Christianity Archives - The Automatic Earth

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Not ideal. But Iran with nukes is worse.

• Massive Escalation: Iran Sends Ballistic Missile Salvo On Jordan Bases (ZH)

State Tasnim reports: Iran has launched missiles at targets in response to US strikes, while unofficial sources cited by Tasnim noted that explosions were heard in Jordan following Iranian missile attacks. The below brief recap shows this new flare-up and tit-for-tat came in rapid succession… Senior US officials to FOX:

“US military has struck targets near Kharg Island and Jask. The targets include Iranian oil tankers. This is part of a larger effort to squeeze Iran economically. The strategy includes sinking and disabling Iranian crude oil tankers. -FOX” How many Patriot interceptor missiles are being plowed through this time? More unverified but widely circulating images out of the region overnight:
https://twitter.com/MoloWarMonitor/status/2097442661141455233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2097442661141455233%7Ctwgr%5Efd1370ed7440d45b27739c1c89f922937bc5fffa%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fhouthis-pummel-southwest-saudi-arabia-ballistic-missiles-yemen-air-ground-war-erupts

Iranian leaders have lately vowed to hit US bases and assets harder in all forthcoming rounds of fighting…
https://twitter.com/MoloWarMonitor/status/2097442661141455233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2097442661141455233%7Ctwgr%5Efd1370ed7440d45b27739c1c89f922937bc5fffa%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fhouthis-pummel-southwest-saudi-arabia-ballistic-missiles-yemen-air-ground-war-erupts

US Attacks Iran Tankers, After American Navy Ships Targeted IRIB reports that US forces attacked a commercial vessel in the coastal waters of Jask City MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS HEARD NEAR KHARG ISLAND ANCHORAGE, A KEY IRANIAN OIL EXPORT HUB; CAUSE, ORIGIN & ANY POTENTIAL DAMAGE REMAIN UNCONFIRMED. – MEHR NEWS AGENCY
US is currently attacking Iranian oil tankers, i24 news reports, citing a US source A small Iranian tanker was targeted by a missile attack from the US army 4 miles from Kharg Island, Tasnim reports.
IRAN LAUNCHED UNDISCLOSED SECOND ATTACK ON US SHIPS ON MONDAY: WSJ. NO AMERICAN SHIPS WERE STRUCK IN THE ATTACKS: WSJ.

Fox correspondent confirms Iranian oil tankers (plural) and “targets” (plural) were struck by the United States in recent minutes. This does nothing to “squeeze” Iran, just to be clear. The tankers are inside the US blockade line and the Tanker for Tanker policy is just a… https://t.co/bwLrw9QO7v
— Brett Erickson (@BrettErickson28) September 8, 2026

Oil Climbs, Brent Near $100
Nothing official has yet to emerge, also amid unconfirmed reporting that Iran’s IRGC Navy has launched anti-ship cruise missiles from Jask toward the Strait of Hormuz. According to breaking Al Jazeera News:
“Several explosions have been heard on Iran’s Kharg Island, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency. No official information has been released on the cause or origin of the explosions.”
More from WSJ on the prior Monday attack incident: “No American ships were struck in the attacks, but Iran’s recent attempts to hit American naval assets are raising alarms that the regime is using more sophisticated weapons and could be getting assistance from China or Russia.”

“.. & Restoration Of US-Russia Ties..”

Trump wants peace with Putin, as Europe seeks war.

• In Putin Call, Trump Seeks Swift End To Ukraine War (ZH)

On Tuesday morning President Trump and his Russian counterpart President Putin held a “positive” phone call regarding finding an end to the Ukraine war, the Kremlin side has stated. Russian president aide Yury Ushakov has been the first to provide a readout, with little revealed from the US side in the immediate aftermath. The phone call was “constructive and frank” and lasted exactly one hour, but remains “strictly confidential.”

Likely the White House will also be equally scant in what information it chooses to release, given the sensitivity of the timing, coming just off the weekend shuttle diplomacy by Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Their rare, direct meeting with Putin on Saturday lasted than three hours, after which they traveled to Ukraine to meet with Zelensky, in what was a much more chummy atmosphere, naturally.
Ushakov in his fresh comments described of that prior meeting, “Overall, the visit of the aforementioned American representatives was assessed positively.” He further said “European narratives about a Russian threat” were discussed in the call – an issue now “being used to justify support for Ukraine and increased European military spending.” The readout indicates, “Putin supported Trump’s commitment to building a constructive Russia–US partnership and emphasized that Russia has no hostile plans toward Europe.”
Perhaps the most important part of the Russian readout is seen in the following: “Trump said he wants a breakthrough on Ukraine during his presidency and stressed that ending the conflict could open the way to a major restoration of Russia–US relations.” The only additional information that the Kremlin aide provided was that Trump and Putin agreed that work through direct contact as well as diplomatic channels would “continue”.
The Witkoff-Kushner trip had come a little under two weeks after CIA Director John Ratcliffe unexpectedly traveled to Moscow and reportedly floated a trilateral summit involving Trump, Putin, and Zelensky. U.S. President Donald Trump told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday in a phone call that he wanted a swift end to the war in Ukraine, something that would allow U.S.-Russia ties to be fully restored, the Kremlin said.- Reuters.
The only additional information that the Kremlin aide provided was that Trump and Putin agreed that work through direct contact as well as diplomatic channels would “continue”. The Witkoff-Kushner trip had come a little under two weeks after CIA Director John Ratcliffe unexpectedly traveled to Moscow and reportedly floated a trilateral summit involving Trump, Putin, and Zelensky.
U.S. President Donald Trump told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday in a phone call that he wanted a swift end to the war in Ukraine, something that would allow U.S.-Russia ties to be fully restored, the Kremlin said.

Reporter: On Ukraine, people are being kidnapped on the streets. Have you seen those videos? If you haven’t seen them, can I send them to your staff?

Trump: Show them, and I will put them out. I know about the videos. I heard about it very strongly. pic.twitter.com/YPfJF8e7Up
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 2, 2026

Despite the public-facing Washington rhetoric, the Iran ~~quagmire… war…~~ “excursion” has not been going so well as the US seems desperate for a final exit and end to the war. So Trump likely wants a “win” ahead of the November midterm elections, hence the sudden revival of pushing Ukraine talks.

“The bloc is making its people suffer while Russia still has plenty of buyers for its energy, the foreign minister has said..”

• EU Committing ‘Harakiri’ – Lavrov (RT)

Sergey Lavrov speaks at the MGIMO University in Moscow, on September 7, 2026.

The EU is effectively committing “harakiri” by abandoning Russian energy in an attempt to hurt Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Speaking on Monday to students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), Russia’s primary college for diplomats, Lavrov argued that European leaders are making their own voters bear the cost of their policies toward Russia.

