Citizens,
"Albrt" presents, Twirling Toward Freedom, Figuring out what it would look like if Trump were really trying for a long-term political realignment
I said back in November there are reasons to believe that Trump might represent the end stage of a historic political realignment. That post did not attempt to define the nature or the likely course of the realignment, which leads to today’s hypothesis and counter-hypothesis: Trump and Vance could either consolidate power by improving the alignment of the Republican party with the working class, or they could further entrench the current model of a DC uniparty that works for the oligarchs, with two superficially warring factions carrying on a phony fight to the death over issues the oligarchs don’t care about.....Since November, even the dumber organs of the mainstream media have recognized that the Republicans and the Democrats have started down the road of swapping core constituencies. The Democrats have more of the over-educated and the wealthy than they did 20 years ago, while the Republicans have more of the working class...
..At least one persuasive commentator, Musa al-Gharbi attributes this to the takeover of the Democratic party by the professional managerial class (PMC), who (to oversimplify) are not actually very good at managing things in the real world because they prefer to deal with abstractions. Al-Gharbi refers to the PMC as “symbolic capitalists.” .....The first assumption this post makes is that a long-term realignment is in play. The second assumption is that the realignment has not yet been fully accomplished. The third assumption is that it should be possible for a non-expert (like me) to look at how the Trump-Vance administration implements its policies and tell whether they are serious about delivering concrete material benefits for working class citizens in order to consolidate the realignment. I’m going to try to identify some benchmarks in different policy areas that can be used to evaluate what happens over the next few years...
..So my test hypothesis is that Trump and Vance might make relatively rational decisions on a multi-year time frame with the goal of delivering real benefits to working people. The bar for achieving this is set very low... I’m talking about material benefits such as higher wages, better housing, price stability, or health care (as distinguished from “access” to health care through a corrupt intermediary a.k.a. insurance company). For purposes of this post it is important to distinguish material benefits (which the oligarchs want working people to have very little of) from culture war conflict and entertaining stunts.....Trump and Vance might be unusually motivated to create a scenario where Vance can win the 2028 election. Among other things, Trump probably does not want to retire with the threat of another round of prosecutions hanging over his head. I’m calling it the Trump-Vance administration because I think showcasing Vance will be an important goal... If that does not happen, it will be the first indication that my test hypothesis is false.
The null hypothesis I’m testing against is that Trump and Vance will continue the legacy uniparty scam in which both factions have basically the same macro-policies cloaked in divisive culture-war language, psyops, and stunts. Trump is well-suited by personality and by experience for the stunt politics of the recent past so the sensible thing would be to expect more of the same...
..To hold the swingy members of the working class on the Republican side, Trump and Vance need to take actions that help the working class have a viable path to prosperity.....This post only considers domestic policy benchmarks. U.S. foreign policy is insanely chaotic right now,... and will probably be hard to distinguish from the delusional, pro-genocide approach practiced by the Biden administration. A nuclear war could start at any time...
..Immigration was one of Trump’s biggest hot buttons on the campaign trail, and is also one of the areas where it will be easiest to tell if Trump and Vance are serious. I think the immigration issue works particularly well as a litmus test...
..The economists who claim that immigration helps to increase GDP are not necessarily wrong. The problem is that all the gains go to the oligarchs and the cadre of sub-oligarchs and PMC oligarch-servicers who benefit from cheap labor.....The obvious way to reduce the number of undocumented non-citizens working in the U.S. is from the employer side, through administrative measures such as requiring employers to use E-Verify for real and cracking down on duplicate use of social security numbers. Trump actually did this for a little while late in his first term. If this type of enforcement is not expanded, then Trump is not serious about stopping employment of undocumented immigrants.
Trump did not campaign much on administrative measures involving employers, and instead promised massive deportations. Forcibly deporting enough people to make a difference would be extremely difficult...
..Lately Trump has shifted from talking about deportations to talking about ending birthright citizenship. Ending birthright citizenship is a red herring at best... Even if Trump were somehow successful in eliminating birthright citizenship, it would only apply to babies born after the change. Fussing about birthright citizenship is a stunt...Trump did not campaign much on administrative measures involving employers, and instead promised massive deportations. Forcibly deporting enough people to make a difference would be extremely difficult...
..Trump has dismayed some of his supporters by talking about expanding legal opportunities to work in the United States such as H-1B visas... H-1B visas are for “specialty workers” to fill jobs when employers claim there are shortages, so H-1B immigrants compete more with the PMC than with wage workers. Still, using H-1B workers to proletarianize the PMC does not help Trump-Vance earn the loyalty of the working class in the long run because it means that the children of the working class have less chance at upward mobility...
