Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 41

More News.

Sad, but not surprising to see many people talking about the war in Afghanistan as having been failed by the American people who don't want war. Ah yes. Well at least this article here seems to be level headed. Some lines dedicated to how Pakistan funded the Taliban (none on why we didn't have to kick them out, could have focused on AQI, etc) but none on how you do put sanctions on such a fragile nuke holding country. Seriously.  How the mighty have fallen. Have the generals all bought in on the idea that they can actually have forever wars?And it talks about how Pakistan helped the jihadists in the 70s (essentially forcing the USSR to invade... whatever you may think of that invasion). But nothing of Carter and our role there? How about we stop funding fundies? Guess the fundies here at home have too much in common with them. 

Although much of the U.S. expenditures pertained to defense, the United States has ostensibly invested in other sectors of Afghan governance. As of June 30, the United States has spent about $144.98 billion in funds for reconstruction and related activities in Afghanistan since fiscal year 2002, including $88.61 billion for security (including $4.6 billion for counternarcotic initiatives); $36.29 billion for governance and development (including $4.37 billion for counternarcotic initiatives); $4.18 billion for humanitarian aid; and $15.91 billion for agency operations.

Although these numbers are staggering, much of U.S. investment did not stay in Afghanistan. Because of heavy reliance on a complex ecosystem of defense contractors, Washington banditry, and aid contractors, between 80 and 90 percent of outlays actually returned to the U.S. economy. Of the 10 to 20 percent of the contracts that remained in the country, the United States rarely cared about the efficacy of the initiative. Although corruption is rife in Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction repeatedly identifies bewildering corruption by U.S. firms and individuals working in Afghanistan.

The article, luckily looks at our own corruption, always way worse than Afghanistan's. 
So all this evidence and the article doesn't even attempt to look at the reason we were there, not the stated reason. Again, it was a money laundering operation and if we don't first go after the many rich contractors who were there, we will fail again and again. [1]

The United States walked out of Afghanistan in 1990 and made Pakistan the custodian of Afghanistan’s future. Today, it is repeating the same mistake. When the Taliban once again transform Afghanistan into a base of operations for modern Islamist terrorist organizations, Washington will only have itself to blame.

Lol, okay, I'll bet on no for that one. And, again, since they haven't come to the most obvious conclusion, that we were only ever there not to fight terrorism, but to use that as a cloak for money laundering, these morons can look at this evidence and think we need more of that to stop it. 
Naw. The corruption was deep seeded and had to be ended. And, again, we are not capable of anything else. Look at the grift all around you. You think we can build a country when we can't build up our own? Come on. Think. 
Then there's the new domino theory making the rounds. Taiwan and Korea are next!!! The scaremongering
Of course, those claiming we should do war because people suffering, then saying right away we shouldn't bring in refugees are a special kind of evil. I will say that the "Am 1st" types I know just want to kill brown people (usually by their own righteous fire rather than a civil war) but they usually don't say that out loud. Well some do now. 
Then there's this article on China's projects in Afghanistan. 

The Taliban doubtless recall that their own earlier minister of mining was in a meeting with a Chinese delegation in Kabul when the Sept. 11 attacks took place in 2001. Afghans in general been encouraged by the fact that the biggest putative bilateral investment projects in the country since the U.S. invaded have been Chinese.

Yeah, I would think they would want to get back to that, though the article mentions the Kabul government reneging on the deals with them and doesn't get into the minutia (did we pressure them to do so? What happened?) of that while claiming that China doesn't care. Seems like it would be free money, tbf, for them to open those projects up right away, and I'm guessing they will. 

Yet the two projects have since stalled, with the Afghan government taking back the Amu Darya concession, while Mes Aynak has become a byword for broken Chinese dreams in Kabul. 

Right. Article seems filled with wishful thinking. I think it falls into the category, of "don't worry, we're still the superpower, China can't do better than us" kind of article that some policy types share with each other to make themselves feel better, and also get $ from someone in State or DOD who wants to hear that. [2]

Hell, here's Chomsky with his view (from before the complete collapse, something he predicts here, as the ANA was known to end this way) which I really disagree with. I mean, I get where he's coming from, but just no. 
He wants us to ask the Afghani people if we should stay. And, hell, I suppose there's some moral validity in that, but I'm thinking, how do we find this out? 25% voted in the last election. Part of that is Taliban antics, but come on. And maybe the people of Kabul wanted us to stay, but is there any way to confirm this? 
Also, the Taliban had drawn down, while still gaining land (and not shooting US troops, which was part of the deal), over the past year or so. So why think us staying would have changed that at all? It would probably lead to more conflict. I'm really not getting his thinking here. 
Now it seems that on the face of it the Taliban can be pretty moderate (trying to get gov workers to stay etc) and less pol potish. Of course, there's the issue of  how they treat women, but it does seem like they're completely different from the previous Taliban. We'll see, of course (and ISIS at first did not seem completely horrendous), but I do know anything bad that happens under their watch will be blamed on those who wanted to pull out (like me), not those who siphoned money from this project (who will be asking for more to go back in). 
They are more "survivors of drone attacks" or "had relatives killed by the US" kind of people rather than hot headed students, so one can hope that there's a modicum of level-headedness, but they could also be more brutalized and thus of that ilk. We'll see (remember the likes of Pol Pot come out of bombings and being brutalized). [3]
All this depends on how much we decide to fuck with them too. Bombing, or running an insurgency there would heighten contradictions in that society and send them the brutal route (looking for snitches etc) if they haven't gone that way already. 
Again, if it's women or human rights we're discussing, then we can spend a trillion over 20 years in much better ways to improve that around the world. 
Also, don't worry, here at home the water will run out too. Maybe after the fires are done with our forests.