The EU has committed to phasing out Russian fossil fuels completely by 2027, having drastically reduced Russian oil and gas imports since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Energy costs have risen across much of the bloc, with the US-Israeli war on Iran adding further pressure. Germany, once considered the EU’s industrial powerhouse, has been particularly affected. Its economy contracted in both 2023 and 2024 – the first back-to-back annual decline in more than two decades – and is forecast to grow by just 0.5% this year.
“Europe is simply committing harakiri and proudly declaring that its people must suffer… for European values,” Lavrov said, referring to the Japanese ritual suicide also known as seppuku. “Apparently, by ‘European values’ they mean Nazism, burying Nazi criminals with honors, and banning the Russian language, Russian-language education, Russian culture and media, as well as the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” he added. Lavrov argued that the EU’s attempt to pressure Moscow has failed to deprive Russia of customers.
“There’s no panic here whatsoever. We’ve always had plenty of buyers,” he said, adding that Russian exporters have shifted toward “those who are more reliable.” “If Europe wants to pay $800-900 per thousand cubic meters for American liquefied natural gas, what can we do about it?” he asked. Russia has increasingly redirected its energy exports toward Asia amid Western sanctions.
Its seaborne crude shipments to China hit a record 1.86 million barrels per day in January, up 46% year-on-year. Russia has also remained India’s largest oil supplier, selling around 2.1 million bpd in August, or 45% of the country’s imports, according to maritime intelligence firm Kpler. Lavrov said the shift should not be viewed as a sudden “pivot to the East,” arguing that Russia has long cultivated economic ties in both directions.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt by a pro-Ukraine activist, similarly described the EU as a “suicide ship” in April, accusing Brussels of “ideological blindness and incompetence.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged last month that the loss of cheap energy imports had dealt a major blow to the bloc’s economy. Lavrov argued that the policies demonstrate that European leaders “don’t think about the voters that brought them to power.”

Germany next. But not if the AfD can help it..

• Lavrov Says ‘Start Of Real War’ Emerging (ZH)

More tit-for-tat between Russia and Germany amid a deepening diplomatic freeze related to the Ukraine war: the Kremlin announced on Monday that it is closing Germany’s consulate in St. Petersburg, with operations ordered to by suspended by September 18. “It was the German authorities who, once again, provoked a new round of escalation in bilateral relations,” the Foreign Ministry stated, charging that Berlin “bears full and complete responsibility” for the consequences.

A prominent German culture center which has long operated on Russian territory, the Goethe-Institut, is also getting the boot across all branches. All of this is a mirror image of the German government’s earlier move to shutter the Russian consulate in Bonn and Russia’s cultural center in Berlin, also as the EU blamed Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism”.
The harsh words and spiraling diplomatic crisis stems from the drone attack incidents at Germany’s Leipzign Airport last month. There were at least two reported incidents, possibly a third. On the night of August 4, an explosives-laden drone was found on the tarmac near a Ukrainian cargo plane.nThis prompted an urgent airport shutdown, as authorities believes saboteurs were seeking to blow up the plane.
On the following day there was another alleged incident, per German media and officials: Authorities discovered a drone fitted with explosives and a detonation mechanism on the evening of August 4 in the security area of Leipzig/Halle Airport between Ukrainian cargo aircraft and believe a second drone may have collided with a DHL aircraft nearby.
Last week, German media reported a third drone, also loaded with explosives, had also been discovered at the airport. German federal prosecutors described the incident as a “serious attack on Germany’s transport and logistics infrastructure.”
Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul had said after initial investigations, “The means used — such as the drone configuration, components, explosives and detonation systems — are known to us from other hybrid operations by Russia and its war against Ukraine.”
The strongest words out of Moscow have come from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this weekend. While the US delegation of Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were in Russia for a 3-hour meeting with President Putin, he said that a “real war” between Russia and the West is emerging.
He asserted to a Russian state TV reporter: “This is, by and large, the start of a real war. They expelled the consulate general from Bonn. They’re closing the Russian House in Berlin. I remember that before the start of the Second World War… They want war again.”

Russia's Foreign Minister Lavrov on Germany:

But I remember that before the start of the Great Patriotic War, the Germans also closed their diplomatic missions.

They want war again. And all those statements made by Merz about how he will make Germany the leading military power… pic.twitter.com/xqfMEJ9bZO
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 6, 2026

Added to this is that Western powers are assisting Ukraine with intelligence to help with its long-range drone strikes against Russia, often against oil refineries very far from the front lines, and even more frequently targeting Moscow of late. And in turn, Russia has been ratcheting its own major missile strikes on the Ukrainian capital and other cities, taking aim at ‘decision-making centers’ too. Zelensky has sought to ‘bring to war to Russia’ – but is really risking very severe escalation that might bring NATO powers into more direct war with Russian forces.

“Moscow described detailed discussions of major U.S.-Russia economic projects, alongside claims that Bessent is choking off offshore and banking channels funding Ukraine via Europe, the UK, and Canada.”

• U.S. Emissary Missions to Russia and Ukraine (CTH)

Susan Kokinda from Promethean Action PAC picks up on the nuance within the comments from Kirill Dmitriev upon the U.S. delegation meeting in Moscow.

Promethean Action – “The Kremlin released rare footage of a high-level meeting between Vladimir Putin and Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, followed by their first trip to Kyiv this term and a comparatively restrained response from Volodymyr Zelenskyy, signaling revived U.S. diplomacy on Ukraine. The script argues Putin views the American team as a more trusted broker than European leaders and notes a recent sequence of engagements, including CIA Director Ratcliffe’s public Moscow visit and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s G20 outreach to Russia’s finance minister.
With Kirill Dmitriev present, Moscow described detailed discussions of major U.S.-Russia economic projects, alongside claims that Bessent is choking off offshore and banking channels funding Ukraine via Europe, the UK, and Canada. It then pivots to Argentina’s renewed Malvinas/Falklands push as Trump publicly and reportedly reconsiders automatic U.S. support for British sovereignty, recalling internal U.S. divisions during the 1982 war.”

“Figures like Newsom have even campaigned on denouncing capitalism as “not working”..”

• Socialists Call for “War in the Streets” and the End of Capitalism (Turley)

“You better get ready for … war.” Across the country, radicals are openly planning for the next stage of their movement, and notably, the Democratic establishment is not part of their plans. Despite the talk of a “Big Tent Party,” socialists are riding high on a surge of support and talking purges and revolution.

