People who did not sleep through their chemistry classes (you did take chemistry, didn’t you?) may enjoy reading “Energetic Nanocomposites with Sol-gel Chemistry: Synthesis, Safety,
and Characterization”
A.E. Gasht ,R.L. Simpson, and J.H. Satcher, Jr.
Energetic Materials Center
Lawrence LivermoreNational Laboratory
Spray-on melto/bangstuff…neat-o when a State apparatus wishes to demolish tall buildings…

Posted by: Walter | Dec 28 2019 15:25 utc | 3

I stumbled over this 42 minute documentary from DW on How poor people survive in the USA.
I had to stop the video after five minutes. The scene of the cops drawing their guns before going into a person’s home in order to evict them is very disturbing to me, perhaps because I barely avoided being that person.
Seven years ago I was in the middle of the huge mess of court proceedings, bankruptcy, and disability benefit proceedings, while I could barely take care of myself due to illness. At that time I decided I would not be evicted except in a body bag. I even stated so during a court-ordered mediation session. (The mediator was Not Pleased, heh). Being evicted would’ve been a death sentence for me even if I had left voluntarily, so the decision was not too difficult.
In the end I received the retroactive benefits, settled the lawsuit, and kept my home, and I’m still hanging on, somehow. A near-miss sure makes one aware of the millions, yes millions of people evicted over the past decade.
Meanwhile there are more than enough empty housing units to give everyone a place to live. Except, you know, they don’t enough pieces of green paper.

Posted by: Trailer Trash | Dec 28 2019 15:54 utc | 5

This is true justice:
China Sentences Ex-Chairman of Hengfeng Bank to Death

The former chairman of struggling lender Hengfeng Bank Co. has been sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve by a Chinese court for making illegal gains of over $100 million.
Jiang Xiyun was convicted for moving 754 million yuan ($108 million) worth of Hangfeng shares to his personal account between 2008 and 2013, according to the Yantai Intermediate People’s Court. He also took bribes of more than 60 million yuan together with another bank executive, according to the Thursday ruling. A reprieved death sentence may be commuted to a life sentence if the person shows good behavior within the allotted period.

Posted by: vk | Dec 28 2019 16:16 utc | 7

Below is a link to the latest Web of Deb posting by Ellen Brown that is worth a read
The Key to the Environmental Crisis Is Beneath Our Feet
Humanity just needs the collective will to break the chains that bind us from evolving to a better species, IMO

Posted by: psychohistorian | Dec 28 2019 17:10 utc | 9

Democrats and Republicans Aren’t Just Divided. They Live in Different Worlds
The two parties represent radically different slices of the American economy.
America’s political polarization is almost complete. Its two main political parties increasingly represent two different economies. And they barely overlap.
Democrats can be found in educated cities and suburbs where professional jobs are plentiful. Republicans live in working-class and rural communities, home to agriculture and low-skill manufacturing.
http://www.latinopublicpolicy.org/2019/10/democrats-and-republicans-arent-just-divided-they-live-in-different-worlds/
One Country, Two Nations
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/one-country-two-nations/
America has two economies—and they’re diverging fast
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/09/10/america-has-two-economies-and-theyre-diverging-fast/
Red and Blue Voters Live in Different Economies
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/opinion/trump-economy.html
Economic divide in the US is becoming as stark as its politics
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/economic-divide-in-the-us-is-becoming-as-stark-as-its-politics.html

Posted by: Mao | Dec 28 2019 18:17 utc | 11

This is true justice:
China Sentences Ex-Chairman of Hengfeng Bank to Death
Posted by: vk | Dec 28 2019 16:16 utc | 7
Have Boeing Board of Directors invited China to apply their best management and justice techniques and jurisdiction to Boeing Corp (from Board of Direcotors down) to help them get through their current difficulties? It would be the most effective way to make Boeing profitable and effective.
No? Not yet? Well, maybe they put personal matters before shareholders’ interests?

Posted by: BM | Dec 28 2019 18:22 utc | 13

@ bm… apparently mao gave the drug addicts one year to clean up, or they would be shot… that seemed to work too, but no country in the west wants to apply this approach either..

Posted by: james | Dec 28 2019 18:30 utc | 15

Mao@11 links to a CNBC article on a Brookings Institution report that doesn’t even address basic service jobs, just agriculture, mining and basic manufacturing vs. professional, digital service jobs. The report itself deliberately omits context and is worthwhile. The implication that the Republicans actually address with real deeds basic manufacturing and mining, “putting [them] on center stage..) is another gross deception.
Didn’t check the other links.

Posted by: steven t johnson | Dec 28 2019 18:50 utc | 17

@18 vk
Well the UK will not be “Singapore upon the Thames” if the government keeps adding all the nonsense EU rules and destroying our competitiveness. Case in point, one of the systems I am developing is an AI deep learning driven quadcopter (AKA drone), the government via the CAA have decided they want to adopt the EU rules and have now made it illegal for me to allow the quadcopter to fly outside, bravo, millions if not billions in revenue potential destroyed, anyone would think we lost WWII.

Posted by: TJ | Dec 28 2019 19:16 utc | 19

@11 Mao
Yes, and these trends will define the House, much of the Senate, and the presidential primaries.
The presidential general election, however, gets decided in states (PA, FL, WI…) that are mixed in the categories that define the national analysis. Also, the relative importance of the various dividing lines is different in each of these states.
Right now Democrat candidates and media are trying to persuade the decisive primary voters in Texas and California, for example, that the decisive general election voters in Florida and Pennsylvania will group along some particular dividing line.
Biden makes the dubious claim that 2020 will break down as simply a referendum on Trump’s character and impropriety with all other factors being secondary. On this basis alone, he is getting black support. Sanders claims that economic factors (i.e. post industrial discontent) will again be decisive, and he is also reaching out heavily for latino support.

Posted by: ptb | Dec 28 2019 19:49 utc | 21

TJ 10
It’s nice that the wikipedia release comes out at a time when the MSM/Govt are trying to discredit the stories of OPCW whistleblowers. (like the recent PBS newshour story) I still don’t expect the MSM to cover this. Stories that counter the official agenda tend to hit the memory hole quickly. It’s like the MIT analysis/report on the chem weapons used at Ghouta.

