – U.S. (Again) Blocks Strait Traffic Moon of Alabama Iran attacked another oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz last night as it was passing through the southern route near Oman. The tanker was struck by a projectile that hit the engine room, causing it to lose control. pic.twitter.com/Bt25C3yybD — 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕻𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕤 (@SprinterPress) August 1, 2026 * * * Iran Appears to Be Blasting Amazon Data Centers Off the Map Futurism Exactly why they would not have done it. Ergo, it was an Israeli false flag operation, as the Iranian FM said. https://t.co/BNi1iDMaBu — Policy Tensor (@policytensor) July 30, 2026 Al-Monitor reports that the last remaining US forces in Iraq began pulling out of Erbil last week. They have already removed the Patriot batteries and taken them to an “undisclosed” location. — barry with the NED (@bonzerbarry) July 31, 2026 Saudi economy shrinks as Middle East conflict takes heavy toll Financial Times North Yemen civil war Wikipedia. resilc: “Rule #1 yemenis are tough mofos.” Syraqistan Clashes in Pakistan-administered Kashmir leave dozens dead. NHK Deadly attack on police checkpoint in Pakistan leaves 15 dead France24 New Not-So-Cold War An Agent of Influence Scott Ritter. Quite the kneecapping. Ritter is generally very good when he puts pen to paper, in contrast to his unevenness on YouTube. 9 killed, 28 injured in Russian attack on Ukraine’s capital Anadolu Agency British imperialism mounts escalations against Russian shipping The Communists (Robin K) ‘I killed a thousand of my men in a week!’ Events in Ukraine Russian missile destroys US firm’s Kyiv drone factory Guardian * * * Brief Frontline Report – July 30th, 2026 Marat Khairullin and Mikhail Popov Desperate for Fuel, Russia Looks to Kazakhstan for Refining Capacity OilPrice Oil Loading Again Suspended from Caspian Pipeline After Tankers Are Struck Maritime Executive Big Brother is Watching You Watch Flock Cameras Are Being Destroyed Across the US CNN X Warns Australia’s Censor Wants Reach Beyond Australia Reclaim the Net. When X has a point, you know it’s bad… Imperial Collapse Watch ⚡️ $109 MILLION F-35 CRASHES in CALIFORNIA — burned-out wreckage SMOLDERS pic.twitter.com/pZnII9a2Nm — RT (@RT_com) July 31, 2026 World War Three: The War to End Hegemony & Exceptionalism Karl Sanchez Understanding Section 219 American Conservative (resilc) Morocco Speeds Past California Issues & Insights. In fairness, pray tell where do you put the terminal in Los Angles? And what neighborhoods get the Robert Moses treatment for the tracks in and out? Trump 2.0 Let them eat SUVs: Trump White House orders fleet of luxury cars as Americans struggle Guardian FIFA president scraps plans to sell stake in World Cup Anadolu Agency How Pres. Trump Just Hung 25 Million Seniors Out to Dry MS Now Immigration Airports, nursing homes and schools brace for disruption without Haitian workers Washington Post NY migrant children face having to go it alone in immigration court Gothamist Democrats Suck How Left Will Democrats Go In 2028? That Depends on 2026 Washington Monthly. It is certain the Dems will not get as far “left” as middle of the road, Reagan era. Democrats Mobilize Over Fears Trump Will Deploy Troops to Polls NOTUS. resilc: “I guess i have to carry my shotgun?” Our No Longer Free Press A federal judge has stated that my rights were violated with the seizure of my phones, and placed the repression I experienced in the wider context of Trump's assault on press freedom Our case is moving forward thanks to the valiant work of @JeninYounesEsq and @adc https://t.co/CydZq7bYWF — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) July 31, 2026 ABC Accuses FCC of ‘Attempted Censorship’ Politico The Real Reason that Substack is Collapsing Scott Carney (Micael T) Meta is censoring Palestinian content. Here’s proof +972 He made the Washington Post editorial page uninteresting and unreadable. His job was done. https://t.co/PFT2YmmHfv — Bruce Bartlett (@BruceBartlett) July 31, 2026 Economy These satellite onshore crude oil inventory data providers can’t even get US data right, what hope will they have in getting global data right? Just because the data is available doesn’t mean it’s right. Kpler had PADD 3 show a build of 4.1 million bbls last week. EIA reported… — HFI Research (@HFI_Research) July 31, 2026 US oil inventories fall to ‘precariously low’ level as Iran war disrupts supply Financial Times Economies worldwide are bracing for another energy shock Aljazeera Oil Prices Ignore the Warnings of the Physical Markets. Refinery Crack Spreads Grow Energy News Beat US economic growth sees surprise slowdown in second quarter BBC Mr. Market Should Be More Worried Trying to make sense of Warsh FT Alphaville AI Anthropic’s Claude AI escapes to hack into three organisations BBC A fundamental flaw leaves LLMs strikingly vulnerable to attack MIT Technology Review The seven most shambolic things that happened in AI today Gary Marcus Guillotine Watch Musk’s plan to buy the midterms for the GOP Caleb Ecarma Class Warfare Social care: the fight for economic thinking Chris Dillow American workers and youth are turning towards socialism WSWS Antidote du jour (via): A bonus: This man brushes a crow and stopped, but the bird gives the brush back as it wanted more pic.twitter.com/zAjmdtMcS2 — Nature Unedited (@NatureUnedited) July 30, 2026 A second bonus: I definitely wasn’t expecting this when he offered his fish to the Bird. pic.twitter.com/AkCjNrqb07 — Johnny Midnight ⚡️ (@its_The_Dr) July 31, 2026 A third bonus: A honey badger steps in to free a leopard trapped by a poacher. pic.twitter.com/6UOzcXAZFM — Gabriele Corno (@Gabriele_Corno) July 31, 2026 And a fourth: This is Fenrir. He has not yet been successful in cuddling with the cat. But thinks if he goes slow enough she might not notice. 13/10 pic.twitter.com/seqPvOT4pA — WeRateDogs (@dog_rates) July 30, 2026 And a different sort of bonus: This man surprises his blind girlfriend with a braille marriage proposal. pic.twitter.com/OBVometlNP — The Best (@TheBestqueenx) July 31, 2026 See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here. there’s a center-alignment style issue with all of the text in this post. Fixed, apologies! re: Ukraine propaganda – analysis important After one year Frenchman and former OSCE Benoît Paré has come out with his second book, available on Amazon Ukraine : The Great Manipulation Paré with Pascal Lottaz sums up the crucial points of the book in a tour de force monologue. The details are important here. I knew most of it. But he has looked into a few things again and that makes a difference. Essentially he has probed into the evidence and nature of the manipulation behind a couple of events like the bombing of the Mariupol hospital and theatre, the Bucha narrative and Kramatorsk. I assume more appearances will follow on other podcasts. Also spread the word about the new book. Revealed: EX-OSCE Observer DESTROYS Ukraine War Lies | Benoit Pare 72 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0xLKCp_xZU Thanks! I’d get the book if a digital version were available. “Trump has singled out us Canadians for special treatment in his tariff war – there is no choice but to get nasty” One Canadian recently put it like this. If the United States can’t get along with Canadians, then which other country can they get along with. Trump and his MAGA fans took the most stable relationship that the US had which was with Canada and reduced it to mutual mistrust and hostility in only little over a year. Since Trump still wants to incorporate Canada into the US though, he can’t stand the people, then it must be all about grabbing Canada’s resources for profit. For Trump, it’s just another real estate deal. I saw that the US is banking on SK-based rare earths for ‘domestic’ magnet production. A-hem. Our quaint Canadian Cousins, in the 51st Territory. It BURNS!!! I am going to guess that, if Team Blue ever regains power, the extent of US effort toward a rapproachement with the rest of the West will be some kind of Obamaesque formulation of it is what it is, take it or leave it. After all, it’s as inconceivable to liberals as it is to Trump that they might not need us. As edifying as it would be to see this fail (“Sorry, we’re making BYD cars in Windsor”), they might be right. The West is really only comfortable in a certain kind of relationship with those people, and since those people really aren’t into that, anymore, it will be back to the arms of Daddie Dearest. I’m hoping for a Minnesota – Alberta trade. Really not funny but because the article mentions it, I will point out that it is a tiny percentage of low information cranks that are advocating for “sEpArAtIoN” and all of the leaders are grifters with a con to run, because now they need the money to keep flowing. Albertans aren’t just annoyed with “the seppies” as many folks are calling them, they are FURIOUS. Businesses that held signing events for the petition have had to shutter because they became pariahs in their own communities. Most of the Canadian “press” is foreign owned and has their own interests in hyping Alberta’s lunatic fringe, and I am telling you the facts on the ground are quite different than what you may read in the yellow press. Even platforming these people like they represent anything other than again; a small amount of mostly rural folks who have been conned, is journalistic malpractice. Everyone else, everyone, is angry at them. Everyone. Umm, redleg is a Minnesotan. Bugfix: the tag around * * * after the first paragraph isn’t closed, so it propagates to the whole post. O’Brennan X post on dispiriting reaction of European countries about Ceuta. Most people “know” that Trump-friendly Morocco was behind the events allowing, together with the people-trafficking mafias, the accumulation of potential migrants around Ceuta’s waters. Morocco has been trying to gain Trump points for its projects and it wouldn’t surprise if it has the seal of approval form the Netanyahoos. Yet, I doubt any participation of Israel happened except moral support. I was yesterday feelin very much the same as O’Brennan on the reaction by reactionary and far right Meloni’s government and the reactionary and far right Orpo’s (Finland) government. Now apparently joined by Denmark’ s supposedly left-wing Frederiksen which is the only party involved that, apparently, cannot be labelled as far-right. As I see this it pretty much looks like an spontaneous international far-right outcry against the badly isolated socialist government of Spain. That and stupid Frederiksen who probably doesn’t know what the hell she is politically speaking. The silence from others like France or Germany is also telling, IMO. They should be supporting the efforts of Spain to contain the tide. Trump-friendly Morocco you say? You want to believe it. Just the other day, Morocco renamed an 850 mile highway in their Western Sahara, which Morocco is occupying and Trump recognized, as the President Donald J. Trump