 
[1] And indeed, that's why so many are angry & you see almost a dumbeat (spelling correct there) that says we need to go back, every single atrocity is your fault, American people, for being so weak and not fighting more, is just them screaming for money.  not true. Deficit reduction when the people get too much money, not when corporations or rich people do. Same with foreign interventions. If they weren't getting rich they wouldn't care either.


[2] Which gets us to the other kind of article, hate on China. Sure, there is the issue of Han supremacy (this article still being the best one), and that should be called out where it can be, but anyone from the West talking in this language really needs to fix their own shit first, then we can talk. Still that first link seems solid and I think is worth looking into, though, again, your own and your allies' atrocities first. 
[3] Also I'm wondering how much all those peace talks in Doha have made the Taliban like the gilded life. Maybe they'll be just as corrupt. Maybe they want something like what the gulf states have going on. I'm guessing the previous iteration did not have this exposure. Let's see, I suppose. 
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Stabbed in the Back & the Real Deep State

Welp, looks like Kabul has fallen and the Taliban has taken over the Presidential Palace, the former leader has long fled the country. And now we wait and see the results. Once again, the people, to include vets over at r/military are pushing back on the narrative coming out of the MSM (and the foreign policy establishment), to include pointing at the finding that most generals have known for years that the Afghans didn't know how to fight and would fold like a cheap trick. 
And I'll admit I expected the Taliban to take over much of the country, but not this quickly. And I expected more of a fight to happen. Guess I was wrong. That the corruption went much deeper than even I thought. Now, this isn't to minimize the issue of our terps hurting (see this call for help, indeed some sad shit, though wasn't it Trump who made sure they couldn't come over easily?) or women [1] and how they'll be treated. cry for help for a terp. 


But, in the end, there was no one to fight (though since there was no fighting at all, I have to think that many ANA commanders had already made deals with the Taliban, nvm how corrupt many of the leaders were and who probably didn't pay or back up their soldiers). Hence the fleeing. 
Looks like someone who's claiming his troops are ready to fight has been told to stand down. Someone has a Swiss bank account to get to, stop fighting, you. 



troops feelingOf course, that still doesn't mean those who were meant to make money on this massive money laundering operation aren't going to go all in on "we were just gonna win" and "we were stabbed in the back", with the latter being one I fear will galvanize the right (though even the likes of Ann Coulter aren't biting and claiming this is smart by Biden). 
People trying to flee the country. Not an easy sight to take in. 


Still, the MSM [2] bangs this drum long enough and it will change a few minds for sure (with the task of making Biden look weak, when he's actually pretty fucking brave for doing this). I do hope he goes on the offensive and starts an audit. Let's see who really stabbed our nation in the back.[3] Who was paid (let's look at contractors etc etc) to train these people? Who was given money to build and did nothing? Track down the millionaires who made their 💵 from this war and you'll get them to shut up pretty quick IMO. 
Otherwise the stabbed in the back story will gain a lot of traction and empower our right wingers at far too much. Speaking of the American Taliban and their ilk here in the states (and why we should nation build here first, before trying it anywhere else). Here you have the cops basically allowing our own Taliban to do as they want. Great. 


And this isn't to say that we have a fight coming with eco-fascim (which will, in fact, take the face of the the likes of the Taliban, tbf, in many places around the world), but seeing which ones have power, here at home, and dealing with it there is the most important thing IMO. 
[1] Note that the crocodile tears the right or foreign policy est sheds for women should be looked on as the BS that it is. No one cares for Taliban's treatment of women. But if we're in the business of a in international women's power movement (nvm that we don't even have an ERA here at home), then, all right, let's discuss that and make that our goal in foreign policy. You won't hear much about this from many of these people though. 
[2] the closest thing we have to a deep state, the combination of foreign policy hawks, the lobbyists peddling influence (weapons manufacturers, contractors, gulf states, KSA, Israel etc) in DC and in the media and the list goes on. Note that This isn't the swamp that Trump ever even touch. 
[3] Another BS talking point making the rounds is that 3k troops would have made a difference. Note that we've been losing land to the Taliban for the past few years (where Trump increased bombings to a high level, one not seen for a long time). So why listen to these grifters... Also there's the new domino  theory that's dumber than the last one.  Ah, never stop grifting foreign establishment
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Afghanistan Gone.

