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Sunday, September 29, 2024

2024-09-30

 ***** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


Economic and Market Fare:

Rosie: Memo To Treasury Market Investors: Chill! (via theBondBeat)

Okay, I am getting inundated enough now regarding the sloppy behavior by the Treasury market since the Fed cut rates -50 basis points last week that it deserves a response. A little bit of history is in order.

When the Fed cut rates -50 basis points at the onset of the easing cycle that commenced on September 18th, 2007 (from 5.25% to 4.75%), the 10-year T-note yield actually popped the next day to 4.55% from 4.47%. That is because investors bought into the view that the rate cut was better for the equity market than it was for the bond market because, like now, there were visions of rate cuts being coupled with a “no landing” economic scenario. By October 12th that year, the 10-year T-note rate had risen to 4.70% for a +20-basis point increase in the 10-year T-note and my phone was ringing off the hook: “WTF is going on?” I preached patience then as I do now. At the lows, the 10-year T-note yield hit 2.08%.

The same thing happened on January 3rd, 2001, when the Greenspan Fed cut -50 basis points in a surprise intermeeting move, and the 10-year T-note yield spiked to 5.14% that very day from 4.92% the day before as fund flows went straight into the stock market, and for the very same reason cited above….

… Go back to the first jumbo cut of -50 basis points on October 11th, 1984 (after a pair of -25 basis point cuts) and the 10-year T-note yield again refused to rally initially — it was 12.31% that day, and days later, it was sitting at 12.32% — and yet, the low was 7% and this did not even require a recession. Just sustained disinflation.

So, stay the course and stop freaking out over daily or weekly gyrations. History shows that equity investors rejoice more than bond investors do to the initial jumbo rate cut. But the early “sell the fact” that engulfs the bond market proves to be a very attractive buying opportunity because in disinflation cycles, when the Fed is easing, with or without a classic recession, the trough in Treasury yields is down the road. And history shows that, on average, the decline in the 10-year T-note yield from the start of the first jumbo cut to the low is closer to -300 basis points. That would put sub-2% in sight for the 10-year T-note






A valuation-aware, dynamic approach to strategic allocation

Asset Allocation Is Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice
In theory, growing a pool of wealth over decades – whether for a family, an endowment, or a pensioner – is a straightforward endeavor. An advisor or allocator needs to do three things: understand the goals of their client, find different ways to receive compensation for taking risks, 1 and then take the right amount of risk to meet those goals. 2 Taking too much risk may expose the client to unacceptable drawdowns, while taking too little risk will likely lead to inadequate returns in the long run.

The de facto “passive” allocation of 60% equities/40% bonds has proven effective at compounding wealth over time by tapping into two key risk premia: the equity risk premium earned by underwriting the risk of an economic growth shock and an inflation risk premium received for bearing the risk of surprise inflation. Since 1979, when the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Index incepted, a 60/40 portfolio made up of U.S. equities and bonds has delivered returns of 10.2% annualized, outpacing inflation by 7.0% and exceeding the return requirements of most investors.

So, we’re done, right? We should all just run 60/40 allocations and call it a day? .......

But this enviable long track record hides the fact that there have been six periods, averaging 11 years each, in which an investor in a 60/40 portfolio would have either broken even relative to inflation or, even worse, lost money in real terms. Those chapters share something in common – they all followed exceptionally strong periods of return for the traditional portfolio and thus began when either or both stocks and bonds were trading at extremely high valuations. .........


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Enhancing Traditional Stock/Bond Allocations
Investing in a static 60/40 allocation relies heavily on the herd’s view of valuation, or, more accurately, whatever way the wind of investor sentiment is blowing. The passively allocated 60% to equities buys more of whatever has the largest market cap, while the 40% invested in bonds leads to increased exposure to borrowers that issue more debt than others in the index. Even in an industry where “being different” can be a difficult, doesn’t it make sense to get a second opinion from someone who is prepared to genuinely look at valuations relative to underlying fundamentals?