..Peter Turchin has said that in order to restore stability in the U.S, we need to “bring the relative wage up to the equilibrium level (thus shutting down elite overproduction) and keep it there.” End Times at 202. “Equilibrium level” means working class wages and conditions need to improve enough that a somewhat larger percentage of working class people decide it is OK to be working class, so they don’t need to go to college and try to become PMC. But some of the youngsters still want to move up. Importing a bunch of people to take existing PMC slots makes it much harder to achieve a stable equilibrium.....In short, there are two tells with immigration. If Trump and Vance want to benefit citizen wage laborers, they need to require all employers to start using E-Verify or something similar, with real social security numbers. In order to benefit citizens who aspire to the next steps up the economic ladder, Trump and Vance need to reduce H-1B visas, not expand them. I don’t think either of these indicators can easily be fudged. If Trump and Vance limit immigrant work opportunities in this way, then I think the effects will be visible, and may even lead to significant inflation, particularly in food and construction...
..Tariffs and re-shoring manufacturing.....A few weeks ago the big story was that Trump was going to restart American manufacturing by imposing massive tariffs. That story has now disappeared from the headlines in favor of immigration scare stories and whatever else Trump tweeted in the past 24 hours. Tariffs and industrial policy are difficult to do well. Imposing tariffs on goods that the United States has very little capacity to produce for itself will lead to short-term inflation and shortages followed by demand destruction rather than plentiful jobs.
Success on this issue will be harder to judge than immigration, because it requires evaluating whether Trump is appointing serious people and whether the solutions they come up with are working... One thing to look for is whether Trump can stop picking fights over tough-guy sanctions and move toward tariffs or other measures that actually give a boost to viable American businesses...
..The other thing to look for is whether re-shored businesses (if any) actually start offering jobs Americans would take. It’s not just wages—we need to see more private sector working-class jobs that offer benefits, or else we need to see socialistic benefits to replace employment-based benefits. Either one would make working class life more acceptable to many people, helping to create Turchin’s equilibrium and consolidate the potential political realignment...Success on this issue will be harder to judge than immigration, because it requires evaluating whether Trump is appointing serious people and whether the solutions they come up with are working... One thing to look for is whether Trump can stop picking fights over tough-guy sanctions and move toward tariffs or other measures that actually give a boost to viable American businesses...
..Drill Baby Drill...
..Trump repeatedly said that one of his highest priorities would be a “drill baby drill” energy policy. On its face this does not make a great deal of sense, at least not as it relates to gas prices. “Drill baby drill” is an inherently boom-bust policy that would most likely lead to big swings in fuel prices...
..If Trump were serious about boosting the economy through domestic energy production, he would develop a long-term plan to stabilize American energy prices using shale production at a target price to help decouple the U.S. from the wild swings of the world oil market. If you want to encourage business confidence, you need to allow businesses to plan for longer term investment. This is especially true in capital intensive industrial sectors. Trump probably won’t be able to use Biden’s method of depleting the strategic oil reserve because Biden is leaving it pretty depleted.....Trump repeatedly said that one of his highest priorities would be a “drill baby drill” energy policy. On its face this does not make a great deal of sense, at least not as it relates to gas prices. “Drill baby drill” is an inherently boom-bust policy that would most likely lead to big swings in fuel prices...
..Like the tariff issue, this one is hard to judge because it requires Trump and Vance to do something difficult and complicated. Nevertheless, if they start to shift the energy rhetoric toward stability rather than driving prices down, that would be a sign they are serious...
..Firing federal workersTrump and his boy-wonder DOGE sidekicks Elon and Vivek have made a lot of idiotic statements about cutting the federal budget by firing huge numbers of people. My most constructive suggestion is to start with the National Endowment for Democracy. That’s the CIA sponsored organization that funds anti-democratic “color revolutions” in countries all over the world and was substantially responsible for starting the Ukraine war. If Trump and Vance actually succeeded in eliminating the National Endowment for Democracy, I would consider becoming a late-stage MAGA convert myself...
..Elon and Vivek can undoubtedly find a few offices full of DC wokesters to sacrifice, but that’s just another stunt. It won’t have a big impact on the budget, much less an impact on material conditions for the working class.
Based on summary numbers at federalpay.org, most federal employees (around 3 million) are associated with the Department of Defense, which Trump fans are stereotypically supposed to support. The next two biggest departments are the departments of veterans’ affairs (over 400,000) and Homeland Security (over 200,000)...