Apparently, spending trillions of dollars doesn't get you even a single division that's willing to fight. Now here's a good article on the situation, the Ponzi scheme if you will. And even r/military isn't chomping at the bit, calling this the sunk cost fallacy rather than saying we should go back. Also here, most who were in that theater don't care. 
That being said, the news of atrocities etc will start tumbling in. Both because the Taliban are pretty fucking brutal, but also the elites want you to hear about these atrocities. The amount of people who could make money in this quagmire are many and they want more 💴. So things like this (from the elites, so far the people seem to have sense):
Are meant for other elites (and they will silence where they can). They will try to drum up support in DC because that's all they care about, money and blaming people for ending the war. Note that other atrocities they'll never fucking care about (and don't care about these, but they'll use them for their own ends). 
So it goes, but I Think the best reply is to start a complete investigation into how we spent trillions of dollars (on these contractors and weapons) and still don't have an army that's willing to fight for anything. Seriously, you pay someone to get a boxer to fight and you pay them well and they keep telling you, they're almost there, just a little bit of time etc etc and you finally say, well it's been 20 years, let's give it a try and he loses to some weakling, not even loses, just runs from the ring, you have to ask, what the fuck did I pay you for? Give me that money back. 
So in that sense I disagree with Juan Cole. It's not a Ponzi scheme so much as a straight up scam. Perfect for this age of grift, but instead of letting these fool try to scare us, we need to say, let's see what you claimed you did and claw back all of that money. From the contractors and billionaires and others as well. Well, I can dream, can't I?
But this mad dance of apes continues.  (not to mention that the corrupt Afghan gov never even tried to enter the peace talks until it was too late, and now they're rushing for the doors. Many, I'm guessing have fat bank account overseas.... I am truly saddened for the normal people who aren't rich and corrupt and have to stay)
And I should note that some of this offensive could change, but I'm guessing at best it stalls outside of certain areas like Kabul. 

Meanwhile, the above map has the internets buzzing. And yet CC keeps going and the bill passed in the Senate, certainly better than nothing, but damn is this some small ass minded shit as the world burns around us. When will someone say it's enough? And remember the size of the amount spent here at home vs in Afghanistan (and elsewhere). The dumb really goes hard in the paint, but someone's getting rich af.
On a side note, check out this movie, the art of un-war.  IG here. Might be in it, I think. Enjoy. 
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Stalin

Ended WWII. From all I've read, the evidence points to that, and not the bombs ending the war, even though, to this day, that's taught in most classes and is the general belief (myth history teacher taught the, it was used to try to intimidate Stalin theory). 
Funny thing, though, is that when you see the comments, people try all sorts ways to back up that evidence free general belief. Someone even linked a very good article on the radiation as a refutation, but it doesn't say anything that the original article gets at? Interesting times. 
Meanwhile, I'm still into the idea that people who've watched their parents or others die are so into the anti-vaxx theory that they still won't get the vax for Covid. I really do think it's new. 
Here in Seattle, meanwhile, the smoke threatens to hit us, though still only likely to get into the upper atmosphere. Be safe out there. 
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Homelessness

Here in Seattle, the aftermath of covid is apparent not so much in people still wearing masks, but the increase in homelessness. Tents have spread to many corners of the city where they never were. Slums, essentially. And indeed, here's a quick view from Portland. 

I close the door in their face.

I walk over sick bodies on the sidewalks.

I pick up mentally ill, medically fragile people in my vehicle and I leave them in unfamiliar pockets of the city.

I ignore the calls of help from a barely clothed man laying on the greenway, covered in his own waste. 

You see, I’m a bus driver in America.

I am ordered to not board people who are a possible biohazard, because it costs the company I work for $300 to trade buses on the road. I had an older man fall asleep on my bus early one morning and woke to find that he had wet himself. He apologized and left, embarrassed. What bus is going to get him back home for a fresh change of clothes? Is there someone he can call? Or will he just have to wait for his pants to dry enough that no one will notice?

We used to have state run hospitals and facilities that cared for people with mental illness and other various physical and cognitive disabilities. Those places also practiced eugenics and over medicated and abused their patients. There was a time when a husband could have his wife committed if she wouldn’t have sex with him, or didn’t keep up on the housework, or, you know, maybe he just wanted to spend more time with his mistress. Teens were committed for being “promiscuous” or not wanting to attend church with their family. 

Instead of creating safer, better facilities for these folks (the ones who actually needed help), we shut them down. Instead of changing the laws and requiring ACTUAL reasons to get help for a loved one, now we cannot do a thing. And no one is willing to help. 

So here I am. Driving a bus for someone who doesn’t know where to go, and booting them off when we get to the end of the line. Yet another unknown starting point of their day. 

That barely clothed man covered in feces? He was laying in the greenway of one of the many hospitals in the city. His hospital scrubs were stained brown and a wheelchair lay on its side just 3 feet from him. After he was wheeled out from the hospital to fend for himself, he watched as buses drove by every 7 minutes and hospital staff walked to and from work. Deep from his gut came emotions that I have never experienced in my life, as the one place that could help him had just publicly rejected him. 

So yes. I treat homeless people like shit. Society has written them off as non-humans, blocking our view of the scenery that we are entitled to. They shit on our sidewalks just outside our $3K a month lofts and it pisses us off. They disturb our happy hour of microbrews and tapas on the sidewalk patio. They don’t have to do anything specific, just being present ruins our appetites. The piles of trash along the freeways and sidewalks streets—they put it there because they have no sense of respect. 