In Chicago, radicals gathered for a conference on Marxism during what many view as the heyday of socialism in the United States. The Democratic Socialists of America is now larger and more powerful than at any time in our history. Socialist candidates are winning elections across the country as Democratic establishment figures from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to Gov. Gavin Newsom pander to the movement.
Speakers in Chicago used the conference to push supporters to the next stage in the movement, including some openly calling for violence and the end to capitalism.
University of California Santa Barbara History Professor Butch Ware said Democrats “must be destroyed” and urged attendees to be ready for “war in the streets.” Notably, in postings on X, Ware has said that candidates such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed are too restrained and are being pushed by the establishment “to contain radicalism.”
The professor “of Africa and Islam” whose faculty page is appropriately found under “bware” is the latest radical to dismiss the “Big Tent Party” rhetoric of establishment figures like Schumer. He declared, “The Democrats cannot be reasoned with. They must be destroyed.” There is little subtlety in the message, Ware has explained: “You cannot call yourself a revolutionary and not be talking about training with weapons.”
It is another example of the delusion that establishment Democrats have that they will be able to use these radicals to destroy their political enemies but not themselves. After one election victory, socialists chanted “You’re Next!” when House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s image came on big-screen televisions.
Hasan Piker has called for a purging of moderates from the Democratic Party. Just last week, Darializa Avila Chevalier declared, “A big tent doesn’t pay your rent, lower your grocery bill, or take on the corporations bleeding our country dry. Democratic socialism does.”
In a video posted to X, Professor Ware called for violence, warning followers that “some of these clickety-clack revolutionaries have never been in a f*cking gunfight.” He menacingly added, “Y’all ain’t nowhere near ready for a war in the streets. You better get ready for both kinds of war if you stay ready, you ain’t got to get ready.”
This is just the latest example of the type of hate-spewing radical that university departments want to teach in higher education. While purging virtually all Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians from departments, faculty candidates cannot be too radical enough to secure positions on colleges and universities. UCSB pays Professor Ware over $211k to spread this type of lunacy.
Notably, this is the same university that saw a professor lead her students in physically assaulting pro-life advocates on campus years ago. Despite pleading guilty to criminal assault, she was not fired and later honored by the University of Oregon for her inspiring leadership.
In other events around the country such as “Socialism 2026 Conference,” City University of New York Professor Ruth Gilmore said in a video, “It’s capitalism we’re after,…There isn’t a capitalism that is somehow not racial. There isn’t a capitalism that does not produce and reproduce all kinds of sexual and gender boundaries.”
At my alma mater, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, the half-sister of Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, has denounced the university and explained that she is only teaching there to bring down the system.
One year after the massacre, Professor Abdelhadi offered an “October 7th blessing” over an attack that murdered, raped, and tortured innocent men, women, and children. She was previously arrested for spitting on officers.
She added “I hope you know that we have a lot of work ahead of us and that we need each other to do that work. We have an imperative to not just imagine a better future, but to build one together. I’ll see you on the streets.”
What is so striking is that these radicals are not hiding their agenda or their hostility toward the Democratic Establishment. William Lawrence, who is running for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, previously called for the end of borders, the nation-state, capitalism, and told a leading moderate Democrat to “hurry up and die.”
In the meantime, some Democrats are admitting that, after using the socialists to retake power, they will marginalize them in actual governing decisions. Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY) just explained that they will have to block the “crazy” DSA stuff from actually getting to the floor for a vote.
In Rage and the Republic, I discuss how these Democratic leaders are following the same self-destructive delusions of other establishment figures in history who thought that they could use mobs against their opponents while hoping that they could survive.
Figures like Newsom have even campaigned on denouncing capitalism as “not working” as candidates like Texas Democratic Senatorial candidate James Talarico have called to “dismantle” capitalism. Figures like former Vice President Kamala Harris have dismissed loyalty to our core institutions such as the Supreme Court as mere “nostalgia.”
It will not work. These figures are nothing more than “clickety-clack revolutionaries” who convince no one inside or outside the movement. By putting their elections above every other consideration, Democratic leaders are willing to endanger core institutions, values, and even capitalism itself to reacquire power. In so doing, they are embracing the very “mobocracy” that the Founders warned us against in laying the foundations of our constitutional system.

“A nationalist revolution against globalism is brewing.”

• Making the World Great One Nation at a Time (J.B. Shurk)

What we call “globalism” has been on the march for eighty years. A system that embraces centralized markets, bureaucratic regulation, international institutions, and so-called non-governmental organizations (predominantly funded by governments), globalism places significant power in the hands of a small collection of wealthy and powerful stakeholders from the planet’s top investment houses, corporations, law firms, universities, central banks, and government bodies.

Globalism speaks in the language of “democracy” while ignoring — or even criminalizing — the will of the people. Across the West, citizens have opposed open border policies that have flooded their nations with unassimilable, foreign immigrants. Globalists have categorized this dissent as “hate speech,” censoring — and even prosecuting — citizens for their social media posts and public speech. Globalists insist that there must be limits on free speech. They seek to punish “thought crimes.” They label opposing points of view “disinformation” or “misinformation.” In practice, globalists protect governments and institutions from public criticism.
Globalism also speaks in the language of “free markets” while heavily regulating industrial production, encumbering the use of private property, and manipulating currency valuation, stock markets, and trade. By effectively “printing money” and intervening in markets, central banks steal from citizens who save their cash earnings, inflate the prices of essential household goods, and protect privileged companies or industries deemed “too big to fail.”
By ginning up “global warming” fears among the public, lawmakers, bankers, and bureaucrats have justified the imposition of “carbon controls” that regulate energy use, economic production, and human activity. By expanding public welfare programs while weakening protections for property ownership, globalists tax citizens at increasingly higher rates, redistribute earned income and savings, confiscate real property, and even permit squatters (often foreign migrants) to occupy private residences.
Globalism falsely clothes itself in principle and tradition. Its proponents speak of “Western values,” while encouraging non-Westerners to migrate to and radically change the culture and demographics of Western nations. Its propagandists claim to represent “the people,” while doing the bidding of multinational corporations and investment banks. Its defenders pretend to respect public opinion, while mandating slavish devotion to “expertise.” Globalism seeks to end the nation state while demanding that citizens sacrifice themselves for government bureaucracies.
It wages war against Christians who refuse to worship government institutions as the highest authorities on “truth.” Globalists divide societies into “victims” and “oppressors,” so that citizens remain too busy fighting each other to notice the surveillance prison being built around them. Globalists criticize opponents by saying things such as, “That’s not who we are,” while taking a sledgehammer and blowtorch to Western identities.
In defiance of globalism’s steady advance since WWII, a revolution has been brewing. Although its messengers have appeared all over the world — including Pat Buchanan in the United States, Shinzo Abe and Sanae Takaichi in Japan, Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Javier Milei in Argentina, Alice Weidel in Germany, and Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom — President Donald J. Trump is the unofficial leader of the rebellion.
What these men and women have in common is a strong sense of duty to their respective nations, a firm belief that culture matters, a preference for common sense, and a commitment to their countrymen over the international institutions, multinational corporations, and globalist NGOs (such as the World Economic Forum) that seek to eliminate national borders and condemn citizens to lives as disposable serfs.
President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement has spawned similar campaigns around the world. Whether in El Salvador or Nigeria, Spain or Australia, Canada or India, there are locals who have appropriated that slogan as part of an effort to make their own nations great. While globalism diminishes the importance of culture and celebrates amorphous “multiculturalism” as an inscrutable ideal, nation-builders around the world know better:
Culture is the lifeblood of every society. It is the glue that binds a people together, fosters cooperation, and turns dreams of the future into reality. Just as members of a family help each other to succeed, members of a shared culture ensure their nation’s success. People who climb mountains do not plant flags from the United Nations, European Union, the World Economic Forum, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; they fly their national flags at the top.
Because no matter how much globalists lecture us about the evils of nationalism and the moral equivalence of all cultures, human beings know better. Our families, traditions, religious convictions, and historical memories matter. And when we ascend the icy peaks that few people have reached, we mark the moment, not as an achievement for “multiculturalism,” but rather as a testament to the inherent greatness of the places we call home.
For decades, globalism has been promoted as a “free market” ideal that would generate economic growth and foster international peace. But how has it operated in practice? Powerful corporations and lobbying groups have worked with governments to construct elaborate trade agreements that benefit the bottom line of political and financial elites.
Rarely are the interests of the common man considered, except in the context of labor unions, standards bodies, or trade groups that purport to represent the average worker. Instead, complex legal documents such as the North American Free Trade Agreement have assisted in the creation of large industry monopolies while squeezing out small businesses. After the creation of NAFTA and similar “free trade deals,” American corporations and investment firms became multinational conglomerates, while Main Street mom-and-pop shops disappeared.

