Dear Naked Capitalism Reader,
Welcome to August 2023 and the Best of Naked Capitalism from the last month or so. This month we're looking at BRICS, possible war in the Caucasus, the consequences of Ukraine 'Proxy War,' the Chinese economy, and European Vacations. We hope you enjoy the collection!!
And stay tuned, our annual fundraiser starts soon!
Major Stories
(8/4/2023) More on the Collapse of Operational Capabilities in the West: How Did We Get Here. Today's topic is far too sprawling to address well in a single post; one can imagine future historians, assuming there's enough societal surplus to support serious academic inquiry then, will likely debate this and other issues related to the decline of US/Western hegemony. But it seems that there's been enough additional decline from the already deteriorating baseline of operational (or alternatively, managerial) capabilities in most advanced economies to spur more and more commentators to write about it. Aurelien has been describing this problem in passing but roused himself to write his stylish Reality Would Like a Word. John Michael Greer had a go at the question of why elites today seemed incapable of doing anything useful in a crisis (aside from grifting, which is personally useful) in Storm Trooper Syndrome.
This same week, Andrei Martyanov, who has an extensive, extremely well-documented description and analysis of the decline of the US military across several highly regarded books, warned that the pathology was getting worse. From his When I Talk About…:
It is a systemic problem and it cannot be addressed without rebuilding the system from the ground up and the good first step would be throwing out all those Ph.Ds in 'strategy' who infest US 'academe' and think-tankdom while having no fucking clue about what they preach. Studying military and political history in and of itself does not represent 'strategic studies' due to inherently complex nature of modern warfare and a required accuracy in description of the object of study, such as a country, in our particular case – Russia. The US in general, and combined West in particular, DO NOT have the tool kit to handle all that, we can say it now with confidence. So, the issue is multifaceted and pseudo-academe and 'experts' who dominate decision-making chain in the US are incapable of correcting the course. It is too late now anyway
chris comments: We have to start young I think. The best idea I have to help is to give our kids opportunities to fail, and then give them support as they climb their way back up from failure. Too many are sheltered from failure. Too many are coddled and their problems are hidden. Too many understand that even the appearance of failure can be catastrophic. We need to give kids the opportunity to fail. Like riding a bike off a ramp thats too high. Like putting something together and watching it fall apart. Like trying to accomplish a school project and being told it wasn't good enough. And then we need to reward them for fixing things and learning from that experience.
There used to be options for kids to learn this. Not just in school, but in the Scouts, sports like football, boxing, working on cars, first jobs, etc. We need to give our kids these chances again.
(8/3/2023) Energy Destinies – Part 8: Pathways. The world simultaneously faces two problems – dwindling fossil fuels and emissions. These can be addressed by reducing demand as well as increasing or managing supplies including the shift to lower emission renewable sources.
Energy demand is a function of a number of factors: population, energy consumption per capita, and energy density relative to GDP. A critical externality is the emissions per capital or unit of GDP.
Unfortunately, there is little impetus to manage many of these variables. Political constraints around forced population control and expectation of perpetual improvements in living standards mean curtailing demand is not on the policy agenda. ...
Cars are over-sized given that frequently it transports a single passenger in many cases for short distances. Sport-Utility Vehicles (SUVs) speak to vanities, insecurities and fears rather than practical need. Used for a small portion of their lives, the embedded energy in the materials used to construct vehicles is similarly wasted.
Heating and cooling building, which constitutes a significant proportion of power consumption, is wasteful due to poor energy efficiency. While newer designs have improved energy use, older buildings, which make up the bulk of housing and office stock, are difficult and expensive to retrofit.
elissa3 comments: De-growth. Simplicity. If not voluntary, then forced by whatever entity that has power.
As someone who has lived a long time, it continues to amaze me how much superfluous 'stuff' is available in the USA. And how convenience, which consumes enormous energy, has been elevated to an expected right rather than a costly privilege.
(8/25/2023) Could New BRICS Member Argentina Become First Country to Receive a Full-Scale BRICS Bailout? What a difference a day can make. On Wednesday afternoon, it seemed that Argentina would not be admitted to the BRICS grouping following months of speculation that it was a virtual shove in. Mercopress even reported that Argentina's President Alberto Fernández had called off his scheduled trip to Johannesburg to attend the summit after learning that his country would not be joining the BRICS during this round of admissions.