Risk premia change as valuations change, so an asset allocation strategy should only hold assets that are priced to deliver satisfactory returns at any given time. Valuation-sensitive multi-asset class strategies such as GMO’s Benchmark Free Allocation Strategy (BFAS), which shifts allocations significantly during extreme valuation environments, can help a portfolio both avoid bubbles and capitalize on dislocations. The following examples of dynamically shifting and expanding beyond traditional risk premia are ways BFAS has been able to help diversify risks and enhance returns: ............



... While the S&P 500 has advanced by less than 1% since the preponderance of “overextension” syndromes we observed on July 16, the desperate “fear of missing out” among investors is striking. The narrative on financial television seems completely insensitive to prevailing conditions, as analysts cite average outcomes following Fed pivots, and average bull market gains – completely detached from the present context, where valuations are already at record highs, while market conditions feature lopsided bullish sentiment and continued divergence in our key gauge of market internals (important notes on that below). As I detailed in the July comment, You’re Soaking In It, a rate cut is typically worth a one-day pop even when internals are unfavorable, but on average, market losses have actually been worse when easy money is combined with divergent internals. 

Meanwhile, more often than not, Fed pivots have historically occurred at moderate or depressed levels of market valuation. That feature matters, so one can’t simply quote “average” outcomes apart from that context. The chart below shows the 12-month total return of the S&P 500 and its deepest 30-month loss following Fed pivots across history, based on the level of market valuation at the time of the pivot. ......

I continue to view period since January 2022 as the extended top formation of the third great speculative bubble in U.S. financial history. ........

Even if one accepts analyst estimates of year-ahead S&P 500 operating earnings at face value, current valuations are at rare extremes. Since the price/earnings ratio on forward operating earnings has only been popular since the 1990’s, investors often overestimate what “normal” valuations are. One can get a better sense by comparing the forward P/E with Robert Shiller’s cyclically-adjusted P/E (CAPE), which has a far longer history. The green horizontal line shows the current extreme for comparative purposes. In the available data since the 1980’s, the current price/forward operating P/E is associated with subsequent 10-year average S&P 500 nominal total returns between -2% to 3% annually.


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China Fare:


................ The question though is whether the government will succeed in fighting off deflation and restoring economic confidence?

While the authorities have been taking mostly ineffective steps to support the real estate market and sustain economic momentum for a long time, it is worth noting the lengths to which the government now seems to be going.  ...............

These measures were rocket fuel for stock markets, favouring not least the state enterprises and institutions that constitute much of the ownership of shares. Yet, while the measures generally may bring temporary relief,  they will not really boost the economy much. China’s economic problems are not due to interest rates being too high, a shortage of liquidity, or credit supply constraints and China’s property market needs much more than patchy support designed to stop it from adjusting to decades of overbuilding and a bursting bubble. ...........

It is worth bearing in mind that Xi Jinping’s focus on cyclical support for the economy is necessary but by no means sufficient or even relevant to address the country’s systemic flaws. The engines of past economic growth, property, infrastructure and the expansion of the finance sector are all spent forces now, and must adjust to more modest conditions and weaker fundamentals. Ridding China of deflationary, deleveraging,  and unemployment risks will require a major re-think, which may be politically impossible for a Leninist government,  about demand management, distribution, inequality, access to social welfare, and the provision of public goods and services to more people, including almost 300 million migrant workers.

Instead, Xi Jinping’s economic strategy is focused on state-led industrial policy in which the private sector plays a political second fiddle, a mercantilist preoccupation with exports which sits uncomfortably with a rising chorus of nations, and fighting macroeconomic fires instead of re-engineering China’s economic model. A spooked government need look no further than its leader. 


