Talk about colonialism in the last thread made me remember on of the books that is currently on the bookshelf I have in the den for things I am currently reading,
Burmese Days, by George Orwell.
Orwell is a long-standing favorite for me. Anything of his I have read is always engaging and eye-opening. As is so often the case with artists, his lesser-known works are usually more interesting than the works that made him famous.
In addition to Burmese Days (which seemed apt because it is a study of colonialism), he wrote a stunning/heartbreaking book about life for coal miners in the UK, Road to Wigan Pier (which is my personal favorite among his works). Another good one was Down and Out in Paris and London, which is an interesting tale of the life of a poor working stiff in Paris restaurants and on the welfare dole in the UK.
I came to the conclusion back around 2005 that Israel, and the pro Israeli lobby is not a tail that wags the dog. I had held that idea for quite a long time. Because of that I understand how easy it is to fall in to this trap. And not only that even though I now take the view that the Israelis are puppets of the US MIC, they are willing executioners for the US MIC so their guilt is in no way shape or form diminished. But believing that it is Israel that calls the shots for the US allows US decision makers to at least have a mitigating circumstance for their crimes by using the Israeli excuse to claim that they were coerced in to supporting an Israeli attack on Iran (and everyone else in the region) rather than the aggrevating circumstance which is that the non Zionist leaders of the US MIC orders Israel to carry out these attacks. Which the Israelis then carry out with enthusiasm.
Not that it all matters much because the whole collective west is a giant system with no accountability for the leadership at all. None of the leaders will be punished. And if they eventually are it will not matter because that punishment will not serve as a warning to leaders in the future. Because humanity has no future beyond 2050 if not 2040 if not 2030 if not 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPAFvlPf-UE
“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.” –Invisible Monsters
“Why, it might be argued, should anyone think it is anything but inevitable that the preeminent schools of a capitalist society produce professionals to serve the society’s preeminent capitalist?” –Calvin Trillin
—–
“A systematic review and meta-analysis were undertaken of RCTs(Randomized controlled trials), published prior to 1983”
“The reductions in mean serum cholesterol levels were significantly higher in the intervention groups; this did not result in significant differences (Risk ratio .99) in CHD or all-cause mortality.”
This is a meta-analysis of corporate designed, performed, and selectively released studies on statins.
One of the authors was paid by 4 of multiple Statin drug corporations as stated in the competing interests section.
Besides conflict of interests biasing the results in favor of statins these studies contained other various flaws/bias favoring the drugs.
-Exclusion and inclusion criteria. It’s standard practice to selectively choose patients who are expected to tolerate the drugs and exclude those who are expected to have a higher risk of adverse events.
-Use of a run in period. This is where the patients are given the drug and those who have negative effects are removed before the study starts. Likewise, this results in the placebo group
receiving a period of harm from the drugs.
-Ending the study prematurely. For example the ASCOT-LLA atorvastatin trial started as a 5 year long study but it was ended after 3.3 years. Everyone could recognize how this practice was absurd when Trump called for the vote counting to stop part way through.
-Drop out bias a portion of the participants results are excluded.
The results were:
“median postponement of death for primary and secondary prevention trials were 3.2 and 4.1 days, respectively.”
Put differently, in corporate studies designed to make Statins look good they extend life expectancy by 3-4 days.
“Lipid-lowering drugs produce myopathic side effects in up to 7% of treated patients, with severe rhabdomyolysis occurring in as many as 0.5%”
“persistent symptoms occurred in 68% of patients despite cessation (of statins)”
Statins caused long term damage to the metabolic and muscle systems that did not resolve after withdrawing from the drugs.
This highlights the bias favoring statins in all the clinical trials because remember they gave the “placebo” group a statin for 6 weeks.
A common way drug corporations hide drug harms is to ensure that the “placebo” group is actually a group harmed in one way or another.
——
In a 2 month long French study clinical levels of muscle pain were reported in
“10.5%” of users with 38% and 4% of those people being prevented from moderate daily activities or being confined to bed respectively.
A dose dependent relationship was found with stronger statins and doses causing larger amounts of negative effects.
The authors were employed by a statin manufacture and the study was funded by that same drug corporation (Acknowledgment section).
In a randomized study done by authors who were paid by a dozen drug companies and funded by a drug corporation grant (acknowledgment section) they found:
“35.8% experienced muscle pain on SIMVA (statins) but not placebo, exhibiting confirmed SAMS (statin-associated muscle symptoms)”
“Real critical thinking means uncovering and questioning social, political and moral assumptions; applying and refining a personally developed worldview” —Disciplined minds, Jeff Schmidt
“Truth is a pathless land –the moment you follow someone you cease to follow truth.” –Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.” –Invisible monsters
As always sci-hub can be used to get past paywalls and read the entire published study. https://sci-hub.se/
I haven’t been able to get to Turcopolier blog for several days now. First, it looked like my Browser (MS Edge) didn’t want to let me go to a site it considers unsafe, but now it looks like the site has disappeared (again).
I attended the Duluth, MN “No Kings” Rally today, it was a cold 50 degrees with high winds where we were in sight of Lake Superior. Good crowd, certainly a bit over 2,000, more than that with people coming and going the 90 minutes plus I was there.
I did not realize that Governor (and Netanyahu buddy c. 2009) Tim Walz had encouraged Minnesota residents NOT to attend especially in the Twin Cities, because of the targeted assassination of the Democratic House speaker Melissa Hortman & her husband by a deranged CHUD impersonating a cop yesterday. https://www.startribune.com/brooklyn-park-police-searching-for-suspect-in-multiple-targeted-shootings/601372993 (A comment on this article– the photos of Cops “protecting” from a fake Cop with their semi-automatics did not comfort me. I’m reminded of the old classic “Police and Thieves,” by Junior Murvin, 1976. I know I heard the Joe Strummer/ Clash version first when I was 17 or so.
I saw some old friends and made some new ones. I had to shop for groceries, liquor and art supplies to make my placard before the rally started at noon. By coincidence, my food store is near the starting point of the march to the crossing to Minnesota Point/ Lake Park, so I talked to a few folks there before rushing home and making my sign. One lady I briefly interacted with was waving an American flag, so I asked her in a friendly, non-confrontational way, “I hope you don’t support the Gaza Genocide since you are waving THAT flag?” She responded of course not, and we had a friendly tete-a-tete. I told her I’d be attending the rally and somehow Ukraine came up. I told her I support Russia because Ukraine is a Nazi-ideology regime, she said “I’ve never heard that!” (She’s American, I’m not surprised.) I told her to goggle Stepan Bandera, I told her stuff I shared recently with L & S (Lie and Suborn), about the 5 million dead Russians after 1991, about doing a reverse BLM with statues in Ukraine, going from anti-Nazi to pro-Nazi, Russian being outlawed as a language, Western Ukraine having been fascist in WW II, etc. I recommended she buy Hopkirk’s The Great Game if she wanted to learn about Russian history . . . it was a respectful and friendly conversation, might (or might not) have changed somebody’s mind, it never hurts to try.