Yo Yo Ma once said in an interview (I’m paraphrasing) that the worst thing that could happen to a human is the loss of one’s dignity.

We are all contributing to the overwhelming loss of dignity, and we need to open our eyes and recognize that something needs to change in America, and it needs to change fast! We need to demand this from ourselves, our neighbors, and all the way up to local, state and federal government.

We have seen exponential growth of homelessness and addiction, so many of that population should have been cared for since the beginning. But after all of the facilities have closed, we now see those faces on the streets and sleeping in bushes. Scores of others are joining those same ranks.

Without proper mental health resources, even folks who have a loving family who is doing their best to help, are left unchecked and lost to the streets. 

Every now and then I think I get a glimpse of my brother when I drive my bus through town. I want it to be him, because I haven’t seen him in years and I hope he’s okay. But I know I won’t say hi. This handsome, brilliant man who spent time in Africa helping HIV/AIDS patients and had plans for medical school, is now a scary, angry man who refuses help from anyone. There was once a time that he was arrested and got a 72 hour hold in the hospital. We all visited and his medication and brief moment of stability allowed him and I to have a conversation about our favorite authors and the different kinds of trees all over the world that we dreamed of seeing in person. 

But now, years after that big brother/little sister moment, he’s the reason our city isn’t pretty anymore. He’s the reason we are getting more rats in our $700K 2 bedroom houses. He’s the reason you can’t enjoy your Prosecco in the summer sun.

There's some self-flagellation from the center that you see (and I too participate in), but I do wonder if we can increase our mental health institutions in this country (or state) to help. I have seen some homeless people lately who do seem way more aggravated than before. inequality itself can cause that, but then what do you do to improve it? Right?
On that note, check out this bus driver's blog. Good stuff. 

I wouldn't call his presence intimidating; perhaps instead distinct. He was dressed trimly, in dark clothes that fit. Imagine approachable, thoughtful eyes, long dreads running the full length of his back, and that clean, blemish-free skin which makes guessing an age impossible. His confident bearing seeped out of his person in an uninsistent, many-splendored way no young person can realize. From that alone I guessed he had to be over forty. 

"Oh, come on," he said loudly, turning to me to add: "Tell him to put his mask on."

He was referring to the man in the back corner, also black American but younger, with a very different air: unbathed and unkempt, in a beanie and dirty green rain jacket, aloof, the dismissive pride in his slitted eyes offset by food particles in his beard.

I got on my microphone and said in my usual conflict-averse manner: "Alright, let's try to put our masks on if we have 'em."
Mr Dreads paraphrased me more directly, calling out: "Put your mask on!! You!!"
As Mr. Beanie continued staring blankly forward I added on the mic, "I'm talkin' to my buddy in the back–"
Who grudgingly acquiesced. "Okay, okay." He gave a condescending grin, his ego unable to give up the last word. Oh, egos.

It was the nonchalant attitude. The poorly calculated smirk. The man in the back found nothing worthwhile in virus protection and made that clear with his body language. He gave no sign of having much experience following directions or considering the needs of others. His shame was his lack of shame, his rock-solid beliefs that, from the outside, smacked of antipathy. 

More likely he felt, as a number of street folk I've talked to do, that the virus is a hoax and therefore no mask is necessary. This is different from ignorance due to party affiliation; my street people are either apolitical or progressive. It's not that they don't care about others. They feel short-shrifted by a society and government that clearly doesn't care for them, and has made endless false promises in the past. Why would they feel obliged to trust it now? Follow its rules now, after how it's handled them for so many years? Seattle's current government behaves towards its underclass as an abusive parent does its children. And if you have any sense at all, you know never to trust your abusive parent. Your body makes that decision for you. It's a reflex. 

That resistance combined with an untrained ego is what I imagined informed Mr. Beanie's decision to smirk, to put his mask only halfway up, leaving his nose exposed. Did he even know he was issuing a challenge?

2. Appearances

"Over your nose! Do you understand what the fuck this is? Three million dead!! My friend is in..." Mr. Dreads' righteous fury morphed into helpless, inchoate anger. His mouth twisted at the juncture of unformed words, gestures trailing into restless emptiness. It's a feeling shared by many Americans now: what words could I possibly find to bridge the gap so my views will get through, my views which are so obvious to me and so alien to the person– relative, parent, coworker– right in front of me? 

It is the sensation of helpless exhaustion. He collapsed in a chair up front, staring forward. 

Mr. Beanie: "Alright, alright!"
Mr. Dreads looked over. "Over your nose!!!"
Mr. Beanie adjusted the mask accordingly, before immediately letting it fall again. 

Our friend at the front exhaled. From within his own world, he exploded. The bus may have had ten-plus other (very white) riders, but only two men could speak now, and in this moment only one did. All could hear his words, spat forth in vehement despondency.
"GOD! I wish I could go one day, just one FUCKIN' day, without bein' ashamed to be black."