By Wednesday evening, news outlets around the world were reporting that Argentina was no longer on the list. One of the key participants of the Argentine government's visit to the IMF's HQ in Washington this week said 'the Fund and the BRICS are two very different families,' suggesting a clash of interests between one group and the other. Even as late as Wednesday night, Reuters was reporting that divisions persisted among BRICS members on how much to expand the bloc's membership and how quickly:
An agreement had been meant to be adopted following a plenary session earlier on Wednesday, but the source said it had been delayed after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced new admission criteria.
Asked about the delay, an Indian official aware of the details of the talks told Reuters late on Wednesday that the discussion were continuing.
'Yesterday … India pushed for consensus on criteria as well as the issue of (candidate) names. There was a broad understanding,' he said.
By Thursday morning, that 'broad understanding' had given way to full, unanimous agreement. For the first time since late 2010, the BRICS' doors was open to new members, those members being Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and Argentina. Four countries from the Middle East, a region that until now the US and Western Europe have collectively dominated for over a century and another from Africa (though Egypt is also, of course, an African country).
Luciano Moffatt comments: your analysis is music in my ears.
I am still afraid that Milei might get elected, thou.
However, that would not be the end of the story.
If Milei, as expected applies a neoliberal recipe a la Thatcher, or worst a la Yeltsin, we would expect huge social turmoil and a huge drop in the standard of living.
That would be the time for a new figure to emerge and copy his transgressive style but this time 'selling' a complete departure from the US dependency.
Argentina, is well known, competes with the United States: we both sells agricultural (and cultural) products. Argentina did well (at least part of the population) when we associated with the complementary UK. Many people see that an association with China/BRICS would be complementary and that would help everybody here.
Once Argentinian elites are convinced, the change will be dramatic.
(8/7/2023) The Road That Could Ignite a War in the Caucasus. Azerbaijan has been blockading the lone road that leads to the region of Nagorno-Karabakh for more than seven months. Residents are reportedly running out of fuel and food. Ever since the breakup of the USSR, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave recognized as Azerbaijani territory by the international community but mostly populated by ethnic Armenians.
They fought a war there three years ago when Azerbaijan grabbed land in a six-week conflict that led to roughly 7,000 deaths. There have been periodic skirmishes ever since. While Nagorno-Karabakh is important to both sides, I don't believe it is the primary reason Azerbaijan continues the blockade. The real reason is that Baku wants a peace deal that includes the opening of the Zangezur corridor – which would connect Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave wedged between Armenia, Turkiye, and Iran. The problem for Azerbaijan and Turkiye, which also wants the corridor, is that it risks a wider war. Iran has said such a corridor is a red line. Such a corridor would mean goods and energy could flow freely between Azerbaijan and Turkiye without having to be rerouted through Iran, thereby eliminating the lucrative fees Tehran charges for such transfers. This is part of the reason Iran is so opposed to such a plan and has beefed up its presence along its border with Armenia.
The nine-point ceasefire agreement signed under Russian mediation that ended the 2020 war included a stipulation that Armenia is responsible for ensuring the security of transport links between the western regions of Azerbaijan and the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic, facilitating the unhindered movement of citizens, vehicles and cargo in both directions. Azerbaijan and Turkiye have latched onto that point, insisting they have the right to set up transportation links through southern Armenia.
Candide comments: Great review of the opportunities for violence among the riders of the lifeboat, rather than cooperation and survival of even the dominant species on this globe.
(8/18/2023) Better Late Than Never? Spain's El País Sounds Alarm Over Consequences of Ukraine 'Proxy War' for EU's Future. After enthusiastically selling the war since its inception, the mainstream media in Europe may be beginning to change its tune.
As the undeniable failure of Ukraine's much-anticipated counter offensive begins to sink in on the old continent, another crack in the media narrative around the conflict has appeared — and what's more in one of Europe's newspapers of record, Spain's El País. On Monday, the newspaper published an op-ed (behind paywall) by José Luis Cebrián titled 'Defending Ukraine to the Death… of Ukrainians.' The article raises serious concerns about the real objectives of the war, the way it is being waged and its impact on the European Union, much of which is encapsulated in the article's sub-heading:
'The war is a proxy war between NATO and Russia that has roots that predate the invasion whose immediate consequence has been the subordination of the EU project to the objectives of the [NATO] military alliance.'