My sign at the rally was as follows, and several people took pictures of it, evidently were in agreement. It was as follows:
DEFEAT FASCIST GENOCIDAL AXIS OF EVIL: U$A + UK + ZIONAZIS + GERMANY + UKRAINE (all in black except Zionasis was in Red, with blood drips down from the letters)
REST of the World (=RoW) BRICS + U.N., Global South says U$A Fuck Off, Hands off! (all black except RoW red)
WHITE SUPREMACY, Your Days Are Numbered! (in Blue)
Stop Sending All My Taxes to Right Wing, Looting Regimes! (in red)
Put Down the Billionaire Oligarchs and Restore Roads, Bridges, Health Care, Schools, Safety Net! (in black)
American “Exceptionalism” = Showing R.o.W how fat, stupid, violent, & ignorant White Majority is!! Stop! (in red. I was not “fat shaming per se, but this is a case where I figured referencing the Donald directly would engender more openness to the message)
NO GODS, NO MASTERS, No Kings! (in Blue– I put the Anarchist motto in all Caps, not so for name of the Demo, as Donald is just a figurehead, if a particularly egregious and ugly one. And as I shared already, I went to Zero of the local Shit-Libs Virtue “Resistance” Rallies, oh, if Kamala were here it wouldn’t be so bad!! Fuck dat noise.)
Closer was “FREE YOUR MIND, YOUR ASS WILL FOLLOW!– Bootsy Collins (in black)
An older lady I know from the Unitarian Church was first to complement it, she said “Too bad you couldn’t include more.” I said yes, only so much room for Bumper Sticker wisdom.
No violence or mayhem, no counter-protesters. Lots of supportive honking by 90% of cars coming thru the Central intersection. Old, young, mostly white (it is Duluth) a very friendly vibe. Last group to ask to photo the poster were 3 women with one having an “Eat the Rich!” sign, I had complimented it, saying “Hey, Eat the Rich, that’s genuine Radicalism.”
It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing to know that others are disgusted and fed up. The fact that young people are checked out from the consensus was shared with me by a new friend. Other than the one conversation sans placard, nobody disputed my inclusion of Ukraine in the fascist Axis.
La Lucha sigue. El orden viejo esta matando. Hasta la Victoria contra el fascismo.
Statins are such a scam! Read the package insert carefully, says I.
Seriously, I do not understand the medical judgment at all. Cholesterol is central to such fundamental mechanisms of tissue repair, why would anyone focus on serum levels? Something is certainly going wrong in the processes of arterioscelerosis, but is it plausibly the quantity of cholesterol of whatever types floating in the blood? Granting that that the blood test is a statistical indicator, does it make sense as a treatment to manipulate an indicator? Does it make any sense at all to prescribe a drug and use as feedback the results of a blood test that correlates rather loosely with the disease?
Call me old school, but I expect an investigation of disease processes and mechanisms with interventions logically related to process/mechanism. A drug to manipulate an “instrumental variable” in an almost certainly false linear model? Are you kidding? What is wrong with these people?
As I’ve often noted I live remote and my internet access is sketchy at best; I have to catch a signal from space using my cellphone.
Anyway, today I repeatedly received the message that “the page cannot be opened because the server stopped responding”, which reminded me that UNFI’s (the largest US natural foods distributor—practically a monopoly) servers were hacked and have been down for about 10 days.
What this means is Whole Foods and your local mom and pop , if such exits in your neighborhood, have serious inventory shortages. The interdependence, it burns.
There’s no going back, unless some dystopian scenario takes effect, in which case we’re going way back. But for now we’re internet reliant and vulnerable. Gotta have security systems to guard against malware and hackers and who knows what. There are some sinister players lurking out there ready to create chaos and mayhem. I’m surprised there isn’t more disruption occurring. There will be of course with cyber warfare accelerating. It ain’t natural is all I’m saying.
In the unnatural department, I took note of a posting at NC this week about the Millennials and the X’s and Z’s I guess not getting it on so much. Porn and stress and who knows what dulling mundane desire. Horny ain’t what it used to be, apparently. I don’t know. Don’t get around much anymore, I’m attributing this phenomenon to endocrine disrupters and hormonal imbalances from corporate food, environmental toxins and all the other usual suspects that I usually cite. Testosterone and estrogen levels aren’t what they used to be. Kind of amazing that we function at all. Even those who rely on Whole Foods for their sustenance are mostly consuming organic processed foods. I used to care, but not so much anymore.
I hear there are some wars happening that are bigger than chat room food fights. Wishing all those in the ‘free world ‘ a peaceful and pleasant weekend.
I was AFK for over 12 hours. I understand there was a period where the site was slow or not loading, sorry about that. It’s due to DDOS, not sure why we get hit.
If comments aren’t approved fast it just means that I’m AFK. I sometimes sleep a long time and when I’m out of the house I usually don’t carry a phone.
Thanks for the report Marc and for showing up , very interesting read. It is funny (sad) to think that sortition (electing leaders by random draw) would probably be a huge improvement for the US, and perhaps Canada too.
A Good News/ Bad News scenario for me after I wrote my No Kings Day post yesterday at home.
The Good: I’d gotten a free Energy Drink when I was shopping before the rally, for buying over $4 of stuff at the Deli. I took it with me to the rally to hydrate and stay awake. So when that kicked in I went back to the Israel attack on Iran thread and saw some very nice comments about my Yi Ching take from Tariq, a correction of a mistaken claim of mine from Jessica, and some nice comments directed my way from someofparts, mago, and others.
I responded with a lengthy post, including some more expanded takes on mysticism in literature and film, etc. Please read if you commented on that thread. And to Tariq, I am going to send you a short email via Ian, which I imagine he’ll pass along to you on an easier way to do a Yi reading with only 2 six-sided dice rather than an elaborate set of yarrow stalks, or coins (which I started with) or similar. (When I was watching The Man in the High Castle c. 2018 online, the protagonist was throwing stalks old school.) Of course some people like to go traditional, just want to share an easier option. This is not an Applied Mysticism website so I’ll stop yammering about the topic now and practice the 4th virtue of the Sphinx, Silence.