Perhaps you don't have to agree with his viewpoints, but the reporting seem solid to me. And his Taipei pics are brilliant. 
Speaking of pics, here are some joiners from me. Links to get the canvas or art prints here ( sunset joiner, Whidbey island joiner). Cloud centric, but you know how that is.  
Oh, and I was talking about the anti-vaxx movement around the world. Well here it is in Germany. A nurse giving saline solution instead of the vax to people. Hopefully prison for her. Too bad no GOPers will be going to jail for killing people. Funny how if you play the tune of white innocence/supremacy/grievance you get away with, if, say ISIS was doing what they did, what would be called bio terrorism. Would be something if they're posing as patriots and behind this entire thing. But it's probably some billis who have far too much money trying to push some dumb agenda. That and grifters. 
Here's a decent point about that. I too have met a million experts who try to talk in a denial of services manner (so much info you couldn't possibly go through it right then and there). That being said some of the takedowns of the anti vaxxers aren't that great either. And actually just saying "the experts say" is not always true when the experts disagree. Zeynep's takedown of the WHO is indicative of that. Experts in the world's leading public health institution (true it has been hollowed out) not saying it's aerosols. JFC.


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That Smell

Crazy times out there, think they're gonna get crazier, unfortunately. Apparently, deaths are ticking up higher than in April, which means that even though older people are vaxxed at a higher rate, the delta is taking out more than thought. 

Of course, I don't think this means we'll get to numbers as high as in at the start of the year, but still.  Just thinking about these numbers (especially around January) and I still sense the backlash hasn't been seen yet. I also wonder if the this anti-vaxx craziness has been seen before. When reading Defoe there was little people could do to prevent the plague. But now? The explanations are many. And it's not just in the states but places like France etc where people don't trust. 

Not that we don't have other issues to deal with. Lots of them. See the toxic sites above. They're everywhere. And we should clean them up, but naw. 
Also, there's the matter of our endless wars, or, going overseas in search of monsters. Good article. 
This aspect of Trump's so called "dovish" positions always gets to me. Good breakdown of what really happened (he just knew how to distract away from such things, which I'll always be in awe of):

Throughout his presidency, Trump was often misperceived as being an opponent of the War on Terror. He owed that reputation to his vocal derision of “stupid” Mideast wars. Yet in office he escalated the war dramatically, intensifying aerial bombing campaigns across multiple war zones, particularly in Somalia, where the war had never been fought as intensely as under Trump. One study, in December 2020, found that Trump’s accelerated bombing had increased civilian casualties in Afghanistan by 330 percent. Military commanders faced fewer operational restrictions and transparency obligations. In 2019 the president deployed an additional fourteen thousand U.S. troops to the Mideast as part of a pressure campaign against Iran, the War on Terror’s white whale, that culminated in the assassination of its senior security official. Every time Trump proposed withdrawal—even once declaring an ongoing war over—he ultimately acquiesced to the objections of the military leadership. Before sensibly suing for peace with the Taliban, he even doubled troop levels in Afghanistan, the Forever War theater he claimed to hate the most.

And yeah, I think this is spot on:

Trump understood something about the War on Terror that they did not. He recognized that the 9/11 era’s grotesque subtext—the perception of nonwhites as alien marauders, even as conquerors, from a hostile foreign civilization—was its engine. As much as Trump shifted his positions on this or that conflict, he never wavered on that crucial insight.

Such a crucial point into an aspect of Trump many continue to miss. [1] This article is full of hits, I'm telling you:

Yet it was beyond the limits of respectable discourse to blame the Forever War for giving birth to new generations of forever enemies. The agony of the war outlasted the enthusiasm of the political, media, cultural, and intellectual elites who had hailed it as the Great War of Our Time, a grand national, even civilizational crusade against… something Islamic that hated freedom, or at the very least hated America. In the early years after 9/11, they even treated the open-ended nature of the war as a virtue, a Kennedyesque challenge for a reunited America that was finished with the frivolity of the 1990s, something that could prove American could again accomplish anything, no matter how arduous the struggle.

This view into the war and how it was touted, then what it became, is spot on. Note how few wanted to say the war itself begot worse evils, though you definitely heard it here. 
This though, also needs to be said:

In retrospect, any failure—especially by the war’s architects, stewards, and chroniclers—to see that the War on Terror was seeding the ground for a figure like Trump testifies to the power of American exceptionalism, which is nothing more than white innocence applied globally.

Yeah, that and allowing that paranoia (rather than innocence, I would say) to stand in for reality and to allow it's power to torch the world. And though I agree with this, I'll say that that sentiment was defined early on for many racists in this country. 

Experiencing neither peace nor victory for such a sustained period was a volatile condition for millions of people. Trump knew how to explain such humiliations: The War on Terror was an enraging story of insufficient brutality wielded by untrustworthy elites. Those elites, he claimed, pretended that America was not at war with Islam, that it was not experiencing a foreign invasion, that it was not at risk, in the final analysis, of being itself lost. If America could not defeat its enemies abroad, there were so many here at home: Muslims, nonwhite immigrants, brown people from what Trump called “shithole” countries, queer and especially trans people, Black people, socialists, liberals, Jews.

Indeed, even I felt it in the military. Not that it was everywhere, but it was there and there was tension between that and the idea that a citizen should have been more than just white. 
Then there's this:

Trump did not hesitate to act on his insights. In the plague year of 2020, he maneuvered the War on Terror onto newer domestic frontiers. He declared followers of popular movements against fascism and for Black liberation to be terrorists. 