Posted by: Curtis | Dec 28 2019 20:18 utc | 23

@ Posted by: NemesisCalling | Dec 28 2019 20:40 utc | 24
There’s an internal struggle between the right-wing and left-wing of the CCP. The right-wing, which has the support of the bourgeoisie, preaches for the privatisation of China’s financial system.
This guy’s execution has clear political motivation. Xi Jinping, from the CCP’s “left-wing”, is clearly sending a message both to the CCP’s “right-wing” and the Chinese bourgeoisie.
But just because it is political, doesn’t make it not justice. Every action that benefits the general welfare of the working clas is just. Besides, capital punishment is still encoded in Chinese Law, so you can’t even use the “against the Rule of Law” argument here.
Also, the article I linked is from Bloomberg. I didn’t see it in any of the main Chinese newspapers – at least not in their home pages. Hardly State-sponsored propaganda.
–//–
@ Posted by: TJ | Dec 28 2019 19:16 utc | 19
If you think some random pseudo-AI software is going to save the UK’s economy, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell to you.
Britain’s problems are much deeper than some millions of pounds.

Posted by: vk | Dec 28 2019 21:17 utc | 25

Fascinating how some people seem to automatically assume that western corporate mass McMedia, which lies to them endlessly, is somehow more trustworthy than eastern public media, and that western judiciary, which never seriously pursues rich and powerful criminals, is by default more just than its eastern equivalent that holds the rich and poor to the same standards.
Why do so many people in the West have this knee-jerk need to try to build false equivalencies between their criminal empire and other systems, or voice cynical and unfounded assumptions of malfeasance by those other systems whenever those other systems demonstrate superiority? It is an egotistical tribal sickness. A healthier response would be to simply acknowledge that one’s own culture falls well short of anything that could be called ideal and resolve to try to make it better. That’s what the Chinese do and it is one of the reasons why their culture has become better.

Posted by: William Gruff | Dec 28 2019 21:22 utc | 27

“Why do so many people in the West have this knee-jerk need to try to build false equivalencies between their criminal empire and other systems, or voice cynical and unfounded assumptions of malfeasance by those other systems whenever those other systems demonstrate superiority?”
To curry favour with the Boss/State/Academy which rather likes criticism that ends up apologising for the status quo. For example the “Neither Washington nor Moscow” slogan was a difference maker in many academic careers.

Posted by: bevin | Dec 28 2019 21:53 utc | 29

vk @25
I think perhaps TJ @19 may be making the argument that initiating new industrial activity is hampered in the West by excessive regulation. AI can certainly be a component in new manufacturing endeavors, which if those endeavors can employ people locally in significant numbers then it could buy capitalism a little time.
Of course, to buy capitalism decades those endeavors would have to be on the industrial scale of America’s auto industry back in its heyday. As things currently stand there is nothing like that on the horizon. Furthermore, China has hundreds of scientists working on AI for every one in Britain, and even many dozens to one versus the US. That ratio is just going to continue to grow, and that tsunami of intellectual resources is decisive. The West has a tiny trickle of its youth flowing into that talent development pipeline, while China has multiple highly competitive fire hoses blasting talent at their academic pipelines. In fact, both Russia and Iran each have more talent in those pipelines than does either the US or Britain.
The greybeards with all of the real skills are dying off in the West and the vast majority of the fresh up-and-coming talent is blooming elsewhere. In the very best of cases for the West this gives the empire one more generation, but I think that is overly optimistic.
But a quadcopter factory in Britain wouldn’t hurt.

Posted by: William Gruff | Dec 28 2019 22:12 utc | 31

compare this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Masaya <== to == >
this https://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/3384
U will see that almost all nation state wars are fought to benefit the few.. in the host nation state against the few in the target nation state. As someone said above the income and qualify of life gap between the few at the top and masses at the bottom is growing further and further apart, but the knowledge gap between the two is diminishing at rapid rates and the masses are by shear number going to fix it soon. I predict. Its just a matter of time.
The nation state system is the structural tool that allows these differences in wealth and living standards. . The nation state serves as a conduit to enable the few to use corrupt politicians to order or reward by enticement national leaders able to direct the energies of the masses in ways favorable to the few (including war)..
In other words, one nations government backs its producers, competitors and investors against the producers, competitors and investors in the other nation state. Te few in each nation state uses politics, religion, patriotism, and false and misleading propaganda to roust into action thosed governed by the nation state against those governed in the other nation state..
—
Humanity just needs the collective will to break the chains that bind us from evolving to a better species, IMO by: psychohistorian @ 9 <=the chains are already under tension the more they are stretched the less strength it will take for collective humanity to break them. Great post.

Posted by: snake | Dec 28 2019 22:24 utc | 33

>Why do so many people in the West have this knee-jerk need
>to … voice cynical and unfounded assumptions of malfeasance
>by those other systems
>Posted by: William Gruff | Dec 28 2019 21:22 utc | 27
So far as I know, there has never yet been a centralized hierarchical society that has survived the inevitable onslaught of corrupt and incompetent psychopaths clawing their way to the top. I really would like to see China succeed, but the huge growth in the millionaire and billionaire class is a bad omen.
People seem to think that hierarchy is inevitable and a good design. I fundamentally disagree. That doesn’t mean a complex society doesn’t need supervisors and managers. But there is no fundamental reason that a supervisor must be “above” (have higher status) the rest of the crew.
For example, I have managed software projects in the distant past. My role was not to be “the Boss” or give orders. Rather, my primary responsibility was to make sure everyone had the resources needed to do their job and that all the tasks were assigned to somebody and properly completed. That didn’t make me more important that the people cranking out code.
Right now the model is “Capital hires Labor”, apparently even in China. Let’s try something different, like “Labor hire Capital”. ‘Cause what we’re doing now ain’t working so good.

