Catch Up on the Iranian/US Problem

On this day:

763 BC
Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology of Mesopotamian history.
1215
King John of England puts his seal to the Magna Carta.
1389
Battle of Kosovo: The Ottoman Empire defeats Serbs and Bosnians.
1667
The first human blood transfusion is administered by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys.
1752
Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity (traditional date, the exact date is unknown).
1775
American Revolutionary War: George Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
1785
Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, co-pilot of the first-ever manned flight (1783), and his companion, Pierre Romain, become the first-ever casualties of an air crash when their hot air balloon explodes during their attempt to cross the English Channel.
1896
The deadliest tsunami in Japan’s history kills more than 22,000 people.
1919
John Alcock and Arthur Brown complete the first nonstop transatlantic flight when they reach Clifden, County Galway, Ireland.
1985
Rembrandt’s painting Danaë is attacked by a man (later judged insane) who throws sulfuric acid on the canvas and cuts it twice with a knife.
1996
The Provisional Irish Republican Army explodes a large bomb in the middle of Manchester, England.
2002
Near-Earth asteroid 2002 MN misses the Earth by 75000 mi, about one-third of the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

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What used to be envy has been chewed upon by unoccupied academic minds and has become a philosophy

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A new study published in the journal Current Biology recently found that octopuses can learn how to use mirrors to locate food hidden from view in an impressive feat of spatial thinking never before observed in invertebrates.

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Carolina Hurricanes captain Jordan Staal was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy for most valuable player in the Stanley Cup playoffs, becoming the oldest player to win it at age 37.

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A "Memorandum of Understanding." A "Framework." Huh?

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Catch Up on the Iranian/US Problem

It is difficult to get any informative news from the US that is not ludicrously laden with righteous bias. Here are some opinions from the BBC, which may have no more value than US news. But the beliefs are surprising and, if untrue, just more international nonsense highlighting the universal mendacity of the makers of war and opinion. But if true...

1. Israel does not want the Middle East fighting to stop, and its attacks on Lebanon are intentionally provocative and disruptive.

2. The U.S. is the country that is constantly changing the rules and discussion, not Iran.  

3. The objective of the current discussions is to open the Straits and create a nonbelligerent environment for further discussions regarding the nuclear ambitions of Iran. If agreed to, the Straits will open, and the negotiating conditions will return to the way they were before the US attacked. Nothing more. So the objective of the talks is to create the pre-attack conditions.

These ideas are certainly contrary to what is being said in the US.

Sunday/Tension at the Abyss

 On this day:

1645
English Civil War: Battle of Naseby – 12,000 Royalist forces are beaten by 15,000 Parliamentarian soldiers.
1775
American Revolutionary War: the Continental Army is established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the United States Army.
1789
Mutiny on the Bounty: Bounty mutiny survivors including Captain William Bligh and 18 others reach Timor after a nearly 7,400 km journey in an open boat.
1800
The French Army of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo in Northern Italy and re-conquers Italy.
1807
Emperor Napoleon I’s French Grande Armee defeats the Russian Army at the Battle of Friedland in Poland (modern Russian Kaliningrad Oblast) ending the War of the Fourth Coalition.
1830
Beginning of the French colonization of Algeria: 34,000 French soldiers begin their invasion of Algiers, landing 27 kilometers west at Sidi Fredj.
1846
Bear Flag Revolt begins – Anglo settlers in Sonoma, California, start a rebellion against Mexico and proclaim the California Republic.
1940
The Soviet Union presents an ultimatum to Lithuania resulting in Lithuanian loss of independence.
1940
World War II: Paris falls under German occupation, and Allied forces retreat.
1941
June deportation, the first major wave of Soviet mass deportations and murder of Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, begins.
1947
Roswell UFO incident: A supposed UFO crashes in Roswell, New Mexico

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Disagreements and protests are inherent to freedom and democracy. But are confrontations inherent to democracy?  Aren't elections the alternative to confrontation?

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CNN reporter Christine Amanpour stated she was fearful to visit the U.S. to speak at Harvard, comparing her anxiety to that of visiting North Korea. Does that kind of judgment disqualify her opinions elsewhere?

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Sunday/Tension at the Abyss

There is worry in the writings today, worry over the desperation of mankind.

The gospel opens with, "At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd." 

Christ creates the solution, the Apostles' mission is to go among the people of Israel so, as the Old Testament message in the desert says, "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”
He is specific, strangely tribal. “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

Does he change his mind with time? Is he giving Israel the free choice, only to move on to include the Gentiles?