And again, Trump definitely took some of the ideas that were floating out there and used them to his own ends, but this was already being done but he likes of Bush (if you buy drugs you're helping the terrorists etc). 

[1] take, for example the vax issue. There's the matter of how trump seems unwilling to now tell people to take it. And sure, I think that will move the needle a bit, but Trump, even when he ordered a slight lockdown, immediately backpedaled when he saw his crazy base buck (those protests in MI etc). He was nothing more than a man jumping in front of a carnival, and one who knows how to empty their pockets. Again, note that he was all for the vax, but there were plenty who wouldn't take it anyways. (also there are a whole lot of people who simply don't trust the medical establishment, and with actual reasons, those in minority communities, and I wonder how many in rural communities hit by opioids are the same. No analysis has been done). 
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Olympics.

Anyhow, my take on the Olympics has always been that they are all pretty fucking impressive. Athletically, or whatever. Only met one person near that level (didn't qualify but actually went to trails) and they were monsters, physically speaking. So those who make it, let alone win have my utmost respect. Bears going at it. Politics, probably. Maybe a kind of olympic sport too
 
That being said, watch this family (Chenchen's) celebrate her gold. That dad is all heart. 
Meanwhile, this is how marathon swimmers get their drinks. Close to 2 hours of swimming. Impressive. 
And finally, to my point that just about everyone is impressive. Lookie at these synchronized swimmers:
Yeah, I'm not even sure I could do that for a few seconds. The physicality and training needed to get there is impressive (and young, dumb, me would have mocked synchronized swimming the first chance I had). 
Well, enough of looking at the physicality of the apes that we are. Let's look at the brain part. How's the FDA doing with its "not gonna approve the covid vaccine as the pandemic picks up" going, as well as the people backing them up?
WEll, look, our institution is broken and needs to be fixed. Note that even the author doesn't think abolishment is the choice. but if people (centrists?) think they are perfect they way they are and don't want to fix it or don't want negativity because the people who want to break the FDA even further will get what they want, well then they're missing something, or a lot. Shit needs to change. And I think Trump was right when he smacked (was it the FDA) them with a "approve or else" and they did cause it was that or doing it later after death by committee. 



As for the anthroprocene and climate change, given the boomers now trying to moderate (read end the world as we know it) whatever few baby steps we were making, well, we're not doing well people. That these senators are all being bribed says a few things about our system, none of it good. [1]
So if we get to 5.4C we are going to have mass extinction. We are the locusts and the Senate is holding us back:

AbstractClimate change is a critical factor affecting biodiversity. However, the quantitative relationship between temperature change and extinction is unclear. Here, we analyze magnitudes and rates of temperature change and extinction rates of marine fossils through the past 450 million years (Myr). The results show that both the rate and magnitude of temperature change are significantly positively correlated with the extinction rate of marine animals. Major mass extinctions in the Phanerozoic can be linked to thresholds in climate change (warming or cooling) that equate to magnitudes >5.2 °C and rates >10 °C/Myr. The significant relationship between temperature change and extinction still exists when we exclude the five largest mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic. Our findings predict that a temperature increase of 5.2 °C above the pre-industrial level at present rates of increase would likely result in mass extinction comparable to that of the major Phanerozoic events, even without other, non-climatic anthropogenic impacts. 

The genuine question, is how do we move forward? My point is call your senator or email them and have them get on the ball. Meanwhile liberals with blogs and twitter handles with check marks just whine (guess that's the ticket to 💵) and don't provide even one solution or say, hey let's try and call so and so and change their minds. Yeah, I get that there's a lot of ideology that wants an apocalypse in this country, but ffs, give it a fight. 
[1] Note there's a lot of blame to go around in the pandemic. Well, after you take 90% to blame trump for being an idiot and the anti-vaxxers, but this 10% is worth pondering. Many public health institutions fucked up by being too rigid. It's obvious that during a pandemic we can't have that and we need to move away from that. Again, look to the Asian institutions for how well they managed. Another thing is it seems that the FDA needs less rigidity and more ability to actually punish the snake oil salesmen. 

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Get your Covid Vaccine, Please.

So the anti-vaxxers have more of a hold on people's minds than I would think. Odd stuff. Apparently that Karen-Scream (I've seen this in leftist circles, and it's not a good look, apparently it's all in on the right too) has managed to even get the lyme disease vac shut down. Now that's dumb af. That being said, the FDA not giving the vax a go ahead seems dumb. 