We need Christianity to defend against islam.

• Wherefore Art Thou, Christianity? (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Episcopal Church has a Very Reverend Dean who trans-identifies as a maThe Dean is married to a woman who also trans-identifies as a man and is a Lutheran pastor. So, what do we have here? A marriage between two lesbians or a marriage between two homosexuals.I think we can see why Christianity, once a powerful force, is today so weak and left undefended. It stands for nothing, with the exception that Christian Zionists stand for Israel, not for Christ.

If a person can deny their biological gender and be accepted as the opposite by trans-indentifying, why can’t they do the same for their race, their nationality, or is this already happening? Democrats seem content for allowing immigrant-invaders declare themselves American citizens and grant them Constitutional protections based on their presence in America.
What is the reason that a person cannot declare themselves to be Napoleon or Genghis Khan without being regarded as crazy, but can be taken completely seriously when declaring themselves to be the opposite gender to what they are? Isn t this some kind of logical breakdown in Western civilization, a denial of fact? It does seem that trans-identifying is the beginning of the end of factual existence.
What kind of existence will a non-factual one be?

Does he really mean his own generation? Not, say, the founders?

• Generation That Built America Was the Last of Its Kind (Victor Davis Hanson)

Jack Fowler: Our friend, your friend, and I’m a great admirer of David Mamet, the playwright and screenwriter and author. He wrote a piece the other day in National Review. You were just talking about being uplifted by Hillsdale. Well, David is a little—he’s got a little bit of the Eeyore gene going on, and I know you can relate to that. And his essay was titled “America, History, and Futility.” And I just want to read its conclusion, and then, Victor, you can, you know, I’m giving you permission to expound on it. So, here’s what David Mamet wrote:

“A contemporary remarked that perhaps the pendulum will swing back, and that reason, courtesy, and patriotism will reemerge. But he was wrong, for he could only imagine their reemergence in those, our contemporaries, who understood these attributes as essential for a functional and prosperous society. But to the young, the American century is a disgrace and the American dream a shuck. Histories may be debated, but the irreducible core must be verifiable fact. And what a fact is determined only by Big Brother.”
And here’s his conclusion: “I don’t know if the United States will survive in a form recognizable to my generation. I can’t even describe the current form other than as a civilization split into two factions, one decrying and the other exploiting chaos. I don’t know if prophecy as prediction actually exists, but I know, like Cassandra, that if so, it will do so in no useful form. I don’t know if the sun can actually supply enough power to run our cities, but I know there is nothing new beneath it.” Kind of depressing there, Victor, but maybe he’s kind of realistic. Your thoughts?
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, I’m prejudiced because I’ve always admired David Mamet, and I like him, and I know him. He’s a very courageous guy. He was beloved by the Left. He was a man not of the hard Left, but he was a liberal. And he finally got sick of it years ago, and, of course, they turned on him, and they turned on him professionally. But he had such a talent and such a name that he persevered. And that essay is kind of a siren song. He’s also saying throughout that essay that the problem with getting old is that you get disconnected, and you become an observer rather than a participant because of the energy levels, physical and mental.
And then second, you get philosophical and you get angry because you know what was destroyed. One thing that’s a subtext, and I think it’s true of all of us, some of us in the boomer cohort actually knew people from the 19th century. And I was blessed because my paternal grandfather and my maternal grandmother and my maternal grandfather were born in 1890 and 1888, 1889. So, they came of age without electricity, without flush toilets, without tractors, using horses. Everything about them, from their worldview, was imprinted on their childhood in the late 19th century.
So, when I got to know them, when I was 5, say, to 20, when most of them had died, everything about them, their language, their accent, their comportment, was completely foreign to the modern world. If I wanted to go outside, my grandmother said, “Be careful out there yonder. Don’t go out yonder. I’ll give the dickens to you.” What did that mean? Or, “I’ll take a switch to you, ha ha ha.” “Ain’t funny, McGee.” She used to listen to Fibber McGee in the ’30s, I guess. And “There’s the sunset, Victor. It’s sinking in the far, far west tonight.” All this.
And they lived by nature. My grandfather would say, “The birds are nesting early. There’s a big wind stirring up in the south, and that can’t be good.” Or when he’d say something, a moral lecture: “And that’s all there is to it. Now, Victor, there’s two types of people in the world. There are those who pay interest and those who get it. You got to be on the right side of the ledger. I wasn’t. Now that’s all there is to it. And when you get a $20 bill you earned, it’s a lot easier to spend it than to put it in the bank, so put it in the bank.”
All of that parsimoniousness, shame culture, be careful. He would say, “When you got your license, I was worried. I don’t want to drive in and see you drive by me in town with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth or ink on your skin. You understand?” I said, “I do understand.” And then I had a Swedish grandfather who was really, really tough. They had that bad-seed notion. They didn’t believe in therapeutics.
There was a neighbor family that was kind of affluent, and every one of them had been in jail.
So, I said, “Why are they … Is it because they had a divorce, Grandpa? What happened?”
“Well, Victor, there’s a bad seed over there. There’s a bad seed. Now one of them’s no darn good. The other one, not much better. So it’s just a bad-seed family. That’s just all there is. They’re just bad seed.”

“It’s fortunate that Hanson is a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, in addition to a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.”

