Dear Naked Capitalism Reader,
Welcome to August 2023 and the Best of Naked Capitalism from the last month or so. This month we've got Hunter's failed plea agreement, the endgame in Ukraine, Bidenomics vs. eviction crisis, banking nightmares, and COVID. We hope you enjoy the collection!!
Major Stories
(7/27/2023) Hunter Biden Plea Deal Collapse: Dirty, Desperate Dealings in Delaware. It's troubling to see the press for the most part underplay the seriousness of the implosion of Hunter Biden's plea deal on tax evasion and gun possession charges. Yes, as Glenn Greenwald stressed in his System Update show last night, the two sides will probably find a way to cobble something together that the judge, here Maryellen Noreika, will be hard pressed not to accept. But the much bigger issue as Greenwald also stressed is that it is close to unheard of for a judge to reject a plea agreement. And as too many commentators have glossed over, this one was so irregular procedurally as to have the judge force the prosecution to admit it was unprecedented, and according to Noreika, potentially unconstitutional.
This development follows another incident in the Hunter case this week that is also so irregular that it may get the defense legal team sanctioned. Noreika filed an order demanding that Biden law firm Latham & Watkins explain in a hearing the action, alleged by one of Noreika's clerks, that a Latham & Watkins staffer contacted the court and misrepresented themselves as instead from the law firm that had filed an amicus motion on behalf of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith. That brief asking the court to consider the information from IRS whistleblowers that showed that Biden the junior had gotten kid glove treatment. The Latham & Watkins staffer purportedly sought the removal of the filing from the docket.
We'll return to the amicus motion later, but it is important to note that the media on a widespread basis has misleadingly referred to it as a 'document' and not a bona fide filing. Worse some commentators have insinuated that it was improper for a Congressman to have made such a move. In fact, this document was a preliminary step to filing an amicus brief. while it may not be common on a search engine to find there is ample precedent for Congresscritters filing amicus briefs.
David in Friday Harbor comments: I worked as a prosecutor for 32 years and I can attest that Yves has explained the nuance of the current state of play correctly.
I suspect that the lawyers mis-read an earlier ruling by Judge Noreika in the laptop defamation litigation as portending that she was playing along with the signaling from the White House reported in Law360 that she was under consideration for elevation from the District Court to the Circuit court — and that she would rubber-stamp their patently irregular configuration of Hunter's Get Out of Jail Free card.
This sort of a-nod-and-a-wink corruption is how these people think that the game is played, but Judge Noreika's background as a former patent attorney with a Masters in biology suggests that she's not a 'player' in their games. Good for her.
(7/28/2023) Some Thoughts on the Russian End Game in Ukraine. Ever since the start of the war in Ukraine, pundits, armchair generals, and other members of the chattering classes have attempted to forecast its trajectory. While that is human nature, the propensity to try to read tea leaves may be even higher than usual due to the unprecedented amount of day to day battlefield information, the intense and too-often-visible Western efforts at narrative control, and the way this conflict has become a hegemony-breaking struggle of the US and NATO with a Russia that in the eyes of much of the rest of the world is midwifing the birth of a multi-polar order. In other words, the stakes have become disproportionate to the size of even this moderately big conflict.
Sme of the most stalwart supporters of the notion that Russia will prevail against the Collective West have recently sounded cautionary notes about timing. Recall that not just war mavens like Brian Berletic but even the Discord leaks showed Ukraine running critically short of weapons, particularly offensive and air defense missiles, over the summer and early fall. So what gives?
As we'll explain, independent of reasons on the military front to think the end-game might not be as near as some experts had once thought, there may also be political/geopolitical reasons for Russia to continue to go slowly, including being deliberate about the acquisition of terrain.
One key issue is that it became clear in the NATO meeting in Vilnius that most of the NATO European members have soured on Project Ukraine. That leaves the US holding the bag even more so than before. Of course, with Biden having just promoted the Russia-hater-in-chief Victoria Nuland to the #2 slot at the Department of State, there's no sign of Administration commitment softening any time soon.
But as economist Herbert Stein famously said, 'If something can't go on forever, it will stop.' And the West is scraping the bottom of its barrels to keep supplying Ukraine with weapons. Tellingly, despite recognizing that it can't keep up with Russian production, it still has not even attempted to initiate a reindustrialization/rearming program (I am old enough to remember the post-Sputnik panic; the US quickly resolved to catch up and threw resources at the problem). A few more contracts with the usual suspects is not a remotely adequate response.
Chas comments: After the USA invades a country it leaves that country a shithole mess — Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Vietnam. Russia is indicating it won't treat the Ukraine like that. For instance, it is very careful how it destroys infrastructure, only taking out what is absolutely necessary so as to minimize rebuilding problems. Also Russia tries to minimize casualties of its slavic brothers and sisters. So Russia is positioning itself to rebuild the Ukraine into a prosperous country by re-developing its manufacturing, agricultural and mining potential. Ukrainian refugees will want to move back for the cheaper energy, food, and jobs. However, if Russia decides it doesn't want to be responsible for western Ukraine, it behooves Russia to take possession first and then sell whatever it wants to Poland or others. That way it can prevent Poland et al. from militarizing it. Install missiles and the sale is null and Russia retakes possession. Russia will not follow the USA's lead in nation rebuilding.