Now I’ll just respond to Mago’s update on the Internet outage(s) and Ian’s update on DDoS attacks. I have had no access problems here in the last 48 hours. Prior to that, I’d say 3 to 4 days back, I got repeated “failed to link” boxes, I forget the exact wording.
I have 2 computers, a 10+ year old one that is still chugging along pretty well, in my living room. It did go down when I took a trip to Chicago in early 2024, staying 8 days, so I was forced to buy a pricier new one as a back-up until I could fix the old one. If I kick back in the evening and want to watch a movie, the nice new one is in my 2nd bedroom and linked to a larger screen. My film subscription service, Mubi, just put the original Twin Peaks TV show in their rotation, haven’t seen that since the 30 years later update came out (also around 2018, I think?) so I wanted to watch that.
Internet is fine. When I bought the new one at a Best Buy it came with “free” Geek Squad support which I took, lasted a year. The mouse they sold with it died in about 4 months, still on warranty, so I got it replaced. I used the free support once when I needed to update my old computer from version 10 to 11, as 10 was going to lose support.
About 4 weeks after the year’s support coverage ran out the touchpad suddenly died, not usable. Bummer, things are a little slower with a mouse but it still works.
So yesterday evening I fired up the new machine and when it was time to input my password the cursor was in the little box, and I started to type the PW. Nothing doing!!
No response, nothing, couldn’t enter a single letter, much less a word. Of course this happened on a weekend too, so no quick fix. I shut it down, tried auto restart, etc. Nothing. Dead as a doornail, unusable. I could click inside the box where the mouse indicated I already was, but keyboard useless, touchpad useless.That machine was not cheap and now after just under a year and a half I might need a costly fix or to junk the entire thing!!
Planned obsolescence I guess. It’s a “Yoga” brand. I’ll try to get it fixed on Monday (not with Geek Squad, there’s another place I prefer), but won’t ever buy that again if it died. America, land of the scam.
Okay, all the way out of left field with this one, but I am charmed by the culture and people on the eastern seacoast of Canada. Currently watching videos of a couple homesteading on an island in Newfoundland. The husband was born and raised in Halifax and describes the community as the hillbillies of Canada, where nobody has much money but all the people in the place know each other. Seems the money and the crowds are on the west coast around Vancouver.
My sister spent most of her adult years in Grand Rapids and she hated the winters up there, absolutely hated them. When she arrived in Michigan she had never lived in a place that had severe winters, so she had to learn the hard way how one arranges life to adapt to a climate like that. Among other things, it sounds kind of dangerous for old folks like me who don’t need to slip and fall just getting to the mailbox.
But on the flip side of that, and maybe even because the fierce weather keeps interlopers at bay, the communities up there, on the Canadian and American sides, strike me as down-to-earth, unpretentious and just appealing to someone who thinks the way I do. Portland Maine sounds like a much nicer town than Portland Oregon and Montreal sounds funky but charming as well.
Did I mention that I adore the Trailer Park Boys? Anyway, figured I would throw this into the conversation for general amusement since our maestro Ian is a native and Mark Level is in Duluth. Am I wrong to think that for someone who loves to read and snuggle into my home for days without going out, that long winters that keep a person indoors would not be as unwelcome as they are for an outdoorsy gal like my sister? Am I just foolishly romanticizing something that is actually daunting and depressing?
the blood test is a statistical indicator, does it make sense as a treatment to manipulate an indicator? –Bruce
—–
It doesn’t, but it’s the common operating procedure for many medical drugs.
Though to be fair it is far far better than all of psychiatry which hands out addicting deadly drugs based on a subjective questionnaire.
Greer has been into this sort of thing for a very long time and has much to say about it. He also reads and responds personally to every single comment that is posted at his site, so having a direct exchange with him is guaranteed if you comment there.
I went back to the Iran post to read the updated comments. Thanks for your thoughts Mark Level. Much appreciated.
I remembered the days when I would throw the I Ching and use the resultant hexagram as a haiku writing prompt. Don’t know where they are now and I only remember this one:
The roar of thunder
makes your mouth a perfect O
of astonishment
Ok. Maybe it’s just as well the collection was lost.
But I’ve got to leave with one more that came to me while riding my bike in the Netherlands.
The art of cooking
combines the five elements
skillful means and joy
I’d just started a catering business there that I named Haiku Catering, natch. I put those three lines on my business card, which was incidentally designed in collaboration with a Dutch artist. I still have a few hanging around.
Just a bit of Sunday morning messing around before launching into a culinary project. Ta.
someofparts thanks for 2 relevant updates, I am leaving Duluth in mid-August however, the last winter killed me, & I’m getting out of this lousy country. I will look into the website, thx.
I am old school I was in an Oakland branch of the OTO from 1989 to 2002 or so. When I first got there it was great, mostly very smart, hard working and insightful people. It got more cluttered up with riff-raff, druggies and losers the longer I was there. I called one of them out and faced harassment that made me file a police report against the malefactor. The Leadership, including the so called Outer Head of the Order threatened me to take back the police report and I refused and stopped paying the dues, expelled after 2 years, no worries.
I’m going to share something here, a review I wrote on GoodReads of an OTO “brother” who went insane, I am not outing myself too much because the name on the 1 star review of “The Black Lodge of Santa Cruz” is no longer my legal name. Here is a link for the few who may be interested– https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3239923-black-lodge-of-santa-cruz
Oh, for those interested in this kind of scene, I highly recommend Charles Portis’ satirical novel, Masters of Atlantis. Well-researched, insightful, and hilarious. You can work to better yourself but there will always be a piece of you that is a petty, sometimes ridiculous human bean. As Oscar Wilde noted, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
About to post some 2nd thoughts I had about attending the No Kings thing yesterday, it was a great feeling of community being there BUT the organizers are NeoCon Lesser Evil Oligarchs who only the D.C. crowd could love. It might be the spark of something, but it ain’t the Something yet, not by a long way.
As I said, 2nd thoughts about No Kings, but glad I went.
This podcast by Matthew Ehret (think he used to write for the Nation, which I haven’t read much for years) has the brilliant Garland Nixon who points out the obvious. He researched who is running this, it is a bunch of Oligarchs, Dem Party CIA-friendly goons, Zionists but the “Nice” pro-LGBTQ type. These are NOT the Answer Movement and actual Lefties, they’re just essentially saying Settle Down and Behave Children, we got this. . . Link– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9GySS942M0
Garland is an ex-cop and he makes me walk back my ridicule of cop psychology on a recent thread. He is a thoughtful human being and legitimately left wing. He has a great Bullshit Detector (I should’ve said just above to anyone who wants to study occultism, don’t do it if you don’t have one. You will be destroyed.)
