The Evening Blues - 11-16-22
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features New Orleans piano player and blues singer Champion Jack Dupree. Enjoy!
Champion Jack Dupree - Nasty Boogie
"The world is over-armed and peace is under-funded."
-- Ban Ki-moon
News and Opinion
Poland considers calling meeting of Nato ministers after missile strike
Poland’s president Andrzej Duda said he expected his country would call for an emergency meeting of Nato members on Wednesday after “Russian-made” missiles strayed over into the country killing two people. The incident is the first time that the territory of a Nato country has been struck during the near nine month Ukraine war, and follows an intense 100-missile attack by Russia on Ukraine, which saw millions lose power and supply in neighbouring Moldova also disrupted.
The Polish president said he had spoken to Joe Biden, the US president, Rishi Sunak, the UK prime minister, and Germany’s Olof Scholz and told them it was “highly likely” that Poland would request the special consultative Nato meeting.
It was not clear who launched the missile that landed at the village of Przewodów a few miles away from the Ukrainian border on Tuesday afternoon, Duda added, but he and other officials said it was likely to be “Russian-made”. That could mean it was a Russian munition which may have veered off course, but it could also have been a missile from Ukrainian S-300 air defence system, weapons which experts said were originally made in Russia.
Poland’s government said it had summoned Moscow’s ambassador for an explanation but Russia’s defence ministry denied its missiles crossed into Poland, calling the reports a “deliberate provocation” in a statement. “No strikes on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish state border were made by Russian rockets. The wreckage published by the Polish media from the scene in the village of Przewodów has nothing to do with Russian weapons,” the Russian defence ministry added.
Poland missile strike: What is NATO's Article 4?
Russia Biggest Missile Attack on Ukraine, West Admits Ukraine Missile Hit Poland; UK Inflation Soars
Russian military performed no strikes targeting Ukrainian-Polish border zone - ministry
The Russian Defense Ministry dismissed as a "deliberate provocation" Polish media reports about the alleged fall of Russian missiles in Poland on Tuesday, adding that the Russian military has performed no strikes targeting the Ukrainian-Polish border zone.
"Polish mass media and officials commit deliberate provocation to escalate situation with their statement on alleged impact of 'Russian' rockets at Przewodow," the ministry said in a statement. "Russian firepower has launched no strikes at the area between Ukrainian-Polish border."
"The wreckage published by Polish mass media from the scene in Przewod·w have no relation to Russian firepower," the statement reads.
Poland WWIII scare shows why top US general wants peace (w/ Doug Macgregor)
U.S. scrambles to reassure Ukraine after Milley comments on negotiations
The Biden administration is in damage control mode after a top U.S. general said a window for peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow could open this winter, with senior officials scrambling to assure Ukraine it wasn’t undercutting its goal of expelling the Russians.
Specifically, senior U.S. officials are telling their counterparts in Ukraine that the expected winter fighting pause doesn’t mean talks should happen imminently. Instead, they’re relaying that Washington will continue to support Kyiv’s militarily as it launches the next phase of advances on the battlefield, according to Ukrainian and U.S. officials familiar with the outreach.
The scramble follows comments last week by Gen. Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs chair. The four-star general said during an appearance at the Economic Club of New York that a victory by Ukraine may not be achieved militarily, and that winter may provide an opportunity to begin negotiations with Russia.
'NO EVIDENCE' Of Russian Offensive In DEADLY Poland Blast: NATO, Ukraine SLAMMED Over Allegations
Turkey Accuses US of Complicity in Istanbul Bombing That Killed 6
Turkey’s interior minister on Monday rejected condolences from the US on a deadly bombing in Istanbul and suggested that Washington was complicit in the attack due to its support for Kurdish militant groups in northeast Syria.
The bombing in Istanbul killed six people and wounded 81 others, and Turkey has accused a Syrian affiliate of the Kurdish group PKK of being behind the blast. Turkish authorities arrested a female suspect who they said was sent from Syria to carry out the attack. For their part, the PKK denies responsibility and said it wouldn’t target civilians.
FTX partnership with Ukraine is latest chapter in shady Western aid saga
The demise of FTX, the fifth-biggest cryptocurrency exchange by trade volume in 2022, and the second-largest by holdings, has sent a wave of chaos through global financial markets. As the turbulence grows, the government of Ukraine is conducting an ongoing cleanup and whitewashing operation to rid any and all references to a high-level cryptocurrency fundraising arrangement it struck with FTX from the web. Eerily, it seems to have commenced just days before the scandal erupted.
Online records unearthed by The Grayzone claim tens of millions were raised by FTX for the Ukrainian government, and put to a variety of belligerent uses. But with the company now exposed as a Potemkin village lacking underlying assets, and major question marks hanging over whether its operations were from day one fraudulent top to bottom, where does that leave the supposedly successful donation scheme? Were those sums truly raised, and if so, to what purposes were they actually put? ...