(7/10/2023) Underestimate Russia at Your Own Risk: A Comparison of Hubris by Germany During WWII and Today's Collective West. In honor of the NATO summit July 11 and 12, this is a comparison of how the Nazi leadership in World War Two and today's collective West similarly underestimated Russia and overestimated their capabilities.
Despite Russia's overwhelming upper hand in Ukraine, Western officials and media continue to largely pump sunshine and weave stories of Russian collapse.
There are increasing breaks in the fever, and it looks like maybe, hopefully the acceptance of the loss is gaining traction in Washington.
Meanwhile, the unwillingness or inability for hardliners to objectively assess efforts against Russia occurs today just as it did during Operation Barbarossa.
This too is reminiscent of the Nazi offensive against the Soviet Union when the failure was hidden from the German public. Adding to the similarities is the fact that both the Third Reich command and today's officials in the West simultaneously downplay Russia's military capabilities while endlessly hyping the threat from Moscow.
Hitler, similar to so many Western 'experts' and officials today, mocked Russia's supposed backwardness while also hyping the threat 'Slavic Bolshevism' posed to the West. The progression of his comments show him seesawing between a reluctant acceptance and desperate hope as his miscalculations of Russia slowly dawn on him. It's a path today's governments in the West are still discovering.
John R Moffett comments: Great summary. I can't figure out if the US policy makers believe their own lies, or if they just repeat them to try and keep others onboard with their criminal policies. They act as though they believe, but the things they say fly in the face of reality. If there is one good thing that could come out of this horrible situation it would be that the US and NATO will fail completely at achieving any of their goals and will begin to break apart. NATO is the most destabilizing entity in Europe, and its demise would bring new possibilities for peace.
(7/21/2023) Latin America Again Refuses to Fall In Line With the Collective West on Ukraine, This Time from Brussels. Another attempt by the Collective West to isolate Russia from the rest of the world — or the 'Jungle,' as the EU's chief 'diplomat' Josep Borrell calls it — fails spectacularly.
Volodymyr Zelensky is accustomed to being the star guest, whether in person or on-screen, at just about every Western international summit, though his shine does appear to be fading. But at the summit that took place in Brussels early this week between the European Union and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the president of Ukraine was nowhere to be seen. This was despite the best efforts of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who is current holder of the EU Council's rotating president, to get his name on the guest list.
At a bare minimum, Zelensky's participation would have required the endorsement of the governments of Latin America's three largest economies, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, all of which have taken a largely neutral stance on the war in Ukraine. Which is why it came as little surprise that the EU's dogged attempts, not just during the two days of the summit but in the preceding weeks, to include in the final declaration a paragraph condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine also come to nothing. The move faced opposition from a host of CELAC members including Brazil, Bolivia, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.
Stephen comments: The west is attempting to do what it has managed to do with many other European conflicts over the past few hundred years: make them global. Get everybody to participate. This obviously applied to the world wars but the Revolutionary/ Napoleonic and Seven Years Wars (for example) took place on a global canvas too. It is a reflex.
Latin America seems instead to be saying that this is a local issue and that Europe / the west needs to fix it. 'Happy to help end it and broker peace but why should we be part of it.' For a continent that has been used to being the centre of the world the lack of deep interest seems possibly to be the ultimate insult. The Brazilian comment about poverty being their foe sums that up.
The fact that the US seems unable to get Latin American countries to toe the line sums up the loss of power and how the world is changing, as the cross referenced article made clear too.
Thanks for covering this: I suspect that corporate media (which I avoid) will not be covering these goings on in any form of factual way.
(7/2/2023) Are the Californian Wildfires Really 'Natural' Disasters? Two narratives dominate accounts of wildfire causality: Careless or malevolent individuals (arsonists, ideally liberal Democrat donors) and climate change. From the New York Times:
While wildfires occur throughout the West every year, the link between climate change and bigger fires is inextricable. Wildfires are increasing in size and intensity in the Western United States, and wildfire seasons are growing longer. Recent research has suggested that heat and dryness associated with global warming are major reasons for the increase in bigger and stronger fires.
In an earlier post I showed that it was not possible to give an account of this year's wildfires in Canada without considering the impacts of tree plantation monocultures. More generally, wildfire post mortems must examine not two layers — climate and the individual — but a third as well: Political economy. In Canada, timber companies. In California, real estate development. ...