I don’t agree with everything the 3 guests say, but they are all insightful and make many good points.
I think the USA is doomed, and Trump is just a skilled Accelerationist, they can’t do any better at the top. Some real movement may emerge, but probably not for decades, if then. But the Empire will not be saved by soulless technocrats. Soulless technocracy and dehumanization are the problem, humanism is the solution but that is certainly not within a hundred miles of On the Table since the Neoliberal Austerity and NeoCon endless wars regimes emerged in the 70s and 80s, and were installed in power by the corporate MSM.
If an outdoorsy person can learn to accept the outdoorsy cold, there are outdoorsy things that people in the long winter zones do outdoors in winter. Cross country skiing, snowshoeing, ice fishing, other things.
Decades ago when I was a more active birdwatcher than now, I enjoyed my several winters in upper New York State because there was the good chance of one or more
Winter Finches as well as other high northern birds from Canada. Between there and then living in Michigan till now, I saw about all the far northern birds I was likely to see and then started liking winter somewhat less.
One fun thing I can still do in winter is shovel snow up off of my yard and pack it onto my garden beds for a good snowmelt meltwater start to the growing season. Also it is fun to turn my thermostat down and see how cool I can still find it okay. Unless I am sick I find 60 degrees indoors to be perfectly fine. And if we are forecast a cold snap of near-zero or below, I turn the heat up to avoid pipe freezes.
Here is a Reese Waters video about Trump’s birthday parade and contrasting it with various No Kings events in different parts of the country. It is very funny in its own way and it also features an accidentally captured ” hot mike” episode of Trump saying something to an aide . . . a “hot mike” statement which neither the MSM ( Main Stream Media) nor the BMM ( Big Murdoch Media) are going to play or even mention. Here is the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjZmdT6S4g
Here is a video titled: ” Chicago PD walked with the people and escorted them during the No Kings protest. ”
Serving and protecting, for real and no sarcasm. This signals that at least one major PD does not support the TrumpAdmin’s effort to create a Civil War situation in America to its own advantage.
I think I am tempermentally unsuited to political protest. My basic attitude is, “use power or stay home.” Protest seems like embracing impotence and irresponsibility or conceding the legitimacy of a ruling class deserving contempt.
But, as it happened I was at the demonstration near New Haven green. I know. So bougie!
Omigod, what a cliche the demonstrators were. White boomers predominated and typified. Oh, so earnest we all were. I, of course, am a white boomer — an indelible stain on my soul, and in invisible white no less. (Can the virtue of Pauli Murray redeem a reprobate like Benjamin Franklin — all Yale cries out for answers!!!)
Oh, well. I apologize for my cynicism regarding my fellow boomers, especially the ones who showed up on Saturday protesting too little and too late. Probably lots of them were just like me, once and only once Obama voters, since voting hopelessly for Jill Stein. My god, we’re pathetic in old age.
Here is a relatively shorter video by a different Black videographer, titled: ” He Trusted Trump… Now His Farm Is In Ruins ” It is in a different spirit ; no talk of leopards or faces, no FAFO . . . just seriously wondering “why” and suggesting simply retro-legalizing all the illegals involved. I may have thoughts later after enough time to really think, but for now, here is the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcJ3KIh8u9Q
It’s ridiculous, in my view, to believe that the US MIC calls the shots and Israel just follows their lead when that also would require one to believe that it is in the US’s interests that Israel levels Gaza. Cause if the US was calling the shots then why would the US supply the bombs to help Israel do this and shift military assets and equipment (including bombs) from Ukraine to help Israel slaughter Gazans when using Ukraine to weaken Russia ought to be of greater importance to the US than supporting Israel’s industrial style systematic murder of Gazans? What threat are the Gazans to the US? Why isn’t the US using its considerable leverage on Israel, if they decided to threaten to withhold funding and military equipment and support, to make them come up with a less costlier solution to the Gazan situation, such as merely boosting security, other than mass murdering Gazans and razing Gaza?
As I wrote once before: show me a US foreign policy think tank that places the US’s interests above all-blessed Israel’s and I’ll show you a think tank that’s influence on US foreign policy is on Empty.
Here is a Reese Waters video about the Sheriff of Brevard County in Florida warning would-be protesters about how the Sheriff’s Department will kill any such protesters “graveyard dead” under certainly subjectively interpreted circumstances if they feel like it. And they will feel like it. (I wonder if this Sheriff is part of the so-called ” Constitutional Sherrif” movement.) https://apnews.com/article/constitutional-sheriffs-5568cd0b6b27680a28de8a098ed14210
The video is titled: ” Ron Desantis & Florida Sheriff’s Threat To Protestors BACKFIRES”
diff clue – Thanks for the Reese Waters links. Whole new interesting voice I had not heard of before, but duly bookmarked now.
m level – Matt Ehret is the person who alerted me to the Turkish dramatizations of Ottoman history and sent me careening down that very satisfying and enlightening rabbit hole.
elkern – I can’t get Turcopolier to come up either using Firefox. Looks like it is being blocked.
miss jennings – Even better, the IDF moved their headquarters under a hospital because they know Iran will NOT target a hospital. Every time I think these vermin have finally gone as low as alleged humans can, they find a way to go lower.
b wilder – Compared to me you are probably a spring chicken. I’m finding that a sense of humor helps a lot if one can muster the energy for it. Every day is another opportunity to be startled by some new odd thing my body is doing now. Did you know that having a runny nose is a thing oldsters do? I mean honestly, the indignities just keep coming.
The biggest lesson I’m learning though is to cherish my friends who are still alive like crazy, because as we start to disappear one by one, drip, drip, drip, I realize that the people I love and still have beside me are THE big thing that makes being alive remain satisfying. Actually, come to think of it, I also feel that way about some of you other regulars here in comments, and definitely about Ian as well.
someofparts
Talk about colonialism in the last thread made me remember on of the books that is currently on the bookshelf I have in the den for things I am currently reading,
Burmese Days, by George Orwell.
Orwell is a long-standing favorite for me. Anything of his I have read is always engaging and eye-opening. As is so often the case with artists, his lesser-known works are usually more interesting than the works that made him famous.
In addition to Burmese Days (which seemed apt because it is a study of colonialism), he wrote a stunning/heartbreaking book about life for coal miners in the UK, Road to Wigan Pier (which is my personal favorite among his works). Another good one was Down and Out in Paris and London, which is an interesting tale of the life of a poor working stiff in Paris restaurants and on the welfare dole in the UK.
