Links and Notes for August 16th, 2024

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Labor
• Economy & Finance
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Public Policy & Politics

The War on Gaza by Joe Sacco (The Comics Journal)

Joe Sacco wrote the fantastic graphic novels Palestine in 1993–1995. He is back with his easily recognizable style with a new series of short essays, in both text and comic form. He’s been writing them since January 2024 and has published fifteen of them so far.

“And Now They Want Our Votes” by Eman Abdelhadi (CounterPunch)

“Eman Abdelhadi’s speech from the “Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws” demonstration on Aug. 18 in Chicago.

“Chicago, we all know why we are here.

“We are drowning, and our hearts are broken.

“We are drowning in debt. In medical bills. In rising rents. In inflation.

“We are under attack in this country. The Right has declared war on people of color, on trans people, on women. They are trying to dismantle our systems of education, trying to criminalize teaching Black history and the realities of racism, oppression and exploitation in this country.

“They openly call for mass deportations and want to strip Black people of voter rights.

“Every year, the climate crisis kills more people of heat, of floods, of fires. Every year, the number of climate refugees at home and abroad climbs and climbs.

“And in this moment of absolute disaster, of absolute crisis.

“The American ruling class —the people descending on this city for the Democratic National Convention — have seen fit to spend our money on killing children in Gaza.

“They have provided an infinite supply of bombs to destroy Gaza’s homes, its schools, its hospitals, its playgrounds, its mosques, its churches, its croplands, its infrastructure.

“As the most powerful country on earth, they have bullied the rest of the world in the name of protecting a far-right government openly committing a genocide.

“And now …

“Now they want our votes.

“They say they have earned them by showing a little more empathy towards those poor Palestinians they happened to kill.

“Vice President Harris, we hear your shift in tone.

“But …

“Your tone will not resurrect the dead.

“Your tone will not shelter the living.

“Your tone will not pull bombs out of the sky.

“Your tone is not enough.

“Genocide Joe would still be on the ticket if it were not for this movement, for all of us. Our movement is one of the main reasons that you are now the Democratic candidate for President in the most powerful country on the planet.

“You, Vice President Harris, get to run for office because we ousted your predecessor right here in these streets. But it was never just about him. It was about the 40,000 Palestinians he helped kill.

“And now we are telling you that ​“Not the other guy” is not a platform.

“We are telling you that you actually have to earn our votes.

“And we are telling you exactly how to earn them.

“We are telling you we want a weapons embargo.

“We are telling you we want a permanent ceasefire.

“And we are telling you that we want them NOW.

“You keep telling us that democracy itself is on the line.

“You keep telling us that fascism is knocking at the door.

“You keep telling us that Trump would be worse.

“But the majority of Americans, in poll after poll, say they disapprove of Israel’s actions in Gaza. Study after study shows that a weapons embargo would earn you more votes, would secure you this election.

“Vice President Harris, why are you risking the end of democracy, the rise of fascism, the return of Trump to protect Netenyahu’s war on children?

“You are not the protector of democracy.

“We are the protectors of democracy.

“If you want to see democracy, look to Chicago’s streets this week. We are democracy speaking back to power, saying we will not be ignored.

“We want to house our unhoused.

“We want to feed our hungry.

“We want to heal our sick.

“We want to guard our planet.

“We want to build our future, not rob Gaza’s children of theirs.

“You may think that the people who make it into the United Center today are the ones who get to shape the future of this country.

“That’s not true.

“We make the future of this country. We make it where we’ve always made it, right here on the streets.

“Vice President Harris, you have a choice. You could join a movement for justice. You could make a place for yourself in history. You could be a leader who chose to listen to her people rather than the interests of the war manufacturers. Or you could aid and abet a war criminal.

“Vice President Harris, if you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, WE ARE SPEAKING.

“Hear us. We will not be placated by tone.

“We need you to act — and we will not leave the streets until you do.”

James Baldwin at 100 by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post)

“Maybe it was the Christian preacher in him: It was agape, the unqualified love of humanity, along with the associated caritas, that mattered as much or more to him than eros alone: “All love bridges the immense expanse between lonelinesses, becomes the telescope that brings another life closer and, in consequence, also magnifies the significance of their entire world.” And: “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot.” And, among many other aphorisms like these: “The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair.””

“Sheriff James Clark participated in the violent arrests of civil rights protestors during the Selma-to–Montgomery marches not long before the Cambridge debate: “I suggest that what has happened to white Southerners is, in some ways, after all, much worse than what has happened to Negroes there because Sheriff Clark in Selma, Alabama, cannot be considered — you know, no one can be dismissed as a total monster. I’m sure he loves his wife, his children. I’m sure, you know, he likes to get drunk. You know, after all, one’s got to assume he is visibly a man like me. But he doesn’t know what drives him to use the club, to menace with the gun and to use the cattle prod. Something awful must have happened to a human being to be able to put a cattle prod against a woman’s breasts, for example. What happens to the woman is ghastly. What happens to the man who does it is in some ways much, much worse.””

“It is his love of America, also expressed on many occasions, most famously in Notes of a Native Son: “I love America more than any other country in this world and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.””

““It is a terrible thing for an entire people to surrender to the notion that one-ninth of its population is beneath them. And until that moment, until the moment comes when we, the Americans, we, the American people, are able to accept the fact, that I have to accept, for example, that my ancestors are both white and black. That on that continent we are trying to forge a new identity for which we need each other and that I am not a ward of America. I am not an object of missionary charity. I am one of the people who built the country — until this moment there is scarcely any hope for the American dream, because the people who are denied participation in it, by their very presence, will wreck it. And if that happens it is a very grave moment for the West.””

“You cannot argue the point, “We’re all in this together” now and expect to be taken the slightest seriously. We, the Americans, do not seem to be in anything together. Identity politics, the culture of wokery, Black Lives Matter, The 1619 Project , “cultural appropriation,” and all the other paraphernalia of our moment: It all turns on an axis of divisiveness. I do not think, I confidently do not think, Baldwin would do other than hang his head in sadness at the sight of this spectacle.”