California has the greatest number of houses in the WUI. It's easy for real estate developers to sell houses in the WUI because people want to live in the woods
Wukchumni comments: WUI is me, Porterville seems pretty safe from my standpoint-although the risk is heightened especially by rightfully frightened insurance companies. I'm aware of the risk and have done my best to mitigate something wicked this way comes.
Add in the fact that many out of the way roads in the southern Sierra Nevada have yet to be fixed from winter damage, forget about firefighting vehicles and bulldozers if lightning hits in that neck of the woods.
Every few years I go through native trees in the vicinity of the house and pull or cut off dead branches, and its amazing how many new dead limbs are on trees that I pruned before, the trees sacrificing formerly living limbs to keep on keeping on in the punishing 3 year drought, this combined with some of the highest and thickest dead grasses i've yet seen, its as if she has designs for the land.
The canary in the coal mine as far as climate change is concerned here in Cali are Giant Sequoias which managed to stay alive through thick and thin for thousands of years and only now are they burning up.
Of course, by not allowing forests to burn essentially since the defining fire way back when, the Big Burn of 1910, we've added so much fuel that would have never been there, so include us as an accomplice to their decline.
(7/21/2023) 'Bidenomics' Has No Answer for Eviction Crisis – Or Much Else. The Biden administration continues to insist that the economy is strong and its efforts are improving the situation. So, what is in its most recent efforts announced on Wednesday? From the White House:
Today, the President will outline several new, concrete steps in the Administration's effort to crack down on rental junk fees and lower costs for renters, including:• New commitments from major rental housing platforms — Zillow, Apartments.com, and AffordableHousing.com — who have answered the President's call for transparency and will provide consumers with total, upfront cost information on rental properties, which can be hundreds of dollars on top of the advertised rent;
• New research from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which provides a blueprint for a nationwide effort to address rental housing junk fees; and
• Legislative action in states across the country — from Connecticut to California — who are joining the Administration in its effort to crack down on rental housing fees and protect consumers.
Importantly, while these commitments from rental housing platforms will make renters better informed about the total cost, they do nothing to make housing more affordable.
eg comments: Canada isn't winning any awards for its homelessness and housing performance either. I'm fairly certain that housing starts peaked in the 1970s. For some context in 1975 there were about 23 million Canadians; now there are over 40 million. Perhaps not coincidentally Canada's Federal and Provincial governments got out of the business of building public housing in the '80s 'because neoliberalism.' Let's face it — 'the market' has never, and will never, provide sufficient low income housing. The experiment has been run for at least 40 years now and it has been an abject failure. With apologies to Keynes, 'when the housing development of a country becomes a by-product of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.' Governments need to get back in the game of building affordable housing yesterday. But I'm not holding my breath, living as we do in nations governed for rentiers by rentiers …
Business/Finance
(7/14/2023) A Transatlantic Trend: Banks in UK and US Are Closing Customer Accounts With Little to No Warning Or Explanation. 'The escalation team just reached out to me. They told me that the account was being shut down, and they wouldn't give me a reason. I asked them if they would ever give me a reason. They said no.'
This eerily Kafkaesque account is from California-based writer, activist, and social and political commentator Elad Nehorai. At the beginning of this week, he learnt that his bank of many years, Bank of America, had closed his account with no warning or explanation. He couldn't touch his funds and he had no idea why. Nehorai posted a thread on Twitter that went viral and ultimately prompted the TBTF lender to partially back down. As Nehorai has come to realise through this ordeal, he is not the only person to have suffered this fate (h/t to Lambert for bringing this to my attention) ...
The responses to Nehorai's twitter thread suggest that this 'horror show' is anything but a freak occurrence. And it is not new: CBS published an article in June 2022 about a woman who was shut out of her 17-year account with Bank of America just before undergoing surgery for thyroid cancer, and for certain minority groups, in particular Muslims, this sort of thing has been happening for over a decade. Nor is it exclusive to the US.
GramSci comments: When my mother-in-law died twenty years ago, the family was somewhat aghast to find $400,000 in small bills in a valise in her closet. Besides her rather run-down house, this was the full extent of her estate.
Of course her depression-era fears were rather different from ours, but I'm gaining a new respect for her wisdom.
(7/25/2023) Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina and Head of 'BRICS Bank' Throw Cold Water on BRICS Currency Project. We're late to a story that interestingly has been very much under-reported, perhaps because it is contrary to the anti-globalist narrative….already a minority faction in the Anglosphere. We've said for some time that the prospects for replacing the dollar are a long way away, even more so with a newly-created, reserve currency aspirant.
Our views have been confirmed by none other that Russian central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina, who has effectively cleared her throat to sanity check the desire of some BRICS leaders, including Vladimir Putin, to announce a splashy breakthrough on the 'new currency' front at a late August BRICS summit.
Keep in mind that wanna-be dollar refusniks have already been able to achieve a key aim, that of escaping dollar sanctions, by engaging in bi-lateral trade in each other's currencies. This isn't as tidy as it seems, since unless the two countries trading with each other also happens to have close to a trade balance, one will wind up holding the other's currency and not have any use for it. Russia has been grumbling a bit about all the Indian rupee it now has.