While mainstream media pores over the details of Bankman-Fried’s gargantuan crypto scam, not one single major outlet has investigated or even acknowledged FTX’s relationship with the government of Ukraine. Were client holdings unaccountably and illegally funneled into the West’s proxy war? Or did the supposed aid FTX sent to Kiev find its way into the hands of Ukrainian scammers, corrupt warlords and illicit actors? The corporate media’s failure to explore these questions appears all the more perverse given Bankman-Fried’s flamboyant promotion of his intimate financial relationship with the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The partnership between FTX and the Ukrainian government was first publicized on March 14th when the leading cryptocurrency website CoinDesk announced Kiev had launched a dedicated webpage for cryptocurrency donations dubbed Aid for Ukraine. Under its auspices, FTX pledged to “convert crypto contributions to Ukraine’s war effort into fiat for deposit” at the National Bank of Kiev, allowing the embattled government to “turn bitcoin into bullets, bandages and other war materiel.” CoinDesk stated the initiative “deepens an unprecedented tie-up between public and private sector forces in crypto.” ...
The Aid for Ukraine webpage has now been deleted, but can still be accessed via the Internet Archive. Until very recently, it encouraged visitors to “help Ukraine with crypto” and pleaded, “don’t leave us alone with the enemy.” The site featured promotional quotes from an assortment of Ukrainian government officials and bitcoin bros – among them, FTX’s founder. ...
The last available Internet Archive capture of Aid for Ukraine” took place on the afternoon of October 26th. Throughout the webpage’s existence, the Internet Archive captured multiple snapshots of it weekly. This clearly indicates the page was purged by Kiev in late October, several days before the FTX crisis initially broke out. Was the original webpage’s dumping and erasure, and the shift to a totally new interface, at that time merely a spooky coincidence, or were the Ukrainians warned of what was coming? What did Kiev know, and when did it know it?
Though FTX has been accused of serving as a money laundering vehicle for the US Democratic Party, concrete evidence supporting this claim has yet to materialize. But given Bankman-Fried’s background as one of the most prolific donors to the Democrats, and the role he played as a nexus between party power-brokers and the cryptocurrency sphere, the allegations are understandable.
Some interesting info in this article:
Craig Murray: FTX & the Joke of US Democracy
The FTX story seems truly remarkable. From being founded only in 2017 it rose to be a “partner organisation” of the World Economic Forum and the second largest donor to U.S. President Joe Biden and the Democrats’ mid-term election campaign. It has now gone completely bust, taking every penny of its depositors’ money with it.
That is some trajectory. ...
FTX was a one-man company belonging to Sam Bankman-Fried. The board consisted of him, an employee and the company lawyer. Over $20 billion of investors’ funds from FTX were funneled to a fund management company, Alameda Research, also owned by Sam Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried donated $37 million to the Democrats for the 2022 elections. Every penny of that originated with duped FTX investors. That is in addition to the $5 million given to the Biden 2020 campaign. FTX, of course, crashed instantly after those mid-term elections, which is interesting timing. ...
It is worth noting that Bankman-Fried donated 10 times as much as the largest PAC donation. This brought access — he and his brother had meetings inside the White House on March 7, April 22 and May 12.
It is perhaps unsurprising therefore that FTX was involved in Ukraine, offering to exchange cryptocurrency for fiat and send it to Ukraine in an official partnership with the Ukrainian government. This from their press release
“Aid For Ukraine is cooperating with the cryptocurrency exchange FTX which converts crypto funds received into fiat and sends the donations to the National Bank of Ukraine. This marks the first-ever instance of a cryptocurrency exchange directly cooperating with a public financial entity to provide a conduit for crypto donations. Earlier this month, FTX already converted $1 million worth of SOL and transferred it to the National Bank of Ukraine.”
The collapse of the Bankman Fried scam was allegedly caused by hackers stealing what should have been a comparatively small portion of the assets of FTX, had they not been hived off elsewhere. Doubtless we will shortly hear from state salaried conspiracy theorists that this was Russia/Guccifer/an ISP address traced by Bellingcat to inside the Kremlin.
Greedy rich people want more:
Major investor calls on Google owner to ‘aggressively’ cut staff and pay
The hedge fund of the billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn has written to Alphabet saying staff at the Google and YouTube parent are paid too much and its workforce should be drastically cut back. London-based TCI, which has been a significant investor in the company since 2017 and holds a stake valued at $6bn (£5.1bn), has written to its chief executive, Sundar Pichai, urging it to emulate cost-cutting measures introduced by big tech rivals including the Facebook-owner, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft.
“We are writing to express our view that the cost base of Alphabet is too high and that management needs to take aggressive action,” said Hohn, managing director at TCI, in a letter made public on Tuesday. “The company has too many employees and the cost per employee is too high.” ...
The call for cost savings comes as job cuts come thick and fast at Silicon Valley companies feeling the pressure from a slowdown in the global economy and income streams such as advertising. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, cut 11,000 staff in the first round of redundancies in the company’s history. On Monday, reports emerged that Amazon was preparing to get rid of as many as 10,000 staff in corporate and technology roles, its largest layoffs ever.