• The Counterrevolution: Victor Davis Hanson Surveys Trump’s Fall and Rise (Rust)

President Donald J. Trump is unique in American history. Never has a candidate or president suffered so many attacks — legally, politically, and physically — yet still kept rising and carrying on his fight.

To tell the story of what Victor Davis Hanson calls the “Trump Decade” (2015-2025) requires someone versed in the rise and fall of empires. It’s fortunate that Hanson is a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, in addition to a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
Hanson’s newest book, The Counterrevolution: The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement, which will be released on September 8, takes readers from the depths of MAGA despair after the 2020 election, through the wilderness years of the Biden presidency, to the resurgent campaign of 2024, and finally, to the fast-paced, counterrevolutionary second term we’re still living through today. The book ends in January 2026, but an afterword covers events through April 2026.
His erudition is evident, from chapter titles to quotes by Edmund Burke to classical allusions. He describes the Democrats as “The New Jacobin Democrats,” comparing their 21st-century excesses to the radicals of 18th-century France. Who else but a trained classicist could describe Donald Trump after a key figure in Greek literary satire?
The media never really minded all that much when prior Republican presidents called out their liberal bias. They usually either laughed off the mostly impotent charges or considered them welcome proof of their left-wing bona fides, given that the accusations were politely lodged and largely true. Yet Trump was a different sort, an uncensored, loud-mouthed populist out of an Aristophanic comedy. He answered their unprecedented effort to destroy him politically and personally with commensurate or even greater invective.
Each of the nine chapters is so dense with information that each one could serve as a college seminar. A history book club could meet for half a year, examining one chapter a week. I finally had to stop taking notes when I’d dog-eared every other page of chapter three.
Hanson does not emote; nor does he lavishly praise Trump the way an enthusiastic rally-goer would. He is as close to an objective observer as you can find in the world of commentary.
Part One covers the fall of Trump, from the 2020 election to the exhaustive lawfare. It will prove difficult for any Trump fan to relive the days covered in those four chapters: January 6 and the Pelosi commission afterward, as well as the endless lawfare. It wasn’t just the Democrats who were anti-Trump, but at least seven other entities: the media, the administrative state, the Washington political and military hierarchies, the Never Trump Republicans, popular culture, academia, and even other countries that formed what Hanson calls the “Armies of Anti-Trumpers.”
VDH takes us on a quick journey through all the stages of the four-year period of Joe Biden’s presidency, from the quick undoing of Trump executive orders to the failures of “Bidenomics” to the regrettable decision to hurriedly leave Afghanistan.
Consider what was thrown at private citizen and former president Donald Trump in that interim: five criminal and civil suits; a made-for-TV FBI raid on his home, Mar-a-Lago; the efforts in multiple states to remove Trump from the ballot; and, of course, two assassination attempts, one resulting in a death and two injuries, along with an injured Trump.
Part Two, “The Rise,” begins with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: “What does not kill me makes me stronger.” Hanson describes Trump as a Nietzschean man, one who survived everything thrown at him. The Aug. 8, 2022, Mar-a-Lago raid might have destroyed him. Yet almost immediately afterward, he moved up in the polls ahead of his primary opponents.
It’s fascinating to go back and look at the 2024 primary. On November 15, 2022, Trump formally announced his candidacy. On November 18, three things happened on the same day. Former Acting Associate Attorney General Matthew Colangelo resigned. He turned up working (at a pay cut) on Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s team prosecuting Trump. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel “to investigate Biden’s 2024 opponent.” Fulton County special prosecutor Nathan Wade met with Biden White House counsel staff. Hanson drily recites these facts, leaving the reader to speculate on what, if any, coordination was happening at higher levels.
The rest of Part Two narrates the amazing change between Trump 1, 2017-2021, and Trump 2. In this current second term, Hanson believes that Trump truly is launching a counterrevolution to bring back what Trump views as common sense: “reciprocal fair trade, closed borders, legal-only immigration, progress in curbing or at least no increasing deficits and debt, and a fierce effort to end the recent DEI orthodoxy and the anti-prosperity boondoggles of the Green New Deal.”
Chapter 7, “The Road to a New Old America,” relives the glorious rush of the first 100 days of Trump’s second term. The administration used the tactic of “flooding the zone” to keep its opponents off-key and unable to focus on an attack. The next chapter covers foreign policy and how Trump is aiming at what Hanson describes as “Jacksonian deterrence.”
In the last chapter, Hanson looks at what it will take to keep the MAGA movement alive without Trump. He believes it can be done, thanks to the base Trump has built up, the way Trump’s legacy will “haunt and obsess” Dems, and the way the president has adopted “now-abandoned Democratic issues” such as reciprocal tariffs and tax cuts for the middle class. He warns Democrats that unless they can find a charismatic leader like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama — AND tack to the center — they “are likely to lose any election that pits them against a workman-like MAGA Republican candidate.”

Bombardier used to make only ski-doos.

• President Trump Targets Canada Subsidized Bombardier Manufacturing (CTH)

Bombardier airplane manufacturing sells approximately 55% of its products inside the United States. The company is based in Montreal and manufacturers the airliners mainly in Ottawa; however, component parts are made in the USA and also Mexico. The company has a history of being heavily dependent on Canadian government subsidies and bailouts.

Bombardier employs approximately 5,000 U.S. workers and 12,000 Canadian workers but is also heavily dependent on sales to the USA to maintain over half their business. On the eve of Canada’s retaliatory tariffs against the U.S, President Trump is now recommending a boycott of the airliner. The U.S. airline builder Gulfstream has been blocked from sales in Canada by regulatory slow walking, a non-tariff barrier.
“NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES! Their products aren’t good enough! Over 50% of their revenue comes from the United States — They live off American Buyers, American Companies, American Airports, and American Service — All while Canada blocks our GREAT American Banks, and Companies, throughout the U.S.A. They even blocked Gulfstream Aerospace from doing business in Canada — Completely unjust and unfair! That Era is OVER! If they want our Market, they must build here, and stop treating America like a “piggybank.” BUY AMERICAN. FLY ON AMERICAN AIRLINERS. ENJOY AMERICAN LIQUOR AND BEVERAGES. SAIL ON LAKE AMERICA. AMERICA FIRST! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
~ President DONALD J. TRUMP
There is a reciprocity justification for Bombardier sales restrictions in the USA considering the non-tariff barriers that U.S. company Gulfstream faces against their Canadian competition. It will be interesting to see if the Dept of Commerce or USTR enact a regulatory barrier.
Mark Carney has tariffed $50 billion in U.S. exports.
There are one thousand Billions in a Trillion.
The U.S. economy is 32 Trillion.
Put another way, the U.S. economy is thirty-two thousand billions, and Mark Carney has tariffed 50 of them.
Elbows up, I guess.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2097413216796053703?s=20

We redesigned Cybercab production for production over 5 times faster than conventional automotive manufacturing! https://t.co/OUpLMI7XoG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 8, 2026

We’re hiring 10,000 robotics trainers in the next 7 days.

