@gjohnsit

I do quibble with the idea that the neolibs et. al. are centrist. I'm somewhat convinced that there is no such thing, for one, but, mostly, I find them to be very conservative. (Of course, I call much of today's "conservative" and "right-wing" groups to be reactionary.

be well and have a good one.

Either fascist right or real left

While the French far right has been at the center of wall-to-wall coverage since topping the EU elections, it might just be the left that delivers the killer blow to President Emmanuel Macron’s hopes of holding the political center.

Macron may be on the verge of a near total wipe-out in impending parliamentary elections. If polls prove accurate, his coalition’s losses in the National Assembly after July 7 risk being so devastating that he would be a lame duck until 2027 when his term ends.

Just 10 days ago, the French left seemed irremediably torn. Policy disagreements — from nuclear energy to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine — amplified by personal antagonism among its leaders — culminated in vicious mudslinging.

But after Macron’s risky decision to call early elections following the far-right National Rally’s crushing victory in the EU vote, left-wing parties have come together in a swift marriage of convenience.

The country’s four main left-wing forces, the Greens, Socialists, Communists and hard-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed (LFI) movement, sealed an agreement on Thursday with a shared manifesto to run under one banner, the New Popular Front.

@Dawn's Meta
that video. If I wre far younger I would consider trying that myself.

be well and have a good one.

When I can't sleep at night I look at YT channels that are not about war or politics.

One family I have watched for over a year are a small family trying to create an off grid homestead in Cochise County, Arizona. It's a desert environment at a higher altitude.

They recently posted an essay opinion on building housing with local materials.

What they didn't cover is that one of the first things they did was construct swales and berms. They are beginning to work and within the first three years.

Although they are a self-contained family of four kids and two parents plus pets and other animals, they reach out to others and learn and teach in a growing community.

Tiny Shiny Home

Thanks again for your regular contributions.
ETA: spelling and thanks again.

@usefewersyllables I read the second line? We can hope that the Rus and Chinese are more rational than to go along with that plan.

be well and have a good one

I can't support the Biden administration's tacit plan to address desertification. This would appear to be by simply encouraging the Russians and Chinese to remove the difference between desert and non-desert, by turning the whole country into a fused-silica parking lot.

It seems to me that there should be a better way. But then, I have a really simplistic approach to geopolitics. My betters tell me by their actions that getting nuked really isn't all that bad.

But whadda I know? At least it'll be quick.

@on the cusp

"water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink". It figures, and will certainly get worse.

be well and have a good one

I am surrounding area where I reside is full of lakes, rivers, creeks, branches, bayous, ponds, springs, and an aquifer so near the surface, you can't build basements.
What is the most expensive utility bill I have? Water. (per gallon).
Thanks for the OT and enjoy your day, friend.

@dystopian

Never had my own Escher collection, though I do recall a poster or two and a handfull of his tilings in some magazine, probably something math oriented.

Sorry to hear about the desertification of your little slice of paradise.

be well and have a good one

HI all, Hey EL!

So after it crossed the path, what did the quail say to the hare?

One hot afternoon whilst making haste in 1973 trying to ASAP get off the sandbar peninsula (FL) after a brutal few weeks in July, I looked for Dusky Seaside Sparrow. Then there were still fair numbers but mostly just in a couple spots. Besides habitat loss from Cape Canaveral, mosquito control is what really did them in, as it also killed ALL their insect prey, not just mosquitoes. Heat of afternoon was bad timing and we were in a hurry to see some 5000' elevation markers in the Appalachians at that point.

I have the standard basic M.C. Escher book of his stuff. He was awesome. My research showed they were most excellent for psychoactive study.

We are in a ground-zero desertification zone. In 30 years the 30 inches per year of rainfall line has moved from 65 miles WEST of San Antonio, to 35 miles EAST of it near Seguin, about a hundred miles. Per Texas A & M that watches this stuff like a hungry hawk. Our overnight lows in summer are 5f higher than two decades ago, highs 5f or more hotter. The climate is not what it was 20 years ago (when we arrived to live), and not what it was when we decided to live here 30 years ago. Thousands of dead trees, hundred to two hundred years old. Three in our two acre yard. Now we are 20" per year, MAYBE. Dragonflies have plummeted and gone from abundant to hard to find. Butterflies are very scarce and were also abundant. Bird numbers are WAYYYYY down. Stop me any time. Where are the spiders? Very few bugs. The Scissor-tails and Vermilions came in counted bugs and left to nest elsewhere. The old ecosystem is collapsing before my eyes. It is mind blowing to see such radical changes so fast. Much as all the best predictions and models have far under-estimated time-lines on say loss of glaciers or ice shelves, ad. infinitum.

Thanks for the OT and great sounds!

happy trails all!

edit to add current annual rainfall

@soryang

of I have no idea how many similar campaigns based on the firm, nearly religious belief that "they" just haven't heard how wonderful we have it and how glorious we are. Somebody's dreaming.

be well and have a good one

This anniversary today got me thinking of how little has essentially changed in the far east alignments despite the sometimes opportunistic shifting alliances among the imperial powers and WWII.