Paul makes Christ's decision very personal.

"Christ, while we were still helpless,
yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps for a good person
one might even find courage to die.
But God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us."

 

SatStats

On this day:
1525
Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, against the celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for priests and nuns.
1966
The United States Supreme Court rules in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.
1983
Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune (the furthest planet from the Sun at the time).

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“Sick of his arrogance and Trump-like condescension to the media he begs for money to every time he gets fired!” --Jimmy Murphy on Tortorella, bringing what everyone wants in sports: more politics.

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Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard is revealing new evidence of longstanding United States government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries.

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Smith then inquired into the causes of wealth. He didn’t inquire into the causes of poverty. Smith understood that poverty is humanity’s default mode. Nearly all people before Smith’s time — and still most people during his time — were mired in poverty. Poverty is simply the condition we suffer when wealth isn’t created. Wealth, not poverty, demands explanation because wealth, not poverty, has causes.--Post


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SatStats

Among 70-year-old men, roughly 40 percent show loss of Y in their blood cells, and among 93-year-olds, that number rises to 57 percent.

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The middle class is shrinking, but so is the proportion of Americans below the middle class — because the upper-middle class is growing. As of 2022, they report, the share of wealth held by the middle class had fallen to 8% from 24% in 1989, while the share held by the top 3% rose from 26% in 1989 to 53% in 2022.

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“No child deaths have been definitively linked to Covid vaccines, according to a report from the FDA that was quietly made public.”

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Albert Einstein’s estate was worth just $65,000 when he died.

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A study by GCheck found that, faced with anxiety about how automation could impact job security, 63% of 1,500 workers surveyed reported that they exaggerate their AI skills to appear more up-to-date. That number shot up to 80% among Gen Z workers as the tech threatens early-career and entry-level roles more drastically.

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Wind and solar generated more electricity than gas globally for the first month ever in April 2026, according to data analysed by global energy think tank Ember. Together, wind and solar generated 22% of global electricity in April 2026, compared with 20% from gas.

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New York City’s $125 billion budget is that it is bigger than the $115 billion expected to be spent this year by the entire state of Florida. New York City has 8.5 million people; the state of Florida has 23.6 million.

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Swedish intel on Russia

 While Russia has claimed GDP expanded by about 13% between 2020 and 2024, Sweden’s analysis of nighttime luminosity suggests the economy actually shrank by 8% during that span.

Moscow has also lowballed inflation substantially, according to Stenergard, who pointed out that Russia’s official inflation figure in 2024 was 10% while the central bank hiked interest rates to 21% that year.

Similarly, Sweden’s military intelligence chief has estimated that today’s inflation is likely closer to the current benchmark borrowing cost of 15% than the government’s official reading of 5.2%.

“This would mean Russia is overstating its purchasing power, and that its military spending capacity is weaker than it appears,” Stenergard wrote.

But Swedish intelligence believes Russia would need the average price for Urals oil to stay above $100 a barrel for the rest of the year to provide a meaningful benefit to the government’s finances,

At the same time, more advanced Ukrainian drones with longer ranges have evaded air defenses and attacked Russian oil export terminals, limiting the gains from higher oil prices.

Ukraine has been making battlefield gains in recent months and has inflicted 1.2 million casualties on Russia since the war started, with new recruits increasingly difficult to find.

“Russia’s economy, in nominal terms, is barely bigger than the State of New York’s, smaller than that of Texas and fragile,” she said. 

Putin’s approval rate has fallen to 65.6% from 77.8% at the start of the year and prewar levels well above 80%.

Inflationary pressures will persist for years amid a demographic downturn, military mobilizations, and the high demand for labor in the defense industry.

Russia’s government has estimated the workforce will need 3.1 million more workers by 2030, according to Interfax. And in the next five years, the total shortfall will hit 11 million jobs when including a ramp-up in retirement.

Insincerity Olympics #1

On this day:
1429
Hundred Years’ War: Joan of Arc leads the French army in their capture of the city and the English commander, William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk in the second day of the Battle of Jargeau.
1775
American Revolution: British general Thomas Gage declares martial law in Massachusetts. The British offer a pardon to all colonists who lay down their arms. There would be only two exceptions to the amnesty: Samuel Adams and John Hancock, if captured, were to be hanged.
1776
The Virginia Declaration of Rights is adopted.
1967
Venera program: Venera 4 is launched (it will become the first space probe to enter another planet’s atmosphere and successfully return data).
1994
Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are murdered outside her home in Los Angeles, California. O.J. Simpson is later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable in wrongful death civil suit.