Highway- https://www.democracynow.org/2026/7/31/headlines/trump_thanks_moroccos_king_for_naming_highway_in_occupied_western_sahara_after_him After the US recognizing Morocco rights on West Sahara. My opinion is that Meloni et al are also willing to gain Trump points. And after Morocco joined the Abraham Accords of course. I’m thinking that this was a Trump regime scheme to make Spain look bad and to try to eventually get a more ‘friendly’ government in power there. Naturally only vassals of Trump went against Spain. The revealing bite for me was the Danish government, you know, supposedly leftist , fearing loosing Greenland to Trump, then trying to win Trump points in the most stupid way. European leaders are miserable vassals. Ignacio: The Russia Russia thingy has caused derangement throughout Scandinavia. Think of the Swedes, supposedly such cool cucumbers, now in an eternal panic. The Norwegians, never in danger of invasion by anybody, are now engaged in cartwheels to ruin their own lives. The Danish government for a number of years has struck me mainly as the government of a small stagnant country dominated by dolts. Recall that a couple of years ago, the Danish government eliminated delivery of letters. No one writes letters in Denmark anymore, not even a post card to grandmama during vacations. Then there is the Danish forced-assimilation policy toward immigrants. I’m for integration of immigrants into society, but I’m not in favor of Lutheran fingerwagging about how to proceed, or else. Besides the general atmosphere of panic in the Northlands, I also detect an unsharpening of minds. Does Spain have an air force? Maybe they should bOmb the F*&inG sH!t out of Morocco! /s Ignacio: The actions of the Meloni government aren’t going down well with regular Italians. But to maintain war footing, one must have enemies. And Meloni, Kaja Kallas, and Ursula von der Leyen spend much effort creating enemies, real and imaginary. Antonio Tajani, the minister of foreign affairs, has embarrassed himself repeatedly. The irony (or not) is that he is supposedly chairman of Forza Italia, the political party owned by Marina and Pier Luigi Berlusconi. Yes, owned. I suspect that the quick reaction is a distraction: The scandal of th U.S. bases and the 500 or more flights continues — because it makes Italy an accessory in the war in Iran. The newest secret to explode is that some 700 Italian troops are in Saudi Arabia, and Parliament was never informed. But if an Iranian drone were to blow up around Sigonella, all of these rightwing fake tough guys and lady superheroes would go running to Pete Hegseth for aid and comfort. In short, what we are seeing is how much countries are turning into personal fiefdoms. In the past, the Italian government would have had no comment on such a matter. Of course, in the past, the use of Sigonella for 500 secret flights would have brought a government down. But here we are: No one can control or get rid of those in power. ” No one can control or get rid of those in power.” Time to resurrect the Communist Cadres. The Mussolini Treatment is appropriate. Tony Bennett, a British Labour Party politician from the 60s and 70s, suggested asking five questions about the power of the ruler/s to discover what sort of democracy you lived in: 1. What Power Have You Got? 2. Where Did You Get It From? 3. In Whose Interests Do You Exercise It? 4. To Whom Are You Accountable? 5. How Can We Get Rid Of You The possible answers to Question 5 could become a little uncomfortable for a number of politicians, oligarchs and tech bros. Quatorze Juillet springs to mind… That’s Tony Benn, not Bennett. AFAIK Tony Benn wasn’t much of a singer. (Damn you, autocorrect) Also, Antonio Benedetto was an Italian (American). ;) Sales of American wines have declined in part because LCBO, the Ontario state wine buyer, and one of the largest organizations of its kind, is no longer buying anything from the US. Sales have also declined because of the constant vilification of alcohol. And they also have declined, I believe, because no one wants to spend time with a glass. During my time as a wine salesman, we used to call wines that were one-dimensional “little harlots” because they showed you everything all at once. Good wine told you a story: It revealed itself with time in the glass. The very idea seems laughable now. And this, I would propose, is where the whole concept falls down: The entire business depends on variability. When a wine is the same every vintage, it sort of stops being wine and becomes a beverage, like Coca-Cola. There is no “Coke Spectator.” At the same time, who wants to wait for a glass of wine to tell us something about itself anymore? Especially when we’re all stressed out about keeping our jobs, wondering what idiocy the President will do next, and reading about droughts, wildfires, temperature extremes, etc. Came here to make your first point: the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) is reputed to be one of the single largest purchasers of wine in the world, and there are no American wines on its shelves nor is it shipping any to Ontario’s restaurants (over which it exercises a monopoly of alcohol sales in addition to its retail outlets). Well played, Trump … Here in Sonoma County the lack of Foreign tourists, especially Canadian Tourists, is evident. Sonoma County is hurting economically, big time. Increased input costs for the wineries at the same to me demand is cratering, add the overbuilding in residential Real Estate ( Every body builds to the same price point) and it’s going to be a rough next few years. Costco, a not-small wine buyer, has a lot of the PE owned crappy California wines in the $10 to $25 range now. As bassmule says, little harlots indeed. Easy to spot by the names. They used to offer some good off-region (such as Haut-Medoc) French reds under $10. Costco isn’t just big, it’s the largest buyer of wines in the US. I don’t think she’s there anymore, but for years Annette Alvarez-Peters, their lead wine buyer, was the most powerful person in the US wine business. And rankled some people in the business because her previous post at the company was as an auto parts buyer. https://www.winebusiness.com/news/article/100146 If you’re interested, Mike Hegseth’s Wine Economist explains how Costco does business: https://wineeconomist.com/2007/08/22/costco-and-global-wine/ Legal cannabis likely plays a role in lower wine and beer consumption in NorthAmerica. Alcohol consumption in Canada is also lower Canadians are drinking less, driving the biggest drop in alcohol sales in 20 years: StatsCan. And discretionary income in also a factor. There’s also a rise in those gin/vodka fruit flavoured mixes. Great for youngies having non-social getting plastered sessions. This feels almost like a personal attack, I’m guilty of buying stupid premixed drinks occasionally to imbibe on my own (KLG’s post earlier about alcohol dependency had me contemplating…) instead of wine, which I’d prefer, but doesn’t keep as well if I stop drinking for a little while. Legal cannabis AND the neoliberal prevention of the cultural reproduction of wine drinkers: cost, income, time, and education are all implicated. This is the end state of allowing culture to be metabolized into current cash flow, the universal goal of neoliberalism. Legal cannabis and illegal cannabis. The clever blue states with their ridiculous notions of how to legalize cannabis in ways that benefited their cronies have discovered that the networks that moved illegal pot didn’t go away just because there’s a store you can go to now. Legal prices are too high, old school growers are overgrowing and creating surpluses of very cheap, very strong cannabis. The amateur science is way advanced now, you only get the munchies if you seek out a strain to stimulate your appetite. And cannabis goes well with wine so there was always an overlap that made it easy for wine drinkers to transition, especially after vaping was legalized. But what bothers me is that the Feds are making ZERO effort to inspect/regulate all this pot. There’s a very common growth hormone used to speed growing times. You can tell if it was used if your cannabis has strange small hard pellets that look like seeds but if you crush them they’re something else. If the hormone is giving the plant side effects it would be nice to know its impact on humans. Just me being nosy, I guess. Here in central coastal CA there is still a lot of growers selling outside the legal frame work. The weather is excellent for outdoor growing and many growers are doing organic which attracts buyers. Myself, I quit alcohol since I slide into binge drinking easily. I do a little partaking of the herb, trying to use as little as possible just to take away the stress of this timeline. Here in the Emerald Triangle (Humboldt, Mendocino, Trinity) , local economies are suffering badly due to the collapse in prices of cannabis. In the last 10 or so years, I hear the price went from about 5,000 lb. to 300-600 lb. on the wholesale market Local legacy growers with reputation for organic, sustainable crops survive by charging higher prices. But the law says that farmers cannot sell directly to the public, which is a big problem for them. Wine terminology is now applied to premium cannabis: Appelation controllee and terroir https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/california-weed/article246258620.html Also, COVID has been shown to cause alcohol intolerance, at least for those with long COVID. Reference? https://assets.cureus.com/uploads/case_report/pdf/152512/20240129-14848-1gv1q2a.pdf Total 2015 wine sales in dollars was highest year ever. Total volume down from about 1.06 billion gallons in 2021 to about 830 million in 2025. Total us production down 15% at about 550 million gallons. I don’t know anyone who was a wine drinker who moved to pot or spirits. According to the statistics, older people are drinking less or aging out and younger people just don’t drink much wine anyway. A great many Canadians (including myself) haven’t really cared much for big, oaky California reds and buttery, in-your-face California whites since we were callow yutes — and many ‘nucks who still did, opted to personally boycott US wines before the various Provincial governments (BC, which now produces better wines with with more nuance than those from California, included) got in the act and made the US wine and spirits boycott official. And Canadian whisky is now having a big moment internationally with one winning last year’s prize for the best in the world. When (if?) US vintners and distillers regain access to the Canadian Market, they will be in for a disappointment, and more sophisticated palates will be a bigger factor than “elbows up”. There’s a film named “Mondo Vino” about micro-oxygenation, Robert Mondavi’s technique to “age” wines in a hurry, that has transformed wine. It’s possible that some of the best and old French wineries still use time in barrels. I did not verify the prime link. but you can find it. Did you know that every wine made after the atomic