This one sentence makes three points that are hardly news to NC readers but may be to many loyal El País readers: first, what is happening in Ukraine is not a David versus Goliath struggle between an aggressive superpower and a small but plucky neighbour, as newspapers like El País have been claiming for the past year and a half, but rather a proxy war between the world's two largest nuclear powers; second, its roots long predate Russia's Special Military Operation of February 2022; and third, the EU project has essentially been subordinated to NATO's military goals, which are essentially Washington's military goals.
John R Moffett comments: The cracks begin to appear in the facade. I have always wondered why the wealthy business types in Europe have not been squealing about the sanctions and the loss of cheap energy. I assumed that they had been fed a boatload of lies about how weak Russia was and that it would all end magnificently and quickly. But now they are stuck in the current situation with few ways out. NATO has them by the throat and isn't going to let go. I wonder if it is dawning on the wealthy elites in Europe that NATO is a US invention whose sole purpose is to keep Germany down, Russia out and the US in. Maybe they should have studied their history lessons a bit better.
Business/Finance
(8/23/2023) China Schizophrenia: Jake Sullivan Makes Demands, Press Fulminates Its Ambitions as While Overhyping Current Economic Wobbles. As we'll unpack, the financial press has been depicting the soft Chinese economy as teetering on the edge of a crisis. As we'll soon show, even though China has had to intervene to defend the renminbi, the current wobbles are overhyped. That isn't to say that China has a housing debt bubble whose unwind will be a drag on growth. And that isn't also to say that China isn't at risk of an eventual crisis. But its current wobbles are not that.
But the media piling on comes in connection with some major press stories and now Jake Sullivan depicting China as a threat, for its alleged hegemony-building and now, per Sullivan, not being transparent enough about its economy. While yours truly is not a China fan, it's pretty rich for the declining superpower to get upset about geopolitical competition, particularly when the new kid on the block has yet to engage in our speciality, regime change operations.
John R Moffett comments: Notice how it is the US that constantly demands things of other countries like China, but China never demands anything from the US except maybe a little respect. Also, notice how China does not threaten the US with its military, but the US surrounds China with military bases and sails our navy up and down their coast. Whatever you think about China, they are not belligerent, and they are not threatening. I can't wait until this current administration with the likes of Sullivan and Blinken are gone. I was around for the Cuban missile crisis and this feels almost as dangerous because of these neocon warmongers. We are one accident away from a nuclear disaster in Ukraine, while sabre rattling at China at the same time.
(8/22/2023) The Moment of Truth Arrives for Mexico's Anti-GM Corn Laws. This may be an important battle for Big Ag lobbies and biotech companies but it is an existential one for Mexico, for whom corn is the cornerstone not only of its cuisine and diet but also its culture.
Following months of failed negotiations, the U.S. government has escalated its food fight with Mexico by calling for the formation of a dispute settlement panel under the USMCA North American trade deal. The cause of the dispute is a decree passed by Mexico's government that seeks to prohibit the use of genetically modified (GM) yellow corn for human use. Its reasons for doing so include protecting the health of the population, the environment and Mexico's genetic diversity of maize.
The U.S. Trade Representatives Office, or USTR, argues that Mexico's restrictions on GM corn imports are not only not based on 'science' but 'they undermine the market access [Mexico's government] agreed to provide in the USMCA.'
Mexico is the birthplace of corn as well as the world's richest repository of corn varieties. But it is also the second largest buyer of US-grown GM yellow corn, which is used almost exclusively for animal feed. This is thanks largely to NAFTA, which eliminated the Mexican government's protection mechanisms for Mexican farmers while preserving U.S. corn subsidies for US farmers.
The largest buyer, China, is also trying to wean itself off US corn, partly by buying from other major suppliers, such as Brazil and Argentina, but also by expanding its own cultivation of yellow maize. It has its own set of reasons for wanting to do so, including its ever escalating trade war with the US. If Mexico were to do the same, as it is trying to, US corn growers could have serious difficulty finding replacement markets, with big knock-on effects for Big Ag, biotech firms and the four of five US states that depend heavily on the corn industry.
John R Moffett comments: This shows what the 'free trade deals' are actually about. They are to force other countries into mandatory business arrangements. Basically a whole lot of 'offers you can't refuse'. No wonder they are pushed so hard by big business and their partners in the government.