Lex comments: As Yves has pointed out, BRICS isn't a great organization to implement this because it's so loose and situationally voluntary, though maybe that's a sort of asset here. I also agree with her on accepting Putin's words (dependent on translation) because he's precise in using them. I have a hard time seeing a newly created reserve currency but I do wonder about a trade currency. Though I'm not nearly well enough informed to spell that out. I can see how it's hard to have one without the other in practical terms.
It does seem like the rest of the world will have to figure out something. Not to bring down the dollar but to protect itself from US economics and increasingly erratic and irrational US politics. I can see a grand solution as tempting but maybe it's best to let that grand solution evolve organically?
(7/26/2023) Former Apollo Chief Leon Black Has More Jeffrey Epstein 'Splaining To Do with Tax Evasion, Alleged Rape of Autistic 16 Year Old. One has to think that most of the rich men who entered accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's orbit are glad they aren't Leon Black. The disgraced private equity billionaire had a purported professional relationship with Epstein in which Black gave Epstein unseemly amount of money for tax advice….when Epstein was in no way, shape or form a tax professional and all of his ideas were rechecked by actual experts who were paid a pittance compared to the eye-popping $158 million Epstein received. Not only did that arrangement get a fair bit of eyebrow raised press coverage, but the Senate Committee on Finance is also, with limited success, trying to go proctological on the Epstein advice as a case study in how super rich men avoid, and perhaps evade, taxes.
And just as the Senate publicized its probe into Black's big tax savings and Black's evident egregious overpay for Epstein's tax services, and its dissatisfaction with how forthcoming Black has been, comes a new lawsuit alleging that Black raped an autistic 16 year old in 2002 at Epstein's Manhattan townhouse.
Now admittedly, Black claims that Epstein's ideas saved Black $1.6 billion in taxes. But tax pros are not paid on a commission basis. And for $158 million, Black could have hired the very best tax attorneys in the world many times over.
playon comments: It would be wonderful if this case was won but if not, the extreme amount of negative publicity (which Leon Black will likely never live down) at least is some kind of weak justice. Will Epstein's client list ever be revealed, is the big question.
Continuing Themes
(7/13/2023) This Week in Long Covid: Nature Fires Salvo of Four Major Papers. Science is popping! Nature's editors and reviewers must have had quite at time doing all these papers more or less at once. And it's certainly encouraging to see Long Covid[2] getting major play. In this simple post, I'll present the most salient features of each of the four studies (and I'm not super-strong on methodological issues, so I hope readers will bear with me, and mavens will weigh in). Then I'll look into where the salvo landed.
Presenting the studies in order by date:
1) 'The immunology of long COVID' Nature July 11, 2023
2) 'Long COVID prevalence and impact on quality of life 2 years after acute COVID-19' Nature (July 11, 2023).
3) 'Gene linked to long COVID found in analysis of thousands of patients' Nature (July 11, 2013).
skippy comments: This sort of pain staking attention to detail, reconciling past and present, makes you invaluable to NC and its readership. More so, as noted above, provides a linkable post which readership can forward to others, which then negates the verbal issues with discussing a topic with those that have gifted biases or some other malady which makes discussions difficult.
Well done Sir ….
(7/24/2023) Rage, Neoliberalism, and Phone Trees. Conveniently for those in authority, shifts in public mood don't have much impact on their power, at least until it becomes so extreme as to threaten revolt. However, it seems necessary to point out a tendency that ought to be obvious, yet is seldom acknowledged: that the neoliberalism, by hollowing out social relations and regularly prioritizing corporate convenience and cost over good service, fair dealings, and honoring contracts, is a significant cause of the much-acknowledged rise in anger in America.
We'll use phone trees as a source of impotent rage that can't be directed at the perp, the callous vendor, and thus feeds rising base line of upset.
Be honest: how often have you yelled at the phone when you can't get past the prompt system quickly to reach a human and/or encounter only choices that don't fit your situation? Yet because it's stoopid to shout at a recording (as in to add insult to injury, the customer has succumbed to reacting to automation as if it were human) and it's so inescapable, I suspect most underrate how significant an irritant it is.
Before we turn to phone trees as a symptom of neoliberal crapification, we'll look briefly at rising choler in the US. A few minutes on a search engine will turn up many surveys where Americans answer polls saying they are angrier now than in the past. Note this was an established trend before Trump-despising became a national pastime.
EAC comments: One thing that has come to my attention about phone trees concerns the Americans with Disabilities Act. Visually impaired folks often have questions about accounts with extremely long account numbers and other information that require 'punch-in' numbers. If anyone needed a human on the other end of the phone, it is surely a visually impaired person. I have seen a family member receive mailings concerning an urgent matter that included needing to be able to see extraordinarily long incident numbers and so on, which they cannot read, and yet they are kept in a loop without being able to reach a human who could actually look this stuff up. How can this not be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act?