..The Department of Education, a favorite target of Republicans even before Trump, only has a little over 4,000 employees. The department has a $45 billion budget, but most of that is pass-throughs to local schools to pay for things like special education...Based on summary numbers at federalpay.org, most federal employees (around 3 million) are associated with the Department of Defense, which Trump fans are stereotypically supposed to support. The next two biggest departments are the departments of veterans’ affairs (over 400,000) and Homeland Security (over 200,000)...
..It may be theoretically possible to improve the economy by making the federal government more efficient, but it is fiendishly difficult to do in practice... Highly visible stunts with chainsaws are more consistent with the null hypothesis that Trump and Vance intend to continue the kayfabe of the existing uniparty scam...
..Legalizing marijuanaThis is an easy one. Trump toyed with this issue during the campaign, but did not commit. If Trump and Vance are really serious about doing something for the working class, they need to not only legalize marijuana at the federal level, they also need to erase past prosecutions and allow those convicted to rejoin polite society and qualify for decent jobs...
..Promoting alternatives to the college path...
..Telling young people that college is the only path to economic prosperity basically reinforces the power of the PMC, which is the real base of the Democratic party today and is Trump’s main enemy.
Trump hasn’t made any promises about this and I don’t think anybody has any particularized expectations, so the field is wide open. Pushing trade schools (assuming you can find some that aren’t scams) would help, and would also help fill the open jobs if undocumented immigrants in the construction industry disappear from the labor market, or if re-shoring of industry starts to happen on any scale...
..If the Trump-Vance administration figures out a way to break the iron grip of college on our culture and our economy, then a substantially bigger realignment is possible. https://albrtsblog.substack.Trump hasn’t made any promises about this and I don’t think anybody has any particularized expectations, so the field is wide open. Pushing trade schools (assuming you can find some that aren’t scams) would help, and would also help fill the open jobs if undocumented immigrants in the construction industry disappear from the labor market, or if re-shoring of industry starts to happen on any scale...
Bureaucracy kills by creeping dysfunction: Dan Davies, The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind – University of Chicago Press, 2024 How life and the economy became a black box—a collection of systems no one understands, producing outcomes no one likes.
Passengers get bumped from flights. Phone menus disconnect. Automated financial trades produce market collapse. Of all the challenges in modern life, some of the most vexing come from our relationships with automation: a large system does us wrong, and there’s nothing we can do about it.The problem, economist Dan Davies shows, is accountability sinks: systems in which decisions are delegated to a complex rule book or set of standard procedures, making it impossible to identify the source of mistakes when they happen. In our increasingly unhuman world—lives dominated by algorithms, artificial intelligence, and large organizations—these accountability sinks produce more than just aggravation. They make life and economy unknowable—a black box for no reason.
In The Unaccountability Machine, Davies lays bare how markets, institutions, and even governments systematically generate outcomes that no one—not even those involved in making them—seems to want. Since the earliest days of the computer age, theorists have foreseen the dangers of complex systems without personal accountability. In response, British business scholar Stafford Beer developed an accountability-first approach to management called “cybernetics,” which might have taken off had his biggest client (the Chilean government) not fallen to a bloody coup in 1973. https://
Cybernetics and Systems Science: https://www.
Power prices in the EU are up to three times higher than in the United States, for example, which further erodes the competitiveness of energy-intensive industries including aluminum, steel making, chemicals, and cement production.
Europe is losing and will continue to lose competitiveness and jobs if it doesn’t tackle its high energy costs compared to other regions. https://oilprice.com/Latest-
Bloomberg reports that an LNG carrier called "Pioneer," carrying a sanctioned shipment of Russian LNG, circumnavigated the world for four months, failing to find a buyer willing to breach US restrictions. "This vessel (called Pioneer) was spotted on satellite images picking up the first shipment from the Arctic LNG 2 facility in early August — despite camouflaging the move with misleading location information — but then spent well over four months hunting for a customer." https://www.zerohedge.com/
Again, on Christmas Day; Shadow-war? Finland-Estonia Undersea Power Cable Goes Dark As Russian Shadow Fleet Tanker Investigated
The Estlink 2 electricity cable connecting Finland and Estonia was disrupted on Christmas Day, sparking concerns of another potential undersea cable sabotage incident in the Baltic region.
The Financial Times reports that Finnish authorities are investigating a crude oil tanker named Eagle S. The tanker flies the Cook Islands flag and is reportedly part of Russia's so-called "dark fleet."
Data from the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic shows the vessel slowed down at the time the 658 megawatt (MW) Estlink 2 power interconnector was disrupted. The tanker was transiting the Baltics on its way from St. Petersburg to Egypt. https://www.zerohedge.com/
The Honest Sorcerer posits a world which escapes nuclear annihilation, which would destroy wealth, and kill some rich people. In this world, the rich have invested in good farmland, oil and gas wells, mines and factories as well as mortgages, so that they own all of the necessities of life after the financial crash, creating a neo-feudal economic system. Position yourself out of debt, with your basic necessities and a vegetable garden. Nuclear Neo-Feudalism https://thehonestsorcerer.
