/Links 6/9/19
UncategorizedJune 9, 2019

Links 6/9/19

Toxic PFAS Chemicals Found in Maine Farms Fertilized with Sewage Sludge The Intercept. I was saying just the other day that stuff was nasty.

Turns out there’s more plastic pollution in the deep ocean than the Great Pacific Garbage Patch USA Today

Quiet U.S. Fire Season May Get Active Later This Year Weather Underground

California Reckons With the Cost of Wildfires to Come NYT

A Strange Blight LRB

U.S. Economy Celebrates 10 Years of Growth, But No One’s Partying Bloomberg

Syraqistan

U.S. Ambassador to Israel: Israel has right to annex part of West Bank Jerusalem Post

Under Trump arms deal, high-tech U.S. bombs to be built in Saudi Arabia NBC

The seasons after the Arab Spring Le Monde Diplomatique

Brexit

UK’s Boris Johnson says would withhold Brexit bill as PM France24

Everything you think you know about Leavers and Remainers is wrong New Statesman

Michael Gove admits to taking cocaine on ‘several occasions’ Guardian

China?

Is It Too Late to Stop a New Cold War With China? NYT

China and the US are too intertwined to keep up the trade war FT

U.S. 7th Fleet Cruiser Ignores Rules At Sea – Nearly Collides With Russian Destroyer Moon of Alabama

Years of Warnings, Then Death and Disaster: How the Navy Failed Its Sailors Pro Publica. On the Seventh Fleet; re-upping this from Links, February 10, 2019.

India

India Readies for Delicate Trade Talks with US, as Shadow of Section 301 Probe Looms The Wire

India heatwave kills ‘dozens’ of people as temperatures hit 50C Independent

The Burning Sun scandal that torched South Korea’s elites The Interpreter

Why We Rushed to Believe Kim Executed His Own Officials The American Conservative

Korea’s Nine Years of Darkness: Part VI – The Candlelight Ask a Korean

Venezeula

U.S. failed in its policy against Venezuela: senior gov’t official Xinhua

Venezuela: Pompeo Exposes Frustration Over Opposition Divisions as China, Russia Call for Non-Interference Venezuelanalysis

Venezuela crisis: Border with Colombia reopens after four months BBC

New Cold War

Global Peace: Why a Major War Is Impossible in Modern International Relations Valdai Discussion Club

Is Russia Waking Up? The Nation

Trump Transition

Mexico crisis shows the limits of Trump’s brinksmanship Politico

Mexico Agreed to Take Border Actions Months Before Trump Announced Tariff Deal NYT

Ex-WTO chief Pascal Lamy calls Donald Trump’s migration deal with Mexico a win for ‘hostage taking’ South China Morning Post

FTC went to Silicon Valley to solicit antitrust complaints Politico

Three ways that Big Tech could be broken up FT

YouTube is deleting videos on Nazi history as part of its hate speech crackdown MIT Technology Review

Many Turn to YouTube for Children’s Content, News, How-To Lessons Pew Research Center. From 2018, still germane.

2020

Joe Biden Had A Very Bad Week HuffPo. Biden not doing so well in the invisible primary.

Boeing 737 MAX

Boeing turns to high-powered defense attorneys in 737 MAX investigation Seattle Times

FAA’s Boeing-Biased Officials: Recuse Yourselves or Resign Ralph Nader, Common Dreams

Vanguard raises ‘concerns’ with Boeing leaders over 737 FT. Boeing’s largest shareholder.

Some airlines want Boeing’s new ‘797′ to fly with just one pilot on board CNBC. What could go wrong?

The Corporate Debt Stories Show People Still Don’t Understand the Great Recession Dean Baker, CEPR

Class Warfare

Reining in CEO compensation and curbing the rise of inequality Economic Policy Institute

College admissions scandal shows ‘sacrifice matters less than money,’ prosecutors say Los Angeles Times

What 10,000 Steps Will Really Get You The Atlantic

‘Cultural Marxism’: The Mainstreaming of a Nazi Trope FAIR

The Underground Art of Prison Tattoos The Marshall Project

Arnaud Dubus – death of a foreign correspondent MediaPart (DK).

Antidote du Jour (via):

Bush

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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This entry was posted in Guest Post, Links on June 9, 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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