Quotes of the Week:

 Goolsbee: “My view has been for some time, we set the rates extremely high – highest in decades. And the way I think of what the rate is – we set a rate and then subtract off inflation. That tells you the real fed funds rate – that’s the thing that matters. That’s the highest in a very long time, as inflation has come down. Before this cut, we set the rate high and held it there for more than a year as inflation came down. So, we’re tightening in real fed funds terms every single meeting. By not cutting and going along with inflation, we’re tightening. When inflation is coming in at the target and unemployment is where you want it, do you want to be the tightest in decades? If you’re restrictive for too long, you’re not going to be at that sweet spot on the dual mandate for much longer. So that’s why I think the cut of 50 bps to start makes sense. It’s the kind of thing where it is a demarcation that we’re shifting back to a normal dual mandate mode where we’re thinking about unemployment and inflation – and out of what we have been for a year and a half which is singularly and prioritizing the fight against inflation – which we had to. But make no doubt about it, we’re hundreds of basis points above the neutral rate...."


Noland: "Austan Goolsbee has no idea where the so-called “neutral rate” is. Nobody does. It’s a flawed concept in a world where Credit, liquidity, and perceived wealth are dominated by highly speculative financial markets. Anyone today positing that there’s an equilibrium policy rate doesn’t appreciate the precedence held by Bubble Dynamics, and current Credit and market backdrops"


StenoLarsen: Once again, China appears to be bringing chopsticks to a gunfight.




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(not just) for the ESG crowd:

Radagast: How the Dutch electricity grid is going to fail


Radagast: Hurrican Helene

.......... There’s a 100 billion price tag for Helene and the next one is already forming, as the gulf water still contains record breaking levels of heat. Society is not designed to have a 100 billion dollar in hurricane damage every year, but that’s where we’re at now. Ian in 2022 clocked in at a 110 billion in damage, Ida in 2021 at 75 billion.

The idea for climate change was managed retreat: We were supposed to gradually leave the parts of the world that are most vulnerable, like cities in the Netherlands that are below sea level. Well, you can see what happened to that.

But more importantly, we’re starting to notice that there isn’t really any part of the globe that’s safe. Helene traveled over a gulf that contained record levels of heat, which leads to record amounts of moisture in the air and to record amounts of rain, deep inland, in mountainous areas of the world far from the coast that are not used to receiving hurricanes like this and not properly prepared for them. .......

............ Globally, 2024 is already a record breaking year for disasters, according to the International Red Cross, and we’re only in September. Climate change doesn’t strike everywhere at once, the collapse is unequally distributed. It tends to hit poorer and more rural places first. .........


Electric Vehicles and Renewables: Misleading Solutions to a Deeper Climate Crisis


The case that the elite lack of willingness to address climate change amounts to genocide.

............ A hidden assumption is that elites are blocking climate action. Ih fact, all of us are. Too many buy into Green New Deal hopium that if we shopped better, as in had incentives to convert to cleaner energy source sooner and did some other tinkering like more high speed rail and building more energy efficient houses and offices, worst outcomes could be forestalled.

But as we have regularly inveighted, we are way past that point. .................


From Siberia to Brazil, wildfires are moving underground and burning up massive carbon deposits. The resulting emissions threaten to worsen global warming.



Short Take #03 - Do you want to see what a SUCCESSFUL Carbon Storage and Sequestration (CSS) solution looks like?

......... When the Arctic Ocean becomes ice free during the summer ...  it will absorb about +78% more energy. Arctic warming will accelerate rapidly as this happens. ...........

There is a LOT of organic carbon stored in the Boreal Forests and permafrost.

THERE IS ENOUGH ORGANIC CARBON IN THE PERMAFROST TO INCREASE THE ATMOSPHERIC CO2 LEVEL TO ABOUT 1300PPM.

We “underestimated” how big the permafrost actually was from the start of Climate Science. Not by a little, by a LOT.

It wasn’t until the 00’s that we did an actual “on the ground” comprehensive survey of how much permafrost actually exists. ..........

If just 50% of the carbon frozen in the permafrost becomes CO2, that will add about 280ppm to the atmospheric CO2 level. If we put ZERO CO2 into the atmosphere from this point forward, atmospheric CO2 levels could still climb to +700ppm. ........

Our models are WRONG. ........