Bloomberg's Emily Chang asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an exclusive interview at their estate in Lake Tahoe about a 4,500-square-foot underground structure - considered by some as a 'doomsday bunker' - at his 1,500-acre ranch in Kauai, Hawaii.
Chang asked: "You do have a bunker there; is there something you know that we don't?"
Zuckerberg's response was priceless because he denied it was a doomsday bunker, calling it a "little shelter ... basement." https://www.zerohedge.com/
Crushing debt, intensifying pressure from the nationalist far right, wars in Europe and the Mideast: Challenges abound for President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Francois Bayrou after an already tumultuous 2024.
On the surface, the present looks like the recent past. Yes, technology changes, but this constant churn of new technology has long been part of the system.
Make America Great Again is an explicit call to return to the solutions that worked in the past, specifically The Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, which was characterized by these policies:
1. The federal government is the problem, not the solution. The solution is to reduce the influence and financial footprint of the federal government.
2. Deregulation of private industries, starting with finance. Loosen regulations to enable financial / market solutions, even if they're disruptive.
3. Focus on growth. Grow the economy by loosening up credit, drill baby drill, reducing regulatory burdens and taxes, etc.
4. Pursue a muscular global policy of America First. No more wishy-washy playing nice: choose sides, but choose carefully because there will be consequences.
5. It's morning in America. We can get back on track by unleashing America's native optimism and vigor.
These solutions from the past are compelling because they delivered decades of growth. Of course reality is complicated, and it wasn't just these policies by themselves that spawned decades of expansion. Demographics, the "peace dividend" and many other factors helped.
And there were spots of bother: deregulation enabled the Savings and Loan debacle in which a third of the nation's S&L associations closed as $180 billion went up in smoke, losses that cost taxpayers $132 billion in bailouts.
Beneath the political rhetoric, these policies boil down to Keynesian stimulus which has been the de facto go-to policy "fix" for 60+ years: loosen credit, increase government borrowing and spending, encourage risk-taking and "animal spirits." https://charleshughsmith.
NEW: Photos of Hunter and Joe Biden Meeting With Chinese Officials Emerge, Massive Cover-Up Exposed
Putin Reveals Biden Offered To Postpone Ukraine's NATO Entry As Compromise
"We, too, are striving to end the conflict," Putin added, but stressed that this should happen by achieving all of Moscow’s military and political objectives, according to RT. Toward this end, Putin during the Q&A proposed Slovakia as a 'neutral' potential host country for future peace talks. https://www.zerohedge.com/
Biden Pledges More Arms To Ukraine After Christmas Strikes https://www.zerohedge.com/
A regional source has described the initial Christmas tree burning which outraged Syria's Christians as follows:
"Video footage that circulated on social media on 23 December showed a large Christmas tree burning in Hama’s Suqaylabiyah – a Christian neighborhood. The tree was set ablaze on Monday by foreign militants under HTS’s command. Some reports said the militants were from Chechnya, while others said they were Uzbeki fighters.
HTS deployed a military official to the scene of the burning to condemn the incident and vow punishment for those responsible." https://www.zerohedge.com/
Survivor of Azerbaijani Airlines plane crash claims there was explosion when plane tried to land in Chechnya
Subkhankul Rahimov claims pilots tried to land aircraft in Grozny, Chechnya 3 times in a row
US ramping up biological warfare presence in Africa — Russia’s top brass
Major General Aleksey Rtishchev said that branches of the US National Naval Military Medical Center are stationed in Ghana and Djibouti where active work is carried out in natural disease foci, isolation and sequencing of pathogens. https://tass.com/defense/
Just how broadly does this actually apply? Ashkenazi Jews descend from 350 people, study finds
‘Bottleneck’ dates back 600 to 800 years, genome analysis shows; researcher says among population ‘everyone is a 30th cousin’ A new (9/10/2014) study concludes that all Ashkenazi Jews can trace their ancestry to a “bottleneck” of just 350 individuals, dating back to between 600 and 800 years ago.
Researchers analyzed the genomes of 128 Ashkenazi Jews and compared them to those of non-Jewish Europeans in order to determine which genetic markers are unique to Ashkenazi Jews. They found that the Ashkenazi Jews’ genetic similarities were so acute that one of the study’s researchers, Columbia professor Itsik Pe’er, told the Live Science website that among Ashkenazi Jews, “everyone is a 30th cousin.” ...