(7/10/2023) CDC's HICPAC Prepares to Whack More Patients as Infection Control Experts Gather for August 22 Teleconference on Masks. Still true:
Let's get the engineering stuff out of the way first, because masking is too important to be left to the medical community. Covid is airborne (a.k.a. aerosol transmission); people infect each other with Covid via 'shared air', which floats like cigarette smoke. Covid is airborne in hospital settings. Masks work to prevent airborne transmission.
Infection control guidance for hospitals that deviates from these engineering principles costs patients' lives. It really is that simple.
As readers know, I have long railed against the hospital infection control community for its tooth-and-nail resistance to the 'engineering stuff' summarized above. CDC's HICPAC (Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee) is providing a fine example of massive resistance that, in another context, would have made George Wallace proud. ...
Since airborne transmission and its prevention are fundamentally engineering problems, some might find it surprising — given that #CovidIsAirborne — that there are no aerosol sciencists or ventilation engineers on the Committee. Then again, if we view HICPAC as the highest expression of the Infection Control hive mind, we might not find it so surprising.
HICPAC is currently reviewing CDC's guidance on masks and infection control generally, and has already done a lot a lot of damage to patient (and health care worker) safety
watermelonpunch comments: Erica Shenoy …
Does she advocate getting rid of mosquito nets where malaria is endemic? what a joker.
(7/20/2023) If MRSA Is Airborne, then CDC Guidance on 'Enhanced Barrier Precautions' in Nursing Homes Is Wrong (and Lethal). I put this article from Kevin Kavanaugh, 'Pandemic Strategies Are Inadequate To Assure Public Safety,' in Links yesterday, and in what I will struggle to make a short post, I want to draw out some implications of these paragraphs from that link:
The lack of publicly available data regarding the incidence of MRSA, COVID-19, and other pathogens in the United States is concerning.
Unfortunately, our infectious disease policy appears not to be fixing these problems but instead is retreating. The draft CDC Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) updated infection control recommendations need to adequately address screening.
One of the worst proposed policies is Enhanced Barrier Precautions (EBP), an antiaptronym [word of the day] since they are watered-down precautions that are even being advocated for Candida auris and MRSA.
Roxan comments: I recall being told MRSA was only airborne if a patient had it in their lungs and coughed, etc. But, seems to me, if you have it in your nose that might spread it via air. I always avoided drinking ice water in hospitals, as many places dispense ice from coolers on carts. Aides usually drop the scoop back into the ice and I doubt they ever wash their hands. Another source could be shaking out bed linens and those dusty room dividers.
(7/5/2023) Industrialism Is Bad for Our Health: The Series Continues. What have we done? Toxic 'forever chemicals' that make life easier, in the short run, such as found in the cheap non-stick frying pan that works no better than your grandmother's well-seasoned cast iron skillet, an artifact that will last forever. Ground water mined at rates far beyond natural replenishment for industrial agriculture where rain is scarce. The expanding hypoxic dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi, the watershed of which extends from Louisiana to North Carolina, New York, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana, Alberta, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico (1,151,000 square miles). Microplastics everywhere and in everything, from filter-feeding mussels to you and me.
And then there is the 'Western Diet' of food-like substances, which has been a concomitant of the post-WWII industrialization of agriculture in the United States. Industrial Agriculture is a category mistake nourished by a market fundamentalism that has led inexorably to misery, pathology, and environmental degradation. ...
The transformation of our diet began in the 1950s with the 'Diet-Heart Hypothesis.' Despite millennia of practical wisdom, this can be summarized (incorrectly) as 'eat fat, get fat,' with bad things happening to your heart as a result. Fat and protein calories were replaced by fat substitutes (e.g., margarine and vegetable oil) and refined carbohydrates. Sugar, which is not toxic in moderation, has been replaced with high-fructose corn syrup in many of our 'staples.' What has rightfully become known as the 'obesity epidemic' is a most obvious result.
Susan the other comments: I went on a 6/18 diet over a 4 year period. And I liked it so much I'm still on it. I learned to appreciate a feeling of being empty. Something I was not familiar with before. So now I think it's a little strange to expect a healthy result from habitually eating 3-meals-a-day. The curious thing is that now when I am hungry it's usually for a piece of fruit or some raw carrots. And I'm also suspecting there is an unrecognized benefit to regularly consuming your own fat stores. Wondering if human fat is an ultra nutritious processed food, as well as personally customized.
(7/18/2023) How the Mayo Clinic and Uber Killed Efforts to Help Workers in Minnesota . Democrats, controlling the governor's office, the state house and senate passed a wave of legislation that has some describing Minnesota as a shining example of progressivism and led The Guardian to declare it the 'best state for workers.'
