Week 49

NYT: "Russia and Iran Pledge Support for Syria’s al-Assad Against Advancing Rebels"

Stratfor: "The fall of Aleppo and further rebel advances in southern Syria will threaten Iran's supply lines to Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon"

#Wilkerson #Gaza

[-]

Energy News Bulletin: "Hazer bags $6.2mn [Oz] government funding for hydrogen production"

Kinda bizarre.. it's good #Spiderman2

[-]

#Stewart #MorningJoe

[-]

"Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza .. [their] research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, the organization said in a landmark new report published today"

404 Media: "Major Health Insurance Companies Take Down Leadership Pages Following Murder of United Healthcare CEO"

ProPublica: "[2024/02] UnitedHealthcare Tried to Deny Coverage to a Chronically Ill Patient. He Fought Back, Exposing the Insurer’s Inner Workings... More than 200 million Americans are covered by private health insurance. But data from state and federal regulators shows that insurers reject about 1 in 7 claims for treatment. Many people, faced with fighting insurance companies, simply give up: One study found that Americans file formal appeals on only 0.1% of claims denied by insurers under the Affordable Care Act"

"@rusty@piaille.fr

Yesterday, an American billionaire was shot dead in the middle of New York. This man was the CEO of a health insurance company [UnitedHealthcare], and he held the record for the number of denials of reimbursement. The worst executive in American health insurance.

And so, Americans don't sympathize. This morning I'm inundated with jokes about an assassination, it's really strange"

"@wilbr@glitch.social

That's not funny, my beloved grandma was an insurance CEO who made $10-20 million per year"

More R&R..

"Increased tariffs will trigger a trade war". You cannot have a trade war with a country you are in trade surplus with, they will win hands down. If they are selling you 10 you are selling 100, even a 50% tariff will hurt you much more than it will hurt them.

Interesting Engineering: "New catalyst boosts hydrogen yield.. The catalyst enables hydrogen production at 300°C lower than conventional thermal methane cracking processes, improving hydrogen productivity by 50%"

Elevation, 4 stars, good scifi

"@ProPublica@newsie.social

Immigrants’ Resentment Over New Arrivals Helped Boost Trump’s Popularity With #Latino Voters.. Across the U.S., Latino #immigrants who’ve been in the country a long time felt that asylum-seekers got preferential treatment. 'Those of us who have been here for years get nothing,' said one woman from Mexico who has lived in Wisconsin for decades"

"@QasimRashid@mastodon.social

Dems should be more moderate? Ok.

Racial justice is moderate—racism is extreme.

A living wage is moderate—a poverty wage is extreme.

Healthcare is moderate—denying it is extreme.

Climate justice is moderate—denying climate science is extreme.

Reject GOP Framing"

#Diagnosis

[-]

#PlanetAmerica

[-]

"Back in the bad old days, the story goes, antitrust policy was relatively divorced from economic reasoning. Bigness was a problem, not primarily because of its effects on the economy but because of its effects on society. The key figure here is Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, whose 1914 essay “The Curse of Bigness” expressed concern about the effect of size not just on smaller competitors and prices, but on the healthy function of a democratic republic...

Then, in the late 1970s, the clouds parted, and Robert Bork descended from the Heavens. Bork’s 1978 book The Antitrust Paradox led scholars and practitioners alike.. embrace a new vision of antitrust based on the standard of consumer welfare. He and his colleagues in the Chicago school of antitrust argued that the alleged.. [h]ighly concentrated markets were often a byproduct of economies of scale, not anticompetitive practices. But if bigness doesn’t necessarily make consumers worse off, then bigness as such isn’t really the problem. Antitrust policy, according to Chicago, should target only behaviors that actually reduce consumer welfare, and otherwise leave the market alone.

The Chicago view was profoundly influential on American antitrust law. Bork’s book was cited approvingly by the Supreme Court almost immediately after it came out, and the consumer welfare standard is still the dominant consideration in antitrust law today. As a result, government started to take a much more laissez-faire approach to mergers and acquisitions than it had for most of the twentieth century....

[But concentration was causing problems everywhere] the poultry industry is dominated by just a handful of processing companies. This means that farmers are often in a 'take it or leave it' situation with respect to the processors, on whom they depend for their livelihood. About a decade ago, the federal government was running a series of listening sessions to learn more about problems faced by farmers in the industry. But many of the chicken farmers simply didn’t show up. The reason? The processors had threatened to retaliate against them if they did, and that was a risk they simply couldn’t afford to take. The processing companies were using their market power to silence workers, effectively undermining both their freedom of speech and their ability to improve their working conditions"

[-]

#Frontline #UA #RU 11/23 - 12/01

[-]

Same idea.. talk tough, show stick and there will be some carrots.

CNN: "Sebastian Gorka, who Trump recently named to serve as one of [future NatSec] Waltz’s top deputies [said] 'I will give one tip away that the president has mentioned, he will say to that murderous former KGB colonel, that thug who runs the Russian federation, you will negotiate now or the aid we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts. That’s how he will force those gentlemen to come to an arrangement that stops the bloodshed'"

Wikileaks: "[2012/02, E-mail] From: Jake Sullivan

To: Hillary Clinton..

[Al Qaida] is on our side in Syria"

[-]

TR likely gave the green light, as Sunni jihadis (read: anti-Shite, meaning anti-Iran and of course anti-Russia) are on their camp. But since Asia Minor is America's bitch US likely gave the original order... The US-jihadi connection is well known and goes back years.

Al-Monitor: "Syria war monitor says rebels control most of Aleppo city.. The fighters have pressed a lightning offensive against forces of the Iranian-and Russian-backed Syrian government since Wednesday, the same day a fragile ceasefire took effect in neighbouring Lebanon between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group, a Damascus ally, after two months of all-out war...

'Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) [a jihadist alliance led by Al-Qaeda's former Syria branch] and allied factions... took control of most of the city and government centres and prisons', said [the monitor]"

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in