$50–$90/hour, fully remote. You’ll review and label videos of robots performing tasks to help them improve.

An entirely new category of work is emerging around teaching robots how to interact with the world.
— micro1 (@micro1_ai) September 7, 2026

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Debt Rattle July 29 2018

Jul 292018

July 29, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:15 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, austerity, bats, Bernie, Christianity, confidence, donations, HDP, refugees, social media, wildfires 2 Responses »

Pablo Picasso The old guitarist 1903-4

• What the GDP Report Won’t Tell You About the Economy (DDMB)

• Julian Assange Looks For Deal To End ‘Diplomatic Isolation’ (CNN)

• In Refusing To Defend Assange, Mainstream Media Exposes Its True Nature (CJ)

• Round the Bend (Jim Kunstler)

• David Cameron’s Welfare Cuts Led Directly To The Brexit Vote (Ind.)

• An Open Letter to Bernie Sanders: ‘No Bernie, It Wasn’t the Russians’ (MPN)

• Putin Calls Christianity Foundation Of Russian State (AP)

• Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Star)

• Nature’s Darkness-Creature Has Become Ours, Too (G.)

• Migrant Arrivals Push Shelters To Breaking Point In Southern Spain (El Pais)

• Number Of Fatalities In Greek Wildfires Rises To 88 (K.)

GDP may look strong, but sentiments are crumbling.

• What the GDP Report Won’t Tell You About the Economy (DDMB)

Something is amiss in Corporate America. Both national and regional surveys reveal a sinking sense that the economy’s tailwinds are shifting to headwinds. The downtrodden confidence is a curiosity given many economists’ forecasts calling for second-quarter growth to have accelerated to a 4.2 percent annualized rate, the fastest since 2014. Soft though the survey data may be, the numbers don’t lie. If something doesn’t give – and fast – what follows is sure to be damaging to the real economy. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey for July revealed that the business outlook had slumped to the lowest level in over two years.

Odds are pretty good this number was dragged down by those with the highest incomes, many of whom are likely also business owners and corporate executives who’ve been on the front line of the rising costs to run their businesses. But there may be more than meets the eye among those whose incomes rank in the top third of households. While the majority of these respondents expressed concern over the tariffs, what they’re reading, hearing and seeing may be dampening their outlooks even further. As things stand, it’s as if January never happened, a month in which confidence was so high, the “news heard” among high income earners hit a 20-year high. By the beginning of July, “news heard” had slid to minus 18, the lowest in two years.

The six-month, 79-point swing is so severe it rivals August 2011, when the euro crisis shook world markets, Standard & Poor’s stripped the U.S. of its AAA credit rating and households were rattled by the debt ceiling debacle. [..] Consider the starting point for many companies. Last year’s weak dollar and natural disasters had many struggling to satisfy overseas demands and the massive needs required to rebuild. Labor and raw material costs were already on the rise to correct for the imbalances. The tariffs were the insult to injury many manufacturers could simply not afford.

“The actual economic impact will really come down to time,” cautioned Boockvar. “The longer this goes on, the more actual business activity will be negatively affected.” To Boockvar’s point, the collapse in business sentiment suggests many companies don’t foresee the ability to withstand further blows to their ability to profitably conduct business. Businesses are saying as much.

Unbelievable garbage from CNN. That they pay attention to Assange now may be a ominous sign. They straight-faced claim that Assange fled rape allegations in Sweden. He did not. Sweden told him he was free to go to London. Only to turn around and issue a warrant for him.

• Julian Assange Looks For Deal To End ‘Diplomatic Isolation’ (CNN)

Julian Assange walked into the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on June 19, 2012 to claim political asylum. He has been there ever since – a total of 2,230 days – rarely seeing daylight. But multiple sources say his situation is now untenable and he may soon leave, whether he wants to or not. The question is: what will happen to Assange as and when he does walk out of his bolt-hole around the corner from Harrods? The recent indictments issued by US Special Counsel Robert Mueller imply that Assange and WikiLeaks were a conduit for Russian intelligence in distributing hacked Democratic Party emails in 2016. According to the indictment document, “The conspirators (…) discussed the release of the stolen documents and the timing of those releases with Organisation 1 to heighten their impact.”

Assange has always maintained that he did not receive them from the Russian government. He told Fox News in January 2017: “Our source is not the Russian government, and it is not a state party.” A member of Assange’s legal team, Jennifer Robinson, told CNN this week: “WikiLeaks has made very clear they were not engaged in any way with the Russian state with respect to that publication. There is no connection between WikiLeaks and any of those who have been indicted.” His lawyers argue that all Assange did was publish the hacked emails, as did other media, after being in contact with a hacker called Guccifer 2.0. The Special Counsel alleges that Guccifer 2.0 was a cover for Russian intelligence, saying in the indictment that on July 14th [2016], Guccifer 2.0 sent WikiLeaks an encrypted attachment that contained “instructions on how to access an online archive of stolen DNC documents.”

Whether a sealed indictment awaits Assange in relation to the Russian hacking investigation is unknown. But according to US officials, charges have been drawn up relating to previous WikiLeaks disclosures of classified US documents. Assange would face arrest if/when he leaves the embassy because he skipped bail in 2012 – when Swedish authorities were seeking his extradition to face accusations of rape. Last year Sweden suspended the investigation, but Assange’s lawyers fear his arrest would be swiftly followed by a US extradition request. Assange maintains his innocence.

This feels like too little too late. We know all this, we have for a long time. And it’s worse: as I wrote in May in I am Julian Assange, the Guardian engaged in an active smear campaign against Assange then. So does CNN -see above. That’s much more relevant than that they don’t defend him.

• In Refusing To Defend Assange, Mainstream Media Exposes Its True Nature (CJ)

Last Tuesday a top lawyer for the New York Times named David McCraw warned a room full of judges that the prosecution of Julian Assange for WikiLeaks publications would set a very dangerous precedent which would end up hurting mainstream news media outlets like NYT, the Washington Post, and other outlets which publish secret government documents. “I think the prosecution of him would be a very, very bad precedent for publishers,” McCraw said. “From that incident, from everything I know, he’s sort of in a classic publisher’s position and I think the law would have a very hard time drawing a distinction between The New York Times and WikiLeaks.” Do you know where I read about this? Not in the New York Times.

“Curiously, as of this writing, McCraw’s words have found no mention in the Times itself,” activist Ray McGovern wrote for the alternative media outlet Consortium News. “In recent years, the newspaper has shown a marked proclivity to avoid printing anything that might risk its front row seat at the government trough.” So let’s unpack that a bit. It is now public knowledge that the Ecuadorian government is actively seeking to turn Assange over to be arrested by the British government. This was initially reported by RT, then independently confirmed by The Intercept, and is today full mainstream public knowledge being reported by mainstream outlets like CNN.