Minnesota might very well deserve that designation as it's not a very high bar to clear, but the true test of the gopher state's worker friendliness came when proposed legislation favoring workers threatened the interests of the capital class. The monied interests in this case were Uber, Lyft, and the Mayo Clinic, and when their bottom lines were threatened they all responded with various threats. In each of these instances, Minnesota's elected officials failed the tests as the legislature and governor quickly backed down.
Here's a long, enthusiastic thread on everything Minnesota Democrats enacted during this year's legislative session
Aleric comments: Mayo Clinic is highly overrated, my family lives in that part of the state and consistently received poor to terrible care. Not sure if the people jetting in on their gulfstreams are getting better care than the townies, or it has been coasting on reputation and marketing for decades.
Other Politics
(7/17/2023) Recork the Champagne: Sweden's NATO Accession Deal With Turkiye Still Faces Hurdles . Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave NATO the public relations boost it so desperately wanted during the Vilnius summit. First, he released the neo-Nazi Azov commanders back to Ukraine in violation of the agreement with Russia. Then, he agreed to some sort of deal for Sweden's entry into NATO.
The contents of that deal still aren't entirely clear, but now that the PR euphoria has subsided and the summit has ended, it looks like the details still need to be ironed out as the same old stumbling blocks remain for Sweden's accession.
Stockholm says it will meet Turkiye's demands after Ankara gives the final go-ahead to NATO accession while Erdogan wants that order reversed and has now pushed off a vote in Turkiye's parliament until October.
Dida comments: Stockholm says it will meet Turkiye's demands after Ankara gives the final go-ahead to NATO accession while Erdogan wants that order reversed.
You'd have to be an idiot to believe any promise that comes out of the morally bankrupt West. They weren't even capable to make good on the grain deal.
Thank you Conor for keeping an eye on this corner of the world. Russia would be so screwed if Erdogan opened the Black Sea to NATO.
(7/18/2023) The Dark, Shady Past of Spain's Likely Next Prime Minister, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Spain's general elections this Sunday (July 22) could be a milestone event — of the bad rather than good kind.
If the latest polls are right — and, of course, they may not be — the until recently reasonably fringe party VOX could be about to become the first far-right party to enter national government since the dying days of Francisco Franco, in 1975. This it will do by becoming the junior partner in a coalition government with the conservative People's Party (PP), as has already occurred in numerous towns, cities and regions across Spain in the wake of local and regional elections in May.
In such an outcome, Spain's new prime minister will be Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the former president of Galicia's regional government and current leader of the People's Party. And he has a dark, shady past that he is trying his damnedest to downplay.
Christophe Douté comments: An impressively documented article from Nick, with good analysis, as always. On the side-issue of the Civil War and Franco dictatorship, I always noticed the indecency with which the Spanish right, at least members of it who express themselves publicly, likes to openly disparage and make fun of the mourning and memories of people who lost relatives in the Civil War or otherwise claimed for justice. It is also true, of course, that the PSOE did little, under Felipe González, to bring that justice or at least official recognition, when it could still be done, i.e. when the criminals were still around. On the main theme of the article, if Covid has shown anything, it is the total moral corruption of 95 plus percent of European politicians. Feijoó just goes one step beyond with his narco ties.
Science and Technology
(7/7/2023) The EU's Mass Censorship Regime Is Almost Fully Operational. Will It Go Global? Government censorship of public online discourse in the West's ostensibly liberal democracies has been largely covert until now, as revealed by the Twitter Files. But thanks to the EU's Digital Services Act, it is about to become overt. Next month, a little-known development will occur that could end up having huge repercussions for the nature of public discourse on the Internet all over the planet. August 25, 2023 is the date by which big social media platforms will have to begin fully complying with the European Union's Digital Services Act, or DSA. The DSA, among many other things, obliges all 'Very Large Online Platforms', or VLOPs, to speedily remove illegal content, hate speech and so-called disinformation from their platforms. If not, they risk fines of up to 6% of their annual global revenue.
The Commission has so far compiled a list of 19 VLOPs and VLOSEs (Very Large Online Search Engines), most of them from the US, that will have to begin complying with the DSA in 50 days' time:
• Alibaba AliExpress • Amazon Store • Apple AppStore • Booking.com • Facebook • Google Play • Google Maps • Google Shopping • Instagram • LinkedIn • Pinterest • Snapchat • TikTok • Twitter • Wikipedia • YouTube • ZalandoVery Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs):
• Bing • YouTube • Google SearchThe Rev Kev comments: We keep on hearing the EU talking about European values but why is it then that the European values that we see are those of the 1930s? So who decides on disinformation then? And is it movable feast? We saw Hunter Biden's laptop called Russian disinformation and the media censored that story but after the election was over, it was admitted to be true. And who can forget Weapons of Mass Destruction. America went to war over that along with a lot of other nations but it turned out to be a bs story. But by the time it was admitted, we were deep into trying to occupy Iraq. And who can forget all the so-called 'misinformation' of the past three years which the establishment used their agents in social media corporations to try to smother. 'Horse-paste', as it turned out, was the very least of it. The cornerstone of any real democracy is a well informed electorate but the elites in the Empire of Lies have decided to opt for total information control instead.