Another treaty from the UN system is adopted without a vote. More evidence that the US may want to exit this undemocratic system. https://merylnass.substack.
Vaccine Injury Claims Spiked 27x After COVID-19 Injection Rollout
U.S. Government Accountability Office Report Exposes Critical Failures in the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program https://petermcculloughmd.
Mexico is the ancestral home of corn and corn genetic diversity. With Help From NAFTA 2.0, US Strikes Brutal Blow Against Mexican Food Sovereignty, Health and Global Biodiversity, by Nick Corbishley
“Both the USMCA and this ruling issued by the trade dispute panel are designed primarily to protect the interests of transnational corporations.”
The time is ripe to realize that Life also computes. Natural ecosystems out there in the sun perform calculations and process information.
In short, it is sustainability. Life computes how to persist over time, without running out of anything, without polluting anything, and maintaining favorable conditions for its own continuation... Life is a distributed system of microscopic computers (living cells) that cover the entire Earth, assessing environmental conditions and reacting immediately if something goes wrong...
Chang asked: "You do have a bunker there; is there something you know that we don't?"
Zuckerberg's response was priceless because he denied it was a doomsday bunker, calling it a "little shelter ... basement." https://www.zerohedge.com/
Bond-investors vs. Citizens. Don't be the first country to declare bankruptcy. France has a new government, again. Politics and crushing debt complicate next steps
France’s president and prime minister managed to form a new government just in time for the holidays. Now comes the hard part.Crushing debt, intensifying pressure from the nationalist far right, wars in Europe and the Mideast: Challenges abound for President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Francois Bayrou after an already tumultuous 2024.
The most urgent order of business is passing a 2025 budget. Financial markets, ratings agencies and the European Commission are pushing France to bring down its deficit, to comply with EU rules limiting debt and keep France’s borrowing costs from spiraling. That would threaten the stability and prosperity of all countries that share the euro currency.
France’s debt is currently estimated at a staggering 112% of gross domestic product. It grew further after the government gave aid payments to businesses and workers during COVID-19 lockdowns even as the pandemic depressed growth, and capped household energy prices after Russia invaded Ukraine. The bill is now coming due. https://apnews.com/article/
France’s debt is currently estimated at a staggering 112% of gross domestic product. It grew further after the government gave aid payments to businesses and workers during COVID-19 lockdowns even as the pandemic depressed growth, and capped household energy prices after Russia invaded Ukraine. The bill is now coming due. https://apnews.com/article/
Charles Hugh Smith, What If Solutions That Worked in the Past No Longer Fix What's Broken?
You see the irony here: the more successful the old solutions were, the greater our compulsion to cling to them even as they fail.Make America Great Again is an explicit call to return to the solutions that worked in the past, specifically The Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, which was characterized by these policies:
1. The federal government is the problem, not the solution. The solution is to reduce the influence and financial footprint of the federal government.
2. Deregulation of private industries, starting with finance. Loosen regulations to enable financial / market solutions, even if they're disruptive.
3. Focus on growth. Grow the economy by loosening up credit, drill baby drill, reducing regulatory burdens and taxes, etc.
4. Pursue a muscular global policy of America First. No more wishy-washy playing nice: choose sides, but choose carefully because there will be consequences.
5. It's morning in America. We can get back on track by unleashing America's native optimism and vigor.
These solutions from the past are compelling because they delivered decades of growth. Of course reality is complicated, and it wasn't just these policies by themselves that spawned decades of expansion. Demographics, the "peace dividend" and many other factors helped.
And there were spots of bother: deregulation enabled the Savings and Loan debacle in which a third of the nation's S&L associations closed as $180 billion went up in smoke, losses that cost taxpayers $132 billion in bailouts.
Beneath the political rhetoric, these policies boil down to Keynesian stimulus which has been the de facto go-to policy "fix" for 60+ years: loosen credit, increase government borrowing and spending, encourage risk-taking and "animal spirits." https://charleshughsmith.
The National Archives finally released long sought-after pictures of Joe and Hunter Biden meeting with Chinese officials. The president has long insisted he never facilitated nor had any involvement in his troubled son's business dealings. Yet, a series of photos taken during Joe Biden's time as vice president paint a very different story. 
The comments came in the context of a question over Trump's reported peace plan and the idea of freezing the front lines. Putin described that such a plan is nothing new, and added the following per state media translation: "I know that the current President Biden spoke about this, it’s no secret, back in 2021. He proposed exactly this to me – to delay Ukraine’s admission into NATO by 10-15 years, because [Kiev] is not ready yet," Putin said, referring to the midsummer meeting he had with the US leader in Switzerland.