(8/16/2023) Quelle Surprise! High Fee 'Alternative Investments' Produce Serious 'Negative Alpha' as in Underperformance as Managers Get Rich. Over the years, this site and some important writers like Michael Hudson have written regularly about rentier activity and how it distorts economic performance and creates a parasitical elite. A new paper by finance maven Richard Ennis, who has been systematically analyzing the performance of high-fee so-called alternative investments, shows that they systematically fail to deliver on their promise of superior returns. And the huge amounts of money involved produce an economy-wide drag, even before getting to the destructive effects of shifting more wealth to the top 0.1%, starting with cementing oligarchical control over politics.
Ennis' new article is embedded at the end of the pose.
Readers react to examples like medical industry grifting such as balance billing and upcoding, and ever-rising housing and higher education costs. But they seem to be less interested in the far greater extraction that occurs via the asset management industry. As we wrote in 2021:
Many of you may think that money management is a tiresome subject, on the same plane as accounting except the practitioners generally wear better suits.If you think that, you've just admitted to not understanding one of the big reasons why the rich keep getting richer. Specifically: asset managers are twice as likely to become billionaires as technologists. And during the period when economists were looking at what was causing the post-financial-crisis 'secular stagnation,' many papers, even one by the IMF, concluded that overdeveloped financial sectors were a major part of the problem. And the asset management industry was the biggest drain of resources.
The biggest vehicles for extraction are high fee 'products' like private equity, hedge funds, and real estate funds. Together, those three are often called 'alternative investments' or 'alts' in contrast to liquid securities like stocks and bonds. The partners in large funds make so much money that they wield outsized influence. When you look at who heavyweight political donors are, you'll see these big money men overrepresented.
LilD comments: It's only possible to generate alpha by taking it away from another market player. It's zero sum before fees. Fees are great, so we all want to pretend that we will be one of the few special managers who will win. Some of us do produce alpha. I'm retired from managing but still consult on manager selection for some very large allocators. It's rare for me to recommend anyone, maybe one in fifty, and mostly for diversification reasons not pure alpha.
Ennis is basically on target, certainly on average alts are a losing bet.
But picking a winner earns a lot of bragging rights at the country club.
(8/9/2023) Vacation for Me, Not for Thee: European Workers' Hard-Won Summer Vacation Tradition Is Slowly Being Taken Away. August is the time of year that the majority of Europeans head off on vacation, and Americans reading the news are reminded of how crappy the paid time off policy is in the US.
That is no doubt true. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), American workers put in more hours than every other 'developed' country in the ILO's report – France, Belgium, Germany, Australia, the UK, and Sweden. That averages out to roughly 400 more hours on the job every year compared to Germany. ...
In theory the Europeans' vacation policies are a comparatively sane balance between capital and workers. But if you start to peel back some class layers in Europe, what you'll find isn't pretty. The vacation 'privilege' has for some time been quietly eroding for the working poor.
While 75 percent of Europeans planned to travel this summer, the number one reason for those staying home was economic challenges. Forty-seven percent said they were too short on cash to go on vacation, which was up six points over last year.
JonnyJames comments: US attitude: 'I got my seven-figure salary, six weeks of paid vacation, golden parachute retirement, so everyone else can f-off. You don't deserve a vacation, health care or a pension, so you will die at least a decade sooner than the upper-income groups. Too f-in bad, whaddya gonna do about it.?': (see declining average life expectancy in the US)
The UK (former senior partner, now jr. partner in crime) is fast becoming the mini-me of the USA. Once they take away paid holidays (vacations) and fully privatise the NHS, there will be no difference.
The EU countries are slowly losing their hard-won gains, but it will take a little longer to privatise everything, take away paid vacations, etc. They still have an increasing average life expectancy, for now at least. At least the French fight back. The folks who brought you the guillotine don't take kindly to getting stolen from by the kleptocratic oligarchy.
In the US, folks are too ignorant, misinformed, dumbed down and brainwashed to understand what is going on.
COVID and Health Care
(8/12/2023) FDA Tries to Pretend It Didn't Oppose Ivermectin Use for Covid. One thing that deeply offends me is when members of the officialdom lie, even when it is the artful sort of lying that is narrowly true. The case study today is the FDA (and joined at the CDC) position on Ivermectin as a Covid treatment and possibly prophylactic. As readers may recall, official opposition was ferocious, to the degree that we had to curtail discussion in comments due to concerns about becoming the target of an effort to discredit the site generally. ...