It is also public knowledge that Assange’s asylum was granted by the Ecuadorian government due to a feared attempt to extradite him to the United States and prosecute him for WikiLeaks publications. Everyone from President Donald Trump to Attorney General Jeff Sessions to now-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to ranking House Intelligence Committee member Adam Schiff to Democratic members of the US Senate have made public statements clearly indicating that there is a US government interest in getting Assange out of the shelter of political asylum and into prison.

The state of the media is something to behold. Can it slide even further? You bet.

• Round the Bend (Jim Kunstler)

Some people you just can’t reason with, especially the hell-spawned man-beast who personally directed Russian “meddling” and “interference” in our election and stole certain victory from president-designee Hillary. (I know this because The New York Times and The Washington Post said so.) Another astonishment: in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US would not recognize Crimea as part of Russia and would demand the return of the region to Ukraine. Not to put too fine a point on it, Mr. Pompeo is pissing up a rope on that one. Russia will not give up its warm-water naval bases on the Black Sea anymore than the US will return its San Diego naval installation to Mexico, and Mr. Pompeo knows it.

So do the posturing idiots on the senate committee, who apparently forgot that our own government officials fomented the 2014 Ukrainian coup that prompted Russia to annex Crimea and its military assets in the first place. How many of you feel a gnawing disgust and contempt for both sides of the US political spectrum? The news, day and night, reveals a nation unable to think, unable to discern reality from fantasy, avid to dissemble and lie about absolutely everything, eager to support any racketeering operation designed to fleece its own citizens, and utterly ignoring the genuine problems that can drive us into a new dark age.

On balance, and just for now, I’m more disturbed by the side represented by the Democratic Party, aka the “progressives” or “the Resistance,” because they are responsible for politicizing the FBI before, during, and after the 2016 election and that was a dastardly act of institutional debauchery in an agency with the power to destroy the lives and careers of American citizens. The product of that corruption is a dangerous manufactured hysteria inciting hostility and aggression against another nation that could lead to a war that humanity will not recover from.

Austerity leads to right wing support everywhere.

• David Cameron’s Welfare Cuts Led Directly To The Brexit Vote (Ind.)

As the Brexit negotiations roll on, we do see some signs of progress. Our understanding of the underlying causes of the referendum outcome has developed significantly in the last two years. Leave-supporting areas can be easily distinguished from those supporting Remain. Broadly speaking, they are more deprived, have lower levels of income, fewer high status-jobs, a weaker economic structure, and an ageing demographic with lower levels of educational attainment. Further, non-economic factors have also been highlighted as important correlates of support for Brexit . But an open question to economists, though, is what are the economic origins of the relationships between these characteristics and support for Leave?

An important cross-cutting observation that has been made over and over again is that Leave-supporting areas stand out in having an electorate that has been “left behind”, is particularly reliant on the welfare state and is thus exposed to welfare cuts. In a recent paper, I show that austerity-induced reforms, including widespread cuts to the welfare state since 2010, were an important factor behind the decision of many people to shift their political support to UKIP and, subsequently, support Leave in the EU referendum.

The austerity-induced reforms of the welfare state, implemented in the years after 2010, were broad and deep. In 2013, it was estimated that the measures included in the Welfare Reform Act of 2012 would cost every working-age Briton, on average, around £400 per year. Crucially, the impact of the cuts was far from uniform across the UK: it varied from around £900 in Blackpool to just above £100 in the City of London. Aggregate figures suggest that overall government spending for welfare and protection contracted by 16 per cent in real per capita terms, reaching levels last seen in the early 2000s.

What is Bernie thinking?

• An Open Letter to Bernie Sanders: ‘No Bernie, It Wasn’t the Russians’ (MPN)

Let me preface this open letter of sorts that I’m writing to Senator Bernie Sanders. I’m not penning this missive as though I’m a crestfallen supporter, after falling for the okie doke in 2008 and waking up to the deception of Obama, I decided to stop putting my faith in politicians. Rather, I write this article on behalf of Bernie’s legions of supporters and the millions of Americans who put their faith in someone who spoke against the iniquities that are ravaging our nation and our planet as a whole. Bernie, it was your decision to speak against this consolidated graft that is cratering society that captured the imagination of the disaffected and gave people hope that their voices could be heard above the cash extortion that dominates our government.

Instead of continuing your rebellion against the establishment and speaking against the corrosive nature of our politics, you are charting a course towards irrelevance by jumping on this cockamamie #Russiagate narrative. Here is what I don’t get about your decision to glom on to this most ridiculous assertion that 12 Russians had more impact on our elections than the billions of dollars that are spent by corporations and plutocrats to bend elected officials like pretzels. The insinuation the punditry is making is that Americans were duped to vote against their own self-interests because they refused to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Never mind that Hillary was one of the most divisive and disliked politician to run for president in modern American history. Never mind that the DNC essentially rigged the primaries to ensure her victory at your expense. Instead of focusing on the structural and systematic flaws that render our votes irrelevant, fingers are pointed at a manufactured villain halfway around the world in order to distract from the fact that our elections have been hijacked by moneyed interests and entrenched leeches who are sucking the citizenry dry. Whatever efforts Russia might have made to influence our elections were outweighed by a kleptocracy that hacked down our democracy with dark money and self-centered politicians who put their interests above that of the people they purportedly serve.

This one’s for you, bible belt.

• Putin Calls Christianity Foundation Of Russian State (AP)

Vladimir Putin says that the adoption of Christianity more than 1,000 years in territory that later became Russia marked the starting point for forming Russia itself. Putin’s comments came Saturday in a ceremony marking the 1,030th anniversary of the adoption by Christianity by Prince Vladimir, the leader of Kievan Rus, a loose federation of Slavic tribes that preceded the Russian state. Speaking to a crowd of thousands of clergy and believers at a huge statue of the prince outside the Kremlin, Putin said adopting Christianity was “the starting point for the formation and development of Russian statehood, the true spiritual birth of our ancestors, the determination of their identity. Identity, the flowering of national culture and education.” The comments underline strong ties between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Book review. Hope the book itself is better. What social media do to people’s brains and social lives is far more relevant.

• Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Star)

If you’re online these days, you likely sense that something’s wrong with the internet. You probably feel weird about how many times a day you check Facebook or Instagram, and likely a little uneasy about how annoyed or envious you feel when you do. Maybe the hostility online depresses you. Maybe you worry about the next generation, and how anxious they all seem. Maybe you’ve even considered deleting your accounts. This is exactly what Jaron Lanier, a leader in the tech world, says you should do. Right away. Lanier — a pioneer in the world of internet startups, and virtual reality in particular — has long been a critic of the Silicon Valley status quo. In this slim, highly-readable manifesto, he lays out his case against social media. And it is a devastating one.