Literary and Lifestyle
(7/11/2023) On Taking Walks. It's been awhile since I perambulated through the biosphere … or indeed at all, and today I thought I would perambulate through the concept of perambulation itself: What is the right word for one who walks with awareness? (Leaving aside White Walkers, and Walker, Texas Ranger, both dubiously aware, and also the ambiguous 'walker') There are several options, but flâneur (Fr. f. flâneuse) seems to lead the pack:
Flâneur (French: [flɑnœʁ]) is a French noun referring to a person, literally meaning 'stroller', 'lounger', 'saunterer', or 'loafer', but with some nuanced additional meanings (including as a loanword into English). Flânerie is the act of strolling, with all of its accompanying associations. A near-synonym of the noun is boulevardier. Traditionally depicted as male, a flâneur is an ambivalent figure of urban affluence and modernity, representing the ability to wander detached from society with no other purpose than to be an acute observer of industrialized, contemporary life.
Skk comments: As a kid, living in a crowded inner city in India, in the early 60s, I recall dusk as the time when people strolled the streets. It was after the scorching afternoon heat had receded, but before the mundane evening/night chores of food shopping, flour mill chores, temple visits.
It was really about people watching and to be watched, IMO.
(7/20/2023) Why Psalm 23 Gives Me the Creeps. (I have used the King James version, because English prose and poetic stylists were in top form in the early 1600s, as gloriously shown here. I'm guessing the King James is the version most familiar to readers, from being read at funerals). I will not do a close reading of the text; rather, my focus is on the material aspects of the relation between shepherd (God) and sheep (you or me), and not on the social aspects; my cursory research couldn't determine the social status of shepherds when Psalm 23 was written, or in the psalm itself, whether the youngest boy in the family, a priest, or both. As soon as you look closely at those material aspects, the Psalm becomes either, well, delusional, or else savagely ironic.
ambrit comments: 'I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.' This line nicely obscures the possibility as outlined by M. Strether that the shepherd is the evil to be feared. It nicely fits with the Commandment that; 'Thou shall have no other gods before Me.' It constitutes a gradual limiting of available alternatives. The process produces the epitome of the 'True Believer.'
And Another Thing...
JBird4049 (7/2/2023) comments:
One can see the same process in the United States especially after the increasing militarization, brutality, and legal immunity of the police.
I vaguely remember there was a trend of increasing professionalism of the police (mind you, that was from a very low bar) in the 70s, but somewhere, perhaps from the crack wars of the 80s, the whole process ended. Look for pictures of American police officers from 40 years ago, and note that even in full riot gear, they were less armed and armored than modern police. They were still freaking terrifying in person, but they looked human, unlike the robotic Borg look of today. Also, the older generation of police, I guess pre 9/11, generally do not like the increased brutality of the current generation. Not brutality itself because American policing has always been rough, but the seemingly unreasonable and often unpredictable use of it.
Then add the increasing use of anti drugs, gun, or gang units as well as SWAT. All of these units are usually use much violence on the entire community and aside from SWAT routinely become the most corrupt in an entire police department. All done in the name of public safety and order. Then there is the use of policing via asset forfeitures and tickets as a means of taxation. Policing for profit mostly on the poor and working classes.
What this means is that the very people who want the police in the usual poor community for their own safety are also the very same people who are abused the most by and who become the most hostile to the police. They become overpoliced and underserved. The community develops a confrontational approach to the government as well.
The higher classes wonder why people are rioting or at least strongly protesting without looking at the effects of the abusive policing. Then the demand for more police. The police are a cause of the violence.
This is not to say that there are not violent criminals and areas of massive lawlessness, but when people are afraid of calling the police because they might kill or beat somebody, or even steal their car, often the wrong somebody, the police become the problem. The police become the servants of the state and not the community.
Bill Malcolm (7/4/2023) comments:
Indeed, a legitimate wicket. When I played cricket as a child in my prep school's second team (I was only ten), this was a favourite tactic. Batsman misses ball entirely and wanders out of the crease, perhaps hoping for a bye run. But if the wicket-keeper catches the ball and stumps the wicket with the ball in his gloves, or if he or a fielder catches it and throws it at the wicket and knocks the bails off while the batsman is out of the crease, well it's a wicket (out). The most common manifestation of the situation is:. A fielder grabs the 'errant' ball and whips it to the 'keeper who is standing right at the wicket and sweeps the bails off. That happens anyway a lot of the time just in case the batsman is out of the crease, and the umpire has noticed the batsman out of crease. Often, the batsman is in, but no harm trying anyway. I was an umpire when other 'houses' in our school other than mine were playing. Our 'house' was one of four. The exact same setup of four 'houses' was used in intramural sports in the high school I attended from fall '59 in Canada.