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It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry--Thomas Paine

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The American politician meets the rug merchant. In the Middle East, the West has met a culture as cynical and mendacious as its own.

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A new contest: Draw your own cartoon to fit the caption!
"Hmm. Well, I''ll see your MMA Markwayne, and raise you a Nazi."

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The fighting in Ukraine has ground on for longer than the First World War.

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Israeli firm BlackCore, suspected of interfering in France's local elections in March, is also suspected of meddling in elections ‌in New York City and Scotland, and operating in Angola and Togo, France's disinformation detection service, Viginum, said on Thursday.

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Insincerity Olympics #1

The dichotomy between what the world's elite demand of us and what they do continues at breakneck speed. But in our world, where the only guy who is not a Nazi is the guy who says he is one, and has a tattoo to prove it, nothing is real or meaningful.

You can bet your bitcoin on it.

The world’s largest banks committed $906bn in financing to the fossil fuel industry last year, an “unfathomable” increase in investment locking in years more of coal, oil and gas production as the world continues to overheat, a new report has found.

The surge in new fossil fuel lending, up $64bn or nearly 8% on 2024, shows that the world’s largest 65 banks are making decisions incompatible with international agreements to restrain rising global temperatures, according to the coalition of environmental groups behind the new analysis.

But the development of AI is incompatible with those pronouncements, too. And AI  promises wealth and power. acrifices will have to be made.

JPMorgan Chase is again the world’s leading financier of fossil fuels, according to the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, after pushing $58bn to the sector last year – up 13% from 2024.

In 2015, countries agreed in the Paris climate deal to strive to avoid breaching 1.5 °C of global heating above preindustrial levels, beyond which the world is said to suffer ever more ruinous heatwaves, floods, droughts, and other climate-fueled disasters.

Avoiding such a threshold would require the near elimination of planet-heating emissions from fossil fuel production. Since the Paris agreement, however, the world’s largest banks have funnelled $8.7tn to the fossil fuel industry to dig and drill for more coal, oil, and gas.

Scientists now predict that the 1.5C limit will be breached imminently, with a recent string of record-hot years set to be surpassed this decade.

Last year, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a UN-backed scheme that aimed to align banks’ lending with a net-zero-emissions scenario by 2050, was disbanded after several high-profile departures from its membership.

“We’ve seen a lot of banks turn their back either quietly or more loudly amid a context of political pressure, particularly in the US,” said Lusiani.

He added: “The era of voluntary commitments has not worked at the scale that we need and so this points to a much more active role for financial regulators, legislators and policymakers, especially in those big six financial centers.”

The guys who can't run a charity want to run the world. But of the myriad of motives available, our betterment is not one of them.

Spiting Your Face in New York

 On this day:

1190
Third Crusade: Frederick I Barbarossa drowns in the river Saleph while leading an army to Jerusalem.
1793
French Revolution: Following the arrests of Girondin leaders, the Jacobins gain control of the Committee of Public Safety, installing the revolutionary dictatorship.
2003
The Spirit Rover is launched, beginning NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission.

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Is charity with borrowed money morally superior to self-indulgence with borrowed money?

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Is the SPLC a Reichstag Fire organization funded with tax-deductible contributions for the purpose of fighting political opponents through de-banking, government defunding, and prejudice?

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Let me in out of the rain, dude, or I'll kill you?

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The Platner nomination must mean something.

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Spiting Your Face in New York

Trump was on the way to Game 3 of the NBA Championship, with the executive order in his pocket. He was excited. The President can't be above everything. After all, the Knicks hadn't won a championship in over 40 years. And the Spurs had won 5 in the last 25. Talk about inequality!!!

Of course, the Constitution doesn't mention the NBA; that gave him some leeway--if it's a living document and all. And the success of the Spurs and the failures of the Knicks is worth something--maybe a reparations argument. 

New Yorkers had suffered some tough times, and with goofy Mamdani, more were coming; they needed a win. He stepped out of the limo.

Later that night, in an interview with FOX News, a Trump spiritual advisor explained, "Yeah, he was gonna give the Knicks 10 points by executive order, but when the fans booed him, he got pissed and bagged it."