US taxpayers funded a covert campaign to downplay the risks of pesticides and discredit environmentalists in Africa, Europe, and North America


Ontario’s southernmost herd illustrates how hard it is to bring a species back from the brink — and why we need to recognize tipping points before we reach them



I saw a fascinating tweet by BloomTech CEO Austen Allred the other day that stirred up a lot of thoughts here.
“Of the Silicon Valley founders I know who went on some of the psychedelic self-discovery trips, almost 100% quit their jobs as CEO within a year,” Allred said, adding, “Could be random anecdotes, but be careful with that stuff.”
Allred tweeted this in response to writer Ashlee Vance sharing that he’d been told by a venture capitalist, “We’ve lost several really good founders to ayahuasca. They came back and just didn’t care about much anymore.”

There’s some very useful information in those words. They reveal a lot about the insane mess our species finds itself in in today’s world, and provide insight into how we might find our way out. 

I mean, think about it. How bizarre is it that our entire civilization is structured around values and priorities which are so fake and ridiculous that ingesting an ancient psychedelic potion causes even wealthy CEOs to quit their jobs and change their lives? 

All it takes is a slight shift in consciousness, a little tilt in perspective, and you immediately see that this whole rat race of domination and acquisition and productivity and wealth hoarding that all our political and economic systems have as their foundational premise is completely destructive to happiness and human thriving. .............



Geopolitical Fare:


At the United Nations this past week, the figurehead of the US Joe Biden talked about a “remarkable sweep of history,” which was somehow not referring to a descent into a WWIII hellscape but an optimistic vision of the future world led by the US.

It was a fitting final UN address for Biden who has put an exclamation point on the US’ decades-long run as chief planetary scourge — from NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine and the ongoing encirclement of China to the support of Israel’s genocidal rampage across the Middle East to the endless coups, assassinations, drone attacks, and the never ending global war on terror.

Is there any hope for change? Aurelien has an engrossing piece asking what lessons might be learned in the West from the impending loss in Ukraine. In the US at least, where learning lessons that don’t involve more conflict is mostly verboten, it’s hard to see it.

Think tanks, those buzzing plutocrat-funded shadow government hives, are week after week pumping out content on how to tinker with the lumbering leviathan. Most of these tweaks to existing strategy involve the recycling of old ideas, e.g., Ukraine is the new Afghanistan for Russia/USSR, revive the Kennan containment strategy, etc.

But what would some lessons be that the US could learn from Ukraine and the neverending wars from the past few decades if it were so inclined? How should the US adapt to the multipolar world in a way that doesn’t involve the crazies doing their best to hurtle us towards global catastrophe in a quest for hegemony?

With none of the think tanks paid to do any real thinking, it felt like a good time to look at some potential solutions — no matter how romantic they may seem at a moment when the US seems dead set on igniting WWIII. As literary critic Fredric Jameson wrote: “Utopias are non-fictional, even though they are also non-existent. Utopias in fact come to us as barely audible messages from a future that may never come into being.” ..............



On Tuesday the dementia-addled meat puppet who is still officially the President of the United States told the UN that he is working to bring a “greater measure of peace and stability to the middle east,” even as the US government pumps weapons into Israel so that it can continue its bloody massacres in Lebanon and Gaza.

On Wednesday Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told the press that “we don’t want to see this escalate” in Lebanon and that the US is working to “avoid a regional war”.

Only an idiot would believe these claims. They are self-evidently false.  .........

................................ Our world is on fire, and the US-centralized empire is the flame. We ordinary people must find some way to extinguish it, before it torches us all.


Mate: In Lebanon carnage, Biden deepens US ‘obligation’ to Israeli aggression
Israel has killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, emboldening a US-backed war for hegemony in which Arab civilians are an open Israeli target.

............ During this period, the Biden administration has adopted a strategy of pretending to pressure Israel all while offering it the weaponry and diplomatic cover to kill tens of thousands of people in Gaza and make it unlivable for survivors; expand its long-running terror and land theft in the West Bank; regularly bomb Syria; and now pursue its longstanding intent to destroy Hezbollah, the main force in the region that can significantly fight back.