He stressed that no matter the timeline, Ukraine's admission into NATO would be unacceptable "whether it’s in one year or ten years.""We, too, are striving to end the conflict," Putin added, but stressed that this should happen by achieving all of Moscow’s military and political objectives, according to RT. Toward this end, Putin during the Q&A proposed Slovakia as a 'neutral' potential host country for future peace talks. https://www.zerohedge.com/
Group publishes details about CIA mind control studies, Historic memos about brainwashing “Russian agents” and drugging US inmates with LSD have been put online
Starting in the early 1950s, the CIA secretly searched for ways to control human behavior with drugs, including the then novel hallucinogen LSD, hypnosis, and extreme maltreatment, such as sensory deprivation.
The experiments, including those done on unwitting subjects, largely stemmed from interest in anti-war sentiments expressed by US troops who fought in the Korean War and went through captivity...
..CIA Director Richard Helms and MKULTRA chief Sidney Gottlieb destroyed most of the original records in 1973 in what the Archive called “perhaps the most infamous cover-up in the Agency’s history.” ...The experiments, including those done on unwitting subjects, largely stemmed from interest in anti-war sentiments expressed by US troops who fought in the Korean War and went through captivity...
..The Archive pointed the finger at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Company as the supplier of “tonnage quantities” of LSD to the CIA.
It is “a history marked by near-total impunity at the institutional and individual levels for countless abuses committed across decades,” the group said. Some of the research was akin to what was previously done by “the Nazi doctors who were tried at Nuremberg.”
Syrian Christians Protest Presence Of Foreign Jihadists After Christmas Display Burned
"We demand the rights of Christians," the protesters chanted, many carrying crosses. Other slogans demanded a future role in the country for all Syrians, and that churches and the religious freedom of everyone must be protected.It is “a history marked by near-total impunity at the institutional and individual levels for countless abuses committed across decades,” the group said. Some of the research was akin to what was previously done by “the Nazi doctors who were tried at Nuremberg.”
..The December 1974 expose of MKULTRA in the Times was penned by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. The veteran reporter has authored several explosive stories over the decades, most recently claiming that the US government blew up the Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russia and Germany in 2022. https://www.rt.com/news/
Trump’s nominee for top defence post thinks Middle East is ‘relatively unimportant’
Elbridge Colby has said the US should stop focusing on the Middle East, and turn its military's attention to China
Israeli airstrike in Bekaa shakes ceasefire 29 days after it came into effect
Israel kills five journalists in clearly marked press vehicle in Gaza
Al-Quds Today staff were targeted outside a hospital, as number of media workers killed by Israeli forces exceeds 200 https://www.middleeasteye.
Israel strikes Yemen’s Sanaa airport, Hodeidah power plant
Israeli military attacks several sites, including airport in Yemen’s capital as the WHO chief boards a flight.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he and his United Nations colleagues were preparing to board a plane at Sanaa airport when it came under Israeli bombardment. “One of our plane’s crew members was injured. At least two people were reported killed at the airport. The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge – just a few meters from where we were – and the runway were damaged,” he said in a post on X, adding that they were all safe.
Tedros said the UN and WHO teams were in the country “to negotiate the release of UN staff detainees and to assess the health and humanitarian situation in Yemen”. https://www.aljazeera.com/
Elbridge Colby has said the US should stop focusing on the Middle East, and turn its military's attention to China
US President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he will be nominating Elbridge Colby for the position of under secretary for defence policy, awarding the senior post to a former Trump official who has advocated for reducing American troops in the Middle East and against striking Iranian nuclear facilities...
..Colby, the grandson of former CIA director William Colby, served in the Pentagon during the previous Trump administration, where between 2017 and 2018 he was deputy assistant secretary for strategy and force development....."The United States must limit much more substantially its strategic engagement in the Middle East. This is both necessary and feasible," Colby said... .."As is evidenced by the experience of recent decades, large ground interventions do not help resolve this issue and almost certainly exacerbate the problem." Colby has been a public opponent of the US-led invasion of Iraq and said that he has opposed every US intervention abroad since then - including the increasing US military support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia's invasion. https://www.middleeasteye.
Buy Greenland, make Canada the 51st State, dominate Arctic mineral resources, right? Trump Wants to Buy Greenland—Described It as an ‘Absolute Necessity’ https://defconnews.com/2024/
Get the jokes? President-Elect Trump Posts Christmas Message To "Wonderful Soldiers of China", "Governor Trudeau", And Greenland https://www.zerohedge.com/
For the first time since the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah came into effect on Nov. 27, Israel breached the agreement deep inside Lebanese territory.