USA Lets Athletes Cheat With Steroids, as It Accuses Russia & China of Violating Anti-Doping Rules by Ben Norton (Scheer Post)

“The US Anti-Doping Agency misleadingly claims to be a “non-governmental organization”, but in reality it is funded by the US government and overseen by the Congress. USADA has frequently accused Washington’s geopolitical adversaries of violating anti-doping rules.”

“A bipartisan group of US Congress members responded to this news with threats, vowing to cut funding for WADA . The US Anti-Doping Agency misleadingly claims to be a “non-governmental organization”, but in reality it is funded by the US government and overseen by the Congress . USADA has frequently accused Washington’s geopolitical adversaries of violating anti-doping rules. WADA criticized the hypocrisy of the United States, writing, “It is ironic and hypocritical that USADA cries foul when it suspects other Anti-Doping Organizations are not following the rules to the letter while it did not announce doping cases for years and allowed cheats to carry on competing”.”

Pop − 3 by Akim Reinhardt (3 Quarks Daily)

“If that happens, we can go back to an older, more established political landscape of shitty and shittier politicians of the regular variety who routinely degrade U.S. democracy through standard, legal forms of corruption instead of trying to completely overturn democratic institutions and norms in pursuit of autocracy.”

This is the most horseshit of all horseshit beliefs: that Trump represents a significantly greater danger. That the current administration hasn’t veered toward autocracy just as hard as Trump did—or even harder.

“I have no faith in humanity, so I don’t assume that the Trump Bubble will pop before he undoes American democracy to a significant degree. After all, a lot of damage has already been done and he could very well regain the White House by methods fair or foul.”

Never a mention of what has been done since Trump was president. Exactly what he fears has accelerated in the interim three years. He never noticed. He was ordered not to. I just heard a Democrat on FOX describe something called the “Trump Abortion Ban,” which is just the wildest horseshit you could really call it.

“I can smell something in the air: then [sic] scent of the United States’ deeply flawed democracy, wheezing and broken, hanging on a little longer.”

This is exactly what these fools want. They cling to the comfort of a deeply broken system because it still benefits them and they know none of the vast majority whom it grievously injures for their benefit.

The surprising truth about wealth and inequality in the West by Sam Haselby (Aeon Magazine)

“My work with new data, published in my book Richer and More Equal (2024), arrives at a new conclusion for the history of wealth and inequality in the West. The new results are striking. Data show that we are both richer and more equal today than we were in the past. An accumulation of housing wealth and pension savings among workers in the middle classes emerges as the main factor producing greater equality: today, three-fourths of all private assets are either homes or long-term pension and insurance savings.”

Even if true, it doesn’t address the question why is there still so much inequality? It’s better, but not nearly by enough. The trends are in the other direction.

“The first is that the populations in Western countries are richer today than ever before in history. By rich, again, I mean having a high level of average wealth in the adult population. Why this measure of riches captures relevant aspects of welfare is because higher wealth permits a lot of good things in life. It allows for higher consumption, more savings and larger investment for future prosperity. It also promises better insurance against unforeseen events.”

Average. Western.

“However, it is notable how the lifting of regulations and the historically high taxes since the 1980s are indeed associated with the highest pace of value-creation that the Western world has ever experienced.”

Here it comes…he’s going to recommend lowering taxes. Also, Piketty didn’t dispute that wealth hadn’t increased but that inequality inevitably seemed to.

“The importance of ordinary people’s assets in the aggregate signifies the degree to which workers take part in the value-creation processes of the market economy.”

They do take part in those processes! They just keep precious little of the created value, somehow. Also he completely left out the U.S., which is both wildly unequal and whose policy and approach is a black hole toward which the others are drawn.

“Homeownership rates today range from 50 to 80 per cent.”

How is such an imprecise statistic at-all relevant? 50–80% is an over 50% error bar.

“The straight line in the figure has a negative slope, which suggests that raising the homeownership rate by 10 points leads to an expected reduction in wealth inequality by 0.04 Gini points. As an example, France has a lower homeownership than Italy ( 60 per cent compared with 70 per cent), and a higher wealth inequality (0.67 versus Italy’s 0.61).”

Another economic analysis completely divorced from politics and therefore useless. Home ownership is coming to an end because of the bubble that he purports is lifting all boats. The wealth increase is because what remains of the middle class shares in the bubbles of the housing and stock markets. Pension funds in Europe are largely real-estate portfolios as well.

“As of 2010, the richest 1 per cent in society holds a share of total wealth at around 20 per cent in Europe. That is roughly one-third of its share of national wealth from a century earlier. Countries like the UK, the Netherlands, Italy and Finland have top percentile shares of around 16-18 per cent. A bit higher are countries like Spain, Denmark, Norway and Sweden with top shares at around 21-24 per cent. Germany has an even higher share, around 27 per cent, and Switzerland’s richest percentile group owns about 30 per cent of all wealth.”

After a century, still wildly unequal and trending upward again. I’m sure he had to hurry up and finish his report. If he’d waited any longer, it would have been even more accurate than it already was.

“However, it is consistent with most of the asset ownership patterns documented above, with most of wealth today being in housing and pensions, assets predominantly held by low- and middle-wealth households.”

But people don’t own most of their home. The bank does.

“Analysing instead the changes in absolute wealth held by the rich and by the rest reinforces the conclusion that wars were not a devastating moment for capital owners.”

No shit Sherlock. That’s why they were allowed to happen. Again, politics-free economic analysis is useless.

“Capital taxation increased rapidly between the 1950s and the 1980s in most Western countries. Wealth and inheritance taxes reached almost confiscatory levels in the early 1970s, and this coincided with stagnating business activities, few startups, slowed economic growth, and an exodus of prominent entrepreneurs from high- to low-tax countries.”

There it is. Ludwig von Mises is smiling…

“The extent to which this is due to productive entrepreneurship generating products, jobs, incomes and taxes, or to forces that exclude groups from acquiring personal wealth causing tensions and erosive developments in society, is a question that needs to be studied more.”

By you maybe. It’s pretty clear to some of us that plunder is at the bottom of it.

Why cricket’s latest bowling technique is so effective against batters by Jennifer Ouellette (Ars Technica)

“The ball’s trajectory is affected by diameter and speed and by tiny irregularities on the surface. Baseballs, for example, are not completely smooth; they have stitching in a figure-eight pattern. Those stitches are bumpy enough to affect the airflow around the baseball as it’s thrown toward home plate. As a baseball moves, it creates a whirlpool of air around it, commonly known as the Magnus effect. The raised seams churn the air around the ball, creating high-pressure zones in various locations (depending on the pitch type) that can cause deviations in its trajectory.”