As you can see below, the FDA is trying to act as if it never opposed the use of the anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin for Covid by now saying doctors could prescribe it for so-called off label use, as they can any other approved medication. For instance, most of the prescriptions for Botox are for off label uses.
IM Doc blasted this claim in an e-mail we are hoisting as a post below. Not only were doctors risking their licenses if they recommended Ivermectin, but one reader reported he asked about Ivermectin at his local pharmacy, to see if he could get it quickly if he could get a doctor to prescribe it. He was told the pharmacy would refuse to fill an Rx of Ivermectin for Covid.
The Rev Kev comments: And it wasn't just the American medical establishment that was corrupted by this. Here are some headlines from 2021 here in Oz regarding Ivermectin – or as we use to call it, the drug that cannot be named -
'New restrictions on prescribing Ivermectin for COVID-19'
'Restrictions placed on Ivermectin use in general practice'
'Melbourne clinic offers Ivermectin despite it not being approved as a Covid treatment'
'Thinking of trying Ivermectin for COVID? Here's what can happen with this controversial drug'
'Ivermectin is not being given to COVID-19 patients in Australia'
'Doctors concerned by Melbourne medical group selling controversial drug to fight COVID-19 '
Doctors here were threatened if they prescribed this drug and it was made illegal to have doctors prescribe it for Covid at all. I didn't bother asking my own doctor at the time. But now since June 1st of this year, 'the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has removed the restriction through its scheduling in the Poisons Standard because there is sufficient evidence that the safety risks to individuals and public health is low when prescribed by a general practitioner in the current health climate.'
(8/17/2023) CDC's HICPAC to Gut Hospital Masking Protection for Patients Based on Shoddy 'Evidence Review' (and in Further Violation of FACA). In this post, I will let fly at what I hope is the soft underbelly of the beast: a draft document entitled 'Isolation Precautions Guideline Workgroup,' acquired by HealthWatch USA after HICPAC's previous meeting on June 8, not available on the CDC's HICPAC page, despite its status as a 'work group' document. From Slide 2 of that document:
I write 'Slide' 2 because, in yet another sign of our society's operational incapability, HICPAC is making decisions affecting the health and lives of millions not only based on a draft, but a draft PowerPoint presentation, bullet points and all. That said, from the General Services Administration (GSA), the FACA guidance on 'deliberative material':
The Federal Advisory Committee Act requires advisory committees to make available for public inspection written advisory committee documents, including pre-decisional materials such as drafts, working papers and studies.
In my view, HICPAC's Designated Federal Officer, Michael Bell, M.D., should use his authority to either postpone or immediately adjourn the August 22 meeting, reconvening when HICPAC is fully compliant with FACA.
Be that is it may, in this post I will look at one section of the 'Isolation Precautions' draft: 'The Evidence Review' (starting on Slide 26), which poses the following question:
For healthcare personnel caring for patients with respiratory infections, what is the effectiveness of medical/surgical masks compared with N95 respirators in preventing infection?
The 'Evidence Review' answers to the question it poses — spoiler: 'No,' but they're wrong — in the form of aggregated tables ('snapshots') that characterize many mask studies. First, I'll examine the methods by which these tables were created. Then, I will disaggregate the tables, which will yield some interesting results. (It is perhaps at this point needless to say that both the methods and the tables are positively replete with FACA violations, and in fact, at critical points, opaque.) Both parts are quite detailed. This post will be long, but the things that satisfy only come real slow.
KLG comments:
'HICPAC is making decisions affecting the health and lives of millions not only based on a draft, but a draft PowerPoint presentation, bullet points and all.'
When I had graduate students in my laboratory, I made them read the most recent printing of How to Lie with Statistics and Edward Tufte on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. Here is his free excerpt explaining the Columbia Disaster. My students' slides were simple and direct, with no added frills to divert the audience's attention from the data. I remember when the Old Guard went nuts when a presenter went to the trouble to use color slides pre-PowerPoint unless color was absolutely necessary. Their natural reaction was the speaker had something to hide. Diazo slides (blue background/white lines and print) were too much for most of them, even though they were easier on the eyes than black on a white background.