As the class struggle grows in US, another rail union rejects White-House backed contract
Tuesday’s rejection of a contract by members of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers (IBB) was the latest blow to the sellout national railroad agreement brokered by the White House. The IBB is the smallest of the 12 craft unions in the industry, with only 500 members, but its members were the third consecutively to reject the deal, following workers in the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes (BMWED) and the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen (BRS) late last month.
Momentum is clearly building for the defeat of the deal, with less than a week left in voting by 60,000 engineers and conductors, who have been the center of opposition. Moreover, a strike even by the 500 IBB members would be the equivalent of a national strike of 120,000 railroaders, because workers in other crafts would honor the picket line.
Constant threats of congressional injunction and a campaign of lies and misinformation from the union bureaucracy, which has subjected workers to endless delays and broken them up by craft to break their unity, have failed to stem the tide of opposition. Workers are determined to launch a national railroad strike to end chronic overwork and uncertain working schedules, understaffing and attacks to real wages and health care benefits.
The rail union bureaucracy, however, is acting ever more shamelessly to try to sabotage the struggle. They have simply ignored 99 percent strike authorization votes and have rammed through the contract by narrow margins at seven unions in balloting marked by serious irregularities. At the request of the White House, the BMWED delayed once again its self-imposed strike deadline, the result of a secret deal with rail negotiators, to December 9.
To justify this decision, the BMWED resorted to complete fabrications that insult workers’ intelligence, including the lie that workers cannot strike until Congress passes a law giving them permission—a claim which not even Congress itself has made. The unions are proving by their own actions that they are controlled by a well-heeled apparatus completely unaccountable to the rank and file, and which makes every decision in consultation with the carriers and the White House, not workers.
FBI Infiltrated PROUD BOYS: Report. Christopher Wray GRILLED On Bureau Involvement In Jan 6
'Chilling' Video Footage Shows Asylum-Seeker Being Force-Fed in ICE Detention
Human rights advocates on Tuesday renewed calls for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop force-feeding detained people and end its reliance on mass detention after The Intercept obtained and published footage of a hunger-striking asylum-seeker being force-fed in 2019.
The video depicting nurses forcibly inserting a tube into the nose of Indian asylum-seeker Ajay Kumar in an El Paso, Texas detention center marks the first time the U.S. public has ever seen the federal government force-feed someone, according to The Intercept.
As the outlet notes: "With Ajay Kumar's consent, The Intercept first requested the video through the Freedom of Information Act in January 2020. After ICE refused their request, The Intercept filed a lawsuit, and ICE subsequently agreed to turn over the footage—after redacting the faces and names of everyone who appears in the video, aside from Kumar's."
It was by no means the first, only, or last time ICE officials have carried out involuntary and invasive medical procedures in violation of international law. ...
Joanna Naples-Mitchell, a research advisor at PHR and co-author of the ACLU-PHR report on hunger strikes in ICE detention, noted that "under international law, force-feeding constitutes cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and can rise to the level of torture, violating multiple international human rights treaties."
"This abhorrent practice is often not possible without the participation or complicity of health professionals," said Naples-Mitchell.
"Although this chilling footage depicts former President Trump's Department of Homeland Security, force-feeding continues today under the Biden administration," she added. "President Biden should seize the opportunity to change course by adopting a new directive on hunger strikes and addressing the underlying cause of so many hunger strikes: an abusive immigration detention system."
Georgia’s six-week abortion ban overturned as unconstitutional
A judge overturned Georgia’s ban on abortion starting around six weeks into a pregnancy, ruling on Tuesday that it violated the US constitution and US supreme court precedent when it was enacted. The ruling by Judge Robert McBurney of Fulton county superior court applies statewide. The ban had been in effect since July.
It prohibited most abortions once a “detectable human heartbeat” is present. Cardiac activity can be detected by ultrasound in cells within an embryo that will eventually become the heart as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. That means most abortions in Georgia were in effect banned at a point before many women knew they were pregnant.
McBurney’s ruling came in a lawsuit that sought to strike down the ban on multiple grounds, including that it violates the Georgia constitution’s right to privacy and liberty by forcing pregnancy and childbirth on women in the state. The lawsuit filed by doctors and advocacy groups in July also argued that Georgia’s abortion ban was invalid because it violated the US constitution and US supreme court precedent when it was enacted.
McBurney agreed with that argument in his decision.
Donald Trump announces run for president in 2024
Donald Trump has announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, likely sparking another period of tumult in US politics and especially his own political party.
“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Trump said from ballroom of his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach on Tuesday night.
Vowing to defeat Joe Biden in 2024, he declared: “America’s comeback starts right now.”
January 6 panel considers next steps after Trump fails to attend deposition
The special US House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is weighing whether to issue a contempt of Congress referral for Donald Trump after the former president skipped a closed-door deposition with the panel that was scheduled for Monday.