As in Gaza, Israel is pursuing its goals by terrorizing Lebanon’s civilian population, and not for the first time. It was in Lebanon where Israel formalized a policy of deliberately targeting civilians ................



Last weeks pagers exploded all over Lebanon. They were pagers bought by Hezbolah, but most of them were not used by military personnel or even by Hezbollah members, though many were.

The attacks were set up to be particularly nasty. Small ball bearings were embedded in the pagers. First the pager would buzz. The person would grab it, bring it up to their face so they could look at the screen, where they would see an error message.

Then the pager would explode. The most common injuries were maiming (the hand), terrible facial wounds, and eye-injuries. I don’t know what percentage caused permanent vision loss but I saw one interview with a surgeon who said he’d removed more eyes in the last day than he had in a career of over twenty years.

Civilians, women and children were hurt. ...............

(To state the obvious, if the pager attacks weren’t terrorism, nothing is.) ..........

It is noticeable that the US and most European countries refused to condemn the attacks. If they won’t even say that this sort of thing is off the table, who will trust that they wouldn’t do this themselves? ..........

In a lot of secure areas I would expect that people won’t be allowed to bring in their own phones. This is already the case in some very secure areas, but I expect it to spread. It may also change policies about phones and other small electric devices on planes.

This is another case of Israel and the West screwing themselves. It’s going to hurt economically and it’s going to lead to copycat attacks by others, including on the West.

And, of course, it was a monstrous action. Very on-brand for Israel and very normal for the US to fail to condemn it.

Even more than before I just don’t want to hear American officials condemning terrorism. Ever. If the word still means anything, they don’t what it is.



Israel killed some 500 people in a massive new onslaught in Lebanon on Monday which saw the IDF launch more than a thousand airstrikes. 

The US is once again sending additional troops to the middle east as things escalate, on the orders of god knows who because the president’s brain has completely stopped functioning.

It’s been a few minutes since Israel last began a new project of mass military violence, so perhaps it’s time for a refresher on the official rules on how we’re meant think and talk about such matters.

Rule 1: Recorded history began on October 7 2023. Maybe some things happened before that date, but nobody can remember.

Rule 2: Anything bad that Israel does is justified by Rule 1. This is true even if it does things that would be considered completely unjustifiable if it were done by a nation like Russia or Iran.

Rule 3: Israel has a right to defend itself, but nobody else does.

Rule 4: Israel never bombs civilians, it bombs terrorists. If shocking numbers of civilians die it’s because they were actually terrorists, or because terrorists killed them, or because a terrorist stood too close to them. If none of those reasons apply then it’s for some other mysterious reason we are still waiting for the IDF to investigate.

Rule 5: Criticizing anything Israel does means you hate Jewish people. There is no other reason anyone could possibly oppose military explosives being dropped on areas packed full of children besides a seething, obsessive hatred for a small Abrahamic faith.

Rule 6: Nothing Israel does is ever as bad as the hateful criticisms described in Rule 5. Criticism of Israel’s actions is always worse than Israel’s actions themselves, because those critics hate Jews and wish to commit another Holocaust. Preventing this must consume 100 percent of our political energy and attention.



Good westerners don’t start off hating Israel. When our hearts are in the right place we start off giving Israel the benefit of the doubt and assuming the situation must be more complicated than it appears, because we’re not just going to reflexively assume the Jewish state is evil like some kind of neo-Nazi. We grew up learning about the persecution of the Jewish people, watching movies and reading books about it and vowing “never again” like everyone else. 

So for entirely sensible and good-natured reasons we tend to start off viewing anything to do with Jews and Judaism in a sympathetic light.

It’s not until we start learning and paying attention to Israel’s actions that this view begins to change. We come to understand that Israel is in fact profoundly evil, not because it is full of Jews but because it’s a western settler-colonialist project that’s inflicting the same kinds of genocide, ethnic cleansing, theft and abuse on the indigenous population of the land that other western settler-colonialist projects like Australia, the US and Canada inflicted in earlier centuries.