Curt Kastens
I came to the conclusion back around 2005 that Israel, and the pro Israeli lobby is not a tail that wags the dog. I had held that idea for quite a long time. Because of that I understand how easy it is to fall in to this trap. And not only that even though I now take the view that the Israelis are puppets of the US MIC, they are willing executioners for the US MIC so their guilt is in no way shape or form diminished. But believing that it is Israel that calls the shots for the US allows US decision makers to at least have a mitigating circumstance for their crimes by using the Israeli excuse to claim that they were coerced in to supporting an Israeli attack on Iran (and everyone else in the region) rather than the aggrevating circumstance which is that the non Zionist leaders of the US MIC orders Israel to carry out these attacks. Which the Israelis then carry out with enthusiasm.
Not that it all matters much because the whole collective west is a giant system with no accountability for the leadership at all. None of the leaders will be punished. And if they eventually are it will not matter because that punishment will not serve as a warning to leaders in the future. Because humanity has no future beyond 2050 if not 2040 if not 2030 if not 2026.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPAFvlPf-UE
Oakchair
“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.” –Invisible Monsters
“Why, it might be argued, should anyone think it is anything but inevitable that the preeminent schools of a capitalist society produce professionals to serve the society’s preeminent capitalist?” –Calvin Trillin
—–
“A systematic review and meta-analysis were undertaken of RCTs(Randomized controlled trials), published prior to 1983”
“The reductions in mean serum cholesterol levels were significantly higher in the intervention groups; this did not result in significant differences (Risk ratio .99) in CHD or all-cause mortality.”
https://openheart.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000196
——
This is a meta-analysis of corporate designed, performed, and selectively released studies on statins.
One of the authors was paid by 4 of multiple Statin drug corporations as stated in the competing interests section.
Besides conflict of interests biasing the results in favor of statins these studies contained other various flaws/bias favoring the drugs.
-Exclusion and inclusion criteria. It’s standard practice to selectively choose patients who are expected to tolerate the drugs and exclude those who are expected to have a higher risk of adverse events.
-Use of a run in period. This is where the patients are given the drug and those who have negative effects are removed before the study starts. Likewise, this results in the placebo group
receiving a period of harm from the drugs.
-Ending the study prematurely. For example the ASCOT-LLA atorvastatin trial started as a 5 year long study but it was ended after 3.3 years. Everyone could recognize how this practice was absurd when Trump called for the vote counting to stop part way through.
-Drop out bias a portion of the participants results are excluded.
The results were:
“median postponement of death for primary and secondary prevention trials were 3.2 and 4.1 days, respectively.”
Put differently, in corporate studies designed to make Statins look good they extend life expectancy by 3-4 days.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/9/e007118
—-
“Lipid-lowering drugs produce myopathic side effects in up to 7% of treated patients, with severe rhabdomyolysis occurring in as many as 0.5%”
“persistent symptoms occurred in 68% of patients despite cessation (of statins)”
Statins caused long term damage to the metabolic and muscle systems that did not resolve after withdrawing from the drugs.
This highlights the bias favoring statins in all the clinical trials because remember they gave the “placebo” group a statin for 6 weeks.
A common way drug corporations hide drug harms is to ensure that the “placebo” group is actually a group harmed in one way or another.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16671104/
——
In a 2 month long French study clinical levels of muscle pain were reported in
“10.5%” of users with 38% and 4% of those people being prevented from moderate daily activities or being confined to bed respectively.
A dose dependent relationship was found with stronger statins and doses causing larger amounts of negative effects.
The authors were employed by a statin manufacture and the study was funded by that same drug corporation (Acknowledgment section).
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16453090/
—–
In a randomized study done by authors who were paid by a dozen drug companies and funded by a drug corporation grant (acknowledgment section) they found:
“35.8% experienced muscle pain on SIMVA (statins) but not placebo, exhibiting confirmed SAMS (statin-associated muscle symptoms)”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6083851/
—-
“Real critical thinking means uncovering and questioning social, political and moral assumptions; applying and refining a personally developed worldview” —Disciplined minds, Jeff Schmidt
“Truth is a pathless land –the moment you follow someone you cease to follow truth.” –Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.” –Invisible monsters
As always sci-hub can be used to get past paywalls and read the entire published study.
https://sci-hub.se/
elkern
I haven’t been able to get to Turcopolier blog for several days now. First, it looked like my Browser (MS Edge) didn’t want to let me go to a site it considers unsafe, but now it looks like the site has disappeared (again).
Anybody else having same issue?
Joe
I would recommend also the Orwell work, the essay, Shooting an elephant.
Marc Level
I attended the Duluth, MN “No Kings” Rally today, it was a cold 50 degrees with high winds where we were in sight of Lake Superior. Good crowd, certainly a bit over 2,000, more than that with people coming and going the 90 minutes plus I was there.
I did not realize that Governor (and Netanyahu buddy c. 2009) Tim Walz had encouraged Minnesota residents NOT to attend especially in the Twin Cities, because of the targeted assassination of the Democratic House speaker Melissa Hortman & her husband by a deranged CHUD impersonating a cop yesterday. https://www.startribune.com/brooklyn-park-police-searching-for-suspect-in-multiple-targeted-shootings/601372993 (A comment on this article– the photos of Cops “protecting” from a fake Cop with their semi-automatics did not comfort me. I’m reminded of the old classic “Police and Thieves,” by Junior Murvin, 1976. I know I heard the Joe Strummer/ Clash version first when I was 17 or so.
I saw some old friends and made some new ones. I had to shop for groceries, liquor and art supplies to make my placard before the rally started at noon. By coincidence, my food store is near the starting point of the march to the crossing to Minnesota Point/ Lake Park, so I talked to a few folks there before rushing home and making my sign. One lady I briefly interacted with was waving an American flag, so I asked her in a friendly, non-confrontational way, “I hope you don’t support the Gaza Genocide since you are waving THAT flag?” She responded of course not, and we had a friendly tete-a-tete. I told her I’d be attending the rally and somehow Ukraine came up. I told her I support Russia because Ukraine is a Nazi-ideology regime, she said “I’ve never heard that!” (She’s American, I’m not surprised.) I told her to goggle Stepan Bandera, I told her stuff I shared recently with L & S (Lie and Suborn), about the 5 million dead Russians after 1991, about doing a reverse BLM with statues in Ukraine, going from anti-Nazi to pro-Nazi, Russian being outlawed as a language, Western Ukraine having been fascist in WW II, etc. I recommended she buy Hopkirk’s The Great Game if she wanted to learn about Russian history . . . it was a respectful and friendly conversation, might (or might not) have changed somebody’s mind, it never hurts to try.