The committee’s Democratic chair, Bennie Thompson, said that the contempt of Congress referral targeting Trump “could be an option” – though the Mississippi congressman added that the panel would have to first address a lawsuit filed against it by Trump’s lawyers on Friday. The suit challenged the subpoena ordering Trump to appear at the deposition as a violation of executive privilege.
In a joint statement with Liz Cheney, the outgoing Republican congresswoman and vice-chair of the committee, Thompson said that Trump’s lawsuit “parades out many of the same arguments that courts have rejected repeatedly over the last year”.
“The truth is that Donald Trump, like several of his closest allies, is hiding from the select committee’s investigation and refusing to do what more than a thousand other witnesses have done,” which is to testify in accordance with panel-issued subpoenas, they said.
Four Trump allies have already been held in contempt of Congress after refusing to comply with committee subpoenas.
New Study Warns Declining Sperm Counts 'Could Threaten Mankind's Survival'
While it may sound like a plot element from a dystopian novel like The Children of Men or The Handmaid's Tale, an alarming study published on Tuesday found that worldwide sperm concentrations and counts have fallen by more than half since the 1970s, an accelerating crisis that experts say could pose an existential threat to humanity if not promptly addressed.
Published by an international team of researchers in Human Reproduction Update, the study analyzed data from 57,000 men in 53 countries, with results suggesting that average global sperm concentration declined from an estimated 101.2 million per milliliter in 1973 to 49 m/ml in 2018—a drop of 51.6%—while total sperm counts decreased by 62.3% over the same period.
The paper updates and enhances previous research that was limited in scope to North America, Europe, and Australia. The new paper found that for the first time, men in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are experiencing similar sperm declines as those in the three previously studied regions.
Perhaps most alarmingly, the researchers reported an accelerating rate of decrease, with sperm concentrations dropping by 1.16% each year since 1972—but falling by 2.64% annually since 2000.
Hagai Levine of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Hadassah Braun School of Public Health, the lead author of the 2017 and 2022 studies, likened their findings to a "canary in a coal mine."
"We have a serious problem on our hands that, if not mitigated, could threaten mankind's survival," Levine said in a statement. "We urgently call for global action to promote healthier environments for all species and reduce exposures and behaviors that threaten our reproductive health."
What's causing sperm counts to perilously plummet? Levine told Health Policy Watch that "the primary suspect is a mother's exposure to man-made chemicals during pregnancy," with plasticizers, pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, toxic gases, and air pollution believed to be among the chief culprits.
"Climate Collateral": How Military Spending Fuels Environmental Damage
Climate activists throw black liquid at Gustav Klimt painting in Vienna
Climate activists in Austria have attacked a painting by Gustav Klimt, with one throwing a black, oily liquid at it and another gluing himself to the glass covering the painting.
Members of Letzte Generation Österreich (Last Generation Austria) tweeted that they had targeted the 1915 painting Death and Life at the Leopold Museum in Vienna to protest against their government’s use of fossil fuels.
After throwing the liquid at the artwork, which was not damaged, one activist was pushed away by a museum guard while another glued his hand to the glass over the painting.
The group said they were protesting against “oil and gas drilling”, which they called “a death sentence to society”.
In a video of the incident, which the group posted online, one of the activists can be heard shouting: “We have known about the problem for 50 years – we must finally act, otherwise the planet will be broken.”
Who Should Pay for Climate Crisis? Global South Demands "Loss and Damage" from Wealthy Nations
E-bike batteries have caused 200 fires in New York: ‘Everyone’s scared’
New York City delivery workers have to deal with an array of threats: speeding cars, volatile weather, armed robbers and app algorithms that can “deactivate” them if they don’t rush to customers quickly enough. Lately, workers have added another to the list – their electric bikes bursting into flames.
The powerful lithium ion batteries used in small electric vehicles are responsible for a growing epidemic of fires. This year, there have been about 200 fires and six deaths, according to the New York City fire department. This month, an e-bike fire inside a Manhattan high-rise apartment became an inferno that injured nearly 40 people and forced firefighters to evacuate residents using ropes. ...
As the densest city in America, New York is a micro-mobility haven. Here, small electric vehicles aren’t toys for weekend jaunts but vital tools for the estimated 65,000 delivery workers trying to scrape a living through low-paying apps.
There are thousands of choices today if you want an e-bike, e-scooter or e-moped. Some of the high-end, name-brand machines are sold in beautiful downtown showrooms for well over $5,000. But many of the vehicles used by New York City’s workers come from unknown manufacturers and are sold online or through small shops for between $1,000 and $2,000.
Nearly all of these vehicles are powered by lithium ion battery packs, which contain tightly bundled cells that store energy as flammable chemicals. Typically, the cells are kept in sync by a piece of electronic circuitry called a battery management system, or BMS, which makes sure that the cells don’t overcharge or release too much energy at once. But that careful balance can get disrupted due to damage, wear or faulty manufacturing, sometimes with dangerous results.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Is the US Serious About Negotiations on Ukraine?