And we learn that this evil doesn’t just pervade the Israeli government but all of Israeli society — not because of Judaism or Jewishness, but for the same reason hatred and racism pervaded the societies of the Jim Crow south and apartheid South Africa. .......................

A sincere dedication to truth, justice and kindness can only lead one to view the Zionist project with complete revulsion after learning the facts about what it really is, what it really does, and why our western governments really support it.



To kill Hassan Nasrallah, one of the most popular leaders of the resistance (and not just among Shias), the IDF had to destroy several buildings, launch terrorist attacks via messaging devices and once again kill hundreds of innocents, dropping at least fifteen 2,000lb US-made bombs. Netanyahu gave the order to immolate the buildings in southern Beirut while he was in the States to address the UN General Assembly. Just to rub it in. The real ‘special relationship’ is sacred and eternal. Nasrallah will not rest in peace.

As we now know, neither Genocide Joe and his gang leaders in the West nor the pointmen in the Arab world who support him care a damn about how many Arabs are killed or in which country. Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen: the US and its proxies have irrigated them with blood. The attitude was summed up by the then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton after Gaddafi was lynched and the nation was de facto handed over to jihadi factions: ‘We came, we saw, he died’. The post-9/11 wars acclimatized many Western citizens and the politicians they elected to such routine torture and killings. The Israeli genocide in Gaza did the rest. ..........

That Nasrallah was an extremely shrewd tactician and strategist is acknowledged by both his supporters and his enemies. Speaking with Noam Chomsky once in Santa Fe, he confessed that the two most intelligent political leaders he had ever met were Hugo Chavez and Hassan Nasrallah but he couldn’t say it in public. Both are now dead, so I can say it for him. ..........



.......... As for the assassination, it’s much less important than people make out: decapitation strategies don’t significantly degrade strong ideological organizations like Hezbollah. The real question is how much knowledge Israel has of the actual military infrastructure. Nasrallah was a well loved leader, but he was a very cautious man and much less interested in fighting Israel than many make out. The new leadership, and given Israel’s success at assassination, it is almost all new, will be far more willing to fight. ..........



........ We’ve been seeing articles like this for a year now. It’s become a whole new genre of news reporting in the mainstream press to transcribe statements fed to the media by anonymous White House officials saying the president’s feelings are feeling upset feelings toward the Israeli government in order to frame the Biden administration as some kind of reluctant passive witness to all this butchery and genocide instead of the willing participant that it so obviously is. ............

I told him, “You’re asking me if I prefer someone who murders kids while saying nice words or someone who murders kids while not saying nice words. I don’t care. They are exactly the same to me.”

But that’s what Democrats have to offer. Nice feelings and words. Vibes. Bombing middle eastern kids to shreds while saying they support human rights ............



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There’s a lot of speculation as to if and when Iran will involve itself more materially in the current conflict, but whatever happens any amount of involvement Iran does have in middle eastern conflicts would have infinitely more legitimacy than US involvement there.

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It has long been obvious that western liberals are lying about who they are and what they stand for, but it took a Democrat overseeing genocidal atrocities during an election season to fully drive the point home. 




The odds of Ukraine recapturing all its lost territories are vanishingly small

............ This could, at least in theory, put political pressure on the Russian authorities to end the war, even as the Ukrainian position on the frontline continues to deteriorate.

This explains the attack on Russia’s Kursk province as well as Zelensky’s repeated demands for permission to use NATO weapons to strike deep into Russian territory and his continued requests that NATO grant Ukraine immediate membership.

The exact details of Zelensky’s victory plan are a closely guarded secret, but press reports suggest that the core of it lies exactly in this—NATO membership and long-range weapons along with permission to use them deep in Russia.

As plans go, it’s not a very good one .............