Posted by: Trailer Trash | Dec 28 2019 22:44 utc | 35

Trailer Trash @35: “…there is no fundamental reason that a supervisor must be “above” (have higher status) the rest of the crew.”
Indeed, that was the whole point of China’s “Cultural Revolution”. The only reason we in the West imagine that it was something more sinister is because we only heard the supervisors’ version of what happened, and then only the ones whose egos wouldn’t permit them to accept that they were no better than the underlings they used to order about. College students being required to go into the countryside and teach former peasants how to read? Some viewed it as injustice and torture while others embraced the work with patriotic fervor. Guess which ones’ version of events the western narratives about the “Cultural Revolution” are based upon?
Many people in China have forgotten the lessons of the “Cultural Revolution”, but many have not. Even for the ones who have forgotten, though, those lessons remain embedded in their culture and their subconscious. More importantly, the Dunning-Kruger Effect is not nearly as pervasive in China as in the West. The Chinese are not remotely as blinded to their own personal weaknesses are most westerners are, and so they are not pro forma opposed to hierarchy. If someone else is better suited to higher responsibility tasks than themselves, then they don’t have a problem accepting that. Still, the lessons of the “Cultural Revolution” leave them skeptical of formal authority, as was the whole point of the “Cultural Revolution”. They accept hierarchy, but they demand competence from that hierarchy.
I think it should be obvious that there is a huge difference between role of hierarchy in the West and what exists now in China. There is a dynamic tension between the top and the bottom of that hierarchy in China, and to maintain that balance the ones towards the top need to be sanctioned just as much as the ones towards the bottom when they violate the interests of society. That is precisely what we see happening with the corrupt banker in China.

Posted by: William Gruff | Dec 28 2019 23:31 utc | 37

Re #10
Voldemort is on LinkedIn. I wanted to congratulate him on his ethics (NOT) but did not have the status with LinkedIn required to email someone.
Perhaps someone else in the bar could send him a message – needs to be a premium member.

Posted by: augrr | Dec 29 2019 0:10 utc | 39

Patroklos @30
That sounds like a great resource but I don’t understand why you write:

It’s a sobering read, but one that offers a good description of a post-Left/Right landscape and the implications of the current vacuum of politics.

IMO we are not “post-Left/Right” anymore than we are “post-racism” – unless you mean that we are not supposed to talk of it.
It seems to me that we are ultra-right to the point of some people now using words like neo-feudal and fascist. Corporations and government are as close as ever. What pretends to be “resistance” is often fake/controlled so as to play into scary propaganda about a “Radical Left” boogieman (Open Borders crazies – pre-pubscent Trans nonsense – socialists want to destroy your healthcare!). Plus we now have a new Cold War and increased militarism.
!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Dec 29 2019 0:37 utc | 41

Earlier in this post, I mentioned the habit of Western Democracies to deliberately falsify their own macroeconomic data in order to paint themselves in a better picture to the masses.
Some say it’s destiny, some say it’s cosmic attraction (or whatever else our American millenial astrologers want to say). But just some hours after I posted that, this came out, directly from the cesspit also known as Brazil:
Fraude no Natal: lojistas dizem que alta nas vendas é fake news
Translation:

The Association of Satellite Shopkeepers of Brazil (ABLOS) contest the rising Christmas sales figures published by the Alshop (Association of Shopping Mall Shopkeepers of Brazil). “This is a lie. We suspect it was a manipulation with second intentions”, said ABLOS president, Tito Bessa.
The number contested and replicated by the Brazilian MSM states this Christmas’ retail sales in shopping malls rose by 9.5% in 2019 and the annual growth was +7.5% (in nominal terms, i.e. not counting inflation and the Real price fluctuation vis-a-vis the USD).
“To me, this is a fabricated number” said Tito Bessa Jr., ABLOS president and founder of the clothing chain TNG.
A report from the Folha de São Paulo highlights that “Bessa Jr. said he plans to suit the Alshop and question the source of the information about this alleged Christmas retail sales’ growth. According to Bessa Jr., ABLOS’ internal research pointed out that 70% of the shops had a worse or equal performance to 2018, and 30% said it only got a tiny little better. “But this ‘tiny little better’ is just 1.5%-2%. There is no 9% growth. This may have happened pontually with someone, but to say retail grew 9.5% is a lie”, said the businessman”.
The report added that “at the TNG chain, according to Bessa Jr., this Christmas’ sales were equal to those of 2018. “I don’t know where did they came up with that number, but I’ve been talking to many other shopkeepers and they said they had lower sales”, said Ângelo Campos, MOB’s director. (N.T.: MOB is another clothing chain in Brazil)

It’s one thing for a central government to try to be creative with its unemployment rates. But for the petit bourgeoisie to falsify its own numbers just to prop up Jair Bolsonaro is on another level of degeneracy. This is a new low for Brazilian capitalism.

Posted by: vk | Dec 29 2019 0:54 utc | 43

Re: AI —
Always wondered how pseudo-AI, or enhanced automation, might be constrained by diminishing EROEI.
Unless an actual AI were able to crack the water molecule to release hydrogen in an energy-efficient way, or unless we learn to love nuclear (by cracking the nuclear waste issue), then it seems to me hyper-automated workplaces will be at least as subject to plummeting EROEI as are current workplaces, if not moreso. Is there any reason to think that, including embedded energy in their manufacture, these machines and their workplaces will be less energy intensive than current ones?

Posted by: Paul Damascene | Dec 29 2019 1:28 utc | 45

William Gruff @37–
You’ll have experienced the Asian cultural trait of self-deprecation asking forgiveness for their unworthiness, which may be personal or material, while there is no counterpart whatsoever within Western culture. IMO, Asian culture is more functional and is the much better regulator of human nature that it’s supposed to be.
Do a quick thought experiment: Imagine trying to keep 1.4 Billion people happy with the Outlaw US Empire’s political-economic system while also raising 700+ Millions out of poverty. Indeed, China is set to announce the end of poverty in 2020–the first of its 100 Year Goals to accomplish by 2049. That China solved poverty within its nation while the USA still has 50+ million–about the same number since the 1960s–and about 1 million homeless speaks volumes about which political-economy is better for the common folk. As a respectable Capitalist once said long ago: The results speak for themselves.

Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 29 2019 2:17 utc | 47

Mike Figueroa from The Humanist Report has got a bunch of angry leftists hating on Tulsi Gabbard for her Christmas greeting today on twitter and youtube, they are claiming Tulsi is “too religious” or “she is pandering to evangelicals.” They have gone insane obviously and are hating on Tulsi for other reasons (she dares challenge Bernie for president). Pam Ho breaks it all down for you at Like, In The Year 2024

Posted by: Kali | Dec 29 2019 2:52 utc | 49

I don’t think there’s any actual material reason that there should be any material wants anywhere on this planet, instead “only” political and managerial ones but that’s because I believe (and I’m not an expert) one can add additional levels of safeguards —both physical and administrative— to existing or new nuclear power-plants and “burn” most of the byproducts into essentially new fuel thus buying humanity at least several thousands of years of time instead of for example chopping up large volumes of air and everything in it be it insects or birds.
We should already be in a post-scarcity world, no -isms required, only kindness and applied knowledge. So to me that will be our death sentence if that is the final outcome; too little kindness (towards all life), too little application and sharing of knowledge.
I don’t know if that is inspiring or depressing or both 🙂
(I think Russia and China and perhaps others too get it though, neither are unduly afraid of nuclear but perhaps still not careful enough to add “paranoid” levels of safeguards).
A single simple example: add a cooling bath sufficient to “kill” any core dump under any existing reactors. Why not? Sure one can do even better with new designs but this is a low-hanging fruit for existing nuclear reactors. Hey why not add two so as to have a 100% redundancy then let absolutely everyone check anywhere anytime both remotely and by appointment that everything is as it is meant to be, I doubt there would be a lack of volunteers.

Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Dec 29 2019 2:54 utc | 51

What has happened in Hong Kong is simply saddening madness by what’s still a minority as far as I understand it. The protesters are only destroying themselves and their own city as well as local culture and history. It’s not like I know but after the initial confusion (which I shared in) I don’t get the impression that anyone in the west except perhaps the usual “elite” morons have been impressed or convinced by any of what has happened in HK.

Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Dec 29 2019 3:11 utc | 53

Prolonging the discussion about the bad habit Western Democracies have on falsifying official statistics:
On Those Questionable US Wage Stats…Again

Posted by: vk | Dec 29 2019 3:42 utc | 55

Oppressed Christmas Girl – MSM dusts off Dusty Boy meme for another spin.
https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1210862386216701954

Posted by: PavewayIV | Dec 29 2019 4:02 utc | 57

“I don’t think there’s any actual material reason that there should be any material wants anywhere on this planet, instead “only” political and managerial ones but that’s because I believe (and I’m not an expert) one can add additional levels of safeguards —both physical and administrative— to existing or new nuclear power-plants and “burn” most of the byproducts into essentially new fuel thus buying humanity at least several thousands of years of time instead of for example chopping up large volumes of air and everything in it be it insects or birds.
We should already be in a post-scarcity world, no -isms required, only kindness and applied knowledge. So to me that will be our death sentence if that is the final outcome; too little kindness (towards all life), too little application and sharing of knowledge.
I don’t know if that is inspiring or depressing or both :)”
I always find those thoughts scary – since you and I are both NOT Farmers – and depend upon those little people to supply us with the foodstuffs we need to survive.
It’s GREAT to be a rocket scientist – but before a rocket scientist can exist – ya need Farmers.
Jay Hanson and Richard Duncan said it best:
http://www.dieoff.com/
Here is a synopsis of the behavioral loop described above:
Step 1. Individuals and groups evolved a bias to maximize fitness by maximizing power, which requires over-reproduction and/or over-consumption of natural resources (overshoot), whenever systemic constraints allow it. Differential power generation and accumulation result in a hierarchical group structure.
Step 2. Energy is always limited, and overshoot eventually leads to decreasing power available to some members of the group, with lower-ranking members suffering first.
Step 3. Diminishing power availability creates divisive subgroups within the original group. Low-rank members will form subgroups and coalitions to demand a greater share of power from higher-ranking individuals, who will resist by forming their own coalitions to maintain power.
Step 4. Violent social strife eventually occurs among subgroups who demand a greater share of the remaining power.
Step 5. The weakest subgroups (high or low rank) are either forced to disperse to a new territory, are killed, enslaved, or imprisoned.
Step 6. Go back to step 1.
The above loop was repeated countless thousands of times during the millions of years that we were evolving[9]. This behavior is inherent in the architecture of our minds — is entrained in our biological material — and will be repeated until we go extinct. Carrying capacity will decline[10] with each future iteration of the overshoot loop, and this will cause human numbers to decline until they reach levels not seen since the Pleistocene.
Current models used to predict the end of the biosphere suggest that sometime between 0.5 billion to 1.5 billion years from now, land life as we know it will end on Earth due to the combination of CO2 starvation and increasing heat. It is this decisive end that biologists and planetary geologists have targeted for attention. However, all of their graphs reveal an equally disturbing finding: that global productivity will plummet from our time onward, and indeed, it already has been doing so for the last 300 million years.[11]
It’s impossible to know the details of how our rush to extinction will play itself out, but we do know that it is going to be hell for those who are unlucky to be alive at the time.
And:
The Olduvai theory is defined by the ratio of world energy production and population. It states that the life expectancy of Industrial Civilization is less than or equal to 100 years: 1930-2030. After more than a century of strong growth — energy production per capita peaked in 1979. The Olduvai theory explains the 1979 peak and the subsequent decline. Moreover, it says that energy production per capita will fall to its 1930 value by 2030, thus giving Industrial Civilization a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years. This analysis predicts that the collapse will be strongly correlated with an ‘epidemic’ of permanent blackouts of high-voltage electric power networks — worldwide.
http://dieoff.com/page234.pdf
Will Humans reach the Stars? I believe NOT – and that extinction is but a heart beat away. We are not a Peaceful species – amongst many others – but the Universe lives in Harmony.
See: https://etheric.com/om-the-cosmic-vibration/
and:
https://etheric.com/continuous-creation-cosmology/