“When the ball was spinning, there were expanded and more intense low-pressure zones, while further downstream, those zones shifted and weakened. That’s consistent with observations and measurements of the Magnus effect, particularly in baseball, where high-speed spins on the ball can shift its trajectory mid-flight. While these particular experiments focused on an idealized means of cricket ball delivery, according to Siddharth, “This demonstrated to be an outstanding approach for replicating the intricate and dynamic situations experienced in sports contexts within a wind tunnel setting.””

The Goths by Justin Smith-Ruiu (Hinternet)

“As I argued in my 2017 book, Vampires: Lovesick and Bloodthirsty (don’t ask), the sources of Gothic horror as a literary movement extend back more than a century before Walpole, and in their earliest instances are exclusively non-fictional. The initial impetus for the flurry of early modern texts on the undead and related phenomena, to be precise, was the expansion of the Habsburg administrative apparatus into newly annexed regions of the Balkans, and the assignment to mostly hapless Austrian clerks of the task of sending reports back to the capital on the peculiar customs of the South Slavic villagers.”

“As I argued in my 2017 book, Vampires: Lovesick and Bloodthirsty (don’t ask), the sources of Gothic horror as a literary movement extend back more than a century before Walpole, and in their earliest instances are exclusively non-fictional. The initial impetus for the flurry of early modern texts on the undead and related phenomena, to be precise, was the expansion of the Habsburg administrative apparatus into newly annexed regions of the Balkans, and the assignment to mostly hapless Austrian clerks of the task of sending reports back to the capital on the peculiar customs of the South Slavic villagers. The vampire myth is thus born out of proto-ethnography, as the natives periodically grew restless after reported nocturnal sightings of some poor old widow’s dead husband, and sought to remedy the problem with garlic, crucifixes, and wooden stakes driven through the hearts of exhumed corpses, and as the lowly Beamter sent news of these queer goings-on all the way back to Vienna.”

“[…] roughly speaking, the Gothic is that strand of European history that does not trace its roots back to Rome, but rather interrupts and obstructs classical aesthetics by importing a sensibility shaped in the heathenish forests somewhere to the North and the East.”

“[…] both valued nothing more, at a feast celebrating some great new conquest, than the delicacy of a thousand squabs drowned in honey, and aged there thirty years, even their innards, even their feathers, slowly transforming, like wood become stone in the dark abyss of time, into a delectable candy in the perfect likeness of a baby bird.”

The Incompetence of Masters of War by Samuel Geddes (Jacobin)

“The spread of cheap, cost-effective arms among asymmetric opponents of the West has significantly blunted the power of conventional weapons systems. The rational thing to do is accept this and redirect these hundreds of billions of wasted dollars to social programs and infrastructure. Almost anything would be more defensible than the status quo.”

“A near-identical situation unfolded more than three decades ago during the US-led war on Iraq over its occupation of Kuwait. Official outlets gloried in the technical prowess of the weaponry brought to bear against the Ba’athist armed forces, with the media marveling at the proclaimed effectiveness of the Patriot missile defense system. Its success rate at shooting down Iraqi ballistic missiles was almost immediately challenged. A subsequent US government study into the Patriot system’s performance revised the initial claims of an 80 and 50 percent interception rate in Saudi Arabia and Israel respectively to 70 and 40 percent. The report further notes that, according to the “strongest evidence,” the overall success rate of the Patriot system during Desert Storm dwindled to 9 percent.”

“The total cumulative cost of this seemingly impressive feat of missile defense (assuming we take Israel at its word) has been estimated at more than $1 billion for all of the interceptor munitions fired, whereas the cost of the Iranian operation was at most $80 to $100 million — one-tenth of the price.”

“Anticipating a US-led blitzkrieg against Yemen, one of the poorest Arab countries, online hawks warned Yemenis that they were “about to find out” why Americans “don’t have universal healthcare.” After eight months of the fiercest naval combat experienced since World War II, the unintended truth of that hollow bluster is more apparent than its authors could ever have intended.”

“In June, the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, a supreme example of American hard power, was withdrawn from the Red Sea waters bordering Yemen. Conflicting reports emerged as to whether Ansar Allah had in fact successfully struck and damaged the vessel or whether it had simply exhausted its interceptors against the relentless barrage of disposable Shahed drones launched by the Yemeni movement.”

“Comparing the cost of an interceptor missile (ranging from a minimum of $2 million apiece to as much as $28 million) to that of a Shahed drone ($20,000 to $50,000), this is a losing proposition in the long run. On top of this, the presence of this overwhelming firepower has done nothing to prevent Ansar Allah from strangling maritime traffic through the Red Sea and imposing yet another supply chain crisis on the global economy.”

This reminds me of the goon swarm’s strategy in Eve Online.

“[…] the narrative surrounding this “attack” quickly buried suspicions that the missile involved was an Iron Dome interceptor that veered wildly off course, striking the very territory it was supposed to be shielding. If this hypothesis proves true, then the potentially calamitous war that may result will have been triggered by an errant missile fired by a prohibitively expensive and dangerously unreliable missile defense system.”

“[…] the F-35 was projected to cost over $1.7 trillion over its lifetime. Persistent cost overruns and development woes have angered even the Pentagon itself, which opened the program up to competitive bidding in 2012. More than a decade later, the rapid spread of drone technology has made it possible for unmanned craft, sometimes referred to as “loitering munitions,” to perform many of the tasks traditionally handled by fighter jets — with little overengineering and none of the risk to an actual pilot. That the total budget of this program could eradicate all American student loan debt or cover half the cost of a national health system only adds to the obscenity of it all.”

The Body Bags of Gaza by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch)

“One Israeli soldier was told that Palestinians were being substituted for IDF K-9 explosive-sniffing units because “too many dogs had died.”