Why the War Party is the real winner of the midterms
China Is Making More Big Moves in Latin America
On Iran - Fakenews From Newsweek
‘I don’t have the funds’: a diabetic prisoner pleaded for insulin supplies before his death
Can the world feed 8bn people sustainably?
NATO's Stoltenberg: Poland blast likely caused by Ukrainian missile
Senator Threatens Investigation Of Elon Musk For Disrespecting Him Publicly
A Little Night Music
Champion Jack Dupree - Walkin The Blues
Champion Jack Dupree - Shakin' mother for you
Champion Jack Dupree - I Just Want To Be Free
Champion Jack Dupree - The Railroad Blues
Champion Jack Dupree - Drunk Again
Champion Jack Dupree - Income Tax
Champion Jack Dupree - Chicken Shack Blues
Champion Jack Dupree w/King Curtis - Poor Boy Blues
Champion Jack Dupree - Shim Sham Shimmy
Champion Jack Dupree - New Orleans To Chicago
Comments
Dupree rocks on The RR Blues
Hmm, the news? Not so much.
Investors greed, low brain cell counts, another Ukie false flag, melting ice caps, more trump
and the railroaders are going to shut it all down. Hee hee.
Thanks for the conglomeration!
Being in control of the situation is important.
Otherwise, it is in control of you.
Anon
evening qms...
heh, i'll take champion jack over the news any old time.
Oh yeah, bye the bye
The New Orleans to Chicago anthology is superb as well.
Think maybe mentioned already but used to take the
'City of New Orleans' Amtrak 4x/month while commuting
twixt LA and MI. A great cultural experience and a good ride.
heh...
yep, i really like that album, too. i have another dupree album in the works that i'll post in the next week or two.
Anyone know what is a bigfoot
Re: Champ Jack
alls I want is a bigfoot and a bottle of beer
something about the Crescent City
per the urban dict ..
but that just doesn't quite fit?
It's probably...
"pigfoot". Pigfoot pops up in old blues lyrics quite frequently.
Pigfoot
I 'spect = PIGfoot, as in pickled pigsfeet inna jar onna bar.
(Urban dictionary seems to be mostly only accurate for stuff made up by kids and adolescents in the last few decades.) Here's Bessie's famous lyrics:
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Ahh, so
used to see them swimming around in a big jar of pinkish liquid
on the counter of the corner store. Yuchh.
Have to be 1/2 full of corn hooch to sample them doodads.
'cept us yankees called 'em knuckles
thanks
definitely pigfoot...
here's bessie to explain:
Thanks for EB's Joe!
Demockracy in the UK is finished, doesn't it sound a lot
like amerika?
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRxmhnQFhMQ&t=1s]
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
evening ggersh...
yup. all of the demockeries are at it these days. here in the u.s. there's all kinds of weird laws being made from laws to enhance the patrolling of thought expressed on social media to laws that make it okay to mow down protesters with your vehicle.
democracy has been dead in the u.s. for a long time and it doesn't look like it's going to come back from the dead.
This country never really was a democracy
It has always been run by Those That Have, for their own benefit, on the (specious) grounds that the wealthy and well-educated know better than the peons what's good for everybody. That's why they called it a "Republic", not a "Democracy".
The Founding Fathers' ideal was apparently the virtuous early stages of the Roman Republic, and they hoped to avoid the downhill slide into autocracy and imperialism. But it's clear now that they failed.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Re: Lower sperm counts and the official guess
So the "problem" is that sperm counts are lowering universally, approaching "existential crisis" levels. I can think of 3 possible causes, assuming that a universal result requires a universal cause - climate, pollution (the cause suggested in the text) and divine intervention.
The text's pollution suggestion sounds ill thought out because it suggests that the mother's body only allows male fetuses to be affected. While IMO the most likely explanation the specific hypothesis smacks of woke misandry.
Climate change is possible, but not a primary cause Maybe male fertility is affected by, for example, ambient temperature, but how, and that would mean that it is the how that is the actual issue.
Divine intervention is a catch-all phrase for some previously unrevealed mechanism. Humans have no natural predators (except maybe viruses) there "must" be a mechanism controlling population - preventing runaway overpopulation. ( or see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathworld ) Of course there are holes in this hypothesis. Humans live in all sorts of climates, pollution levels, and population densities. Each should have visibly triggered years ago. Then again, humans seem to be genetically predisposed to refuse to see a problem until it's too late.
On to Biden since 1973
We've been saturating the globe with endocrine disruptors
for some time now and slowly forced ourselves to recognize the impacts, including fertility impacts on numerous animal species. The sperm count decline has been slowly increasing over a long period too and finally we're to the point where we nave to start taking it seriously.
I'm not an endocrinologist, but they're part of the hormone management system and what different hormones are effected can lead to what organs are effected, such as ovaries versus testes, beyond, it's very possibly that females are effected in some manner, but perhaps not one changing fertility and, of course, declines in female fertility could be a problem and even a longstanding one without anybody taking note because the medical and bioscience community hasn't really paid much attention to females, their health, and their problems throughout all history, so how would we know.