bomb era shows radioactivity exposure. Can’t fake older than that. “FIFA president scraps plans to sell stake in World Cup” Word is that they are gunning for his job now so good. That plan of his did explain something to me. This year’s seats at the World Cup were the most expensive ever in history and by a order of magnitude. People who had purchased what were supposedly prime seats discovered that their section had been relocated to the “nose-bleeds'” And who can afford to pay$10,000 or more for a seat to a game anyway. It was a fiasco. Or so I thought. What it actually was was Infantino demonstrating to private equity just some of the ways that they would be able to squeeze people for every single dollar that they had once they got control. Meaning, Infantino actually stuffed up the World Cup simply so that he could make a business case to what would potentially be football’s new owners so that they would “take care” of him. The once mighty British Empire, on which the sun was never supposed to set, instituted a quadrennial sporting event, a “mini olympics” if you will, so that its ex-colonies could have a chummy get-together from time to time. This round of the Commonwealth Games is just wrapping up in Glasgow. The host city for the event was to have been Melbourne, but when the original estimated cost of AU$2.6 billion blew out to a projected AU$6 billion the Victorian state government bailed out, making a penalty payment of AU$200 million. The Glasgow organising committee have managed to deliver a perfectly ancceptable event just using that penalty payment, without needing any additional contribution from the governments of Scotland or the United Kingdom. Is there a lesson in there somewhere for FIFA, do you think? The once mighty British Empire, on which the sun was never supposed to set, Which meant that it never rose either (h/t James Joyce) The bribes he was going to pay transformed in infantino-speak as “much needed help” for associated federations. The guy stinks. Infantino has failed and the rats are abandoning the sinking ship. He won’t last for long in his current position. A Peter Haensseler piece to complement the Karl Sanchez one: https://forumgeopolitica.com/article/the-summer-when-peace-died On the Theravada aside — Buddha did say that karma can shape this life (so maybe a beggar was stingy last time around) but emphasised that karma was not the only force at work; the Cakkavatti-Sihanada Sutta details the disaster that unfolds when rulers fail to attend to the needs of the vulnerable, rooting poverty and misery in socio-economic circumstances as well as karmic cycles. Even taking the “being poor is your karma for being stingy” loop at face value, it still stands to reason that you should give to beggars, so as to avoid the same fate in the next life, and Buddha taught this too. The karmic cycle is a reason for giving and not withholding. I’m not sure the linked article warrants the aside, as it is a warning against “I know what you need” thinking. It talks a lot about compassion so there is most assuredly a connection. From what I have seen and been told about how Theravada is practiced, it is not compassionate. If your life sucks, you did something in a past life to deserve it. There is very little in the way of charity for adults. Sure! In study groups in England I have met a lot of Buddhism-misunderstanders who claim to be practising it (and one especially every time I look in the mirror). But in Thailand, Theravada temples feed the poor and care for stray animals. I suspect you will find the same in a lot of regions where Theravada is widely practised. Dana (generosity of all kinds) is a key tenet of that branch of teaching. For anybody looking to enhance their life through the Buddha’s teachings, they do remain in one form or another, however distorted by the years and mistranslations, and always seem pretty solid when I find time to dip in and study! I agree. There is always inequality in all aspects of human relationships. Theravada is compassionate in my experience. It has helped millions of people and will continue to do so. May all beings find true happiness. Theravada cannot be compassionate. Theravada is a practice. Theravadans are compassionate, but only to themselves. The ultimate goal of Buddhism is Nibbāna, which is selfish. Your whole live is devoted to a goal of your own little center of ultimate bliss. Screw everyone else. I always ask how Buddhism helps people and it always comes around to a selfish answer; I feel more peaceful, I do not get angry, I, I, I… (I was a six year practitioner.) Mindfulness as it now used is not Theravada per se. Theravada Buddhists can practice mindfulness as can any lay person. Following the Buddha’s teachings and applying it to life’s daily needs, in my mind would and does, speaking for myself lead to compassion. If one does not take action in circumstances that migrates less suffering, then one is not practicing the teaching. However, in reflection on what different branches do as organized entities I can’t say I know of programs to feed the poor. Dogma getting in the way of right action? The vow of the bodhisattva is to forgo nirvana until all beings have reached enlightenment. Did not the Buddha show the way? It seems to me that apart from someone knowledgeable on Buddhist traditions you honor Franco Battiato with one of his beautiful songs as your username. I have little knowledge on Buddhism but I like that username and the song it refers to. E un ricordo di me, come un incantesimo. Well spotted! I thought a song about mirages and colonial histories was fitting for an economics and geopolitics blog XD How lucky we were to have Franco Battiatio The homeless here don’t even try to beg because no one will give them money or food. I don’t see feeding of poor people at temples in my secondary city. It may happen but even it seems to be conducted in a way so as not to become regular assistance, like a soup kitchen. Thais are sentimental about children so a way to provide family support is via (but still always Christian-run) charities that feed families so as to keep kids from being put up for adoption. They also provide what amounts to day care with teaching for young kids and raise money for uniforms, shoes, and books for school age children. Similarly, the big charity here for the handicapped (and it is pretty large) is “Father Ray,” as in Catholic. In other words, I see these claims of compassion as empty when they are not manifested in action. One would perhaps sooner expect compassion in association with the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal. In practice of course this also varies wildly (and often it probably has SOMETHING to do with the pre-existing culture it is inserted into), with a great many falling very short. But there are for example in Taiwan various buddhist and syncretistic buddhist-taoist sects that do a lot of social activism and welfare, often especially focused on venerating Guan Yin aka Avaloketishvara, boddhisattva of mercy and miraculous saviour from hardships and dangers of all kinds. There is definitely a long tradition of that in China though waxing and waning in strength of course. What is often called “Religious Taoism/Daoism” in the West started out with a lot of take care of the poor ethos and radical, often militant egalitarian political activism. The first known religiously driven mass revolts and civil wars in chinese history and attempts to create chiliastic, utopian, protocommunist theocracies are associated with it. A quite bloody affair in many cases of course. The buddhists much later also got in on the fun. Yes, I was specifically and only commenting about Theravada Buddhism, and not other schools. Thanks for mentioning the charitable practices in other branches of the faith. Temples and Buddhist foundations also provide charitable and volunteer emergency rescue/ambulance services in Thailand. Quite extensively, IME. More than private or state providers. I lived/worked in Thailand for 10+ and have had a Thai partner for almost 20 years, and I’m puzzled by the claim that Theravada Buddhism is not compassionate and/or there is little charity involved. Making merit – performing good deeds to achieve positive karma (tam bun) – is very important/foundationa to Thai Buddhists. Temples play a primary role in making merit, in the aforementioned emergency ambulance services as well as donations and direct donations/assistance to the needy. Every morning monks collect alms, mainly food, the surplus of which is shared with temple worshipers/visitors. I was a practicing Theravada for six years, read the whole Tripitaka, would meditated at least four hours everyday. This is the conclusion I came to as well. It trains people to be sociopaths,. The most difficult part to their path was the utter lack of caring for others. I have Schizoaffective Disorder Bipolar Type. I applied to stay at The Bhavana Society in West Virginia and they said I could not because I had a mental illness. So no enlightenment for me, have to wait for my next lives, but I cannot even get into a monastery to help get rid of the bad kamma I have? That is when I left. I feel it is fitting that Buddhism was started by a disillusioned rich prince. The lack of compassion always kept me from getting into Buddhism but doing research for a client on Theravada Buddhism and forgiveness I almost changed my mind. There’s something very appealing about a religion that lets you reject an apology if the offending party fails to properly explain what they did that was wrong, how that action harmed the offended party, and that they sincerely regret their words or actions. Hillaryesque phrases like “I’m sorry that you took offense to my words” aren’t considered to be acceptable apologies. I have a great read for you all this summer: Sun House, by David James Duncan. It is breathtaking in scope, depth, story lines, and yes, ‘religions’ and teachings. I only cried several times, and laughed my ass off in equal measure. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64000510-sun-house Thanks, will check. I’ve studied in both Theravada and Mahayana traditions. I’m kind of shocked about the negativity towards Theravada-ism. As an introvert, I found Theravada practice to fit much better with me and never gave a thought about how either school affects compassion or my feelings towards others. Mahayana practitioners were always a little too social and in my face. At the end of the day, almost no Buddhists are going to achieve enlightenment in this lifetime. And if that’s the case, the main point of either practice is to become more centered in the present, and in my opinion, that doesn’t really affect one’s viewpoint about homelessness or charity–at least here in the West. Maybe it’s different in a more Buddhist country with longer traditions. Anyway, I decided a while ago that I’m more of a Taoist :) “‘I killed a thousand of my men in a week!” This guy is a butcher. And yet Zelensky awarded the medal Hero of Ukraine to this Oleksandr Shirshin. I think that the Russians should troll him over the number of Ukrainians he has butchered and award him the Hero of the Russian Federation medal, the country’s highest honorary title. Time for a remake of Paths of Glory: “If those little sweethearts won’t face Russian bullets, then by God, they’ll face Ukrainian ones!” In the new and EU-improved version, Gen. Mireau will be a bold hero who disgraces the defeatist Kremlin agent Col. Dax. The obedient Cpt. Rousseau will open up on his own lines unhesitatingly, with pleasure. One possible emendation: As I read the Events in Ukraine post, Shirshin is the Col. Dax posting an accusation on X. In the tweet he’s quoting Shirayev, a Mireau who routinely ordered blocking troops to fire on Ukrainian soldiers unwilling to do as they were told, i.e., die in place. So this Proxy Hero of the West gallantly offered both true believers and busified alike a Гобсон’s choice, Ukrainian style. Promote him. As for Shirshin/Dax: We have ways (“tools” in Ursula-speak) of making you shut up. Enjoy your reassignment to Orikhiv. Don’t forget not to write. According to Zelensky, isn’t that pretty much all of fatal casualty Ukraine suffered pretty much over the whole month? Beggars on the street should not be helped because they must be there to work off their bad karma. This would seem to align with the western corruption, reinterpretation, and disembowelling of Christianity… see “prosperity gospel” for more info. I’ve heard it expressed that helping the poor is actually a sin: they are poor because God wants them to be poor, to suffer, and to help them is to go against God’s will. It would seem that our neoliberal capitalist state embraces this philosophy as well. Are these the same people who leave a religious tract instead of a tip in US restaurants? Despite knowing perfectly well that the min wage for tipped workers is tiny, and that the tips are a needed portion of the pay. You will know us by our love. Or the lack thereof…. Judge Napolitano and Col. Larry Wilkerson. COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Does Trump Know He Lost His War? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg5HDBv1Nkw I was startled to read the following NY Times headline this morning: “In Iran, the U.S. Appears Headed for a Strategic Defeat, Allies Fear” The delayed attribution in the headline – the style manual read this and leapt from a high window above 41st and 8th – comes after the reader has fully registered that the NY Times is saying that the US is on the road to a strategic defeat. This is not to excuse previous NYT aversion to facts but it may be a milestone. I wonder where Rupert is in his road to this realization? Probably a long way since he personally pounded the table for this war. Apologies as this is behind the paywall. Nothing on archive yet. If you wait long enough you can read both sides of any story in the NYT. And that’s just what passes for news. The opinion section is a whole other story with some arcane formula for how long a piece is up and when they close comments. Related to the Al-Monitor tweet: Ukraine out of Patriot missiles, Zelenskyy says ‘Mike Netter @nettermike In most countries, earning a PhD means writing a dissertation. Hundreds of pages of theory, research, and citations that very few people will ever read. China decided to try something different. Under a law passed in 2024, select universities can now award engineering doctorates based on physical prototypes, new techniques, or major installations instead of traditional papers. The rule is straightforward: build something that works in real life and at scale, and you can graduate.’ That’s quite brilliant that. Not for every student but there would be a lot who would be up for the challenge. And if they come up with something great, it wouldn’t hurt their future employment prospects either. Since China’s National People’s Congress contains a inordinate number of engineers, they would look kindly on this program too. I do wonder who gets the patent on a new work – the student or the hosting university. Meanwhile at the world’s third oldest university: Playbooks, plagiarism and a pig’s head: new claims surrounding a star Cambridge professor (Guardian) For more detail and some gob-smacking claims made by said ‘professor’ see: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademiaUK/s/FhHStnxGKb My favourite claim is “I ran 600 miles in 6 days” which would make him a top 15 global ultra runner. It seems as if this super-professor misunderstands pig heads. It is an invitation to the upper echelons of the British society where it is a custom to put your private parts in pig mouths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate It is not quite new. One of the best PhD dissertations I had a look at was an early, very famous one about RISC processors (about 40 years ago). The author had not just written a dissertation explaining what he proposed, he had (with a team of other researchers) made a prototype and shown it actually fulfilled the objectives set in the dissertation, and thus that the concept of RISC was justified (it was one of the ACM distinguished dissertations, IIRC). Besides, there is some mistake about what a PhD dissertation is. A PhD is supposed to demonstrate that: 1) one is knowledgeable about the state of the art, and can evaluate its contributions and limitations; 2) one can propose an innovative concept that addresses some of the shortcomings of the existing knowledge; 3) one can expose all this accurately in a comprehensible prose. In technical fields, having a prototype implementing the proposed concept is not just a plus, it is most often expected (within reasonable development efforts). The PhD defence is also there to demonstrate one can bat away arguments thrown at one’s research work. Having implemented and evaluated the prototype is of course quite helpful there… So my question would not be “wow, those Chinese sure have a practical way to go about an engineering PhD!” but “So, where do they prove they master points (1) and (3) above” Notice that the X/Twitter description talks about patents — fielding a patent requires one to establish clearly how it fits within the state of the art, for instance. Besides, I would raise the point “How come an engineering PhD in the USA no longer seems to involve some kind of prototype?” In that whole discussion, one should not forget that a PhD was intended to be a filter / training phase for researchers and academics. What engineers typically had (at least in Germanic Europe), were diplomas delivered in “Fachhochschulen”, not universities — where the technical aspects were emphasized instead of the dissertation. With Bologna and creeping credentialism, those technical high schools are now (eagerly) delivering PhDs as well. the janta ka link is wrong – leads to some Thai visa video I think this is the correct link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc2PiBsENyM Fixing! Judge Napolitano with Scott Ritter and John Kiriakou INTEL Roundtable – Weekly Wrap 31-July 4PM – John Kiriakou & Scott Ritter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPUA7v3SK3U Re: Saudi economy shrinks I am surprised the Saudis would make an admission against interest like that. As far as other economies, I did a quick check on Thailand and while its economy slowed, there doesn’t seem to be outright contraction: https://www.bot.or.th/en/news-and-media/news/news-20260731.html Vietnam seems to be doing quite well despite the war and higher energy prices. I wonder what other ME countries GDP looks like after Taco’s devastating blunder. Correct link for Saudi economy story in FT: https://archive.ph/WHge4 The first one gave me a 404 The central bank is keeping the baht high, and the locals are complaining how it hurts tourism and exports. So we are paying a tax of sorts in the interest of warding off a currency crisis. Memories of 1997 are still strong? I remember even 8 years later seeing abandoned half-built buildings in Bangkok from when developers went bust. Yves description of Trump’s policies as Insane is accurate because Trump is insane. Let that sink in for a moment. Sanity is defined by behavior, not thoughts, there’s not a single person who commutes on the Nimitz Freeway that doesn’t contemplate murder on a regular basis… Trump’s behavior is not that of a sane Man. Look at the pictures of trump over the last few Months, he is visibly deteriorating. Which implies that his behavior is likely to become more extreme. Perhaps much more extreme. No filter and no brakes and his finger is on the big red button, Hoo Boy. I always enjoy Janta Ka Reporter’s epithet: ‘the demented occupant of the White House’… Actually, “the deranged occupant of the White House.” Me too: I always enjoy his frank and direct (IMHO accurate) language. He has been using “the deranged occupant of the WH” for some time now, and it seems to be one of his trademark phrases, among others. Thanks for the links! The reporter, Rifat Jawaid, was a former BBC editor apparently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janta_Ka_Reporter Trump is one person, albeit in a position to singularly wield immense power. The Founding Fathers anticipated someone like him and provided us with a remedy – impeachment and the power of Congress solely to declare war. That those who posses the power to save the republic and refuse to take seriously their duty is the real lesson for us. Shame on them and shame of us for not insisting that they do their duty. It is like we all have meekly accepted the idea we have no control other than the periodic fakery we call elections. We’ve suffered through Brain Dead Biden and now Dementia Donald. What is it going to take to learn that, We have met the enemy and it he is us (HT Walt Kelly, cartoonist) The Republic is long gone. Intriguer. About the US “siding” with Malian people eaters. My understanding is that the #AES, of which Mali is a member, maintains that France has supported Jihadist separatist militias on its border to destabilize these states for years. One of main reasons they kicked French out. Mali has contracted with Russia’s Afrika Corps to assist in neutralizing terrorists. So how exactly does US “side” with Mali? A few odd articles last week that claimed US has offered to sell various arms to Mali. I think one can assume that Goïta, the military leader of Mali, will see this as the Trojan Horse that it is. I really object to “news” articles that slip these bits of propaganda in as “fact,” conditioning the mind to accept nonsense. Thinking aloud, could the Situational Awareness hedge fund liquidation (that’s essentially what happened, except there was only one fire-sale buyer, Citadel) be the same sort of milepost marker as the two hedge funds that blew chunks in the summer of ’07? Foreshadowing the big enchilada in 2008? Throw in a side of a 6 percent 10-year yield and corporate debt that has to be rolled at higher and higher rates. If events play out in a late 2007/early ’08 fashion, the OpenAI IPO is a dead man walking and we can expect Mr. Crashey to show up bigly in 2027, just in time to turn Trump’s last 2 years into a total dumpster fire. Maybe not holding mid-terms will be the Gala kick-off? Melly Clistmas, evelybody! I was wondering the same thing. These unwinds can happen with the periphery over-leveraged guys first then contagion to the larger guys I am sure that “it’s contained” as What-me-worry? Ben Bernanke famously said back in 2008. ‘The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter BREAKING: The US and Israel are discussing a full +5900km land blockade of Iran, with the plan requiring cooperation from Iran’s 7 neighboring countries Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan to close border crossings, per Telegraph.’ Good luck with that one. Iran has *checks notes* land borders totaling some 5,894 kilometers (3,662 miles). Who is going to patrol all that? Who is going to pay for it? Are those neighbouring countries going to tell China that trains from their country are no longer allowed to go to Iran? Will that eventually include overflights from China as well? Can you imagine how many smugglers trails there would be along those borders? Along with customs officers willing to look the other way in return for a ‘present’? Will those countries abandon economic links with Iran that will have a knock-on effect to their own economies? Trump and Israel must be getting desperate if this is all that they can come up with. Silly Wabbit, stop making sense! Taco’s latest hare-brained plan is best considered after drinking a fifth of vodka, smoking some crack, and topping it off with a side of hallucinogenic mushrooms. (Apologies to all the hares out there … ) Lol, and don’t forget the heavy painkillers like oxycodone to numb the pain of cognitive dissonance and DoubleThink As all of this really revolves around Trump and Netanyahu trying to build a critical mass of support where they can’t be prosecuted, there never was any kind of strategy beyond launching a “Democratic SMRT war” producing a Libya like result. Then Trump will hope for an Obama 2.0 who will protect him in the name of enjoying the presidency. I just assume everything in Trump’s head bounces between “Trump is being laughed at” -he was at the Knicks game; those prices kept the rabble out- and what will keep the Evangelicals loyal. I always suspect the war was set off because the economic projections weren’t looking good; stocks are still high, and oil is still reasonable. The sensibility of the plan never mattered because the various, public reasons for the conflict were never real. Also, Trump may be a crook, but the GOP balance between true believers and crooks is weighted in favor the true believers. Shrub never would have let the Medicare Pard D subsidy expire on the eve of an election. Hastert, Frist, and Delay types probably never would have let it get that far. DC is full of people who can’t handle basic reasoning. The combined might of US, KSA, UAE….. could not keep high tech weapons out of Houthi Yemen….. US has much more navy. Won’t even raise margins among smugglers. Maybe Trump could just build a big wall around Iran instead A big beautiful one . big. Beautiful wall. So much winning The Great Wall of Trump, 2.0 or is it 3.0? And of course Iran will pay for it, jut like Mexico did? I think we just found a place where they can use all the Flock cameras we don’t want in thr US… Re: Substack collapsing — When I first learned about Substack, I thought about whom among hundreds of excellent individual writers would I be willing (and able) to pay $8 a month, every month, to read. I quickly counted up 15 or 20. Hhhmm, 20X8 = $160. Wait–$160 every month for subscriptions that still would not replace my weekly New Yorker, daily online NYT, local subscriptions and regular tithe to Naked Capitalism? Not happening. So the way Substack is going doesn’t surprise me at all. Glad I didn’t have $1,960 a year in my budget to waste figuring it out, since for me, the Substack model never made sense from the outset. Oops… 20 Substack subscriptions would cost only $1,920 a year… still way above my means! Carla: First, to be snarky: Would it be all that difficult for people who hold themselves out as writers to learn basic U.S. English style when publishing something? “The Real Reason that Substack is Collapsing”: Two mistakes in headline style — it instills me with much confidence. Second, the subscription model might have worked for Substack, but the problem is that the subscription model is turning up everywhere. People don’t like it. I don’t have any need for a monthly subscription to Adobe for a product with too many features and the distinct possibility that I won’t be able to turn off the subscription except by dying. Third, regression to the mean. Carney says that Yglesias and Cox Richardson make gazillions. Hallelujah! U.S. culture is saved. Fourth, the weird idea that knowledge just wants to be free, except of course for knowing how to get anything out of U.S. health insurance. I still get paper Harper’s Magazine each month, even in Italy. It is well edited, with well-selected articles, by writers who have something to say, with book reviews that go into some cultural depth. Harper’s has tended to limit the letters to the editor — which are more self-serving and deluded than ever. What has caused the death of print? I’m not persuaded that it is on-line access that has done so. Fifth, slop. The problem with Substack is something we have discussed here and that I have discussed with some Usonians resident in Italy. The posts are endless. People post on Substack and it’s logorrhea — too many posts, too long, poorly edited, with a scroll bar that never seems to budge as one trudges through the murky prose. This extends to vlogs on YouTube: Heck, I adore Sabby Sabs, but does she have to publish a 90-minute report every afternoon? Carney never deals with the issue of quality and brevity and lack of focus. Agreed, agreed, agreed, agreed! (But I didn’t know all that way back at the beginning when I resisted the siren call…) And I rely on several print subscriptions as well–and never read books on a “device.” I just read… books! A 2nd recommendation for a Harper’s subscription. I get it in print in France. I’ll never cancel that magazine. It’s a wonder. I used to get Latham’s Quarterly until they went under but now it looks like they’re funding a return to print with a – wait for it – subscription Substack. 😔 I buy Le Monde Diplomatic Spanish edition every month, paper edition, in surviving news kiosk. With subscription I would have access to the online product but y want the f*g b*y thing in paper bought in the kiosk. @Ignacio at 3:30 pm I also buy the French language Monde diplomatique (“Le diplo”) at my local bookshop. I did get an online subscription a number of years ago for a while but found I preferred the newspaper format. I might add that I preferred the content when Ignacio Ramonet was the editor-in-chief. He was less afraid of offending the status quo than the editors since seem to be. He was also a very interesting and humble man. We hung out together for a few days some 20 years ago in Quebec City. I had invited him to speak at a union conference I helped organise. He noted there weren’t many cities in the world where you could walk around safely late at night as we did. I had never thought of that as I had never felt unsafe in any large Canadian city at night. (I am a 185cm white male. Others may not have had the same experience). (“Ignacio”, I assume you are not that Ignacio…?) No, no. Very much like you I have tons of respect for tocayo Ramonet. Indeed! And “tocayo”?… Tocayo in Spanish means sharing the same name. There was a time when I thought that Spotify could be a decent model for internet publishing – you subscribe to the platform to choose and pick and the platform distributes your monthly payment accordingly. I soon realized such a system would not get rid of many of the issues you mention, especially the last one, as it certainly is a “publish or perish” environment, so slop rules. Now I’m thinking about keeping the Spotify-type monetizing model, but for writer-editor co-ops. Not a perfect solution, but closer to something that gives a fighting chance for higher quality small publications. With one login, one monthly fee for the user. And maybe provide a zine-channel for free on the side. The spotify-model is to screw the musicians by paying close to nothing and consumers by not tranferring ownership for what you paid for and keep the rest. That’s the Spotify business model. I’m talking about the platform model. I’m sorry it wasn’t obvious. Daniel Davis and Col. Douglas Macgregor. Col Doug Macgregor: IRAN MUST FINISH the JOB TOO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fSWHcDBvak My very short, big picture take-away: neoliberalism, the West’s political leaders’ embrace if neoliberal economics has inevitably led to the West going broke and going broke has led to these wars. The West is desperately searching for new “collateral” to plunder. / my 2 cents Last week I heard someone on the various YouTube channels state, to paraphrase, that US society, culture, and government has been entirely replaced by a marketplace. Not necessarily news to regulars here but hearing that put so succinctly was eye opening. I am truly distressed beyond words that the West seems to have gone full Davos neoliberal ‘Markets are everything, Markets are the final arbiter of value, and Markets are the best information processor available.’ They are wrong. They will never understand why they are wrong. It’s really about money than markets. Thus ‘Money is everything, Money is the final arbiter of value, and Money is the best information processor available.’ Thanks, Rev. You write more clearly and succinctly than I what it is I meant to say. Markets and free competition, and not caring about monopolies anymore except maybe some fine to those from time to time to keep appareances. Fine that will be silently cancelled by judges years later. Free competition! BS Neoliberalism core. The road to enshittification of life in general. During my seven decades of life I have either thought to myself or said out loud “That would be insane, no one could possibly be THAT stupid” many times. I have been wrong every time. Someone is that stupid. Always. I made the mistake of assuming that the US could never elect a president worse than Bush the Younger. I will never repeat that error. US capacity for horrific political choices I now conclude to be bottomless. >American workers and youth are turning towards socialism It’s hard to believe that anyone in their right mind would think this way. If a socialist were to become president, he or she would initially promise prosperity, but would soon reveal his or her true colors. Secret police would run rampant through towns, freedom of speech would disappear, and people would be imprisoned for minor offenses. People would no longer be able to obtain basic necessities. Only government propaganda would be permitted in the arts. You would grow weary of the disconnect between the government’s message that this is the greatest country in the world and the reality. Would you want to live in a country like that? Meaning, I take it, “what’s the point of an ideologically socialist President, since that the country we already have?” I think the commentator simply forgot the /sarc tag. Bravo, ciroc! A superb piece of snark. ” Would you want to live in a country like that?” I assume you forgot to append the “sarc” tag. We already live in such a country. Stay safe, go Grey. re: ” If a socialist were to become president, he or she would initially promise prosperity, but would soon reveal his or her true colors. Secret police would run rampant through towns, freedom of speech would disappear, and people would be imprisoned for minor offenses. People would no longer be able to obtain basic necessities. Only government propaganda would be permitted in the arts. You would grow weary of the disconnect between the government’s message that this is the greatest country in the world and the reality. Would you want to live in a country like that?” ~ Which would of course be entirely different from the country we live in now. Right? / heh (good one) New Mexico’s clean energy success story Yale Climate Connections Please more on news like this (this is another kind of antidote for me). Trump must be happy with this development! Hahaha! Unfortunately, the mods don’t keep the commentariate on track. Comments rarely align with the blog post. “Iran Appears to Be Blasting Amazon Data Centers Off the Map” There are two ways to look at this. The elites would be saying ‘Oh no! They got the data centers!’ while most Americans would be saying ‘Yay! They got the data centers!’ Data centers are not your friend. YAY!* *the fact that they’re Amazon data centers is just a free bonus. Oh, what a pity. / ;) Re. Morocco Speeds Past California Issues Access to urban rail stations could likely use existing and expanded stations and tracks; this is how France and Germany do it, with separate rights of way outside urban centers. Much of the problem and expense for California HSR is crossing the coastal ranges between the Central Valley and LA and SJ/SF. To access the urban areas extensive, expensive tunneling is necessary. No route selection or plans have been made, this most challenging and expensive part of the debacle. Currently no passenger trains run fron the Central Valley to LA and only few conventional trains (slowly) run from the bay area. Lastly, France was the turnkey contractor for Morocco’s HSR, using proven engineering, management and construction experience. California hired known grifters for implementation; like the DoD results are predictable. The project should’ve be outsourced to China; trains would have been running for a decade. I would have upgraded slow train tracks to allow the high-speed train to run on them (slowly) for the entry and exit to the megacities, and then run fast through the valley. One could also add stations in the central valley for people who want to drive to the station from the city and take the train the rest of the way. One can see the slow process of creating bridges every mile for small dirt roads near Hanford – at the rate it’s going, that will take decades just fot the central valley – The I5 just cuts off many of these roads, forcing lengthy detours – not sure why the same wasnt applied for the rail. But logic and California planning are incompatible, in my experience. BNSF and Union Pacific privately own the necessary tracks and simply do not allow improving existing infrastructure for more or non-HSR faster trains. Adding a second or third track isn’t a huge deal, if allowed. But the problem of crossing the coastal range remains. BNSF and UP use the Tehachapi Loops, but this is a very slow, VERY congested freight route. Bakersfield to LA would need miles of tunneling… ya know, the the Swiss, Chinese and Japanese regularly do. If there is the political will, there is eminent domain. But what politician today is going to antagonize a powerful group for a project that has benefits when they are no longer in office? HSR will never happen in California. The US has a few places where HSR makes sense, but the real problems with our transportation system is intra-city not inter-city. Existing rail which can be expanded, highways, and airports handle quite a bit of intercity traffic. The problem is still the last few miles, but HSR speeds up a fairly reasonable experience. The US needs more reliable bus service and short lines, but American tourists to Europe don’t really see how the world works. NTG: you mean you think Americans visiting Europe could come back home and get what they want? Whadayah think this is, some kind of democracy or something? I gather you’ve never ridden CalTrain on the S.F. Peninsula. “Utter joke” is putting it kindly. Anyway, the rest of the world has moved on, while USian mass transit remains stuck in the last century. (BTW, writing this message from the LRT in Kuala Lumpur, whose mass transit system I invite you to compare with that of the San Francisco Bay Area.) Just waiting for the developers to go bust. That’s when the real needs will be start to be met. It’s a poor world after all. May we organize for all. On “Trump has singled out us Canadians for special treatment in his tariff war – there is no choice but to get nasty” Matt Gurney advocates for Canada having an American style for profit healthcare system because he can pay the veterinarian to see his dog immediately. Nothing this man writes should be taken seriously. He’s the Canadian equivalent of a Chronic Democrat. Reactionary in the extreme, and deeply influenced by two generations of economic propaganda. https://www.tvo.org/article/why-doug-fords-health-care-plan-might-be-worth-a-shot aka, a Davos Man. / ;) Good morning, while doing research on the gift the Congolese offered to UN for its 60th anniversary, which was a UN hymn in French with words from the UN Chart, written by Moro Mandjeku, I happened on this song made by the Lebanese for the 70th anniversary. I would like to share it here because it shows the country and its people before the wanton destruction. https://youtu.be/OsS2q5BRRnM very nice, but very sad to see what has been lost. Trump and Medicare… IMO the repubs are throwing a lifeline to right wing dems (they are not “centrist”) The Plutocrat Alliance figured it had already wrapped up global control fraud crapitalism and now whats with this resurgent left? It really is turtles all the way down from here because they want a capitalism and we want the democracy that will spread the wealth. Incompatible goals. Given a choice between maga/trumpism, I choose Social Democrats. Two more years of trump and we won’t have a country. At this point there is nothing to loose by giving social democracy a try. DEBATE: Mohammad Marandi vs Alan Dershowitz On Israel, Iran War & Palestine on YouTube. Some interesting nuggets in this: Iranian Kurdish parties in Iraq face a delicate balance amid Iran attacks (Al Jazeera) Several leaders of these parties have told Al Jazeera they command military formations and organisational structures inside Kurdish areas in Iran, in addition to headquarters and bases in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. On February 22, 2026, five Kurdish groups based in Iraq and western Iran formed the Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan in response to the suppression of the protests. Since the war began, their military and political assets in Iraq have been heavily attacked by Iranian drones and missiles. Kako Alyar, a member of the political bureau of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, claimed his party had sleeper cells and networks that participated in antigovernment protests in Iran, which took place in December and January, until being violently crushed by security forces. — Which would seem to fit with the Iranian version of the protests. — “We have thousands of fighters… We could have done more inside Iran, but we place the security and stability of the Kurdistan Region at the top of our priorities, and we do not want to harm the Kurds in Iraq,” Sharifi said. Iranian opposition fighters are sceptical about the success of any potential large-scale military operation in Kurdish areas in Iran, saying it would be a hugely risky endeavour and would likely lead to huge casualties for their side. “At the present time, there are risks, especially given the heavy deployment of Iranian forces in the Kurdish areas and along the border with the Kurdistan region,” Alyar said. The Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government had requested Iranian Kurdish parties to refrain from activities that could harm local security and interests, given the Iranian response. Various Iranian Kurdish groups, reportedly with thousands of fighters between them, have long opposed Tehran from their bases in northern Iraq and along the Iraq-Iran border. But Iranian opposition leaders are wary of US intentions regarding Iran, suggesting they have not seen any real intention of regime change. ”They [the US] don’t want to support forces inside Iran with the aim of toppling the regime. The objective is to weaken the Iranian influence in the Middle East,” Rebaz Sharifi, a leader in the opposition Kurdistan Freedom Party of Iran, told Al Jazeera. No1 is reporting from a tweet by Col Macgregor that the US is hastily pulling its remaining forces and assets (depleted patriot battery) out of Erbil – not a good sign for the General cheerleaders of ground invasion from Iraqi Kurdistan. Mid_East_Spectator had similar: BREAKING: The last 5 remaining Patriot systems have been withdrawn from Erbil Airport Iraqi Kurdistan is now left at the mercy of Iranian missiles and drones for the first time ever, with no anti-ballistic missile systems to intercept them. —– I think the source for the Patriot bit is this Al-Monitor article US nears full withdrawal from Iraq as bases in Kurdistan Region face attacks from Iran, proxies (Should be unpaywalled) The troop pullout (AKA run away like Brave Sir Robin) plan was announced a few weeks back with a deadline of Sept 30th for all troops to be out. Iraqi PM says he’ll disarm the pro-Iranian groups by that date but fat chance of that! Does Iraq get to keep their oil profits now that the us is gone? I am old enough to remember both US and Iraqi Kurds would or could not push ISIS out of Erbil, Kirkuk and local territory. At the time I thought Kurds were unarmed. It could be the Kurds liked ISIS/CIA more than Quds and PMU who “liberated” them from ISIS/CIA. Currently Kurds are used by CIA/Mossad…. ? Linked to Syria? Let PMU loose. How Israel is POISONING AI Chatbot Responses (Breaking Points) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KP-XiDER5M Israel is paying millions to Brad Parscale to create bullshit filled websites that only exist to be scraped by AI bots. Then this pro Israel propoganda will inform/distort chat queries. And it’s working! Thanks for the link. A year ago two cameras were installed on the little single lane car bridge across the 100+ year artificial lake here, because