“+ Joseph Massad: “In Vietnam, US soldiers’ rape of Vietnamese women guerrillas was not only normalized during the US invasion and occupation of the country but was even part of US army drill instructions””

“Scott Anderson, director of UNRWA in Gaza: “The scale of destruction is like something out of a dystopian science fiction movie set. If you drive around Gaza, there is rubble everywhere, there is garbage everywhere, and there is not enough clean drinking water for people. They should have 15 liters a day and people are getting maybe two or three. And the most troubling thing we see from our perspective is an outbreak of disease. We’ve seen a significant rise in Hepatitis A. […] Polio has been detected. The prevalence of skin disease is quite high. And people don’t have access to adequate supplies to disinfect things that they cook and heat with.””

“Dr. Javid Abdelmoneim, who just returned from two months working for Doctors Without Borders as a surgeon in Gaza: “People are expressing to me that they’d rather just die. They’re waiting for death. They’ve lost hope. And that’s preferable to what they’re going through with serial displacements and the lack of safety.” ”

“Reporter: “Two twins who were newborns were killed in Gaza with their mother and grandmother as their father went to collect their birth certificates. How is the U.S. responding to this?”

“Vedant Patel, State Department: “I’m not gonna speak to specific instances and incidents…I will let the IDF speak to that.”

“Translation: We just supply the weapons, we don’t tell Israel which infants to kill.”

“IDF veteran and Holocaust scholar Omar Bartov […] These were issues that I could only discuss with a very small handful of activists, scholars, experts in international law and, not surprisingly, Palestinian citizens of Israel. Beyond this limited circle, such statements on the illegality of Israeli actions in Gaza are anathema in Israel. Even the vast majority of protesters against the government, those calling for a ceasefire and the release of the hostages, will not countenance them.”

“Riyad Mansour, UN ambassador from Palestine, to members of the Security Council. “Let me state the obvious, Israel does not care about your condemnations. It dismisses your resolutions. It does not even listen to your debates. Their representative will be playing with his iPhone while you are talking.””

“Former PM Ehud Olmert “The day will come when those who are shooting Palestinians in the settlements will shoot at us because they believe we are committing sacrilege… mark my words, remember I said this.””

Republicans Are Morons by Caitlin Johnstone (Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix)

“Republicans are so fucking stupid that every few years they start shrieking that they’re under attack from “communism”, and by “communism” they mean the opposing US party which supports the exact same capitalist status quo they support but with tampons in the boys’ bathroom.

“God I wish Democrats were as cool as right wing idiots make them sound.”

“They got Americans to move from arguing that the US-backed genocide needs to end to arguing over which US politician should be elected to oversee the genocide. Sometimes all you can do is stop and stare in awe of the power of imperial mind control.

“When you find yourself debating which openly genocidal presidential candidate will do a better job managing inflation, you know you have been duped into having the wrong conversations about the system you are living under.”

“They’ve spent ten months going “Yep, yeah, we gotta do something about that eventually,” like this is something that can wait. Whenever the empire’s podium people are confronted by the press about what Israel is doing they’re just like “Yeah, we’re aware of those reports, we’re having conversations with the Israeli government and we’re waiting to hear back from them,” and then never, ever following through with an answer.”

Well, yeah…because they know that the problem will solve itself. They’ll give their homicidal allies in Israel what they want, indebting them to their master. The western politicians know that there will be neither recriminations nor reprobation. They will instead continue to rise along their chosen career paths. There is literally no upside for them to answer any questions or to do anything to prevent what’s happening to people their neither know nor care about.

“Liberal supporters of Israel ultimately do more damage than Israel’s supporters on the far right, because they pollute the information ecosystem a lot more. The overt fascists who back Israel lie constantly, but their lies are easier to see through because they don’t hold positions that can draw sympathy from kind-hearted people who care about human rights and justice. Liberal Israel supporters ultimately promote the same horrors of genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid as far right Israel supporters, but they do so while paying lip service to human rights and a two-state solution. They deceive people into thinking it’s possible to support the Israeli state without supporting the murderousness and criminality that the entire state is made out of.”

Ukraine continues offensive inside Russia by Clara Weiss (WSWS)

“The troops carrying out the first invasion of Russia since the end of World War II were trained in the UK, and are using American and German battle tanks as well as American-supplied HIMARS rockets.”

“Whatever the immediate military and political calculations behind the incursion, its underlying strategy and goals reveal the imperialist character of the war waged by the imperialist powers against Russia. NATO deliberately provoked the invasion by the Putin regime in order to use Ukraine as a staging ground for a much broader war whose ultimate goal is the carve-up of the entire region.”

Basically, the goal is to get to carve up Russia for themselves, while all of their citizens think it’s the most logical thing in the world that it’s happening, that Russia is at fault for its own misfortune, that there was a way of avoiding this exact result had Russia just “behaved itself.” People will happily go along with this invasion as if it’s the most moral thing in the world, even though it’s Europe invading Russia, once again. It probably felt just this logical in the 1910s and 1930s as well. Just the evil Russians getting what they deserve.

It will be the same with the Chinese when they must be attacked for the good of the poor people of Taiwan.

The Democratic Party Exists To Make Sure Good People Do Nothing by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“When Instagram progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promulgates the blatant lie that Kamala Harris is “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza,” the result is that people who trust AOC will relax and stop pushing for an end to the genocide. They’ve been told by the congresswoman who’s been marketed as standing as far to the left as anyone can reasonably be that the current administration can be trusted to take care of this thing, so all they need to do to save Gaza is vote for the vice president in November.”

“What makes the Democratic Party such an effective psyop is that it stops good people from recognizing that everyone with power and influence in their country is their enemy. And it stops them from responding accordingly.”

“Obama made a whole political legacy out of weaving tapestries of flowery prose expressing deep compassion and a love of peace and justice, while spending eight years continuing and expanding all the most depraved and murderous policies of his predecessor. Biden gave liberals throughout the western world a sigh of relief when he took office, because at long last “the adults are back in the room,” and now he’s waging a steadily escalating proxy war against a nuclear superpower while backing an actual genocide.”

“I criticize the Democrats more than the Republicans because they require more criticism. That Republicans are evil is obvious at a glance to anyone with a conscience; that Democrats are evil is much less obvious, and usually requires quite a bit more consciousness and commentary to understand.”

