/Links 6/5/19
UncategorizedJune 5, 2019

Links 6/5/19

Researchers strapped video cameras on 16 cats and let them do their thing. Here’s what they found Science

Golden retriever named Mueller is mayor of Southern California town ABC. From before Mueller was Mueller.

The Dummy Company at the Heart of Deutsche Bank Money Laundering Probe ICIJ

CRA signs secret settlement with wealthy KPMG clients involved in offshore tax scheme CBC

The Wealth Detective Who Finds the Hidden Money of the Super Rich Bloomberg

US farmers’ borrowing boom is built on shaky land values FT

Intense Rainfall Is As Damaging to Crops As Heatwaves and Drought, and Climate Change Is Making It Worse Yale Environment360

China?

A Slower Economy. A Trade War. Now, China Faces Rising Food Prices. NYT

Charting China, the (not always) super power The Interpreter

Tiananmen Square – Do The Media Say What Really Happened? Moon of Alabama

Hong Kong keeps Tiananmen crackdown memory alive with ‘record-breaking’ mass vigil South China Morning Post

Ebola cases pass 2,000 as crisis escalates Nature

Superbugs in the Anthropocene Monthly Review

Venezuela

Venezuela Defaults on Gold Swap With Deutsche Bank Bloomberg

Venezuela’s oil exports drop 17% in May as sanctions kick in: data Reuters

Venezuela crisis: What happened to uprising against Maduro? BBC

Venezuela’s Two Presidents Collide The New Yorker

Russia’s Sovereign Internet Bill explained TechRadar

Syraqistan

Iran attacks US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin Duffel Blog

What war with Iran could look like Military Times.

Here’s Why California Pistachio Farmers Lobby for War (and Represent the Failures of Late-Stage Capitalism) Paste

The Incredible Disappearance of Shai Masot Craig Murray

May retail sales hit by ‘biggest slump on record‘ Sky News. In the UK.

Donald Trump says any US-UK trade deal has to include NHS FT. Trump says the quiet part out loud, as usual.

In the shadow of the Beast: Larry the Downing Street cat takes shelter under Donald Trump’s £1.2m armoured limousine Daily Mail

Trump Transition

Amassing War Powers, Bolton Rips a Page Out of Cheney’s Playbook The American Conservative

Michael Wolff’s ‘Siege’ Is Like His Last Book — But Worse Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

Dems won’t impeach Trump but can’t stop talking about it Politico

Democrats Blame Trump on Trade, But Avoid Their Own Concrete Proposals Bloomberg

Federal aid headed to Missouri, Kansas as disaster bill passes after weeks of delay McClatchy

Top tech executives will be asked to testify in U.S. probe Reuters

Recode Daily: Big Tech’s regulatory reckoning might finally be here Vox

News Media Alliance pushes for new Senate antitrust bill Roll Call

Hospitals Accused Of Paying Doctors Large Kickbacks In Quest For Patients KHN

Facebook shareholder revolt gets bloody: Powerless investors vote overwhelmingly to oust Mark Zuckerberg as chairman Business Insider

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

Your iPhone is staying busy while you’re sleeping Denver Post

This ID Scanner Company is Collecting Sensitive Data on Millions of Bargoers OneZero

Utah will test hidden technology that tries to find weapons among crowds at schools, stadiums and churches Salt Lake Tribune

‘I hope they make his life as miserable as possible.’ Parkland parents jeer former cop Scot Peterson after his arrest in school shooting Sun-Sentinel

Imperial Collapse Watch

Everyone acts like America is in decline. Let’s look at the numbers. WaPo

The Sum of All Beards The New Republic

F-35 Dogfight Accidentally Resulted in a Sky Penis, Officials Say Military.com

Against Advertising Jacobin

Class Warfare

Inequality in the US is at the root of the trade wars FT

Homelessness in L.A. is a catastrophe in motion, and our leaders are largely to blame Los Angeles Times

JPMorgan Chase Seeks to Prohibit Card Customers From Suing NYT

‘It Puts You Into a Process That Hugely Favors the Employer’ FAIR

How a quantum computer could break 2048-bit RSA encryption in 8 hours MIT Technology Review

How Technology Grows (a restatement of definite optimism) Dan Wang

Antidote du jour (via):

Alabama

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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This entry was posted in Guest Post, Links on June 5, 2019 by .

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered.
To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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