In the early hours of Wednesday, an Israeli warplane struck the town of Taraya near Baalbek. https://www.arabnews.com/
In the early hours of Wednesday, an Israeli warplane struck the town of Taraya near Baalbek. https://www.arabnews.com/
Al-Quds Today staff were targeted outside a hospital, as number of media workers killed by Israeli forces exceeds 200 https://www.middleeasteye.
Israeli military attacks several sites, including airport in Yemen’s capital as the WHO chief boards a flight.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he and his United Nations colleagues were preparing to board a plane at Sanaa airport when it came under Israeli bombardment. “One of our plane’s crew members was injured. At least two people were reported killed at the airport. The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge – just a few meters from where we were – and the runway were damaged,” he said in a post on X, adding that they were all safe.
Tedros said the UN and WHO teams were in the country “to negotiate the release of UN staff detainees and to assess the health and humanitarian situation in Yemen”. https://www.aljazeera.com/
A regional source has described the initial Christmas tree burning which outraged Syria's Christians as follows:
"Video footage that circulated on social media on 23 December showed a large Christmas tree burning in Hama’s Suqaylabiyah – a Christian neighborhood. The tree was set ablaze on Monday by foreign militants under HTS’s command. Some reports said the militants were from Chechnya, while others said they were Uzbeki fighters.
HTS deployed a military official to the scene of the burning to condemn the incident and vow punishment for those responsible." https://www.zerohedge.com/
Clashes erupt in western Syria after locals ambush HTS fighters
The ambush was reportedly carried out by former elements of the Syrian Arab Army, coming during an eruption of sectarian tensions across Syria https://thecradle.co/
The ambush was reportedly carried out by former elements of the Syrian Arab Army, coming during an eruption of sectarian tensions across Syria https://thecradle.co/
Survivor of Azerbaijani Airlines plane crash claims there was explosion when plane tried to land in Chechnya
Subkhankul Rahimov claims pilots tried to land aircraft in Grozny, Chechnya 3 times in a row
A survivor of Wednesday’s Azerbaijan Airlines crash said the plane’s pilots tried to land in Grozny, Chechnya three times, followed by an explosion outside the plane, according to an audio recording shared by Russian TV channel RT.
Subkhankul Rahimov said that something exploded on the third landing attempt and that when he reached for his life jacket, he found a hole in it caused by shrapnel. He also said that he was hit by shrapnel after the explosion. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/
Subkhankul Rahimov said that something exploded on the third landing attempt and that when he reached for his life jacket, he found a hole in it caused by shrapnel. He also said that he was hit by shrapnel after the explosion. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/
The photo shows the outside skin of the plane having lots of holes with edges that curl in, as if hit by shrapnel from outside.
We can’t be certain, but it’s likely that the Azerbaijan Airlines flight was hit by shrapnel from a air defence system as it was in the vicinity of Grozny. There might have been a drone attack in the area as well. Crew made heroic attempt to save situation before the crash. https://x.com/carlbildt/
It just happened based on business modeling. Nobody made any decisions... McKinsey Agrees to Pay Another $650 Million to Avoid Trial Over U.S. Opioid Crisis https://cocotteminute.
Major General Aleksey Rtishchev said that branches of the US National Naval Military Medical Center are stationed in Ghana and Djibouti where active work is carried out in natural disease foci, isolation and sequencing of pathogens. https://tass.com/defense/
‘Bottleneck’ dates back 600 to 800 years, genome analysis shows; researcher says among population ‘everyone is a 30th cousin’
Researchers analyzed the genomes of 128 Ashkenazi Jews and compared them to those of non-Jewish Europeans in order to determine which genetic markers are unique to Ashkenazi Jews. They found that the Ashkenazi Jews’ genetic similarities were so acute that one of the study’s researchers, Columbia professor Itsik Pe’er, told the Live Science website that among Ashkenazi Jews, “everyone is a 30th cousin.” ...
..Ashkenazi Jews are known to have origins in the Levant, which Israel is smack dab in the middle of. But exactly who “European” Ashkenazi Jews are has long been debated. An analysis of the gene database shows that the original Ashkenazi Jews were about half European and half Middle Eastern. They lived in the medieval era, about 600 to 800 years ago, according to the analysis – and numbered just 350 or so people. “Our analysis shows that Ashkenazi Jewish medieval founders were ethnically admixed, with origins in Europe and in the Middle East, roughly in equal parts,” said Shai Carmi, a post-doctoral scientist. https://www.timesofisrael.
Meryl Nass MD, UN General Assembly Adopts Controversial Cybercrime Treaty Amid Criticism Over Censorship and Surveillance Risks/ from Reclaim the Net
U.S. Government Accountability Office Report Exposes Critical Failures in the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program https://petermcculloughmd.