End of Hoaxes by James Howard Kunstler (Clusterfuck Nation)

“The odious “Joe Biden,” fake president, is dumped in the ditch of history, and a mighty operation is mounted to put over Veep Kamala Harris, who ignored “JB’s” incapacity to head the US government for four years, carrying out no duties meanwhile, hiding from the public, answering nothing, going nowhere, abetted by a treasonous news media bent on hiding her as she drank away the months in the old Naval Observatory.”

“Have you heard enough of their fake war-cry: “defending our democracy?” From a party that has tortured the law to jail and silence its critics and scrape its challengers off every ballot.”

Journalism & Media

Chatting with a friend who asked me “How is the “Stimmung” for Kamala?”:

We don’t really talk about it. No-one likes her, of course, because she’s useless. The “Stimmung” is completely fake, as usual. Only fools care about it right now. We were distracted by the Olympics for a while.

Anytime you find yourself caring about the U.S. presidential elections, remember that we don’t even know who’s running the U.S. right now. Because Biden’s not doing it; not really. So, if the elected avatar isn’t running the country right now, then why is it so important who the next avatar is?

These are hopes that had been instilled by the greatest propaganda machine that people have ever devised. It’s like the hope you get about a character in a movie or book. It’s not real. She, like any other candidate in my lifetime other than perhaps Sanders, doesn’t actually have any “good” convictions. Her team is just saying what it thinks will get the most donations, which it can convert to votes via marketing.

If you look at headlines about Biden from as recently as late June/early July, the NY Times was recommending that the Biden campaign drop Harris because she was a “liability”. Now, they’re telling everyone that she’s the second coming of Jesus Christ himself. None of it is real.

Five weeks ago, the U.S. media gushed about Biden after a highly orchestrated press conference that Biden was the “sharpest foreign-policy mind in history”. One week later, he’d quit by Twitter and Harris was now the sharpest foreign-policy mind in history. It’s a tough environment to navigate. It’s far worse than even the Soviet politburo was, as people really, really believe that stuff here. I’ve only spoken with two people who are Kamala fans. They were blindly worshipful.

Just like Trump voters.

So that’s my “quick” summary.

I know; I’m a ray of sunshine, as usual.

Israel’s “Shared Values” With The West Are Tyranny, War And Genocide by Caitlin Johnstone (Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix)

“There are no answers in electoral politics. That doesn’t mean there are no answers, it just means you don’t live in a free society where power is held to account by the electorate. There are ways of addressing this which don’t involve voting, but those will never become an option as long as people are relying on the fake plastic keys they’ve been handed to try and escape from their prison.”

Republicans Kill Civilians For Bad Guy Reasons, Democrats Kill Civilians For Nice Guy Reasons by Caitlin Johnstone (Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix)

“The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans will kill a million Palestinians and say they’re doing it so Jesus will come back, whereas Democrats will kill a million Palestinians while making noises with their mouths like “ceasefire” and “two-state solution”.

“That’s basically it; one does an evil thing in an evil way, while the other does the same evil thing in a much more photogenic way. Republicans want to kill Muslims for evil reasons like claiming they’re all terrorists and irredeemable heathens, while Democrats want to kill Muslims for nice guy reasons like helping Israel defend itself and bringing peace and stability to the region. They both want to kill middle eastern civilians, but one of them will kill middle eastern civilians in ways that let liberals feel good about themselves.”

“The same people who tell you Democrats are the better option to help Palestinians because they can be pressured to save Gaza will scream at you that you’re trying to get Donald Trump elected when you try to pressure Democrats to save Gaza.”

“Whenever people say the Biden-Harris administration has been getting firm with Netanyahu, they mean issuing him a stern warning that if he doesn’t stop being so openly genocidal, they’ll be forced to get tough and issue him another stern warning.”

Democrats Release Insanely Hawkish Middle East Policy Platform by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“Kamala Harris is not “working tirelessly” to do anything at this time besides become the next president. Her own staff are saying she is opposed to an arms embargo on Israel and won’t consider cutting or conditioning military aid, which is the only way the Israeli government can be effectively forced to stop sabotaging a peace deal so that the US-backed genocide can finally end. Saying you’ll continue pouring military explosives into a regime that is using those military explosives to conduct regular massacres of civilians is the exact opposite of working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire.”

“After boasting about the Biden administration’s bombing campaign against the “Iranian-linked Houthi forces” in Yemen, its “precision airstrikes on key Iranian-linked targets,” and its success in neutralizing Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel after Israel assassinated multiple Iranian military officials in Syria, the platform says that this “stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s fecklessness and weakness in the face of Iranian aggression during his presidency.”

“Then they literally attack Trump for not going to war with Iran.”

“[…] rather than pledging to re-enter the Obama era of de-escalation and detente with Iran, the Democrats are attacking Trump for not fighting a war with Iran while pledging ironclad support for the nation that’s doing everything it can to get that war started.”

Ready Or Not, Did Kamala Harris Make Her Case? by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice)

“[…] politics is theater, that Joe Biden stepped down only because Nancy Pelosi held a gun to his head (and would have pulled the trigger), and that Harris was cast in this role not because the people choose her, but because Biden needed a brown woman to appease activists and then his brain turned to mush. A month ago, the only thing left of the KHive was four gay guys in P-Town snorting Adderall off a wicker coffee table; now it’s half the country! Whoever scripted this deserves an Oscar.”

Labor

Homeless Detroit teenager handcuffed, publicly humiliated by judge after falling asleep during courtroom field trip by Zac Corrigan (WSWS)

“The judge’s vitriolic, abusive response to the completely natural actions of Eva Goodman, who had never been in a courtroom before, reflects the vast social gulf that separates the two of them. Anyone with any feeling for the conditions faced by Eva and her family would have expressed sympathy and understanding.

“But King is from a different social universe. The Presiding Judge of the Criminal Division of the 36th District Court, appointed by Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm in 2006, is also the son of longtime UAW bureaucrat Stanley King. The senior King, who as a staff member for Local 600 (at Ford’s historic “Rouge” Dearborn Truck plant), pocketed over $1.2 million in pay drawn from workers’ dues money between 2005 and 2017–an average of over $95,000 per year, according to the Department of Labor’s public records.”

“It is telling that a son of a UAW official in the leadership of a historically important local would take such a hostile attitude toward a working class youth, threatening to abuse state power to send a message to a child whose own economic situation is the product of decades of betrayals by the UAW.”