My sign at the rally was as follows, and several people took pictures of it, evidently were in agreement. It was as follows:
DEFEAT FASCIST GENOCIDAL AXIS OF EVIL: U$A + UK + ZIONAZIS + GERMANY + UKRAINE (all in black except Zionasis was in Red, with blood drips down from the letters)
REST of the World (=RoW) BRICS + U.N., Global South says U$A Fuck Off, Hands off! (all black except RoW red)
WHITE SUPREMACY, Your Days Are Numbered! (in Blue)
Stop Sending All My Taxes to Right Wing, Looting Regimes! (in red)
Put Down the Billionaire Oligarchs and Restore Roads, Bridges, Health Care, Schools, Safety Net! (in black)
American “Exceptionalism” = Showing R.o.W how fat, stupid, violent, & ignorant White Majority is!! Stop! (in red. I was not “fat shaming per se, but this is a case where I figured referencing the Donald directly would engender more openness to the message)
NO GODS, NO MASTERS, No Kings! (in Blue– I put the Anarchist motto in all Caps, not so for name of the Demo, as Donald is just a figurehead, if a particularly egregious and ugly one. And as I shared already, I went to Zero of the local Shit-Libs Virtue “Resistance” Rallies, oh, if Kamala were here it wouldn’t be so bad!! Fuck dat noise.)
Closer was “FREE YOUR MIND, YOUR ASS WILL FOLLOW!– Bootsy Collins (in black)
An older lady I know from the Unitarian Church was first to complement it, she said “Too bad you couldn’t include more.” I said yes, only so much room for Bumper Sticker wisdom.
No violence or mayhem, no counter-protesters. Lots of supportive honking by 90% of cars coming thru the Central intersection. Old, young, mostly white (it is Duluth) a very friendly vibe. Last group to ask to photo the poster were 3 women with one having an “Eat the Rich!” sign, I had complimented it, saying “Hey, Eat the Rich, that’s genuine Radicalism.”
It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing to know that others are disgusted and fed up. The fact that young people are checked out from the consensus was shared with me by a new friend. Other than the one conversation sans placard, nobody disputed my inclusion of Ukraine in the fascist Axis.
La Lucha sigue. El orden viejo esta matando. Hasta la Victoria contra el fascismo.
bruce wilder
Statins are such a scam! Read the package insert carefully, says I.
Seriously, I do not understand the medical judgment at all. Cholesterol is central to such fundamental mechanisms of tissue repair, why would anyone focus on serum levels? Something is certainly going wrong in the processes of arterioscelerosis, but is it plausibly the quantity of cholesterol of whatever types floating in the blood? Granting that that the blood test is a statistical indicator, does it make sense as a treatment to manipulate an indicator? Does it make any sense at all to prescribe a drug and use as feedback the results of a blood test that correlates rather loosely with the disease?
Call me old school, but I expect an investigation of disease processes and mechanisms with interventions logically related to process/mechanism. A drug to manipulate an “instrumental variable” in an almost certainly false linear model? Are you kidding? What is wrong with these people?
mago
As I’ve often noted I live remote and my internet access is sketchy at best; I have to catch a signal from space using my cellphone.
Anyway, today I repeatedly received the message that “the page cannot be opened because the server stopped responding”, which reminded me that UNFI’s (the largest US natural foods distributor—practically a monopoly) servers were hacked and have been down for about 10 days.
What this means is Whole Foods and your local mom and pop , if such exits in your neighborhood, have serious inventory shortages. The interdependence, it burns.
There’s no going back, unless some dystopian scenario takes effect, in which case we’re going way back. But for now we’re internet reliant and vulnerable. Gotta have security systems to guard against malware and hackers and who knows what. There are some sinister players lurking out there ready to create chaos and mayhem. I’m surprised there isn’t more disruption occurring. There will be of course with cyber warfare accelerating. It ain’t natural is all I’m saying.
In the unnatural department, I took note of a posting at NC this week about the Millennials and the X’s and Z’s I guess not getting it on so much. Porn and stress and who knows what dulling mundane desire. Horny ain’t what it used to be, apparently. I don’t know. Don’t get around much anymore, I’m attributing this phenomenon to endocrine disrupters and hormonal imbalances from corporate food, environmental toxins and all the other usual suspects that I usually cite. Testosterone and estrogen levels aren’t what they used to be. Kind of amazing that we function at all. Even those who rely on Whole Foods for their sustenance are mostly consuming organic processed foods. I used to care, but not so much anymore.
I hear there are some wars happening that are bigger than chat room food fights. Wishing all those in the ‘free world ‘ a peaceful and pleasant weekend.
mago
It’s possible to love everyday people.
Ian Welsh
I was AFK for over 12 hours. I understand there was a period where the site was slow or not loading, sorry about that. It’s due to DDOS, not sure why we get hit.
If comments aren’t approved fast it just means that I’m AFK. I sometimes sleep a long time and when I’m out of the house I usually don’t carry a phone.
Some Guy
Thanks for the report Marc and for showing up , very interesting read. It is funny (sad) to think that sortition (electing leaders by random draw) would probably be a huge improvement for the US, and perhaps Canada too.
Mark Level
A Good News/ Bad News scenario for me after I wrote my No Kings Day post yesterday at home.
The Good: I’d gotten a free Energy Drink when I was shopping before the rally, for buying over $4 of stuff at the Deli. I took it with me to the rally to hydrate and stay awake. So when that kicked in I went back to the Israel attack on Iran thread and saw some very nice comments about my Yi Ching take from Tariq, a correction of a mistaken claim of mine from Jessica, and some nice comments directed my way from someofparts, mago, and others.
I responded with a lengthy post, including some more expanded takes on mysticism in literature and film, etc. Please read if you commented on that thread. And to Tariq, I am going to send you a short email via Ian, which I imagine he’ll pass along to you on an easier way to do a Yi reading with only 2 six-sided dice rather than an elaborate set of yarrow stalks, or coins (which I started with) or similar. (When I was watching The Man in the High Castle c. 2018 online, the protagonist was throwing stalks old school.) Of course some people like to go traditional, just want to share an easier option. This is not an Applied Mysticism website so I’ll stop yammering about the topic now and practice the 4th virtue of the Sphinx, Silence.
Now I’ll just respond to Mago’s update on the Internet outage(s) and Ian’s update on DDoS attacks. I have had no access problems here in the last 48 hours. Prior to that, I’d say 3 to 4 days back, I got repeated “failed to link” boxes, I forget the exact wording.