Posted by: Tim E. | Dec 29 2019 4:45 utc | 59

Below is a link to a Catlin Johnstone link about the latest Wikileaks dump about OPCW and who Voldemort is
Media’s Deafening Silence On Latest WikiLeaks Drops Is Its Own Scandal
The take away quote
”
Up until the OPCW leaks, WikiLeaks drops always made mainstream news headlines. Everyone remembers how the 2016 news cycle was largely dominated by leaked Democratic Party emails emerging from the outlet. Even the relatively minor ICE agents publication by WikiLeaks last year, containing information that was already public, garnered headlines from top US outlets like The Washington Post , Newsweek, and USA Today. Now, on this exponentially more important story, zero coverage.
The mass media’s stone-dead silence on the OPCW scandal is becoming its own scandal, of equal or perhaps even greater significance than the OPCW scandal itself. It opens up a whole litany of questions which have tremendous importance for every citizen of the western world; questions like, how are people supposed to participate in democracy if all the outlets they normally turn to to make informed voting decisions adamantly refuse to tell them about the existence of massive news stories like the OPCW scandal? How are people meant to address such conspiracies of silence when there is no mechanism in place to hold the entire mass media to account for its complicity in it? And by what mechanism are all these outlets unifying in that conspiracy of silence?
”

Posted by: psychohistorian | Dec 29 2019 5:53 utc | 61

Kali @ 49 said in part;” They have gone insane obviously and are hating on Tulsi for other reasons (she dares challenge Bernie for president).
Challenging Bernie, IMO, has nothing to do with it. She’s challenging the MIC complex, and all the corporate fake lefties
that support them, and their forever wars.

Posted by: ben | Dec 29 2019 5:57 utc | 63

@Jackrabbit 41
I don’t mean that we are not in some ultra-right nightmare—we are. It’s rather that Cusset explains why the Left has been left incapable of recapturing any ground whatsoever, and how we are meant to navigate this post-Left malaise. This quote is explanatory and helpful:
“During this time, starting at the beginning of the 1980s, the Left, or what used to be called the Left, became a ghost of itself. The sad experience of power—for the moderate Left, on the one hand, and for the radical left-wing parties (in their abandoning of collective uprisings), on the other— ended up inverting the very concept of the Left. It swapped the future for the past, and invention for safeguarding. From the extreme Left to the electoral Left, dominant leftist language shifted from deli- berate change, impelled by popular uprisings or by reform, to the defense of acquired rights and resistance to change inasmuch as change has become the operative preserve of the neoliberals. Left-wing terminology has literally—although not ideologically—become conservative. The question now is how to conserve a given situation, to salvage what’s left of a quickly disappearing model of a mixed, or partially redistributive, economy. Logically, the same inversion exists on the other side. The discourse of the powers on the right has gone from being principally patrimonial and reactionary, aimed at defending tradition, to a pedagogy of compulsory modernization and market enthusiasm that is only counterbalanced by a call to family and patriotic values to sweeten the pill of economic chaos. Additionally, this amalgamated Right has appropriated the critical vocabulary of the Left, its old subversive position. Unless it was simply the case that on the left this vocabulary had gone unused for so long that it became available, so that all the Right needed to do was recover it and invert its political content.” (p.117-8)
@DeQuincey 56
To be fair Cusset does not even go near the MIC of the American Empire. He assumes that the global order is propped up by force and lies. Agreed that Cusset is at times uncritical of MSM narratives about the ‘enemies’ of the empire, but look past those if you can—there is subtle analysis on different fronts, such as biopolitics and the neoliberalization of everyday life. His critique of the abject failure of university academics to critique the post-9/11 Patriot Act suppression of dissent is spot on.

Posted by: Patroklos | Dec 29 2019 7:26 utc | 65

End of year thoughts… ‘triggered!’
“At least 5 people have been stabbed after a black male entered Rabbi Rottenburg’s Shul, located in the Forshay neighborhood in Monsey, New York, and pulled out a machete…” (ZeroHedge)
Thousands killed, maimed, and murdered due to Israeli Zionist cult behavior in the Middle East – and a big media yawn. Five of the ‘self’ chosen exceptional’s hurt by a “black male” and it’s world news on all owned/controlled media channels!
Based on the ideological and non-historical BS that this pre-christian system of tribal backslapping relies on I don’t know why the real Black community do not take up a massive world-wide class action to send this little scam broke: big time and permanently. Until the underlying fundamental racist crap propagated as the ‘word of god’ that has justified the enslavement and persecution of the “Sons of Ham” (read as African) by any number of emerging colonial hegemony has been officially and publicly repudiated, it would seem logical that those (whom subscribe to this pernicious BS) be taxed accordingly for ongoing and meaningful reparations. [ and do it in gold and silver, and not some imaginary ‘printed’ QE fiat confetti which costs them nothing.]
When Africans, and African Americans, wake up and realize the deep connections and patterns that connect their historic plight(s) with corrupted State social and cultural policy based on Jewish lore (and subscribing White Christian Zionist America, in this specific case), then we might see some real change ‘we’ can believe in (hear that you slime-ball house negro, Obama?). In this case, forget chasing ‘whitey’ and follow the real money (changers)… all the way to the Sin-agog. I’ve no idea of the mental health of this NY actor, faux or not; but I see the words of Malcolm X and his fellow ‘field negros’ reflected in this little event. Once the mesmeric meta-narrative fails then things are going to get real interesting down there on the plantation. 2020? Maybe not, but the trends are in that direction.
I don’t know who this “Rabbi Rottenburg” is — but if he is in anyway not repudiating the abuse of Black people in the justifying ‘words of our god’ BC (before credibility) series then it seems like he is part of the problem… and one ‘solution’ just came knocking on his door. Kinda reads like Karma in a way.
But then again, as the story goes, he must be a Nazi Hitler sympathizer who is working for Putin etc. Yawn…