“Both the USMCA and this ruling issued by the trade dispute panel are designed primarily to protect the interests of transnational corporations.”
It wasn’t even a close run thing: the panel’s three judges agreed with the US on all seven counts in the case. The panel has given Mexico 45 days to realign its policies with the ruling. Failure to do so could result in stiff penalties, including sanctions.
As we’ve noted before, this case 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.
The dispute panel argues that Mexico’s provisions against GMO corn cannot be applied as they are not based on an adequate risk assessment, scientific evidence or relevant international standards. This is despite the mountains of evidence from peer-reviewed literature the Mexican government provided showing ample cause for concern about the risks of consuming GM corn and the residues of the herbicide glyphosate — most commonly known as Roundup — that often come with it.
By contrast, as Timothy A Wise, author of Eating Tomorrow and senior adviser at the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy, documented in a recent piece for TruthDig, “when Mexico challenged the US to show that its GM corn is safe to eat in the far greater quantities and forms that Mexicans consume it, it received no response.” https://www.nakedcapitalism.
As we’ve noted before, this case 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.
The dispute panel argues that Mexico’s provisions against GMO corn cannot be applied as they are not based on an adequate risk assessment, scientific evidence or relevant international standards. This is despite the mountains of evidence from peer-reviewed literature the Mexican government provided showing ample cause for concern about the risks of consuming GM corn and the residues of the herbicide glyphosate — most commonly known as Roundup — that often come with it.
By contrast, as Timothy A Wise, author of Eating Tomorrow and senior adviser at the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy, documented in a recent piece for TruthDig, “when Mexico challenged the US to show that its GM corn is safe to eat in the far greater quantities and forms that Mexicans consume it, it received no response.” https://www.nakedcapitalism.
Biotic-Pump Model co-originator, Physicist, Anastassia Makarieva, Information processing by natural ecosystems. They have a built-in program of climate stabilization and run it super efficiently
How can we estimate and understand this computing power of Life? Energy from the Sun comes to Earth in the form of discrete particles called photons. The average energy of solar photons is proportional to the temperature of the Sun, which is about TS = 6,000 degrees Kelvin. The temperature of the Earth is about TE = 300 degrees Kelvin. This means that the thermal photons emitted by the Earth into space are 20 times less energetic than the incoming solar photons.
Imagine that we have a switch that randomly toggles between two possible states: on and off. To keep it in one state, we need to apply more energy than the energy of its chaotic thermal motion, which on Earth is approximately kTE (where k is the Boltzmann constant). High-energy solar photons with energy kTS provide this extra energy, enabling biological and ecological computations. A single solar photon has enough energy to turn the switch on or off nineteen times.
..However, it is not only about computing power. The main question is WHAT is being computed? Why does Life need such enormous information processing power? What is written in these biological and ecological algorithms?Imagine that we have a switch that randomly toggles between two possible states: on and off. To keep it in one state, we need to apply more energy than the energy of its chaotic thermal motion, which on Earth is approximately kTE (where k is the Boltzmann constant). High-energy solar photons with energy kTS provide this extra energy, enabling biological and ecological computations. A single solar photon has enough energy to turn the switch on or off nineteen times.
In other words, absorbing solar energy allows the molecular memory cells (the "switches") of Life to rise above the thermal chaos and perform computations...
..Assuming that every act of a molecular memory cell rising above the thermal chaos counts as one operation, we can estimate the rate of information processing by Life from the known rate of its consumption of solar energy. With the global mean efficiency of photosynthesis of about E ~ 0.5 % and the global mean flux of solar energy absorbed by the planetary surface of about F ~ 170 W/m2, we find that the flux of information processed by living cells is about (EF/kTE ) ~ 2 x 1020 operations per second per square meter.
Compare this with a typical modern supercomputer, which consumes a hundred times more power per square meter but performs a billion times fewer operations per second...
Compare this with a typical modern supercomputer, which consumes a hundred times more power per square meter but performs a billion times fewer operations per second...
In short, it is sustainability. Life computes how to persist over time, without running out of anything, without polluting anything, and maintaining favorable conditions for its own continuation... Life is a distributed system of microscopic computers (living cells) that cover the entire Earth, assessing environmental conditions and reacting immediately if something goes wrong...
..There are two conclusions to be drawn from this exercise in assessing Life's information-processing capabilities. First, sustainability is a hugely complex task, requiring the processing of vast amounts of information. It is no surprise that our achievements in this area are zero. Second, there is no technical substitute for biotic regulation of the environment. If we disturb natural ecosystems beyond their self-repair point, we will not be able to stabilize the climate even if we stop all emissions. https://bioticregulation.
Gardening Biocomputer (pictured with broccoli)