“King’s abusive behavior toward the 15-year-old Goodman revealed in a particularly disgusting fashion the essential attitude of the UAW bureaucracy and Democratic Party apparatus towards all workers: Accept all these cuts and like it! Stay in line or we’ll lock you up! Wipe that smirk off your face!”

Economy & Finance

Chinese steel giant warns of “long cold winter” by Nick Beams (WSWS)

“There have been calls from both within China and internationally for the government to take action but apart from minor initiatives and some easing of credit by the People’s Bank of China there has been no response. The focus of the government is on investment in “high quality productive forces” concentrated in the high-tech area.

“The latest data on the Chinese economy, coming in the wake of GDP growth of 4.7 percent in the second quarter down from 5.3 percent in the first, showed no signs of an upturn.”

“The downturn in the steel industry, generally regarded as the backbone of the industrial economy, which is most sharply reflected in China, will have major ramifications for iron-ore exporting countries, notably Brazil and Australia.

“In the past three years, global prices for iron ore, Australia’s biggest export earner have fallen from a peak of $US215 per tonne to $US97 and are expected to fall even further, to $US70 or lower. This will have a major impact on government revenues that are highly dependent on the taxes from iron ore sales.

“It is estimated that for every $US10 fall in the price, Australian GDP drops by $A6.5 billion and government tax revenues by $A1.3 billion.”

Kamala Harris outlines pro-corporate economic agenda at North Carolina campaign stop (WSWS)

“While the working class struggles to survive a deadly pandemic in the face of rising food, healthcare and housing costs, the ultra-wealthy under Biden-Harris have never had it better. Data reported by Forbes and complied by inequality.org shows that between March 2020 and March 2024, the number of billionaires in the US increased from 614 to 737. The wealth controlled by these billionaires has nearly doubled in four years, from $2.947 trillion to $5.529 trillion, or a nearly 88 percent increase.

“Harris promised to build on this “foundation” of “progress” and create “opportunities for the middle class that advance their economic security, stability and dignity.” She did not once mention how she would pay for any of the proposals, nor did she raise the possibility of increasing taxes on the ultra-wealthy or corporations.”

Corporate Bullshit by Cory Doctorow (Pluralistic)

“It’s a four-stage plan:”

1. First, insist that there is no problem.
2. OK, there’s a problem, but it’s your fault.
3. Any attempt to fix this will make it worse.
4. This is socialism.

Gold price reaches record high by Nick Beams (WSWS)

“The People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, is also a major buyer with its gold reserves increasing every month. Last year it bought more gold than any other central bank in the world. At the same time, it has been reducing its holdings of the dollar, which have dipped to below $800 billion, down from around $1.1 trillion in 2021.”

“The rise in the price of gold is an indication that the period when the contradictions of US capitalism and the global economy were able to be covered over by the expansion of debt is rapidly coming to an end. This means that enormous economic and financial convulsions are coming in which the working class will be directly confronted with the task of establishing socialism, a higher economic and political order.”

Science & Nature

The Royal Institution: How does maths influence our everyday life? by Eugenia Cheng (YouTube)

“Is it necessarily always a good thing that we are able to make rigorous arguments and build arguments on arguments and build complexity? I love that kind of complexity but I am painfully aware that it is not necessarily a good thing because what are we doing in the world with our complexity, what are we doing with our scientific advances, what are we doing with building more and more complicated devices that can destroy the environment much faster than people who don’t use that kind of advanced science?

“We are building weapons that can kill more people at once than have ever been possible before and we are trying to use those advances to rescue us from the destruction of the environment we have caused using those advances, so was it even a good thing that we did that in the first place?

“Native cultures, who [sic] don’t use all of that fancy complicated eurocentric science are much better able to live in harmony with the environment and not destroy it, so was it actually a good thing that we did that? I don’t really know.

“I still really like it but I just think we should ask ourselves these questions and not assume that it’s necessarily a good thing to make these things that we call technological advances.”

Environment & Climate Change

Bernie’s Flawed Vehicle by Nick French (Jacobin)

“Eventually the administration did pass climate-investment-related provisions of BBB in scaled-down form in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), mostly in the form of tax credits for private investment and eco-friendly consumer choices. But those investments fall far short of what climate experts say is required to rapidly decarbonize, and even on optimistic estimates, the bill will produce only a 6 to 10 percent reduction in emissions relative to a non-IRA scenario.”

“[…] for all the celebration of the Biden administration’s progressivism by Sanders, Biden’s policies have not meaningfully raised living standards for many working Americans — especially not enough to make up for decades of stagnant wages.”

“With a tirade against the billionaires, the call for a popular economic agenda, and the demand for a more humane foreign policy, Sanders’s speech was a good reminder of why he’s one of America’s most beloved politicians. But those messages sit uneasily with a laudatory attitude toward the Biden administration and an expression of faith in Kamala Harris’s Democratic Party to enact a Sanders-style agenda.”

It’s all pure fantasy. Nothing good will be allowed to happen if it interferes with either party’s donors’ profits. No universal health care, no reduction in military budget, no investment in green technologies that matters, no ending foreign wars. None of this is on either Trump’s or Harris’s agenda. They don’t talk about it—and no-one thinks it’s relevant to the election. The election is a meme battle.

Medicine & Disease

This year’s summer COVID wave is big; FDA may green-light COVID shots early by Beth Mole (Ars Technica)

“Test positivity—a metric that has weakened given the dramatic decline in testing—shows a weekly test positivity rate of 18.1 percent for mid-August (amid a test volume of roughly 43,000). Such a rate, if truly reflective of cases, has not been seen since the initial towering omicron wave of January 2022, which peaked at 30.5 percent (with a test volume of roughly 991,000).”

US death vs. test-positivity trends 2020-2024

Look at that chart: deaths from COVID have dropped off nicely and happily. It’s still a far deadlier disease than the flu but it’s not nearly as deadly as it used to be. That is mostly due to the vaccination wave in 2021 combined with the Omicron wave of infections that got a bunch of the vaccinated and also most of the unvaccinated.