I guess people weren’t obeying and limiting to 3 cars at a time. I never saw anyone misbehave in all my walks. Solar powered, with Ethernet and WiFi or probably cellular on them. Very rural area. Puzzling. There’s an adjacent footbridge as well. With the story about people losing their ObamaCare because the emergency benefits of the beginning of the Pandemic weren’t kept, I’d forgotten with everything else going on, that liberal Democrats forced the longest partial shutdown of the government ever, threatening food stamps and other programs, before completely folding and letting the ObamaCare subsides expire anyway. Fantastic group of people, liberal Democrat senators. If they had any honor, this calls for seppuku without a doubt. So, no, there isn’t going to be anything of value out of the Democrat Party in 2026 or 2028. Maybe if all the centrist dems became centrist republicans the result would be to pull the repubs left instead of constantly herding the flock to the right…for safety… Each and every Republican that switches to Democrat moves both parties to the right. It should work the other way too, but the Dems aren’t really left. Dems switching to GOP probably only reduces the acceleration, not the direction. The Dem establishment might actually want that to happen, as that ensures they can fundraise as opposition without needing to take any action whatsoever. Re: Agent of Influence Scott Ritter “It is this very “post-truth world”, where audiences are lulled into a false sense of intellectual security by over-hyped biographies and deceptive methodologies, turning off the normative defense mechanisms associated with critical thinking and replacing truth with clever fantasy” “Post-truth” seems to be the entire basis of the current US approach to the world. It rather reminds of Stalin, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, etc., where truth was very openly and explicitly considered to be the enemy of the party. I really like both Ritter’s podcast appearances – a bit unbalanced though they sometimes become – and his writing, but my god the man’s resting emotional temperature seems to be some 3 degrees south of incandescent fury. I hope he’s looking after his health – when you speak and write in a certain tone, that tone reflects and to some extent creates how you actually feel, and although I admittedly only play a doctor on TV it seems to me that having the volume at 11 for regular podcast appearances could have consequences for your blood pressure. That aside I also rather appreciate that Doctorow exists as well to at least cut the Russia positivism that exists in alternative geopolitical media, although probably a third of what he does is naked concern trolling. So, Bessent crossed “Buy $5–10 Billion yen” off his to-do list and … UJ moved a whopping 1.3%. I just finished reading the 41 page ethics complaint filed in New York against Jeanne Pirro who is the US Attorney for DC. It is damning, her behavior has been unethical and inappropriate in the extreme, understandable in someone who has spent the last 14 years as a “Legal Analyst” at Fox News and who has spent the last year huffing Trump’s farts. The list of heavyweights who signed that complaint is impressive, this is not something the NY Bar can make light of, even if they wanted to. The Trump Administration has destroyed the presumption of Regularity and ignored or defied the orders of the Courts in many cases, the legal profession and the judges have taken note of this and they are NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT. Ms Pirro’s behavior has been so egregious that I believe that she will at the least be censured. And if the Bar is not intimidated by the Administration disbarment seems likely. It’s an important case and worth watching because this is one of the first opportunities the legal profession has had to emphasize that the Rule of Law still exists. And Pirro is a fat target…her misbehavior has been in your face because she knows Trump has had her back. And will, as long as it is convenient. Am I the only one who was surprised (and maybe a little disappointed) that Nancy Grace wasn’t offered something in the Trump 2.0 DOJ? From Sales Are So Low, California Wineries Are Burning Their Vineyards People are really, really stupid. I swear. A movie made you do it? People are stupid herd animals. Torches of Freedom (Video includes interviews with the sauceman himself.) As an anecdotal observation: In the last 50 or so years that I can recall, I have noticed that many of the fruit orchards in Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and other counties were taken out and replaced with vineyards, starting in the late 1970s or so. There were vineyards in those places before that of course, but now when you drive up 101, or 37, you see nothing but vineyards to the west, vineyards to the east – a seemingly non-stop sea of vineyards. In addition, there are so many wine-tasting places and such it is hard to imagine. I rhetorically asked years ago “how many wineries and wine-tastings do we need?” It seemed to be getting ridiculous. I am not anti-wine, and I do enjoy reds, whites and rose. I recall that Jaques Pepin said years ago that it was not necessary to spend more than $10 on a bottle of wine, anything more would be just snobbery. Now with a wine glut, declining or flat demand, the problem of abandoned vineyards is a big issue. Looks like the boom/bust cycle is hitting hard https://mendovoice.com/2026/04/californias-40000-acre-question/ I can’t tell the difference after the first glass any way. Lol I’m sure that the farmers & orchardists of the Berryessa valley would be quite sympathetic to their situation. /sarc There was a story about this in last Tuesdays online AVA. It seems many are thinking of switching to agave. It interviewed some wineries who are experimenting with it by planting acres of agave instead. Excerpt from the article As the California wine industry faces an oversaturated market due to a steep drop off in consumer demand, some wine grape farmers are considering growing agave to produce what is known in the United States as “agave spirits.” The climate-resilient plant is celebrated for its minimal water usage, lower labor costs compared to other commodities and its role in Mexico’s production of tequila and mezcal, labels reserved for particular regions within the country. Check out the movie Mondovino (2004) about the political economy of wine. Funny too. Highly recommended. Here’s one for the ‘kill with fire” department, and apologies if this has been posted already – I’ve been away listening to loons for a few days. Our would be tech overlords no longer have the patience to wait for the earth to turn on its axis and have now been greenlit to beam sunlight to temporarily benighted areas – https://www.astronomy.com/science/fcc-approves-reflect-orbital-filing-for-mirror-in-space/ The concerns of astronomers do not fall within the FCC’s regulatory jurisdiction, so rather than checking with an agency that does have the jurisdiction, they just got out the old rubber stamp and approved the project. “Reflect Orbital’s pitch is to provide sunlight without limits — whenever and wherever a user might need it. The company’s long-term ambition is a constellation of up to 50,000 orbiting mirrors that could extend solar panel output past sunset, light disaster zones, or replace streetlights. Earendil-1 is the proof-of-concept. It’s a satellite with a deployable reflector projecting a roughly 3.1-mile-wide (5 kilometers) beam of light that Reflect Orbital says will only ever illuminate its intended target. But even if that light is only directed to its target, the satellite would be the brightest ever launched according to a European Southern Observatory (ESO) study. To an observer outside the reflected beam, the satellite would appear as bright as Venus — and inside the beam four times brighter than a full moon. AAS argued in a public statement that the satellite puts research telescopes at risk, could momentarily blind pilots or drivers, and “as Reflect Orbital stated in its own FCC filings — [could cause] potential permanent eye damage to anyone looking through a mid-sized telescope.” Scale that up to a future fleet in the tens of thousands and the danger compounds.” If someone can make a few squillion on a scam, who is the government to say no?!? Nobody was really using their circadian rhythms anyway. 50,000 all-night Panopticon prison lights, directed at will anywhere on Earth, any time. Sweet. What could possibly go wrong? Just a warm up for something like SOL 740: I’m so very tired of these soulless losers stealing names from Tolkien when they want to start a company that is contrary to everything the Professor believed or wrote about. Earendil the character was a half elf who used a light giving gem to sail across the sea and ask for help in defeating evil. Earendil the satellite is an ill conceived start up that will pollute the night sky and cause who knows what other havoc in Reflect’s quest for money. I live in California, where most of the original landscape has been wiped out and replaced by invasive grass thanks to centuries of cattle herds roaming the state. Farm and grazing animals worldwide are also one of the largest contributors to global warming thanks to their huge emissions of methane, which is 30 times more potent than CO2 as a heat trapping gas. Yet, over the centuries we have normalized these things, and for the writer (a vegetarian!), actual animal flesh does not seem to have high production costs or difficulty scaling. For me, also a vegetarian, lab grown meat and “fake meat” is something of a transition food for people like me who ate meat for some part of their life and then wanted to stop eating it. People who have never eaten meat (like my son) have no desire for it and I assume they will not be part of the market for lab grown varieties, either. Nicotine patches and gum also play a similar role, making life a bit more pleasant for people who are weaning themselves off a harmful or unhealthy alternative. For this reason I doubt if there is going to be a huge future for lab grown meat, and the economics and scalability are not terribly important. Throughout human history, the desire to eat meat has been universal. If cultured meat is of the same quality as conventional meat but cheaper, then there should be ample business opportunities. “Lab-Grown Meat” “Nicotine patches and gum” I sense a market opportunity. Everybody I know who tried nicotine patches or gum just kept smoking. The gum has some strange smell that somehow reaches the bottom of my stomach and makes me want to hurl. “Trump Mulls Strikes on Iran’s Oil and Power Infrastructure” Larry has seemed a little fatigued, lately. He should take a break–from all of it. Maybe go to the range. Still, there’s the fact that this is now an unremarkable part of any sane analysis: Too bad Gore Vidal didn’t live to see his “warning that no society so marinated in falsity can long survive in a real world” come true. Maybe we will. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/gore-vidal-speaks-seriously-ill-of-the-dead/ Something odd that occurred to me while watching Alex Christoforou’s new video: I was noticing that he’s introducing himself to ppl he runs into while walking around in Chattanooga as being from “Greece.” I suppose most Americans wouldn’t know where Cyprus is nor, even if we did, would we know that Cyprus is (well, most of it anyways) is part of the Greek world (and I did notice him generally saying he’s from Cyprus while walking about in Europe in the past). But, of course, a Greek Cypriot, I guess, is sort of from “Greece” anyways, much the way Ionians in late 19th century, despite being from “Turkey,” were from “Greece.” I suppose also that Stanislav Krapivnik, even when Donetsk was still part of Ukraine (whatever its current state “really” is) was always from Russia and, while we are at it, even if Igor Sikorsky was born in Kiev, he was always from Russia (even as he became a major US aviation designer). How often are we “from” places that are not what maps say they are part of? This seems far more common than we’d like to think, noitwithstading all the attempts at reassigning people’s “true” nationalities, past and present, to fit where we think they should be from based on modern preconceptions…. americans are well known for our ignorance of the world…especially geography and history. the hospital i was born in was on a patch not yet absorbed by Falls Church, VA, proper at the time, so it says on by BC “fairfax county”. back to texas by 6 mo’s old, etc. but i remember kids in middle school and junior high in east texas calling me a yankee,lol. (Richmond, Virginia was the capital of the confederacy, of course) anomalous me set a record for jaws on floor with my boys’ cohort out here, drawing a map of eurasia on the big whiteboard at the bar extemporaneously. (misplaced mongolia and luxembourg, and sort of mangled down around where Yves lives) and history? ,lol…even sorta recent history is like yer speaking swahili, or something. nobody knows anything, even about where they have lived their whole lives(Mason County is steeped in history…its literally all around us, and can be stumbled upon easily(arrowheads to bits of farm implements)) ive never understood this incuriosity, even before the invasion of the fondleslabs. My kids’ first morning on the school bus on their way to a school deep in rural S.C. were asked THE QUESTION, “Are you a Yankee or a Rebel?” And my kids didn’t have your defense. They were coming from Chicago. To be fair, there are places ppl don’t remember were parts of the Confederacy… There is apparently some small town or village in upstate NY whose residents apparently declared for Confederacy back in 1861. (There was an NYT article back in 1990s, I think, about this.) Apparently, no one, even the townspeople, knew that this happened afterwards. In downtown Tucson, there is a plaque marking the location of the secession convention where the locals declared the Confederate Territory of Arizona (the first time the name “Arizona” was used in anything “official”). This was somewhat a bigger deal, but hardly anyone remembers this either. Then the states of MO and KY had rival state governments declaring for opposing sides. Most people don’t seem to be aware of this, except one of my Kansan friends to whom MO is the state of irredeemable rebels… Even he didn’t know why so many Cherokees wound up in KS…which was that the Cherokee and their allied tribes fought a civil war of their own over whether to join the Confederate cause, after which the losing side (that originally wanted to stay neutral, but kinda wound up being pro Union by default later) had to move to Southwestern KS…. You had it easy: you didn’t have to locate Kirghizstan, Turkmenistan, or Uzbekistan. ;) re: Israel influencing AI Similiar to what the Trump Administration is doing re: oil prices – by flooding the info space with PR Israel is manipulating what that same space then delivers as answers via LLMs. I guess this will become standard. Question is how to counter it. Not unlike an advanced version of rigging public knowledge via manipulating Wiki. But much much worse of course. DROPSITE NEWS Israel Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk About Gaza. It’s Working. Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is overseeing an operation posting hundreds of blog posts on behalf of Israel, with the goal of infiltrating artificial intelligence. https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-brad-parscale-ai-chatbots-gaza Sorry, I overlooked Tom´s post above, on the same subject. However that one is a YT link to “Breaking Points”. This one a text. I assume they are complemeting each other. Yep. Yves posted this in links several days ago. One more reason why LLMs are not to be trusted. thanks for pointing out sometimes a double slips through aka “leaker” 😉 Oh noes. It haunts. She Voted for a Justice Who Overturned Roe. Now it Haunts Her on the Trail. (NY Times) Granted, McConnell also contributed, by deciding that the Senate could refuse to offer advise and consent on Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, however flawed he was, because Obama’s term, as McConnell saw it, was too close to being over. And thus, as written in the Constitution (lol), some presidential prerogatives were thus suspended. A timeline, as it were. The presidency slips away, little by little, rather than upon the term ending. And the Democrats preferred to run on Roe for 50 years rather than codify it. So plenty of blame to go around, and little accountability if any. Would be amusing if Collins gets the boot over it. You don’t hear liberal Democrats running on abortion much anymore. So long, it’s been a profitable 50 years! From Nawfal on YouTube: BREAKING: ISRAEL ON HIGHEST ALERT, IRAN ORDERS EVACUATIONS – w/ Lt. Col. Anthony Agu I think that would require renegotiating oil concession contracts (to change where the payments are deposited). Perhaps the Iraqis will declare force majeure and give the concessions to Sinopec. I assume there are kickbacks – but China could outbid. Robin Brooks latest: Japan’s Interest Rate Disaster https://x.com/robin_j_brooks/status/2083522780809588771 Trump capitulates again Trump’s statement in full (Al Jazeera) But this deal needs to specify that Iran controls that strait in its entirety, or it ain’t happening. I guess we’ll see what happens; Is Trump gonna get bent, or do we go for another round of pointless strikes? And we know Iran isn’t giving up its nuclear sovereignty, either. Another empty bag again Trump holds? Meanwhile Rubio claims we again destroyed Iran’s entire military. https://aje.news/rlfmko?update=4822800 There is no deal possible (ex full US surrender), it’s face-saving bs or fantasy. There’s no mention of the blockage being lifted, which Iran surely considers an act of war. This is more hot air from Trump. It’s hard to think of a more pathetic president than Trump. He must be the most or one of the most incompetent presidents in all of American history, certainly the 21st century. This guy is a greater fool than even W. Bush and Biden, Obama being a calculated evil. ‘The Country of Israel joins me in this commitment.’ Iran would have loved that bit. Intriguing, but annoyingly unsourced. From shortly before Trump’s Taco Truth. Middle East Spectator — MES —❗️🇺🇸/🇮🇷/🇶🇦 NEW: The U.S. has made a last minute peace offer to Iran through Qatar, and Iran is examining it Did somebody order tacos? Scoop: MBS raises concerns over Trump’s plans for massive Iran strikes (Axios / Barak Ravid of course!) Relevant: Other regional powers, including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Pakistan, are also pressing the U.S. and Iran to de-escalate. —- I feel like I’ve seen this movie a few times. I’m beginning to think the whole series of leaks starting with “Brad Cooper’s 2 week plan to destroy everything in Iran” through to the above article are kabuki. The theory: “If the Iranians really think an attack is imminent, surely they will call wanting to talk”. The predictable response from Iran: “Alright, bring it buddy. Btw, here’s a list of incredibly important energy facilities we’ll destroy” Idiot King tomorrow: “I was gonna do it but the GCC begged me not to”. —- This is obviously speculation and I won’t be that surprised if it’s wrong and the idiots do launch the attack. Hahahaha! I just read Jason’s concurrently posted comment directly above with the Trump taco. Yes. https://xcancel.com/realDonaldTrump/status/728297587418247168#m Can we imply that they will then try the land blockade as last resource? Iran’s Araghchi agreed to deal opening Hormuz, leading Trump to cancel attack — report (ToI) Israel’s Channel 12 news reports that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi agreed to a compromise deal on opening up the Strait of Hormuz, leading to US President Donald Trump calling off a planned attack on Iran. According to the report, based on two diplomats familiar with the situation, the compromise deal put together by Qatar and the US, ships will enter the Persian Gulf on the Iranian-controlled side of the strait, and exit via the Omani side. Oman has agreed to the deal but has sought assurances that the agreement would be respected by Iran’s hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the Qataris are attempting to secure, according to the report, which comes from Barak Ravid, a well-connected journalist for the channel and US outlet Axios. — I call bs on this 1. It’s Ravid 2. I do not believe Araghchi would, or has the authority to,” agree”. The absolute most would be “we will consider the proposal and get back to you.” Iran has a process and a system and the proposal must go through that. It would need the approval of the Supreme Leader and the IRGC as well. 3. I think it’s another bit of wish-casting/lying in attempt to divide the Iranians and bounce them into a deal. 4. It’s Ravid. For completeness, here’s the original Ravid ch12 story (in Hebrew). It’s short and the text is basically identical to the quoted bit from ToI above. https://www.mako.co.il/news-world/2026_q3/Article-cf1b00b3d11cf91027.htm And now the Iranian denial: Fars Informed sources: The plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is false 🔹A source close to the nuclear negotiating team told Fars: There is no agreement on the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the news published about this is false. 🔹An informed military source also emphasized: As long as the US continues its hostile actions, the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed and the passage of vessels will only be possible via the announced route and with the permission of the IRGC Navy. 🔸Hours ago, some enemy-affiliated media outlets published news claiming that Iran had agreed to a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a plan that would allow ships to enter the Persian Gulf through Iranian territorial waters and exit through Omani territorial waters. From DDGeopolitics: Because terrorist attacks are OK when we do them.