Tufte is essential to anyone and everyone who has to watch and listen and read what 'science' and the government put out. Like a letter of recommendation, which my job requires me to read regularly, what is not said is much more important than what is in black and white, and color.
HICPAC is likely to end similarly, as a much less localized catastrophe than Columbia. RIP seven brave astronauts.
Continuing Themes
(8/13/2023) Is Obama Running a Shadow Government from His Mansion in Kalorama, Washington DC? This post was motivated by 'The Obama Factor', a long and rambling Q&A between Pulitzer-winning historian and Obama biographer David Garrow, and David Samuels, the Tablet's Literary Editor. Garrow and Samuels answer the question posed in the headline in the affirmative; basically, 'quite possibly, yes.' Spoiler: By Betteridge's Law, my answer is 'No,' but with significant qualifications.
Most of the reactions to 'The Obama Factor' — which focuses primarily on the irresistible rise of a fabulist creep who had written not one but two autobiographies by the age of 47, both in election years — have focused on Obama's sensational fantasy life. In fact, I can only find serious reaction pieces from FOX and the New York Post; nothing from the other side of the aisle at all, and since the piece has been out for two weeks, I assume there won't be (and if it were easy, the takedowns and the dogpiling would already have happened). Nobody seems to have focused on the most provocative part of 'The Obama Factor': Why Obama remained in Washington, DC, bought a mansion, and what he's been doing with his time there. In this post, I will take a first cut at explaining that.
Henry Moon Pie comments: Interesting stuff. I got distracted down the rabbit hole of Obama's letter to his ex-girlfriend which I had not read before. He and the Pritzkers were a good fit. I don't want to contemplate exactly what fit where, but they're a bunch of peas from the same pod.
Those Pritzkers. J.B. is talked about as Pres. Jennifer's funding all those gender affirming clinics. Penny is in tight with Barack still, I'm sure. Rachel's organizing the Ecomodernists. So who has more clout these days? Pritzkers or Gates?
Does Gates have a house in Kalorama?
Other Politics
(8/4/2023) From Covert to Overt: UK Government and Businesses Seek to Unleash Facial Recognition Technologies Across Urban Landscape. The Home Office is encouraging police forces across the country to make use of live facial recognition technologies for routine law enforcement. Retailers are also embracing the technology to monitor their customers.
It increasingly seems that the UK decoupled from the European Union, its rules and regulations, only for its government to take the country in a progressively more authoritarian direction. This is, of course, a generalised trend among ostensibly 'liberal democracies' just about everywhere, including EU Member States, as they increasingly adopt the trappings and tactics of more authoritarian regimes, such as restricting free speech, cancelling people and weakening the rule of law. But the UK is most definitely at the leading edge of this trend. A case in point is the Home Office's naked enthusiasm for biometric surveillance and control technologies.
This week, for example, The Guardian revealed that the Minister for Policing Chris Philip and other senior figures of the Home Office had held a closed-door meeting with Simon Gordon, the founder of Facewatch, a leading facial recognition retail security company, in March. The main outcome of the meeting was that the government would lobby the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on the benefits of using live facial recognition (LFR) technologies in retail settings. LFR involves hooking up facial recognition cameras to databases containing photos of people. Images from the cameras can then be screened against those photos to see if they match.
JBird4049 comments: In the United States, facial recognition, fingerprints, DNA, and drug field tests all have false positives caused either by the technology itself or the way it is used. Facial recognition and the field tests are often wrong and the DNA and fingerprints are often collected and analyzed incorrectly.
Everyone is dropping off bits of their body, which includes the DNA, onto anything nearby including seats and doors, clothing, which can travel for miles, maybe hundreds if a car, train, or plane is tested. The latest tests can find the smallest bit of DNA, which means a murder victim can have DNA from somebody that they never met. Fingerprints are hard to collect and often points of congruence between what is on file and what has been collected is used. It is not bad if many points are used, but sometimes the police will keep reducing the standards until it hits somebody's prints. Instead of say ten or fifteen, it will be five. Technically, there is a match, much like technically there was someones DNA on a body.
All of this is done routinely in American policing. Some departments are good at keeping it honest, while other departments just bends the standards until they scream, and ignore any evidence of failure or mistake.
Field drug tests are routinely false and have been for decades.
Facial recognition often produce false positives.
Fingerprint testing standards often are reduced into a match.