That being said, it appears the most vulnerable are vaxxed and so the deaths won't be so bad this time around. 🤞
And that's not to say the only factor right now is right wing crazies not willing to be vaxxed no matter what (though polls seem to indicate that). Reaching working class people who haven't had time to get a vax seems to be an issue (and even for me it was a non-trivial issue trying to get 2 shots). Don't see a block to block van for vaxxes when there should be. 
Another thing is mistrust of those in power. 
IOW the same set of so called experts who said in 2008 that we just had to save Wall Street (then go quiet on saving Americans themselves) may, to the lay person, sound like the same people yapping about vaxxes. Or a host of other things. So it's easy enough to mistrust. 
At the same time, we have rising inequality and that tends to obscure things (see the above screenshot) while increasing mistrust in general. Why trust those in charge who have ruined things? 
Over at twitter you get the hate directed at Fox, and yeah, sure, that has some effect, no doubt (also FB), but I'm sensing there's more to it than that. As always, Fox would easily lose their audience if they didn't play to this. 
And twitter, with it's call and response tribalism, nvm it's complete lack of nuance, likes to grip into an idea and scream with it. If you even try to add a little nuance, you're on the other side. But it still drives the narrative elsewhere and that seems to be it. Fox News the only cause of anti-vax behavior. 
And the same goes for the analysis of Trump. Whatever he is (And if you've read me you know I think him useless), he doesn't have complete control of the GOP. they usually fall in line with him when they think he's found a good new tactic for something they wanted to do all along (tax cuts, voter suppression etc). Meanwhile, when he gets out of pocket, the powers that be pull away (infrastructure etc) and he is enough of a coward to back off. 
Bringing it back to the vax, that means that Trump getting it didn't move the needle much. No one attacks that aspect of him being the guy who saw the parade of fools and jumped in front of it to grift. 

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A vessel of forgotten languages

That's essentially me. I tried duolingo but  that shit was useless. But now I've found Mango languages. Except it's expensive, unless you do it through your library. Public Libraries to the fucking rescue, my friend. Seriously, highly recommended for all starting out with languages, and for me, a man restarting many languages, it's good for that too. 
btw, on a side note, people who want to talk to other humans, iTalki and Hellotalk are apparently good apps with which you can talk to people from other countries. Of course, you have to pay for those, but that makes sense. Enjoy!
Also, sad tale about mixed race people in Japan. Of course, I've been noticing a lot of anti-mixed stuff online here in the states. Odd eugenics arguments of purity. Not that I think there are some issues and there is a history, but the old (and racist new south stuff I heard in the south) picture of Muslim Brotherhood and the KKK marching for the same anti-race mixing stuff comes to mind. Now it seems that the purity claim is back on the menu and I find much of it laughable, mainly cause it portrays my existence (not only as white genocide) as impure in some way. Just look here. Seems like Japan is worse, though. 
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Time Machine.

In the 2010s or even mid-aughts, a few of the websites or companies behind those sites, we now despise (or at least I do). Certainly we distrust them. Or seen them fall to disrepair. But one site seems to have withstood the test of time. 
Wikipedia.  Of course, this site also has its issues, especially when it comes to more political entries (or even the rivalries for obscure ones), but I think it's a damn useful place to go to these days. Not that it's the end all resource. But, for example, take this entry on the Time of Troubles for Russia [1]. Lost a third of their population due to famine, and all because of a volcano (most likely) erupting in Peru. 
Also that there was a Polish occupation that made the chaos worse.  A lot of it having to do with the Catholic-Eastern Orthodox friction. 

Popular discontent had increased by early 1611, and many sought to end the Polish occupation. Polish and German mercenaries suppressed riots in Moscow from 17 to 19 March 1611, massacring 7,000 people and setting the city on fire

Huh, sounds occupier esque. 

Minin and Pozharsky entered Moscow in August 1612 when they learned that a 9,000-strong Polish army under hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz was on the way to lift the siege. On 1 September, the Battle of Moscow began; Chodkiewicz's forces reached the city, using cavalry attacks in the open and new tactics such as a mobile tabor fort. After early successes, Chodkiewicz's forces were driven from Moscow by Russian-aligned Don Cossack reinforcements. On 3 September, he launched another attack which reached the walls of the Kremlin; Moscow's narrow streets halted the movement of his troops, however, and he ordered a retreat after a Russian counter-attack.[10][11] On 22 September 1612, the Poles and Lithuanians exterminated the population of Vologda; many other cities were also devastated or weakened.[10] Although the Russian victory in the Battle of Moscow secured the city, the Polish garrison in the Kremlin remained until it ran out of supplies and capitulated on 7 November; news of the capitulation reached Sigismund at Volokolamsk, less than 30 kilometres (19 mi) away, the following day. Sigismund, on his way to assist the garrison, stopped and returned to Poland.

Damn that sounds like quite the fight, tbf. This all sets up the Romanovs to rule Russia for a few centuries, until their end at the October revolution. 

The Zemsky Sobor elected Michael Romanov, the 16-year-old son of Patriarch Filaret of Moscow, tsar of Russia on 21 February 1613; his election is generally considered to end the Time of Troubles. Romanov was connected by marriage with the Rurikids, and reportedly had been saved from his enemies by the heroic peasant Ivan Susanin. After he took power, Romanov ordered False Dmitry II's three-year-old son hanged and reportedly had Marina Mniszech strangled to death in prison.

Sounds like some brutal ways, but if that's the only way to secure power, that's what people will do. 
What gets me, though, is how the mini ice age was caused and the famine it self. Note that the weak leader comes into power in 1584, and whatever labels are assigned him, it's the famine, something out of anyone's control, that really sets things off. It seems that this itself is what caused people to 

Russia experienced a famine from 1601 to 1603 after extremely poor harvests, with nighttime temperatures in the summer months often below freezing.[3] The famine is believed to have been caused by the Little Ice Age, also a cause of the General Crisis; a probable cause of the Little Ice Age was the eruption of Huaynaputina in Peru in 1600.[4][5][6]Mass starvation led to the death of about two million Russians, one-third of the population. The government distributed money and food to poor people in Moscow, leading to refugees flooding into the capital and increasing economic disorganization. Rural districts were desolated by famine and plague.