The mother's body doesn't determine what gender the chemicals effect, that is a property of the specific chemicals in question; the mother's body is just a conduit. If, for example, she ingests a ton of some chemical that suppresses testosterone production, it will have differing effects of male versus female foetuses not because of something her body does, but because of what testosterone is and does.
OTOH, God could be a female prone to misandry, I jusst very much doubt that.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I remember hearing
of chemical (specifically "artificial estrogens" used in plastics production) pollution accused of causing premature menstruation in girls and obesity in boys in the 1980s.
On to Biden since 1973
evening doh...
i dunno, but of the three options you present, pollution seems to be the most persistent and prevalent across the planet. for example, microplastic pollution is everywhere, it's in every body of water and in virtually all of the human bodies that have been studied. there's stuff like pfoas (forever chemicals) that seem to be pretty ubiquitous in most study subjects as well.
but, like i said, i dunno.
Again from the early 1980s
we found DDT in the breast tissue of 8 - 10yr old girls. Also at that time we found DDT in polar bears.
The truth is the evidence is overwhelming, but it may be a conscious decision on our part. Harrison's Deathworld (from the early 1970s IIRC) is a fictionalization, but of a clear principle. When you are proscribed an antibiotic you are given X number of pills to be taken over x days - take all of them on schedule or you will be creating super bugs. (faster than we already are - see drug resistant tuberculosis) We see this much clearer with cockroaches. Nature simply has ways to circumvent insufficient attacks. We make half-assed efforts meant mostly to make us feel better and in the process make our natural defenses weaker and our adversaries stronger.
On to Biden since 1973
Remember when people whose jobs were offshored
we’re told to learn how to code?
So Americans aren’t reproducing enough and they aren’t working hard enough either so democrats have a way to fix that.
Millions of people were fired for not getting jabbed, millions more are suffering from long Covid and millions more are vax injured. Well on the ones that were fired for not getting jabbed the NYC guv said no problem I will just hire people from 3rd world countries. Besides they will work for less money and that will make business owners happy.
And yay aren’t we all happy that Trump is going to run again? I’m seeing lots of his supporters saying that he accomplished everything that he ran on. Oh really? Is the Hellabitch in prison? Has the swamp been drained? Sure seemed like on his way to draining the swamp Trump hired lots of very icky people to play in it. Elliot Adams? John Effing Bolton? Mike Pompeo? McMaster? Ect….
And boy howdy it sure seems that something very nefarious happened between the democrats and Ukraine and the FTX guy, but I’m not seeing any news media talking about it nor are the republicans. Trump just made a phone call and got impeached. Will anything come from this scandal? Bueller?
Sheesh!
We went out to the island to see where we want to camp.
The inversion is moving in. Hopefully it blows out before T day.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
evening snoopy...
yeah, it appears that the alphabet company violated one of the fundamental laws of rich capitalists, it created too many good, well-paying jobs. bad employer! prepare for market discipline!
heh, trump again. i guess we are not entertained enough by biden.
the house is now officially in the hands of the gop. if they can't turn the elements of the ftx/ukraine/biden story into a serious scandal, they need to go back to school.
Amnesty
This will be the third time they've done that. Fourth if you count Reagan's Russian "Jews" who didn't emigrate to the Holy Land.
On to Biden since 1973
Of definite interest...
Thanks for the EB, Joe -
Just wanted to plug the very last item on your list: Jimmy Dore on Twitter/censorship/fascism/free speech:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E37aJus3DDc]
Well worth a listen.
"People are now scared to peacefully protest for fear of prosecution. Lawyers are scared to practice law for fear of the 65 project. Doctors are scared to practice medicine for fear of losing their licenses. Election officials are scared to count the ballots and check the machines for fear of the SOS. Journalists are scared to report any of this for fear of being cancelled. If we must contemplate the consequences from the government before doing what you know to be honorable and lawful, then we are no longer free.”
- Kevin Moncla
evening br...
yep, markey gives a class a demonstration of how power is exercised in washington, people would do well to prick up their ears.
Ban Ki-moon's popularity
...probably had reached it's high in 2017. I think he tested the waters during the Nationalist Party (PPP) primary run up, but as I recall he never exceeded 5 percent in polls. Frankly, I think he's too bland for South Koreans. That made him perfect for the UN position. At home the democrats view him as too conservative, and vice versa.
I'll take his peace quotation as an invitation to post the link to this excellent article in the Real News Network by Ju-hyun Park today.
https://therealnews.com/biden-needs-to-accept-that-the-us-cant-intimidat...
The military tensions have reached a boiling point, and Biden tried to get President Xi to exercise some restraint on Kim Jong-un. That isn't going to happen especially as the US, and South Korea hold themselves blameless in a situation they have been exacerbating with the delusion that military threats are going to intimidate North Korea.