“[…] the only vaccines currently available target last year’s strains (related to the XBB.1.5 omicron variant), which are long gone and may not offer strong protection against current strains (JN.1 and KP.2 omicron variants). Even if the 2024–2025 KP.2-targeting vaccine is approved by the FDA this week and hits pharmacy shelves next week, a dose takes two weeks to produce full protection. By that time, the summer wave will likely be declining. In fact, it looks to have already peaked in some parts of the country, including in some southern and western areas.

“The other thing to consider is timing for maximum protection for the likely winter wave. For healthy people five years old and above, the CDC recommended getting only one shot last year. The shots offer peak protection for around four months. If you get your annual shot at the beginning of September, your protection may be on the decline if COVID-19 peaks again at the turn of the year, as it has the past two years.”

The global mpox emergency and the destruction of public health by Benjamin Mateus (WSWS)

“This completely turns on its head the precautionary principle in public health, a fundamental tenet that asserts the need to prevent disease rather than adopting a passive wait-and-see approach.

“The driving force of public health policy under capitalism is not saving lives or preventing debilitating illness, but minimizing the impact on capitalist profit-making. This has produced devastating consequences in the still-raging coronavirus pandemic: deaths of tens of millions, hundreds of millions becoming infected and reinfected with SARS-CoV-2 each year, and the emergence of Long COVID as a mass disabling disease that has become as common as heart and circulatory disorders combined. Estimates at the end of 2023 place the number of Long COVID cases at a staggering 410 million people.”

Art & Literature

Perhaps Movies Should Make Sense by Freddie deBoer (Substack)

“The core point is this: a movie has to earn the suspension of disbelief. It has to petition the audience for the right to indulge in plot details that don’t make sense.”

“[…] a really killer problem that too many modern movies have: the film depends on us being emotionally invested in character relationships that we have no reason to be invested in, as the filmmakers have not taken the time to establish them and make them meaningful.”

“[…] it is absolutely true that there are many other important virtues in a movie than plot, and many of my favorite films are heavy on imagery, style, dialogue, and characterization while being plot-light in conventional terms. But, for one thing, emphasizing those other values isn’t something that I’m obligated to do as a member of the audience; I feel that way when those plot-indifferent virtues are so obvious and moving that they make me let go of plot as a principle concern. For another, you can’t make plot the core of your movie’s identity and also pile on the plot holes carelessly.”

Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture

Thou Shalt Not Commit Genocide by Chris Hedges (Scheer Post)

“Israel has amply demonstrated, including with the assassination of the lead Hamas negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, that it has no interest in a permanent ceasefire. The only way for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians to be halted is for the U.S. to end all weapons shipments to Israel. And the only way this will take place is if enough Americans make clear they have no intention of supporting any presidential ticket or any political party that fuels this genocide.”

Um, Chris? Americans don’t know about it. They are not told about it. They are told deify Caitlin Clark instead. They are told to deify Olympic athletes. They are told to spend their days feverishly posting about how Jordan Chiles was robbed. They are told to worry about Chinese doping at the Olympics. Their lives are filled to the brim with ephemera, mostly sports-, entertainment-, and consumption-related. They are not told about international affairs. The border is as close as they get to hearing about other nations. They do not know about Venezuela or what we’re doing there. They do not know anything about Israel or Gaza or Iran. If they have any idea about Ukraine and Russia, they think that the U.S. is “winning”. They are like children, deliberately infantilized and kept in a non-participatory slumber. Their passion is confined to sports and weather.

“Holocaust studies were hijacked by Zionists. They insist that the Holocaust is unique, that it is somehow set apart from human nature and human history. Jews are deified as eternal victims of anti-Semitism. Nazis are endowed with a special kind of inhumanity. Israel, as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington concludes, is the solution. The Holocaust was one of several genocides carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries. But historical context is ignored and with it our understanding of the dynamics of mass extermination.

“The fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which writers such as Primo Levi stress, is that we can all become willing executioners. It takes very little. We can all become complicit, if only through indifference and apathy, in evil.”

“What does it say about us if we accept a world where we arm and fund a nation that kills and wounds hundreds of innocents a day?

“What does it say about us if we support an orchestrated famine and the poisoning of the water supply where the polio virus has been detected, meaning tens of thousands will get sick and many will die?

“What does it say about us if we permit for 10 months the bombing of refugee camps, hospitals, villages and cities to wipe out families and force survivors to camp out in the open or find shelter in crude tents?

“What does it say about us when we accept the murder of 16,456 children, although this is surely an undercount?”

It says the truth about us (the USA). It says the same truth that the last many decades of warfare have very clearly said about us (the USA). None of this is new. None of what it says about us (the USA) will be any different if the USA would stop Israel’s genocide. None of it.

It says that we (the USA) are mostly empty moral vessels, caring mostly for ourselves and our close loved ones. Our concern, for the most part, does not extend to anyone else. Whenever the circle of concern is expanded by argument, if only a little bit, it quickly contracts again as the deluge of propaganda and prevailing social attitudes return, as inevitable as the tides. This results in people caring only about what they’ve been told to care about.

We (the USA) care about sports teams, the weather, gun control (either way), local and inconsequential taxes, the national borders, cute animals, sharks, billionaires, child abuse, and consumption.

We (the USA) neither know nor care about the military-industrial complex, Russia/Ukraine, the middle east, Israel’s madness, climate change, data-privacy, or the poor.

Right now, the television has been talking about rip currents for fifteen minutes. We are a thousand kilometers inland. Why is this being broadcast here?

“The question is not whether resistance is practical. It is whether resistance is right. We are enjoined to love our neighbor, not our tribe. We must have faith that the good draws to it the good, even if the empirical evidence around us is bleak. The good is always embodied in action. It must be seen. It does not matter if the wider society is censorious. We are called to defy — through acts of civil disobedience and noncompliance — the laws of the state, when these laws, as they often do, conflict with moral law.”

The tweet by Caitlin Johnstone (Twitter) has a good analogy.

“Imagine if there was a mass shooting in a major US city.

“Now imagine that instead of stopping the shooter, the US government started sending him boxes of ammunition.

“Now imagine instead of going on for a few minutes, the mass shooting rampage went on for ten months.

“Now imagine that instead of being treated like an earth-shattering tragedy in mass media headlines, people just kind of got used to it and it sort of faded into the background of mainstream news reporting.