My news today will be brief due to reduced internet access. But I believe the essence is of highest importance since it concerns a very detailed restatement of Russian thinking about deterrance that followed from U.S. and British plans to give Kiev unlimited use of their long range missiles to strike theRussian heartland

A little more than a week ago, just before British Prime Minister Starmer arrived in Washington for what was expected to be an announcement of joint approval of such use of the Storm Shadow, Vladimir Putin told journalist Pavel Zarubîn on the sidelînes of the St Petersburg Cultural Forum that Russia will consider use of British., American or other long range missiles against its territiory as changing the nature of the present proxy war into a direct Russia NATO war and will respond appropriately. .........




How von der Leyen's über-hawkish European Commission hijacked the bloc's military and security policy — and why this represents an existential threat to the continent


#123: A brief introduction to the defense industry.



Eisenstein: More Naivete, Please

Those who call for peace when the fires of war burn hot are always accused of being naive. It is said they underestimate the ruthlessness of an enemy, who will accept nothing less than our total destruction. To negotiate with an implacable foe is the height of folly. Thus, the peace advocate is not only naive, but a traitor—sapping the zeal that comes from the life-or-death necessity of all-out battle, rendering comfort to the enemy.

To do as Gandhi urged, “Speak to their reason and conscience,” is foolish when the opponent is devoid of those qualities.

OK, but in this case, the opponent really is implacable and irredeemable. Which case am I speaking of? Whichever the war du jour is. For those purveying war, today’s war is always the exception. A litany of atrocity stories is always available to demonstrate that this enemy, this person, this group, this nation is beyond redemption. Force is the only language they understand.

I most recently encountered this mindset in my efforts to persuade RFK Jr. and other fervent Zionists to advocate a negotiated settlement, cease fire, and peaceful resolution to the conflict in Palestine. They thought me naive indeed. “Don’t you know that radical Islam forbids its adherents to ever negotiate with a Jew, except as a ruse?” “Don’t you know that they won’t be satisfied until they have exterminated every Jew from the face of the earth?” Here are some statements that prove it. Here, look at the Hamas charter. A cease-fire will just give them time to rearm. They are hell-bent on destruction.

It is hard to persuade anyone with those views to change their mind, especially if they are highly intelligent. Present any evidence, and they will always be able to find counter-evidence. They will select points that fit their narrative, and dismiss—on seemingly reasonable grounds—whatever contradicts it. If that narrative concerns controversial issues and people, they will have a lot of support in maintaining their narrative. In the case of (what I see as) the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, they can look to an entire propaganda ecosystem, as well as a community of opinion comprising lots of other smart people to assure them that they are right. The same is true for any other establishment belief. ..............



Several people recently have chastised me for discouraging Americans from voting, or, alternatively, encouraging them to vote for Jill Stein. I am sure that as the Canadian provincial and federal elections gets closer, I will get the same response when I tell people I’m voting Green in the provincial election and NDP in the federal election (neither candidate has a chance of winning), instead of voting for Trudeau’s (misnamed) Liberal party’s candidates to keep out the foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic Conservative party. As in the US, both ‘leading’ parties avidly support the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Palestine, and the beating of the drums for America’s planned wars against China and Iran. .........

So when I talk to American voters this fall, and when I vote in the coming Canadian provincial and federal elections, I recognize that my vote will count for nothing, as will the votes of those who vote for ‘third parties’ and independents in the US elections.

But I will proudly ‘waste’ my vote, because voting for someone who has pledged to end our countries’ participation in wars, coups and genocides, and to redirect our tax dollars and our energies to address the collapse of our domestic economies, the corruption and perversion of our political systems, and the absolute certainty of near-term climate and ecological collapse, just feels right to me.

And I say that with the full knowledge that the struggle to address the polycrisis — the collapse of all the interrelated systems that underlie our civilization — is most likely a hopeless struggle, probably doomed to failure, no matter who is in office.




Sci Fare:




Other Fare:

Prop 6 would amend the state constitution to ban “involuntary servitude” and prohibit state prisons from punishing incarcerated people for refusing a work assignment.




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