The article is rather lengthy but I commend the author on his succinct summary of how the situation has recently become a crisis only one step away from "fire and fury." The only thing I would change in the article is the impression that Kim walked away at Hanoi. Trump by his own admission walked away saying "sometimes you gotta walk" after John Bolton sabotaged the talks. I remember watching the video of the event later that day, and you could see Kim's advisor from his foreign ministry, Choe Son-hui, North Korea's expert on US affairs, chasing the American delegation down the hallway, trying to salvage something from the summit talks.
Another dimension to this situation, has to do with Yoon's authoritarian inclinations. I consider him a dictator in all but name. His tough on defense image is used to bolster a domestic policy that offers nothing for the average South Korean. The Korean economy is in trouble and it's unlikely he has the ability or the ministers to fix it. He's a Milton Friedman conservative, anti-union, and never served in the military. He knows nothing about business, foreign policy or the military. He's come to power by slandering and eliminating political rivals with press cooperation by investigating and prosecuting critics and rivals with his clique of corrupt prosecutors in the Public Prosecutors Offices. He has now, by non-statutory methods, achieved total control of the previously politically independent National Police Agency. To bolster his image, he moved into the former Ministry of National Defense building, rather than using the Blue House, where the National Security Command Center was located. The move resulted in scattering the service chiefs away from their former military offices and quarters on or near Yongsan and actually compromises South Korean national security. All this is a little beyond the scope of the Real News article. Yoon and his family are corrupt through and through. He needs to rule by intimidation because he is desperate to stay in power. At this point, he is the most unpopular head of state, in the so called countries with democratic values. Yoon openly admired dictator Chun Doo-hwan, and mocked people when he was forced during the campaign to apologize for it. In South Korea currently, people over 60 are the only group to support Yoon by any margin now that the South Korean public has learned what kind of person he really is. The major media in South Korea concealed his modus operandi through the campaign season.
語必忠信 行必正直
evening soryang...
the u.s. has always had trouble giving up its wars and it appears to desperately want to continue the war in korea many decades after any sensible nation would have engaged in intensive diplomacy and gotten it over with.
heh, it sounds like this yoon suk-yeol has most of the characteristics of donald trump except for personal charm and the odd tendency to tell the truth at random times. i guess when trump gets back in office, they'll get along famously.
South Korea's Trump
I have seen political remarks and one or two political cartoons in South Korea to that effect. I think Trump and Yoon would get along very well. Trump also got along with Abe very well. Making Japan "great again" was Abe's mission in life.
It's really unfortunate that the usual US suspects had to derail Moon's effort to normalize relations with North Korea. Trump barely tolerated Moon Jae-in because he was able to encourage the photo ops with Kim that Trump sought.
I actually think though of Yoon as more menacing than Trump because he and his so called republic of lawyers are much more effective in manipulating the legal system than Trump. It's populated with his people in the Justice Ministry, the Prosecutor's Offices, and even the Judiciary. The fact is people are seriously afraid of him (and his wife), and have been so for a few years, once his tactics are understood. This influences how institutions and professional people react to him. Trump is sort of a bumbler compared to Yoon when it comes to political infighting and dirty tricks. Yoon has become an expert in abusing his powers and his has a phalanx of loyal followers in the most powerful media institutions as well as prosecution and court offices who support him. But he's not competent governing because he is almost entirely focused on "getting even" with people who have challenged or criticized him. And those who don't support Yoon are afraid to challenge or contradict him, because they know their family members may suffer the consequences as well as themselves. It's difficult to keep track of how many opposition politicians, ministers, and former democratic officials are either under investigation or being prosecuted by Yoon right now.
Yoon and his wife are actually unpopular in international diplomatic settings and pretty much ignored by other heads of state and wives. Foreign leaders are probably better informed about how he operates and what kind of people he and his wife are. They simply can't be trusted.
It's unfortunate that this problem with North Korea has gone on for more than seventy years now. One kind of analysis says the neighboring states, Japan, China, and the US have vested interests in keeping it that way. Japan fears a united Korea. The US fears losing its foothold for a military presence on the Asian mainland. China probably has the least to lose, and usually sided with North and South Korea in the Six Party talks. So did Russia. A united Korea will naturally have greater commercial and political ties to China and finally be reconnected to Asia. On the other hand, China doesn't want US troops near its North Korean border.
Thank's for your political news and music as always @joeshikspack
語必忠信 行必正直
thanks ...
for your continuing info about korea. like i've said before, its politics are not really well reported in the major media that i see on a daily basis.
i think that you're right that most of the major players have vested interests in the frozen conflict and are happy to see it continue indefinitely. i suspect that the people of korea (north and south) would like to be united, but the problem of who would govern an united korea would endanger the position of the kim dynasty. likewise, there are no doubt established individuals and institutions in the south that have much to lose in such an union. china is made powerful and relevant by having an plausibly deniable, unpredictable nuclear power under its wing and i suspect enjoys that kim creeps out the u.s. on a regular basis.
anyway, thanks!