With the final score Spurs 115--Knicks 111, those ten points would have made all the difference. 

Getting Into the Henhouse

On this day:
53
Roman Emperor Nero marries Claudia Octavia.
62
Claudia Octavia is executed.
68
Roman Emperor Nero commits suicide after quoting Homer’s Iliad, thus ending the Julio-Claudian Dynasty and ushering in the civil year known as the Year of the Four Emperors.
721
Odo of Aquitaine defeats the Moors in the Battle of Toulouse.
1924
In the second attempt to climb Mount Everest, George Mallory and Andrew “Sandy” Irvine disappear, possibly having first made it to the top.
1973
Secretariat wins the Triple Crown.

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This nation must be taken seriously because it is powerful. It used to be taken seriously because it was virtuous.

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A remarkable story out of Russia. A Moscow-based disinformation network named “Pravda” — the Russian word for “truth” — is pursuing an ambitious strategy by deliberately infiltrating the retrieved data of artificial intelligence chatbots, publishing false claims and propaganda for the purpose of affecting the responses of AI models on topics in the news rather than by targeting human readers, NewsGuard has confirmed. By flooding search results and web crawlers with pro-Kremlin falsehoods, the network is distorting how large language models process and present news and information. The result: Massive amounts of Russian propaganda — 3,600,000 articles in 2024 — are now incorporated in the outputs of Western AI systems, infecting their responses with false claims and propaganda.

This infection of Western chatbots was foreshadowed in a talk that American fugitive-turned-Moscow-based propagandist John Mark Dougan gave in Moscow in January at a conference of Russian officials, when he told them, “By pushing these Russian narratives from the Russian perspective, we can actually change worldwide AI.”

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Take a single sheet of ordinary paper, about a tenth of a millimetre thick. Fold it in half, and it is twice as thick. Fold it again, and it is four times as thick, then eight, then sixteen. Keep going in the mathematical ideal, and by the forty-second fold, the stack would be tall enough to reach the Moon.

It would save a lot of fuel.

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Admitted serial rapist and former National Football League champion Darren Sharper has been transferred from federal prison to a halfway house program.

All better.

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WSJ's opinion of Trump's 'autocratic-like spread' of his image:

"This sort of leader-worship is common among autocrats. In Cuba, Vietnam, and China, images of Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Zedong have long been present in government buildings, schools and private businesses. (Not to mention T-shirts and key chains for despot tourist kitsch.) In North Korea, citizens are expected to hang pictures of Kim Jong Un in their homes. 

Sober observers of our democracy note that these mundane flights of Mr. Trump’s ego don’t rise to the level of consequential decisions on policy or foreign affairs. But they are assaults on the country’s character as a republic born from distrust of monarchical grandiosity."

Assaults on the country's character. And they encourage the use of an old word that real autocracies don't allow: tasteless. With any luck, it might bring back another near-extinct word: shame.

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Getting Into the Henhouse


What is it that makes the Left pursue policies that have been proven to be the enemies of individual and societal success and freedom everywhere they've been applied? Dependence, economic need, and social division are not the consequences of Leftist policies; they are the objectives.

How could anyone who hides Biden's infirmities, appoints --appoints!--Harris as a presidential candidate, or offers Platner as a senator, pretend they have the betterment of the citizens and their country in mind?

They do not; they have their own political well-being and their personal and economic rewards in mind. Theirs is a very small window overlooking a small terrain.

And how could anyone accept that the argument above is true, but that their opposition party has fewer of these characteristics and so deserves support?

These are not lady-and-tiger choices; they are baboon-and-mandrill choices.

Assault on the Liberty

 

On this day:

793
Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of the Scandinavian invasion of England.
1794
Robespierre inaugurates the French Revolution’s new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, with large, organized festivals all across France.
1967
Six-Day War: The USS Liberty "incident" occurs, killing 34 and wounding 171
1972
Vietnam War: Associated Press photographer Nick Ut takes his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a naked 9-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc running down a road after being burned by napalm.

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Agroterrorism is a subdivision of bioweapons. Aside from its anti-human savagery, it is a metaphor for the power of the individual, like drones, a dark side of the Enlightenment's legacy, which emphasizes the tension between freedom and virtue.

The thoughtful well-poisoner expresses himself.

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Improvements in aggregate tax competitiveness are positively and significantly associated with real GDP per capita growth, and this association is robust to a wide range of controls. (From a paper with a deep dive into the obvious.)