DNA tests are so good that people can and have been arrested even when they have never been where it was found.
People are in jails and prisons right now because of all this. It takes money, time, a lawyer, and often an investigator, and while the testing might take months for verification, if they do a verification, the accused usually stays in jail. Remember, the common theme is that it is the poor who get it in the neck.
The problem with the collecting, testing, and examination of evidence could be easily solved by the tightening of standards and the replace of all of the field drug tests. It would also help to have the testing of all those rape kits, which is not routine in some places, instead of manufacturing crime.
Our we sure that the British facial recognition system is to find people or is it to terrorize them while manufacturing evidence on troublemakers?
(8/21/2023) Is Erdogan's High-Wire Act Running Out of Rope? . The big announcement that emerged from the NATO Summit in Vilnius last month was that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had agreed to drop his opposition to Sweden joining the military alliance. The Turkish parliament would still have to approve such a move, but it was believed that was more of a formality after US President Joe Biden reportedly promised to sell F-16 fighter bombers to Turkiye and/or an $11-13 billion line of credit from the IMF.
The supposed deal allowed the summit to avoid being labeled as much a failure as the collective West's proxy war effort in Ukraine. And yet, ever since the agreement was announced there has been virtually no movement towards Swedish accession. In fact, in some ways it looks like the sides are even further apart.
It's never a good sign in the West when the Russia blame cannons are deployed to explain away complicated situations, but that's now happening. Stockholm is claiming that Moscow is poisoning minds by 'spreading false claims' about the recent Quran burning incidents in Sweden in order to harm its NATO bid.
NotTimothyGeithner comments: Erdogan knows EU membership isn't happening, it's why he came to power in tge first place. Not every Turk gets this. A select few students and tourists convince themselves through trips, telling tall tales about the EU, but the Borrells won't tolerate it. Germania doesn't want a rising Anatolia/new Rome in the EU as it dilutes Berlin's power.
Instead Erdogan 'tries' and disarms opposition to a major move. The straits and the military add more value to NATO than NATO adds. Who is Turkey's military local peer? Iran? Russia?
(8/5/2023) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. v. Google Alleges First Amendment Violations via YouTube Censorship as a State Actor. This has been such a depressing election season that the blockbuster lawsuit filed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on Friday night is a welcome surprise. It also means that RFK, Jr. will be discomfiting the Biden Administration and the censorship apparatus long after his quixotic bid to win the Democratic party nomination will have gone down to its likely defeat (not only are superdelegates a big obstacle, but so to is Biden's refusal to debate, and the considerable advantages of incumbency.)
RFK, Jr.'s suit challenges the way Google's YouTube subsidiary has been removing videos with content that contradicts official narratives, specifically videos made of RFK, Jr.'s campaign events and interview where he says politically incorrect things about the Covid vaccine or vaccines generally and the entire video is removed. The filing explains cogently why this is activity is state directed. Views that contradict the official views of bodies like WHO and the CDC and of course the Biden Administration generally are expunged. And YouTube has made the role of the Federal government explicit by invoking Section 230.
The filing does a good job of setting forth, at a high level, how the opinion control apparatus is a pernicious public-private partnership.
Valerie in Australia comments: I had a back and forth with a faithful Biden supporter who scoffed at my reluctance to vote for a senile warmonger. This woman informed me that I was reading Russian propaganda. I responded that I read widely including Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Chris Hedges and Seymour Hersh – all darlings of the Democratic Party until they stepped out of line and contradicted the Establishment Narrative. She informed me that they were 'Fake Liberals.' Seriously! You can't make this stuff up!
Science and Technology
(8/2/2023) Science Versus Scientism in Real Life: Where Do We Go from Here? 'Trust the science.' This is a simple statement often heard, especially recently, that has its origin in the Enlightenment. But what does it really mean? This depends on the perspectives of both the speaker and the hearer. For the typical scientist, 'Trust the science' means 'Listen to me, because I know what is best, for you and everyone else!' To many of the hearers, it has come to mean something much different: 'That's what you say, but your authority is less impressive than you seem to believe, and you once again have reminded me to think for myself.'
And this is when and where science becomes scientism, the simplest definition of which is 'the overextension of scientific authority into realms of knowledge and culture where it does not properly belong.' The occasional 'scientist' will attempt to extend his authority into moral philosophy, where lived human experience is the key going back into the deep recesses of historical time. The correct answer cannot be deduced from scientific theory of any kind or arrived at by induction.