You never know until you try
Normalization of relations and a peace treaty are the first steps. Allowing the normal commercial integration of the peninsula to take place is a foundational condition. In terms of cultural integration, the North is quite aware of the commonalities of the two state's cultures, and the greater appeal of the Southern variant. The efforts to keep the North closed off from South Korea by the US and Japan are so strong because they know there is the likelihood that after a normalized "two states" period, the resistance to social and commercial integration domestically would decline. The appeal of Kim's strict dictatorship and resistance to outside influences would weaken over time.
As far as elements of South Korea resistant to improved ties and economic integration with the North, the most significant would be chaebol families and other elites whose family fortunes originated during the Japanese colonial period. At the same time the most influential of these wealthy families actually want commercial access to the North, so their desire for North Korean manpower and natural resources outweighs their fear of a gradual peaceful, normalized coexistence. I would say that its other members of the elites, say at a secondary level, in the professional classes, whose families were tied directly to collaboration with Japan (legacy pro Japan elements) and atrocities South Korean dictatorships committed against South Koreans, or whose families have more recently received patronage from Japan, that fear North Korean normalization.
In a state of coexistence with normalized cultural and commercial ties, one day the Northern regime would simply disintegrate like the USSR. The other model would be for it to capitalize like China and permit commerce with outside world. The presence of outside military threats and what amounts to a state of war under armistice dictated by the US and Japan doesn't allow either. I think China would actually prefer a non nuclear North Korea. They and Russia voted for the sanctions against long range ballistic missiles and nuclear testing. The current lack of Chinese interest in restraining the North's military activity is due to the ramped up allied military activity in and around Korea and its meddling in Taiwan on China's doorstep. This brings China back to the old "lips and teeth" relationship with the North from the fifties.
語必忠信 行必正直
Feds and J-6
Federal involvement in J-6, and the fact that it could be exposed in some way through discovery if protesters' cases were to go to trial helps explain why prosecutors have gone to such great lengths to delay trials, threaten long sentences for those refusing plea deals, insisting on prolonged pre-trial detention and etc.
Actually, proof of FBI infiltration of the Proud Boys came out in July this year, initially reported by Gateway Pundit - supporting FBI leaked documents documents are linked to from the article here
The leaked documents contain a series of real time messages from the informant on the way to and during the Trump rally and Capitol demo/riot including from inside the Capitol (where they were, essentially, ushered in by Capitol Police).
From the article:
"No Russian ever called me white-supremacist Nazi terrorist."
- Me (with apologies to Muhammed Ali)
It’s abhorrent that some of the j6 people are still in prison
and the way they are being treated. Almost 2 years in harsh conditions without even being found guilty of anything. Have they even been charged with something? I’ve read that some of them have medical issues that they can’t get treated for or given their medication. And they aren’t the only ones who are being punished. How many families have lost their main breadwinner and have lost their homes and other possessions? How about the kids not seeing their parent? This is cruel and unusual punishment IMO and enough people aren’t speaking out about it or worse they are okay with it. But then we can thank Obama for rescinding habeas corpus and of course the fcking patriot act. Inalienable rights are supposed to be just that. Unalienable.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Inalienable, unalienable, to-may-to, to-mah-to
The quibble over spelling allegedly goes back to Jefferson vs. Adams and the very writing of the Declaration of Independence (or so says the musical 1776). It is a fact that Jefferson wrote "unalienable", but the printed version said "inalienable" - but we don't know who made the change or on what authority.
A difference that makes no difference is no difference.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
good evening Joe, et. y'all. Thanks for the
evening blues, Joe.
I thought it was established long ago that the feebs had informants embedded in some of the 7/6 groups, and the only question was whether they were provocateurs, and perhaps whether they had advanced knowledge of the break in. The answers are very probably yes, and almost certainly yes. The real question is whether or not anything will come of it and the answer is probably not. I didn't even have to use my magic 8 ball for that.
Hold the pigfoot and gimme a Negra Modelo
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
had you picked up your magic 8 ball for that question, it probably would have laughed at you.
have a great evening and enjoy a virtual negra modelo on me.
I just noticed that JackPine Radicals is back on the air—er, Net
https://jackpineradicals.com/
Some months ago they were down for several weeks and I thought they had bitten the dust for good.
evening lotlizard...
i'm glad to hear that their community continues.
I hope that most
of their folks who came here when it folded stick around from time to time- they have brought some very insightful comments along with them! But most of all I'm glad that there's another place for like-minded people to go, and I hope that it survives its reinvention under new management...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Thanks for the heads up
I visited the site last night and looked at a description of the current situation there.
Apparently the domain was reactivated when somebody paid the fee. The site was then fired up but noone there knows what the admin key is. Anyone who was a moderator of the forum can do stuff but very limited without the admin hook.
Kinda like a plane where the pilot went out while the thing was on autopilot and never came back. I think they really need that pin before the site runs out of juice. I wonder where the data/server is.
I had some difficulty with the forum format so I didn't do much with it. I had fallen astray of the trolls on the earlier incarnation and was too disheartened to become comfortable with the new format. And now I can't remember my login.