I have 2 computers, a 10+ year old one that is still chugging along pretty well, in my living room. It did go down when I took a trip to Chicago in early 2024, staying 8 days, so I was forced to buy a pricier new one as a back-up until I could fix the old one. If I kick back in the evening and want to watch a movie, the nice new one is in my 2nd bedroom and linked to a larger screen. My film subscription service, Mubi, just put the original Twin Peaks TV show in their rotation, haven’t seen that since the 30 years later update came out (also around 2018, I think?) so I wanted to watch that.
Internet is fine. When I bought the new one at a Best Buy it came with “free” Geek Squad support which I took, lasted a year. The mouse they sold with it died in about 4 months, still on warranty, so I got it replaced. I used the free support once when I needed to update my old computer from version 10 to 11, as 10 was going to lose support.
About 4 weeks after the year’s support coverage ran out the touchpad suddenly died, not usable. Bummer, things are a little slower with a mouse but it still works.
So yesterday evening I fired up the new machine and when it was time to input my password the cursor was in the little box, and I started to type the PW. Nothing doing!!
No response, nothing, couldn’t enter a single letter, much less a word. Of course this happened on a weekend too, so no quick fix. I shut it down, tried auto restart, etc. Nothing. Dead as a doornail, unusable. I could click inside the box where the mouse indicated I already was, but keyboard useless, touchpad useless.That machine was not cheap and now after just under a year and a half I might need a costly fix or to junk the entire thing!!
Planned obsolescence I guess. It’s a “Yoga” brand. I’ll try to get it fixed on Monday (not with Geek Squad, there’s another place I prefer), but won’t ever buy that again if it died. America, land of the scam.
someofparts
Okay, all the way out of left field with this one, but I am charmed by the culture and people on the eastern seacoast of Canada. Currently watching videos of a couple homesteading on an island in Newfoundland. The husband was born and raised in Halifax and describes the community as the hillbillies of Canada, where nobody has much money but all the people in the place know each other. Seems the money and the crowds are on the west coast around Vancouver.
My sister spent most of her adult years in Grand Rapids and she hated the winters up there, absolutely hated them. When she arrived in Michigan she had never lived in a place that had severe winters, so she had to learn the hard way how one arranges life to adapt to a climate like that. Among other things, it sounds kind of dangerous for old folks like me who don’t need to slip and fall just getting to the mailbox.
But on the flip side of that, and maybe even because the fierce weather keeps interlopers at bay, the communities up there, on the Canadian and American sides, strike me as down-to-earth, unpretentious and just appealing to someone who thinks the way I do. Portland Maine sounds like a much nicer town than Portland Oregon and Montreal sounds funky but charming as well.
Did I mention that I adore the Trailer Park Boys? Anyway, figured I would throw this into the conversation for general amusement since our maestro Ian is a native and Mark Level is in Duluth. Am I wrong to think that for someone who loves to read and snuggle into my home for days without going out, that long winters that keep a person indoors would not be as unwelcome as they are for an outdoorsy gal like my sister? Am I just foolishly romanticizing something that is actually daunting and depressing?
Oakchair
the blood test is a statistical indicator, does it make sense as a treatment to manipulate an indicator? –Bruce
—–
It doesn’t, but it’s the common operating procedure for many medical drugs.
Though to be fair it is far far better than all of psychiatry which hands out addicting deadly drugs based on a subjective questionnaire.
someofparts
For anyone interested in applied mysticism, John Michael Greer might be a useful writer to check out.
https://www.ecosophia.net/
Greer has been into this sort of thing for a very long time and has much to say about it. He also reads and responds personally to every single comment that is posted at his site, so having a direct exchange with him is guaranteed if you comment there.
mago
I went back to the Iran post to read the updated comments. Thanks for your thoughts Mark Level. Much appreciated.
I remembered the days when I would throw the I Ching and use the resultant hexagram as a haiku writing prompt. Don’t know where they are now and I only remember this one:
The roar of thunder
makes your mouth a perfect O
of astonishment
Ok. Maybe it’s just as well the collection was lost.
But I’ve got to leave with one more that came to me while riding my bike in the Netherlands.
The art of cooking
combines the five elements
skillful means and joy
I’d just started a catering business there that I named Haiku Catering, natch. I put those three lines on my business card, which was incidentally designed in collaboration with a Dutch artist. I still have a few hanging around.
Just a bit of Sunday morning messing around before launching into a culinary project. Ta.
Mark Level
someofparts thanks for 2 relevant updates, I am leaving Duluth in mid-August however, the last winter killed me, & I’m getting out of this lousy country. I will look into the website, thx.
I am old school I was in an Oakland branch of the OTO from 1989 to 2002 or so. When I first got there it was great, mostly very smart, hard working and insightful people. It got more cluttered up with riff-raff, druggies and losers the longer I was there. I called one of them out and faced harassment that made me file a police report against the malefactor. The Leadership, including the so called Outer Head of the Order threatened me to take back the police report and I refused and stopped paying the dues, expelled after 2 years, no worries.
I’m going to share something here, a review I wrote on GoodReads of an OTO “brother” who went insane, I am not outing myself too much because the name on the 1 star review of “The Black Lodge of Santa Cruz” is no longer my legal name. Here is a link for the few who may be interested– https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3239923-black-lodge-of-santa-cruz
Oh, for those interested in this kind of scene, I highly recommend Charles Portis’ satirical novel, Masters of Atlantis. Well-researched, insightful, and hilarious. You can work to better yourself but there will always be a piece of you that is a petty, sometimes ridiculous human bean. As Oscar Wilde noted, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
About to post some 2nd thoughts I had about attending the No Kings thing yesterday, it was a great feeling of community being there BUT the organizers are NeoCon Lesser Evil Oligarchs who only the D.C. crowd could love. It might be the spark of something, but it ain’t the Something yet, not by a long way.
Mark Level
As I said, 2nd thoughts about No Kings, but glad I went.
This podcast by Matthew Ehret (think he used to write for the Nation, which I haven’t read much for years) has the brilliant Garland Nixon who points out the obvious. He researched who is running this, it is a bunch of Oligarchs, Dem Party CIA-friendly goons, Zionists but the “Nice” pro-LGBTQ type. These are NOT the Answer Movement and actual Lefties, they’re just essentially saying Settle Down and Behave Children, we got this. . . Link– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9GySS942M0
Garland is an ex-cop and he makes me walk back my ridicule of cop psychology on a recent thread. He is a thoughtful human being and legitimately left wing. He has a great Bullshit Detector (I should’ve said just above to anyone who wants to study occultism, don’t do it if you don’t have one. You will be destroyed.)