Posted by: Goodbye 2019… | Dec 29 2019 7:35 utc | 67

To the many who look askew at the Capitalist Death Penalty in China, Vietnam has the same thing working here. A director in the party used his position along with assorted henchmen to buy over valued shares in a company that they were using to help the state telecom industry. Well they got caught and the director was sentenced to death for the theft of the people’s money of 3 million dollars. His sentence was suspended and changed to life because he was able to pay the money back. Most are suffering from long, long prison term sentences.
I say “Here, hear,” to the Vietnamese and Chinese Courts for going after those who enrich themselves at the expense of the people or who cause wanton death and destruction (can you say boeing) to the people. The Chinese business man knows what can occur to him for fraud. I don’t play into “this is being used as politics,” nonsense. What happened to the men who made tainted baby formula that killed dozens and sickened hundreds of Chinese children, all for profit? The death penalty. The death penalty in amercia is supposed to be the ultimate deterrent to stop crime, but it is only imposed upon, the poor, minorities, and those who are generally unable to defend themselves or who lack adequate resources (like attorneys who stay awake during their death penalty trial).
A business executive was given a 28 year sentence for the intentional death of a number of people due to the fact that he knew his food product was contaminated with salmonella and he sold it anyway.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/21/442335132/peanut-exec-gets-28-years-in-prison-for-deadly-salmonella-outbreak
The business press went wild with dismay and the executive said “that this was a death sentence due to his age.” No apologies to the people he murdered. Little to no remeorse because he thought he would receive a fine and continue with business as usual. He would have been an excellent example of utilizing the death penalty for those who cause great harm to the public. If this was to happen in america, there would be another so called holocaust because the number of those who would be a guest of “state services,” would be disproportionately dispensed upon those who have wrecked america. The sacklers would be first in line at the gallows (or why not use opiods instead like they are doing with so many americas) followed by those that evict poor people out of their homes, execs who ship our jobs to overseas slave shops, the milkens, madoff’s, and others that who have stolen and looted the american dream and carted it off to sunny lands elsewhere. America could and should learn a thing or two about corporation executions because “we, the people,” could benefit from holding someone accountable as opposed to all the unaccountablility that has destroyed this country to the benefit of the few and the misery of the many.
Never have so few, fucked up so much, for so many.

Posted by: Tonymike | Dec 29 2019 9:44 utc | 69

Sorry, that’s “gilded” in the first sentence.

Posted by: Russ | Dec 29 2019 9:56 utc | 71

I’ve posted the following on the *Turkey’s Military Intervention In Libya Might Help Syria*-thread:
>
It appears the…(Hhmm), MIT-turk intel didn’t like the prolific minute-by-minute reporting being done by my #2 choice for info regarding Syria & turk-headchoppers.
Y.N.M.S (@ynms79797979) got his twitter account compromised and shut it down, permanently:
https://twitter.com/ynms79797979
https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1211068310055460864
HERE is YNMS’s new account:
https://twitter.com/YnmsSy?fbclid=IwAR2AsyZ1IGsOCm-Tmmdf4Xf8XfkBfKvQipfLRkE0ckJnQEnVaC92ewgokjE
< I'd like to add that my 'MIT-turk intel' choice is based on the MO-modus operandi i.e. not so sophisticated interference which was easily discovered and, the timing. The more sophisticated abc:s from the AngloZionist Cabal aren't normally soo sloppy. Yes. We all are being followed in *Real-Time /LIVE*. Some of us more than others. I'm neither paranoid nor nuts. Facts: They have had their *Sentient World Simulation* for quite a few decades now. Try reading the following: 1- https://krannert.purdue.edu/academics/mis/workshop/AC2_100606.pdf
“Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations
Purdue University’s Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations, or SEAS, is currently being used by Homeland Security and the US Defense Department to simulate crises on the US mainland.-Wikipedia”
2- https://emerj.com/ai-future-outlook/nsa-surveillance-and-sentient-world-simulation-exploiting-privacy-to-predict-the-future/
3- https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sentient+World+Simulation+(SWS)&t=ffcm&ia=web
btw, *The Saker* in 2014, wrote a masterpiece, defining what an AngloZionist is, *AngloZionist: Short primer for the newcomers*.
It’s a short read
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2014/09/anglozionist-short-primer-for-newcomers.html
X-