Sounds like the current England team are a bunch of crybabies. An elemental error on Bairstow's part. Peter May (Surrey) would never have been caught out like this unless he tripped on his undone shoelace and fell over – unlikely, as he was fastidious in appearance. Went to enough Hampshire home games (and Oxford home games when on holiday with Grannie and Grandpa in the late 1950s) to see some really decent cricket. Surrey was ascendant in those days. and I saw them twice. Games took three DAYS! Then the family moved to Canada and I got to wonder why sissies wore gloves to catch a baseball. Catcher or wicketkeeper, sure, but fielders? What a laugh. Never had time for baseball, but that's just me. It plays like rounders on steroids where mighty batters swing crossbat attempted cowshots hoping for the best. Been to but one major league game in my life (Blue Jays), and it was a crashing bore. Yes, I'm biased!
Mark Gisleson (6/15/2023) comments:
Being a retired creative I have no stake in this but everything I know tells me AI will — however dangerous — be in most 'creative' regards a complete belly flop.
Immediate impact: each truly horrible snafu will get headlines (like the attorney who trusted AI to do legal research). News media will not be able to resist probably because they will be very cautious with AI. Publishers will love it but every actual journalist and editor will fight it tooth and claw.
Unless AI folks pay top writers/editors to review AI content, AI content will be flawed. Late night comedians will make jokes. Some of the jokes will actually happen, fueling more jokes.
Long tail effect is that every paying user of content will be exposed to AI mistakes, and the writers, researchers and editors competing with AI will have no shortage of guerilla marketing material with which to sell their human services. There will be ZERO competing stories about AI content accomplishing anything. Their goal is to not make mistakes. Creatives thrive on mistakes. AI will never defeat a genuine creative in any kind of challenge.
In the end I think AI will allow genuinely talented creatives to finally get decent 'average' pay (we're clearly on the superstar system, just like athletes). The more business owners are forced to see how AI doesn't get it (and this will not be obvious to the owners at first because they've NEVER understood creative product), the more they'll finally figure out which creatives really produce. They'll try to make new superstars but it should quickly become obvious that most creatives are already 'superstars,' just without the pay.
Sorry to write long but this has been building up for a while. Creating useful written copy is nothing like designing a crosswalk. I suspect that's obvious to everyone but the C-suiters who got to skip Humanities requirements when business colleges began dumbing themselves down in the '80s.
Piotr Berman (7/12/2023) comments:
The link to credit card weeping story is terrifying. A mom with three children, 2, 4 and 6 old, has a decent job with ca. 3k/month net, but she lost her husband. The article says 'divorce', but nothing about support, so there is something dark there.
To work she needs daycare, 1500/month. From what I remember 40 years ago, this is a good price, and alternative, a baby sitter, would cost more. But how can you feed, dress etc. 4 persons in USA on 1500/month? Do you need a car with gasoline and insurance? But somehow the mom 'almost' made it. As an aside, that shows that 'near Nashville, TN' the rents got to be low. But to 'balance that', Tennessee is quite stingy with support for childcare etc., so our mom did not qualify.
So she became a heroic person that keeps solvency of our banking system, namely a revolver. This suggest playing Russian roulette, a bit misleading, it is more like Russian roulette with a bullet in every single chamber. Revolver is a person who does not pay full balance on the credit card, often just the minimum payment, so she was REVOLVING the balance. And the interest rate starts at 26% if you need it (i.e. you have not so good credit rating). There were times when I was young, and there existed usury laws. Note that this interest rate is whopping 20% above inflation.
Stand to reason that you should rather eat the grass than revolve your balance. For starters, DO NOT PAY MEDICAL BILLS. They actually have more decent interest rate, and they do not pester too much. But eating grass is easier said than done. I check historical accounts how it was done in Polish Wikipedia on 'przednowek', English version on 'hunger gap' is much less informative. In Poland and further east, every early spring majority of peasants had to survive with hardly any food. One reason was that potatoes, beets etc. stored since Autumns were rotting in spring, and an obvious solution was to eat them anyway. A more reliable way was to eat weeds, especially the seeds of a weed with related to quinoa. Good food! But you have to find it, and getting food out of it requires A LOT OF WORK (collecting weeds and converting into seeds that are not poisonous), something that poor peasants had time and knowhow. BTW, Native Americans abandoned that plant once they were able to grow much less nutritious corn, surely because of inferior food/work ratio. Perhaps our mom, helped by 6 year old daughter, could spend weekends foraging like that …
Financially, our mom would do better by leaving younger children under the care of 6 year old daughter, another approach of poor peasants, but risky and perhaps even illegal.
And there it is - August 2023 at Naked Capitalism. Thank you very much for your time and attention and we'll see you again next month.
The Crew at Naked Capitalism
|
No comments:
Post a Comment