I don’t agree with everything the 3 guests say, but they are all insightful and make many good points.
I think the USA is doomed, and Trump is just a skilled Accelerationist, they can’t do any better at the top. Some real movement may emerge, but probably not for decades, if then. But the Empire will not be saved by soulless technocrats. Soulless technocracy and dehumanization are the problem, humanism is the solution but that is certainly not within a hundred miles of On the Table since the Neoliberal Austerity and NeoCon endless wars regimes emerged in the 70s and 80s, and were installed in power by the corporate MSM.
(Done posting for today, I promise)
different clue
@someofparts,
If an outdoorsy person can learn to accept the outdoorsy cold, there are outdoorsy things that people in the long winter zones do outdoors in winter. Cross country skiing, snowshoeing, ice fishing, other things.
Decades ago when I was a more active birdwatcher than now, I enjoyed my several winters in upper New York State because there was the good chance of one or more
Winter Finches as well as other high northern birds from Canada. Between there and then living in Michigan till now, I saw about all the far northern birds I was likely to see and then started liking winter somewhat less.
One fun thing I can still do in winter is shovel snow up off of my yard and pack it onto my garden beds for a good snowmelt meltwater start to the growing season. Also it is fun to turn my thermostat down and see how cool I can still find it okay. Unless I am sick I find 60 degrees indoors to be perfectly fine. And if we are forecast a cold snap of near-zero or below, I turn the heat up to avoid pipe freezes.
different clue
Here is a Reese Waters video about Trump’s birthday parade and contrasting it with various No Kings events in different parts of the country. It is very funny in its own way and it also features an accidentally captured ” hot mike” episode of Trump saying something to an aide . . . a “hot mike” statement which neither the MSM ( Main Stream Media) nor the BMM ( Big Murdoch Media) are going to play or even mention. Here is the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjZmdT6S4g
different clue
Here is a video titled: ” Chicago PD walked with the people and escorted them during the No Kings protest. ”
Serving and protecting, for real and no sarcasm. This signals that at least one major PD does not support the TrumpAdmin’s effort to create a Civil War situation in America to its own advantage.
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/goodnews/comments/1lc9c5x/chicago_pd_walked_with_the_people_and_escorted/
bruce wilder
I think I am tempermentally unsuited to political protest. My basic attitude is, “use power or stay home.” Protest seems like embracing impotence and irresponsibility or conceding the legitimacy of a ruling class deserving contempt.
But, as it happened I was at the demonstration near New Haven green. I know. So bougie!
Omigod, what a cliche the demonstrators were. White boomers predominated and typified. Oh, so earnest we all were. I, of course, am a white boomer — an indelible stain on my soul, and in invisible white no less. (Can the virtue of Pauli Murray redeem a reprobate like Benjamin Franklin — all Yale cries out for answers!!!)
Oh, well. I apologize for my cynicism regarding my fellow boomers, especially the ones who showed up on Saturday protesting too little and too late. Probably lots of them were just like me, once and only once Obama voters, since voting hopelessly for Jill Stein. My god, we’re pathetic in old age.
mago
@bruce wilder. Yeah, old age, ain’t it a bitch?
Just like poverty you gotta live it to know it. You can’t explain it.
different clue
Here is a relatively shorter video by a different Black videographer, titled: ” He Trusted Trump… Now His Farm Is In Ruins ” It is in a different spirit ; no talk of leopards or faces, no FAFO . . . just seriously wondering “why” and suggesting simply retro-legalizing all the illegals involved. I may have thoughts later after enough time to really think, but for now, here is the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcJ3KIh8u9Q
Z
It’s ridiculous, in my view, to believe that the US MIC calls the shots and Israel just follows their lead when that also would require one to believe that it is in the US’s interests that Israel levels Gaza. Cause if the US was calling the shots then why would the US supply the bombs to help Israel do this and shift military assets and equipment (including bombs) from Ukraine to help Israel slaughter Gazans when using Ukraine to weaken Russia ought to be of greater importance to the US than supporting Israel’s industrial style systematic murder of Gazans? What threat are the Gazans to the US? Why isn’t the US using its considerable leverage on Israel, if they decided to threaten to withhold funding and military equipment and support, to make them come up with a less costlier solution to the Gazan situation, such as merely boosting security, other than mass murdering Gazans and razing Gaza?
As I wrote once before: show me a US foreign policy think tank that places the US’s interests above all-blessed Israel’s and I’ll show you a think tank that’s influence on US foreign policy is on Empty.
Z
miss jennings
They’re bombing hospitals inside Iran now.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=Israel+Attacks+Farabi+Hospital+in+Kermanshah+Iran&ia=web
different clue
Here is a Reese Waters video about the Sheriff of Brevard County in Florida warning would-be protesters about how the Sheriff’s Department will kill any such protesters “graveyard dead” under certainly subjectively interpreted circumstances if they feel like it. And they will feel like it. (I wonder if this Sheriff is part of the so-called ” Constitutional Sherrif” movement.)
https://apnews.com/article/constitutional-sheriffs-5568cd0b6b27680a28de8a098ed14210
The video is titled: ” Ron Desantis & Florida Sheriff’s Threat To Protestors BACKFIRES”
Here is the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ya_rSCzkd8
someofparts
diff clue – Thanks for the Reese Waters links. Whole new interesting voice I had not heard of before, but duly bookmarked now.
m level – Matt Ehret is the person who alerted me to the Turkish dramatizations of Ottoman history and sent me careening down that very satisfying and enlightening rabbit hole.
elkern – I can’t get Turcopolier to come up either using Firefox. Looks like it is being blocked.
miss jennings – Even better, the IDF moved their headquarters under a hospital because they know Iran will NOT target a hospital. Every time I think these vermin have finally gone as low as alleged humans can, they find a way to go lower.
b wilder – Compared to me you are probably a spring chicken. I’m finding that a sense of humor helps a lot if one can muster the energy for it. Every day is another opportunity to be startled by some new odd thing my body is doing now. Did you know that having a runny nose is a thing oldsters do? I mean honestly, the indignities just keep coming.
The biggest lesson I’m learning though is to cherish my friends who are still alive like crazy, because as we start to disappear one by one, drip, drip, drip, I realize that the people I love and still have beside me are THE big thing that makes being alive remain satisfying. Actually, come to think of it, I also feel that way about some of you other regulars here in comments, and definitely about Ian as well.
Poul
Mining investors discus rare earths, China, EU, USA. Quite informative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIQIidGuz7A