PlutoniumKun comments: Wonderfully written post – this is a very complex topic, breaking it down into such clearly expressed ideas is very impressive.
One issue I think we've seen with over-specialisation is that very smart people can often Dunning-Kruger themselves very quickly when they inadvertently stray outside their area of expertise – very often they are not even aware that they've left their own silo. We saw this all the time with Covid with various -ologists getting over their skids. I see it regularly in debates on energy use too – just because you have a PhD in physics does not mean you understand power grid design issues. In complex societal issues we need specialists and we need generalists. We need people who understand data and we need people who understand that data alone doesn't tell us all we need to know. The trick is getting them talking to each other.
As for Monbiot – a slight disclaimer here as I met him a few times back in the 1990's when I was more actively involved in campaigning – I've been somewhat baffled by his often paradoxical views on a range of subjects. In some topics he is impressively fact and data driven (he is a very, very smart guy), in others he seems to be all too credulous of technological unicorns. His arguments for nuclear power are very disappointing, they are just a series of unicorns and straw men lined up in a tottering row.
And Another Thing...
IM Doc (7/29/2023) comments:
A few words from someone with experience....
I saw a new patient – a 38 year old male – relatively healthy – yesterday. 3 years ago, he was out hiking, got very dehydrated, and came into the urgent care because his knee was really hurting. His uric acid level was 5.4 – something that happens frequently with dehydration – normal being about 3 or below. He was mistakenly diagnosed with gout and this was placed as a problem in his [Electronic Medical Record (EMR)].... But GOUT is now on his permanent record. If you have ever tried to expunge anything from these EMRs – you know what I am about to say is true. This young man did not have gout – he had overdone it on his hike. But when he applied for life insurance this year he was declined. Why? anyone with 'gout' – the real thing – is a very elevated risk for diabetes and heart disease – and they are instantly denied life insurance no matter what.
I called the life insurance company yesterday. I will have a talk with their 'medical' director next week. Based on previous experience, there is a 95% chance he will tell me and my patient to pound sand.
Now in the days of HIPAA, so touted for patient privacy, your [EMRs] are in the direct control of brain dead clerks in the medical records department. They can easily, with the click of a button, send your records without your knowledge to whoever asks for them – government agencies, insurance companies, etc. Absolutely no questions asked and no accountability. You will have no say in the matter – and you will never be notified. You have signed your life away in all the forms at your visit. (One of the P's in HIPPA is PORTABILITY – and believe me – your records are portable)
aletheia33 (8/10/2023) comments:
after repeated 'practice' with annoying pushback, i've learned to ask in advance, politely, at the time of scheduling all medical appointments. my script is more or less as follows:
'i have a request regarding my appointment – can all the providers who will be in a room with me be wearing an N95 mask, as i have an immune condition that makes me vulnerable to infection.' . . . 'yes, i understand that masking is no longer required, and you will need to check with everyone to see if they're willing. and so i would appreciate it if you could do that and then let me know, as i may not be able to come in if this need will not be accommodated.'
so far, so good. no one has refused or failed to follow through at the time of the appointment. this may not be so easy to bring about at big city hospitals, but it's worked for me both at my very small local rural hospital and at the high-level major hospital located further away, where i have to go when i cannot get the care i need locally.
FWIW i am not formally disabled under the ADA (USG only very rarely approves that for chronic fatigue syndrome), but i do have multiple system health problems, including immune problems, that have conditioned my life for decades. i theorize that using the terms 'accommodation' and 'need' makes staff a little nervous, inclining them to politely agree to follow up and get back to me and to be somewhat unsure of the possible consequences of refusing my request.
and when asking in advance, i am dealing with a receptionist, who usually knows nothing of the reasons for the rules she (they are usually women) must follow and cannot make any decisions regarding patients' needs. asking in advance gives her (and everyone else) some time to process my request, instead of simply denying it in the heat of the moment when they're caught up in their habitual routine of checking the patient in or of moving the patient along out of the waiting area and into the area of 'care'.
And there it is - September 2023 at Naked Capitalism. Thank you very much for your time and attention and we'll see you again next month.
P.S. Again, stay tuned for our annual fundraiser, coming up soon!
The Crew at Naked Capitalism
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