In 10 simple arguments, the tech insider paints a picture of a wide-scale behaviour modification apparatus driven by social attention — both the carrot of approval and the stick of criticism, which generates the most intensity or “engagement.” “There is no evil genius seated in a cubicle in a social media company performing calculations and deciding that making people feel bad is more ‘engaging’ and therefore more profitable than making them feel good,” he writes. “Or at least, I’ve never met or heard of such a person. The prime directive to be engaging reinforces itself, and no one even notices that negative emotions are being amplified more than positive ones.”

According to Lanier, the social media apparatus has made people into lab rats, placing them under constant surveillance. He believes the process is making people angrier, more isolated, less empathetic, less informed about the world, and less able to support themselves financially. Add to all that: Lanier says this highly tuned behaviour modification system is for rent to anyone looking to influence the public. The constant stream of data, and the algorithms that tweak subsequent efforts to sway people, aren’t just used to sell soap, he notes, but to influence politics.

Wonderful tale. But given the demise of insect numbers, bats must be under severe threat.

• Nature’s Darkness-Creature Has Become Ours, Too (G.)

Here’s a flicker in the periphery. I notice it because of the way it moves; it’s a sort of fast fidget – staccato and angular in movement and path, like a movie projected at the wrong frame rate. It doesn’t swoop like a swallow, or bumble like a moth. The bat moves like a bat, and like nothing else. I’m sitting near my home under some trees, watching the coming night deepen the navy sky. The day has been airlessly hot, and with nightfall relief creeps into the air like a balm. Animals are out – I can hear twitches in the bushes behind me. Young frogs; hedgehogs maybe. Looking for water. Then I notice this bat. Seconds after I see it, I feel it pass so close that it makes my hair move, with it a split-second rustle of papery wings. I shiver.

Bats are just flying mice, people say, except they’re not, at all. Worldwide there are two main groups: Megachiroptera, big-eyed, placid-faced, small-eared – almost anthropomorphic, a man-bat; and Microchiroptera, the opposite. Nature’s darkness-creature has over time become ours, too. Their thorny outline is so conversant with the sinister that we nearly forget why. Light never catches them. They are opaque, darkly anonymous silhouettes into which humans project all manner of eerie ideas. Unwittingly, bats reinforce these with their habits. They haunt churches. Fly by night. Sleep subversively inverted. And the one far-flung species that feeds on blood bears the name “vampire” all too neatly.

This solitary bat flies about me in rapid loops. This one is maybe a noctule, or a pipistrelle. Catching insects perhaps. I worry that it will hit me but it won’t. It sees by echoing its sounds off nearby objects like aerial sonar, and it’s an excellent way to navigate. Those sounds are too high-pitched for the human ear to detect, and so to us, other than those wings, the bat makes no sound. None at all. I watch it. Bats need to catch air under their wings to fly. They can’t lift off like birds: they must drop. Their flight is a fall, arrested again and again with each frantic flap. That’s why they don’t move like anything else. Except, perhaps, a human trying to fly.

And so the issue keeps shifting. But it doesn’t get resolved.

• Migrant Arrivals Push Shelters To Breaking Point In Southern Spain (El Pais)

Shelters in the south of Spain are struggling to deal with a huge influx of migrants, many of whom are being left without a proper place to sleep. The arrivals – 1,300 in the past three days – have stretched services to their breaking point with the strain felt particularly hard in Algeciras as well as other municipalities along the coast of Andalusia. The number of undocumented migrants arriving in Spain has doubled since last year. Spain is now the main entry point into Europe, above Italy or Greece. But shelter services have been unable to keep up with the demand, leaving many migrants to sleep in overcrowded centers.

Up to 260 migrants spent the past two nights on the deck of a Maritime Rescue ship, more than 50 huddled together on a small courtyard of a police station in Algeciras, and 90 more jostled for a spot in the port of Barbate. Many more are left to wander the streets of towns like Medina Sidonia and Chiclana after spending the maximum legal 72-hour period in police custody. Immigration officials have traveled to Cádiz to look for a solution to what the Spanish government describes as a “collapse” of services. In a press release, the government said that 400 migrants had nowhere to go and blamed the problem on the former administration of Mariano Rajoy for its “lack of foresight.” “The number of arrivals has not stopped rising since 2017 but despite this nothing was done,” said a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry.

IN NUMBERS
• The number of people arriving by sea has tripled in the past year. Since the beginning of the year, 22,711 migrants have reached Spain, 19,586 by sea.
• Spain has overtaken Greece and Italy as the country which received the highest number of migrants.
• An average of 54 people arrived in Spain by sea each day in the first five months of 2018. That average has since shot up to 220 per day.
• Since the beginning of the year, 294 people have died trying to reach Spain – almost double the figure from the same period last year.

Your donations are now also feeding the people in Mati, where conditions are really bad. I’ll have much more on the Automatic Earth for Athens Fund soon, many new and very positive developments, after a bit of a lull. More donations of course are needed and welcome.

• Number Of Fatalities In Greek Wildfires Rises To 88 (K.)

A 42-year-old woman who was in intensive care after suffering extensive burns in the deadly wildfire that ripped through the coastal town of Mati in east Attica this week died early Saturday morning, raising the number of fatalities to 88. On Friday night, authorities also identified the bodies of the nine-year-old twin girls and their grandparents that went missing after the wildfires. Their bodies were among a group of victims recovered by emergency crews on Tuesday lying close together near the top of a cliff overlooking a beach. The news was reported on broadcaster SKAI by the private investigator the family had hired to find the children. It was confirmed by a reported friend of the family on his Facebook page.

The twins’ father had provided forensic authorities with a DNA sample and appeared on several TV stations seeking help in finding them. A total of 46 adult burn victims are being treated in hospitals in Athens, with nine of them in intensive care. Two children remain in hospital but authorities said their injuries are not life-threatening. Five days after the deadly blaze, there was still confusion over the number of those missing. The Athens Medical School’s Forensics and Toxicology Lab said it has conducted autopsies on 86 bodies, of which only 25 have been identified. As sources explained to Kathimerini, in the first 48 hours after the fires, several authorities wrote up lists of missing persons, which means the same people may have been recorded twice or more.

Since there was no official information on where relatives should report missing persons, police started separate investigations, when the relevant authority in this case would have been the fire service. On Saturday, Dimitra Lambarou, the deputy mayor of Marathonas, which has administrational jurisdiction over the majority of the devastated coastal town on Mati, said she is resigning over the deadly fires. “Since no-one else did it, I will,” she told broadcaster SKAI on Saturday. “I’m really ashamed for all those people who are in positions of responsibility,” she said and accused Marathonas mayor Ilias Psinakis of “not rising to the occasion.”