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If a nation is unable to define itself, what is it?

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More than 20,000 people are currently working on AGI — artificial general intelligence — while fewer than 200 are focused specifically on AI safety.

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Ceasefire episodes broke out in the Middle East.

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How did Platner get picked for this job? Who did that? Does he really represent the Dems? Even if his deficits are ignored, can anyone be enthusiastic about him? Or has American politics become some weird parallel universe dominated by a black hole of power distribution benefiting a sliver of avaricious iconoclasts?

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Assault on the Liberty

Every so often, the political animal shows its stripes. And national ambition will always trump friendship. Something like this story always gives a little context, although this is more than an insight into America's friendships, it is an insight into its leadership.

Most of this is from St. Clair's summary of "Assault on the Liberty," a first-hand account by James Ennes Jr. whose book of the event is a hair-raising story of betrayal by America's presumed friends and its own leadership. On this day in history, June 8, 1967.

In early June of 1967, at the onset of the Six-Day War, the Pentagon sent the USS Liberty from Spain into international waters off the coast of Gaza to monitor the progress of Israel’s attack on the Arab states. The Liberty was a lightly armed surveillance ship.

Only hours after the Liberty arrived, it was spotted by the Israeli military. The IDF sent out reconnaissance planes to identify the ship. They made eight trips over three hours. The Liberty flew a large US flag and was easily recognizable as an American vessel.

An easily identified, lightly armed American surveillance ship in international waters.

Soon, more planes came. These were Israeli Mirage III fighters. As off-duty officers sunbathed on the deck, the fighters opened fire on the defenseless ship with rockets and machine guns.

A few minutes later, a second wave of planes streaked overhead, French-built Mystere jets, which pelted the ship with gunfire and napalm bomblets, coating the deck with the flaming jelly. By now, the Liberty was on fire, and dozens were wounded and killed, excluding several of the ship’s top officers.

The Liberty’s radio team tried to issue a distress call, but discovered the frequencies had been jammed by the Israeli planes with what one communications specialist called “a buzzsaw sound.” Finally, an open channel was found, and the Liberty got out a message to the USS America, the Sixth Fleet’s large aircraft carrier, that it was under attack
Two F-4s left the carrier to come to the Liberty’s aid. Apparently, the jets were armed only with nuclear weapons. When word reached the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara became irate and ordered the jets to return. “Tell the Sixth Fleet to get those aircraft back immediately,” he barked. The planes turned around. And the attack on the Liberty continued.

After the Israeli fighter jets had emptied their arsenal of rockets, three Israeli attack boats approached the Liberty. Two torpedoes were launched at the crippled ship, one tore a 40-foot wide hole in the hull, flooding the lower compartments, and killing more than a dozen American sailors.

As the Liberty listed in the choppy seas, its deck aflame, crew members dropped life rafts into the water and prepared to scuttle the ship. Given the number of wounded, this was going to be a dangerous operation. But it soon proved impossible, as the Israeli attack boats strafed the rafts with machine gunfire. 

Strafed the life rafts.

Nobody was going to get out alive that way. 

After more than two hours of unremitting assault, the Israelis finally halted their attack. One of the torpedo boats approached the Liberty. An officer asked in English over a bullhorn: “Do you need any help?”
The wounded commander of the Liberty, Lt. William McGonagle, instructed the quartermaster to respond emphatically: “Fuck you.”
The Israeli boat turned and left.

A Soviet destroyer responded before the US Navy, even though a US submarine, on a covert mission, was apparently in the area and had monitored the attack. The Soviet ship reached the Liberty six hours before the USS Davis. The captain of the Soviet ship offered his aid, but the Liberty’s conning officer refused.

The Russians offered help first.

Finally, 16 hours after the attack, two US destroyers reached the Liberty. By that time, 34 US sailors were dead and 174 were injured, many seriously. As the wounded were being evacuated, an officer with the Office of Naval Intelligence instructed the men not to talk about their ordeal with the press.

The following morning, Israel launched a surprise invasion of Syria, breaching the new cease-fire agreement and seizing control of the Golan Heights.

Within three weeks, the Navy put out a 700-page report, exonerating the Israelis, claiming the attack had been accidental and that the Israelis had pulled back as soon as they realized their mistake. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara suggested the whole affair should be forgotten. “These errors do occur,” McNamara concluded.

The Children of Israel are never alone. But sometimes it's hard to see why.