Posted by: Veritas X- | Dec 29 2019 10:12 utc | 73

@William Gruff #40
The real world usage of AI, to date, is primarily replacing the rank and file of human experience.
Where before you would have individuals who have attained expertise in an area, and who would be paid to exercise it, now AI can learn from the extant work and repeat it.
The problem, though, is that AI is eminently vulnerable to attack. In particular – if the area involves change, which most do, then the AI must be periodically retrained to take into account the differences. Being fundamentally stupid, AI literally cannot integrate new data on top of old but must start from scratch.
I don’t have the link, but I did see an excellent example: a cat vs. AI.
While a cat can’t play chess, the cat can walk, can recognize objects visually, can communicate even without a vocal cord, can interact with its environment and even learn new behaviors.
In this example, you can see one of the fundamental differences between functional organisms and AI: AI can be trained to perform extremely well, but it requires very narrow focus.
IBM spend years and literally tens of thousands of engineering hours to create the AI that could beat Jeapordy champions – but that particular creation is still largely useless for anything else. IBM is desperately attempting to monetize that investment through its Think Build Grow program – think AWS for AI. I saw a demo – it was particularly interesting because this AI program ingests some 3 million English language web articles; IBM showed its contents via a very cool looking wrap around display room in its Think Build Grow promotion campaign.
What was really amusing was a couple of things:
1) the fact that the data was already corrupt: this demo was about 2 months ago – and there were spikes of “data” coming from Ecuador and the tip of South America. Ecuador doesn’t speak English. I don’t even know if there are any English web or print publications there. But I’d bet large sums of money that the (English) Twitter campaign being run on behalf of the coup was responsible for this spike.
2) Among the top 30 topics was Donald Trump. Given the type of audience you would expect for this subject, it was enormously embarrassing that Trump coverage was assessed as net positive – so much so that the IBM representative dived into the data to ascertain why the AI had a net positive rating (the program also does sentiment analysis). It turns out that a couple of articles which were clearly extremely peripheral to Trump, but which did mention his name, were the cause. The net positive rating was from this handful of articles even though the relationship was very weak and there were far fewer net “positive” vs. negative articles shown in the first couple passes of source articles (again, IBM’s sentiment analysis – not a human’s).
I have other examples: SF is home to a host of self-driving testing initiatives. Uber had a lot about 4 blocks from where I live, for months, where they based their self driving cars out of (since moved). The self-driving delivery robots (sidewalk) – I’ve seen them tested here as well.
Some examples of how they fail: I was riding a bus, which was stopped at an intersection behind a Drive test vehicle at a red light(Drive is nVidia’s self driving). This intersection is somewhat unusual: there are 5 entrances/exits to this intersection, so the traffic light sequence and the driving action is definitely atypical.
The light turns green, the Drive car wants to turn immediately left (as opposed to 2nd left, as opposed to straight or right). It accelerates into the intersection and starts turning; literally halfway into the intersection, it slams on its brakes. The bus, which was accelerating behind it in order to go straight, is forced to also slam on its brakes. There was no incoming car – because of the complex left turn setup, the street the Drive car and bus were on, is the only one that is allowed to traverse when that light is green (initially. After a 30 second? pause, the opposite “straight” street is allowed to drive).
Why did the Drive car slam on its brakes in the middle of the intersection? No way to know for sure, but I would bet money that the sensors saw the cars waiting at the 2nd left street and thought it was going the wrong way. Note this is just a few months ago.
There are many other examples of AI being fundamentally brittle: Google’s first version of human recognition via machine vision classified black people as gorillas: Google Photos fail
A project at MIT inserted code into AI machine vision programs to show what these were actually seeing when recognizing objects; it turns out that what the AIs were recognizing were radically different from reality. For example, while the algo could recognize a dumbbell, it turns out that the reference image that the algo used was a dumbbell plus an arm. Because all of the training photos for a dumbbell included an arm…
This fundamental lack of basic concepts, a coherent worldview or any other type of rooting in reality is why AI is also pathetically easy to fool. This research showed that the top of the line machine vision for self driving could be tricked into recognizing stop signs as speed limit signs Confusing self driving cars
To be clear, fundamentally it doesn’t matter for most applications if the AI is “close enough”. If a company can replace 90% of its expensive, older workers or first world, English speaking workers with an AI – even if the AI is working only 75% of the time, it is still a huge win. For example: I was told by a person selling chatbots to Sprint that 90% of Sprint’s customer inquiries were one of 10 questions…
And lastly: are robots/AI taking jobs? Certainly it is true anecdotally, but the overall economic statistics aren’t showing this. In particular, if AI was really taking jobs – then we should be seeing productivity numbers increase more than in the past. But this isn’t happening: Productivity for the past 30 years
Note in the graph that productivity was increasing much more up until 2010 – when it leveled off.
Dean Baker has written about this extensively – it is absolutely clear that it is outsourced of manufacturing jobs which is why US incomes have been stagnant for decades.

Posted by: c1ue | Dec 29 2019 13:28 utc | 75

@dltravers #50
The standard anti-communist/anti-socialist propaganda would be a lot more credible if the numbers of homeless, medically bankrupt, jailed and otherwise economically marginalized people in the United States didn’t number in the millions.
It is also interesting to see the impact of opiates killing Americans today vs. alcoholism killing Russians in the 1990s: 50,000 Russians died of alcohol related reasons in 2000 vs. 70,000 Americans dying of opiates in 2017. The Russian rate is higher because the Russian population is a lot smaller (less than half), but the US isn’t going through a nationwide GDP reduction of 30% as Russia did in the 1990s.
It is also interesting that there aren’t comparisons with the heavily socialized nations in Europe: the EU, Scandinavia etc.

Posted by: c1ue | Dec 29 2019 13:45 utc | 77

@38
I managed several AI project. The fallacy with AI is that it is objective. It is never objective. It always depends on the ASSUMPTIONS of the programmer. Even if there is a second level AI-determined outcome it is still, at bottom reliant on the initial programmer ASSUMPTIONS that underlie the outcomes. Therefore at a macro level AI is just one more scheme of control.

Posted by: Linda Amick | Dec 29 2019 14:09 utc | 79

Spain housing crisis: illegal occupation of vacant homes skyrocket in Spain:
Ocupações de imóveis se multiplicam na Espanha
Irony of destiny is that Spain’s economic boom during its EU-membership era happened through speculation in its housing market. After the 2008 crisis it boomeranged to them and now there’s both an excess of housing unsold and an excess of homeless people.

Posted by: vk | Dec 29 2019 14:27 utc | 81

dltravers@50 “No one was fleeing to the hardcore socialist Marxist countries for those things. The offer was, life with Stalin, conform, and get a free flat. I would not call that the deal of the century. Marxism is 0 forever on that scorecard. As the Democrats move to a hardcore Marxist position they will lose some of their immigrant base of support.”
The emigration from capitalist Ireland to other countries has been consistently enormous. The emigration from capitalist Puerto Rico to capitalist US compares well to the emigration from socialist Cuba. The emigration from capitalist Latvia or capitalist Romania or capitalist Ukraine dwarfs the emigration from socialist Latvia or socialist Romania or socialist Ukraine. Everywhere in the world people have fled capitalist countries. The notion that poor countries somehow aren’t capitalist is an obscene lie.

Posted by: steven t johnson | Dec 29 2019 14:37 utc | 83

vk@22 your citing of the link on Brazil got my attention, I think you’re on to something. My daughter was in Bolivia fall, 2018, and is returning Feb, 2020 and she came back saying that her Bolivian friends, all middle class teacher types, were “tired of Morales” and were basically saying that he stayed in power too long and became corrupt. They had some facts (girlfriend scandal, big house, etc) to back up their general claim. I think they were the block of people– not real large, but significant and professionals or semi/emerging professionals– who withdrew their support from Morales. I’m not in Bolivia but my guess is that this group were beneficiaries of but not members of the MAS movement. The MAS movement is very large and I believe will emerge more in the coming months to show itself a formidable power block. The fascists will continue to go after them including torture, murder and are now receiving guidance from Israel on how to create an apartheid structure.
Below are two links. The first is an interview with Andronico Rodriguez, a possible presidential candidate. It is subtitled in English. The interview was conducted by a journalist working with Max Blumenthal’s the Grayzone; Blumenthal was criticized last week by B and many for his flip on Syria and there was lots of speculation that he is connected to bad people through his father and others. I would ask you to suspend judgement on the Grayzone and keep an open mind on the content of this interview. I also have questions about people like Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, and others so I don’t go to their websites much anymore but regarding Bolivia I think the reporting I’ve seen from the Grayzone (not much until this) is worth looking at.
MAS members are meeting with Morales probably now at the border on the Argentina side and I’m looking for info to come out maybe in telesur or some Argentine press reports.
https://thegrayzone.com/
Here’s another long interview of Adriana Salvatierra, president of the Senate, third in power behind president and vice president. It’s only in Spanish but she’s impressive as well. Both she and Andronico Rodriguez are 30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxM92OabcBk

Posted by: migueljose | Dec 29 2019 14:44 utc | 85

Billionaires’ wealth soared in 2019 amid US worsening income inequality

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the collective net worth of the 500 wealthiest people on the planet soared by $1.2 trillion in 12 months, totaling $5.9 trillion.
Billionaires in the US alone added $500bn to their wealth, with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg increasing his wealth by $27.3bn while Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates adding $22.7bn.