That volcano eruption was one of the worse, and in the immediate area was devastating, never mind the little ice age it caused to parts of the world:

on 19 February 1600 – the largest eruption ever recorded in South America – which continued with a series of events into March. Witnessed by people in the city of Arequipa, it killed at least 1,000–1,500 people in the region, wiped out vegetation, buried the surrounding area with 2 metres (7 ft) of volcanic rock and damaged infrastructure and economic resources. The eruption had a significant impact on Earth's climate: temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere decreased; cold waves hit parts of Europe, Asia and the Americas; and the climate disruption may have played a role in the onset of the Little Ice Age. Floods, famines, and social upheavals resulted. This eruption has been computed to measure 6 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI)

Important stuff to chew on, especially in our climate age is gearing up moment of human history. What's interesting is that Godunov is not looked with much fondness, even if his rule was prudent [2] (nevermind the serfdom). Still his entire entry doesn't once mention the famine that killed 1/3 of Russians. How? he dies of a lengthy illness in 1605? Was it stress from seeing such turmoil or something else? 
Anyhow, that seems to be something else I need to read into this issue, besides the Victorian Holocausts I have been reading on my kindle. A massive amount of death caused by colonial handling (and apathy) of bad weather patterns which did cause a shortage of food (didn't have to lead to that much death though). 

Oh, and the Taliban are increasing their grip on Afghanistan. I suppose it was all inevitable. 
But I digress. Just as the famine caused by weather changes from a volcano seems to be underplayed (overshadowed by human intentions or drive) in the above article (of Godunov) and also in many stories told these days, so too the financial aspect of life. This goes for my own novels which don't even dare mention what the fed or what the financial sector, or where the free money spigot is being pointed is doing with regards to any tale in America post 2008 (pre too, but post was in your face obvious). And that's a lot of my writing and novels. 
To that end, read this piece on Tunisia and how the IMF is squeezing that country into nothing.

This summer, eliminating bread subsidies is on the table again as the Tunisian government negotiates for a $4 billion loan from the IMF, the fourth in ten years. 

Gee, I wonder why the Arab Spring there didn't work out. Maybe the powers that be don't want it to work out... But that being said, how a country gets loans and from whom matters a lot. And it affects the daily bread, so to speak. 
And with Covid hitting and exposing many medical sectors as weak or malnourished, people will have to ask those questions (more on the obvious incompetence in Tunisia over Covid... wonder if we'll see such a reaction, though we didn't against the worst incompetence last year). 

Discussions about bread in Tunisia run seamlessly into discussions about other goods and public services like hospitals and schools. Tunisia’s current wave of Covid-19 – its worst yet, with a record 9823 new cases on 7 July, in a population of 12 million – exposes the neglect of the health sector, which only receives 6 per cent of the budget. Debt repayment is allocated 36 per cent.

Do you know what power is? That's what it is. Fuck you pay me. Again, there are still protests and riots all over the world against various corrupt and vile regimes. 

But the anger went deeper, rooted in dissatisfaction with a stagnant economy, rising living costs, and parliamentarians who seem to be concerned only with squabbling among themselves and lining their pockets, rather than improving the lives of Tunisians.

That being said, such anger can easily be used by the Wiley for their own ends:

‘This is a coup,’ Saida Ounissi, an Ennahdha MP, told me. ‘There is a rotten political situation that has created popular anger and the president has surfed on this for his own objectives.

This finance is part of this story (and, unfortunately, I don't see good guys hardly anywhere) and probably many more. Like the weather, it affects people in ways that are not usually seen (a complete lack of it, like a famine, will be obvious, but other effects won't be). Again, I need to write more and better about this. 


 [1] Not that Brittanica is a slouch either
[2] His policy was generally pacific and always prudent. In 1595, he recovered from Sweden some towns lost during the former reign. Five years previously he had defeated a Tatar raid upon Moscow, for which he received the title of Konyushy, an obsolete dignity even higher than that of Boyar. He supported an anti-Turkish faction in the Crimea and gave the Khan subsidies in his war against the sultan.

Godunov encouraged English merchants to trade with Russia by exempting them from duties. He built towns and fortresses along the north-eastern and south-eastern borders of Russia to keep the Tatar and Finnic tribes in order. These included Samara, Saratov, Voronezh, and Tsaritsyn, as well as other lesser towns. He colonized Siberia with scores of new settlements, including Tobolsk.

During his rule, the Russian Orthodox Church received its patriarchate, placing it on an equal footing with the ancient Eastern churches and freeing it from the influence of the Patriarch of Constantinople. This pleased the Tsar, as Feodor took a great interest in church affairs.

In Godunov's most important domestic reform, a 1597 decree forbade peasants to transfer from one landowner to another (which they had been free to do each year around Saint George's Day in November), thus binding them to the soil. This ordinance aimed to secure revenue, but it led to the institution of serfdom in its most oppressive form.[4] (See also Serfdom in Russia.)

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