Elder South Korean statesmen/scholar Jung Se-hyeon, once likened US diplomats to an "Indian killing long haired white general," alluding to US policy in the Far East as essentially an extension of its wars against indigenous Americans.

One of the great cowboys of the American imagination preserving the rules based order in Beijing in 1900- Charlton Heston 55 Days at Peking (1963)

The west's outlook really hasn't changed that much in more than a century and half since the Opium Wars. Their gunboats still cruise off the Chinese coast looking for confrontations to secure territorial concessions from both the subjected powers in the so called Indo-Pacific alliance and China itself. Hey can I use your airfields here for my military? Can I set my missile launchers here? Can we build new military bases over here to protect you from China? Let's put an ammo dump, and some leaky fuel tanks over here. Remember our agreement- we are not subject to your jurisdiction. We need to have Taiwan for our first island chain strategy against China. According to the US and its allies, Taiwan is already independent, Tibet is not part of China, and Xinjiang should be independent because "genocide."

Russia was never really a favored member of the de facto alliance. Britain and the US had no problem making agreements with Japan which allowed Japan to engage in a war with Russia to secure effective dominance and control of the Korean peninsula when they defeated Russia in 1905 in the Russo-Japanese War. The western powers were content with their holdings elsewhere in East Asia including their concessions inside China. (The de facto alliance with the western imperial states only ended when Japan got too greedy.) When hundreds of thousands of peaceful Koreans rose up spontaneously in March and April 1919 to obtain their independence from Japanese colonization, thousands were killed and imprisoned by Japanese troops. Wikipedia noted this about Reuters reporting at the time-

In 1919, a number of Reuters reports falsely described the anti-colonial March 1st Movement protests in Korea as violent Bolshevik uprisings. South Korean researchers found that a number of these reports were cited in a number of international newspapers and possibly negatively influenced international opinion on Korea.

Ya think? Not much has changed since. In fact, Reuters which has some nonsense claim about objectivity in its journalism had a report today implicitly lamenting the fact, that propaganda loudspeakers aimed at North Korea weren't as effective in terms of range as they should have been in accordance with the South Korean purchase contract. Too bad, so sad. The irony here is that the official US diplomatic and military presence in South Korea last week, totally out of character, basically asked the South Korean Defense Minister Sin Won-shik, a far right ideologue, to cool it with the loudspeakers and the "free speech" leaflet balloon campaign being conducted against North Korea along the DMZ. The South Koreans close to the DMZ or maritime Northern Limit Lines don't like it either. It's a dangerous and reckless military provocation. But the Reuters article goes on to laud the effectiveness of propaganda loudspeakers as a means to bring "free ideas" to North Korea.

The US official requests may have, in part, been motivated by Putin's upcoming visit to North Korea expected to be tomorrow in some reports. There are also 2+2 talks slated to occur in Seoul between China and South Korean officials about the same time.

South Korea's loudspeakers face questions over reach into North

Still, for North Koreans who hear the South Korean messages or catchy K-pop tunes that are banned in the North, the broadcasts can have a significant psychological impact, Kim Sung-min said.

"These broadcasts play a role in instilling a yearning for the outside world, or in making them realize that the textbooks they have been taught from are incorrect," he said.

...

The angry North Korean reaction to the broadcasts also suggests the loudspeakers strike a nerve with the authoritarian country, said Steve Tharp, a retired U.S. Army officer who spent years working along the border.

"We know that the North Koreans find them partly effective because they have spent a lot of time getting them turned off," he said.

This is all bs. In fact, the use of loud noise in this political and military context is a weapon, a psychological weapon. It can be a form of psychological torture. Right wing thugs in South Korea, allegedly with a contact in the Yoon presidential office set themselves up outside former president Moon Jae-in's home not too long after Yoon took power, blasting the former president's residence and community with unacceptably loud noise broadcast in the immediate vicinity at all hours of day and night. A bogus claim of free speech was made in court to protect the harmful nuisance but was rejected allowing time and distance restrictions to be placed on the practice. Go figure. The content of the sound is completely immaterial as those subjected to it seek to escape the noise by any means possible, and if not suffer substantial mental duress from the physical intrusion of the noise into their sensory perception. It is sometimes labeled as low impact, allegedly leaving no signs of physical damage, yet very effective in causing distress.

I left out the sentence in the excerpt above about the two North Korean defectors saying they defected because they were influenced by the loudspeakers. The contention is not worthy of serious consideration for two reasons. First, defectors to South Korea say what that are told to say, by their intelligence minders. Second, even it if were true, is that worth it? Is it justified to place the lives of hundreds or thousands of people who may be injured, killed, or displaced by a military skirmish near the DMZ because the benefit might be that two persons from North Korea may take the chance to get shot at the Military Demarcation Line in a desperate bid for freedom? The contention is ridiculous on its face.

Thanks for the open thread EL. The historical references brought me back to some unlikely associations.

(edit- had to correct the name and quote in 2nd paragraph, shouldn't rely on my faulty memory).