As Trump once said, his government is the best time ever to fullfill the American Dream…
–//–
@ Posted by: migueljose | Dec 29 2019 14:44 utc | 85
Most people here in this blog seem to be from First World countries, so it’s important to make this observation about the Latin American middle classes.
Latin American middle classes have a different societal and historical origin from the First World middle classes. Instead of being highly specialized, highly skilled workers, the middle classes from Latin America (or any other Third World country, for that matter) come not from high education, but from the oligarchic State apparatus.
That’s because the nation-State formation in Latin America was very different from the nation-State formation of the USA, Canada or Western Europe. They became independent through their oligarchies, mainly through negotiations from the top. As a result, what happened in Latin America was simply a legal transformation of the colonial machine into an independent nation-State machine.
As a result, the middle classes in Latin America are not doctors, engineers, scientists, CEOs etc. etc., but judges, politicians, high officers of the government, descendents of the old local oligarchies etc. etc. They are intrinsically connected and dependent on the State to survive as middle classes.
This results in an extremelly reactionary and parasitic middle class. They act as legitimate shock troops of the bourgeoisie.

Posted by: vk | Dec 29 2019 15:00 utc | 87

c1ue says:
Russ’ simplistic views on US military and bases is consistent with his desire to see humanity go back to subsistence farming
i’m not aware that Russ has these simplistic views at all, and in any case don’t see any corollary in your statement.
you’re wrong that US bases will go away when the hosting countries no longer feel it is in their interests to host them, but right that they’ll go away when they can no longer be afforded. hosting countries are for the most part under the same sway they’ve been under since ww2, you know, SACEUR, and all that.

Posted by: john | Dec 29 2019 15:23 utc | 89

@ 69&72; Interesting posts. Man, the ideas expressed on both, could certainly blunt the drive to “profits uber alles”.
Never happen, but, it should….

Posted by: ben | Dec 29 2019 15:25 utc | 91

Posted by: john | Dec 29 2019 15:23 utc | 89
“you’re wrong that US bases will go away when the hosting countries no longer feel it is in their interests to host them, but right that they’ll go away when they can no longer be afforded.”
Those two are linked though, and affordability depend among other things on how intrepid a host country is about acting upon its interests.

Posted by: Russ | Dec 29 2019 15:38 utc | 93

@Russ #92
Please feel free to continue creating straw men to beat up on.
I’ve never said anything about unlimited energy or unlimited progress. In fact, I am more than a bit of a Luddite regarding technology fads.
What I’ve said is that your approach – to flip a switch to change everything to what you want it to be – would kill the majority of humanity alive today, and that very few people are interested in suicide.
Do you dispute this?
I have also said that the vast majority of people, including myself, do not fully understand just how complex modern existence is. The effort I’ve spent learning more has taught me that what I do know, is a fraction of what is there.
The fall of the Soviet Union provided many interesting examples. The fall of the Soviet Union and split off of Ukraine cut off one of the largest import sources of iodine to the Soviet Union – which led to iodine deficiency increases both in Russia and in Ukraine (the exporter failed and so Ukraine also suffered).
The reality of modern existence is that a very large percentage of what all of us consume: not just food, but tools, infrastructure components, transportation vehicles, chemicals, commodities etc are imported.
Any and all simplistic solutions to “fix” unwanted ecological damage will kill lots of people – much as Pol Pot did when he moved a huge number of urban Cambodians onto farms. Growing food is something which requires expertise, infrastructure and materials much as any other worthy human endeavor.
And last I looked, we live in a democracy. People aren’t going to vote for their or their kids obvious and immediate self-destruction.

Posted by: c1ue | Dec 29 2019 16:04 utc | 95

clue 95
“What I’ve said is that your approach – to flip a switch to change everything to what you want it to be – would kill the majority of humanity alive today, and that very few people are interested in suicide.
Do you dispute this?”
I already have refuted it, but I’m sure you’ll feel free to keep telling lies about what would be my approach.
As you know perfectly well from our previous dispute, I’m not the one calling for “subsistence farming”, I’m the one who calls for a transformation to the empirically and scientifically proven abundance of agroecology on a food sovereignty basis amid the restored health of the ecology, producing food for human beings and not grotesquely wasted commodities for corporate power and profit. I’m telling humanity not to keep committing suicide.
You on the contrary are the one who wants to hunker in the bunker with industrial commodity agriculture, thereby guaranteeing humanity a future of the most hardscrabble scarcity of post-industrial subsistence farming with no water, a destroyed soil and a destroyed ecological base.

Posted by: Russ | Dec 29 2019 17:55 utc | 97

regarding “It’s the US, with its all-or-nothing, victory-or-death, you’re-with-us-or-against-us mentality which will insist on this. That will require at least the dismantling of NATO and ejection of US military bases in Europe.”
The US will start a war before that happens; their friends in Poland and the Baltic States will be glad to assist. It’s not all that hard to start a war, the US has some experience at that. The neocons tend to believe their own propaganda about the superiority of US military, how Russia will lose to NATO in a conventional conflict, how Russia will backdown. LOL
Russia will introduce them to their little friends, Mr. Avangard and Mr. Kinzhal, Mrs. Sarmat and Mrs. Burevestnik, and King Poseidon.

Posted by: Perimetr | Dec 29 2019 18:08 utc | 99