“Now imagine the mass media started reporting on the mass shooting as though the mass shooter is only defending himself, and reporting on casualties of the rampage using passive-language headlines which don’t attribute the killings to the shooter.

“Now imagine there was a presidential race, and everybody started talking about which candidate is best qualified to keep giving ammunition to the shooter.

“It’s like that.”

Mainstream Media Is Ignoring Israel’s Sexual Torture by Branko Marcetic (Jacobin)

“For the past few weeks, Israel has been caught up in a scandal around torture at its Sde Teiman detention camp involving an act so nauseatingly heinous, you should only keep reading if you have a strong stomach.

“In late July, ten Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers at the facility were arrested for raping a male inmate, specifically by inserting something into his anus that damaged his internal organs and necessitated surgery to save his life. The arrests sparked a riot by far-right politicians and other extremists outraged at the punishment, who stormed the prison and another military base.

“Then, at the start of August, respected Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem released a report detailing the unspeakable torture at the facility, titled “Welcome to Hell.” Roughly a week later, as the soldiers went on trial, both the United States and the European Union felt the need to publicly express horror at the torture and call for an investigation. About this same time, video footage of the rape was unearthed and publicly released.

“If you’re a devoted New York Times reader, you likely have no idea almost any of this happened.”

Technology

Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse. by Scharon Harding (Ars Technica)

“Automatic content recognition (ACR) tech is at the heart of the smart TV ads business. Most TV brands say users can opt out of ACR, but we’ve already seen Vizio take advantage of the feature without user permission. ACR is also sometimes turned on by default, and the off switch is often buried in a settings menu. Including ACR on a TV at all says a lot about a TV maker’s priorities. Most users have almost nothing to gain from ACR and face privacy concerns by sharing information—sometimes in real time—about what they do with their TVs.

“At this point, consumers have come to expect ads and tracking on budget TVs from names like Vizio or Roku. But the biggest companies in TV are working on turning their sets into data-prolific billboards, too.”

“Those who want a TV without an Internet connection have few options. You can try to prevent a smart TV from tracking you, but again, turning off ACR and other tracking techniques can be challenging. Some TVs remove basic features like Internet connectivity if you don’t let them track you.”

“[…] there are plenty who don’t know the extent to which their TVs are monitoring them. Complexity in understanding and controlling TV tracking is especially relevant as more sets incorporate microphones and cameras. Terms of service are often complex, wordy agreements buried in elusive TV settings or online, and companies have ways of strong-arming TV owners into accepting such agreements. Further complicating matters, it’s possible for consumers to disable tracking from the TV OS provider, such as Google, but still be tracked by the TV OEM, like TCL.”

“[…] it’s easy to imagine TV brands growing complacent about improving more traditional TV capabilities, too.

“For most people who want fewer ads on their TVs, the only option is to vote with your dollar. There’s also a growing pool of technically savvy folks sharing hacks for disconnecting smart TVs from the web or even DIYing your own smart TV.

“People who ask me for recommendations for cheap TVs used to receive lectures about factors like viewing angles and sound quality. Now, I talk about privacy, tracking concerns, and the software behind the hardware.”

Kroger’s EDGE and other corporate swindlers use AI to rob working people by Vivien Ivy (WSWS)

“[…] in partnership with Microsoft, the EDGE shelves are to be equipped with cameras that utilize facial recognition software to generate profiles for each customer. Data collected includes age, gender, and other biometrics. Coupled with aggregate and individual data from Kroger’s own app, and those of its partners, the shelves will modify prices on a per-customer basis to determine the maximum amount that a person is willing to pay for a product.

“The only way to opt out of such an invasion of privacy will be to not shop at Kroger stores, an impossibility in many working class and poor neighborhoods where Kroger owns the only grocery store. And with the contested $25.6 billion acquisition of Albertson’s, the use of ESLs will become even more widespread.”

LLMs & AI

Eric Schmidt’s AI prophecy: The next two years will shock you by Azeem Azhar (Exponential View)

Just look at the headline: this is the level of discourse. It’s about as informative as a cult or a church or a scam or crypto—oh, wait, those are all the same thing, topologically.

Am I being unfair?

Here are the first paragraphs, cited uncritically by Eric Schmidt’s AI prophecy: The next two years will shock you by S. Abbas Raza (3 Quarks Daily). The author runs a science-y web site, but is also so unfamiliar with technology that he has no idea how to even remove the UTM tracking tags from his URLs.

“Schmidt confessed to revising his AI outlook every six months, a testament to the field’s volatility. He shared a striking example: “Six months ago, I was convinced that the gap [between frontier AI models and the rest] was getting smaller, so I invested lots of money in the little companies. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Now, please don’t focus on the fact that Schmidt thinks the future is in ever-larger models (he does). Rather, consider the nature of his knowledge. He is an insider’s insider, about as well-informed as anyone in this field can be, and unlike some critics, he is also putting his money where his mouth is, backing many AI companies like Mistral, Kyutai and Asari.

“Schmidt understands scale and gets neural nets. After all, he ran Google when it acquired Deepmind, developed the transformer architecture and built tensor processing units, the first chips dedicated to speeding up deep learning. And Google has been about scale since its inception.

“Despite this, just six months ago, this tech titan thought smaller models might stand a chance to push the frontier. He doesn’t believe that anymore.

“The point is that he was either right then or he is right now. It took just six months for a u-turn. That is the degree of uncertainty.”

What utter hogwash. Eric Schimdt is worth $23.2B. He is still betting on literally everything on the planet. He will make money no matter what happens. He is talking up the companies he’s more invested in, probably because he sees that the whole AI market is deflating because nothing is really happening, so he’s betting that people will stay invested in a bubble composed of larger players rather than smaller ones.

This kind of stuff is so much like a cult that you can’t take it seriously. It’s almost worse than U.S. politics (which is also a cult).

Programming

Avoiding CDN supply-chain attacks with Subresource Integrity (SRI) by Andrew Lock (.NET Escapades)

“The main downsides with CDNs (which remain unchanged) are:

“You need to trust the CDN to deliver the files you request. You can (and obviously should) enforce this with a good Content Security Policy (CSP) and with SRI integrity attributes.
If you don’t want your site to break if/when a CDN is unavailable or is compromised, then you need to provide alternative hosting for the files (on your server for example), and add fallback code to detect this situation.”