John Helmer playing the antisemitic card? Or "just" a general conspiracy theory card?

That's per this piece of his from June 5, about Ukraine essentially trying to redo, or renege on, its grain export deal with Russia, which said that in exchange, a Russian ammonia pipeline (for fertilizer) to Odessa would be unblocked as well, and other reciprocal items.

Helmer's not the only, or first, person I've seen write about this. He does add more about the UN background on the deal, and about the UN allegedly putting its thumb on the Ukrainian side of the scale, starting with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres himself. And, that may include assistants at the UN Secretariat being his flunkies.

But, note one thing in this paragraph?

Reinforcing Guterres in these schemes of deceit have been his spokesman, American and Frenchman Stéphane Dujarric (Rothschild), Argentine Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); and the negotiator of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, British lawyer Martin Griffiths (lead image, right) and https://twitter.com/.

Gee, "Rothschild." Wonder how that "just slipped in there"?

Actual background of Stéphane Dujarric? His mother, née Anka Muhlstein, is the daughter of Anatol Mühlstein and Diane de Rothschild. The senior Mühlstein (Wiki has his daughter without umlaut) is also Jewish, but doesn't have a famous, "triggering" name like Rothschild. (And, yes, Diane is from the French branch of "those" Rothschilds.) Given that Dujarric has never worked for any branch of Rothschild banking, and that Helmer neither mentions family history names or previous employers of the others in that paragraph, I have little doubt he's playing "that" card."

Also sadly, the likes of Yves at Daily Capitalism was among the rebloggers/reposters of this. Besides the rebloggers, a conspiracy theory-hinting piece like this from last November was at the top of what Google retirned when I had nothing in quotes.

His response:

Oops, Sokkie -- the reference is to the long and well documented history of the Rothschild family financings of war against Russia -- French, Prussian, Japanese. Didn't you know?

— Dances_with_Bears (@bears_with) June 13, 2023

That may lessen the antisemitic angle, but given the Rothschild family has multiple branches and has financed many wars, in many cases either not involving Russia or if they did, not against Russia, it now comes off as pushing a Russian conspiracy theory. (I had the middle part of that sentence in my response to him.) For example, Nathan almost entirely financed the tail end of British effort in the War of 1812, which ... Russia was on the winning side of! (And, since the US declared war on Britain, Nathan indirectly financed the British burning Washington, DC! See how that works, John! There's even a good conspiracy theory tying THAT to the First and Second Bank of the US. 

And, tied to Russia, per a section of the Wikipedia entry on the Austrian family, this:

Further, in 2001, files involving more than 40,000 papers taken from the Rothschild family in Vienna by the Nazis, were voluntarily returned by the Russian government to them from the State Military Archive in Moscow. The Russian government inherited the papers from the Soviet Union which obtained the papers during the fall of Berlin during World War II.

Russian-favored! (I will not link to conspiracy theories that claim they financed the Bolsheviks.

Of course, although they began in France, we know where the Protocols of Zion took off. Tied to that time, World War I actually shattered Rothschild transnational fraternity. And, of course, the Nazis hammered the Austrian branch and Vichy the French branch 20 years after WWI. Otherwise, from what I can tell, read Vol 1 and Vol 2 of Niall Ferguson's family biography. Vol 2 notes that never putting a branch in the US, conspiracy theory above aside, was their downfall, relatively speaking.

In response to my nickel-version of all the above, he replied:

How kind of you -- or is it cowardly? -- to retract your anti-semitism slur by advising me how to write, and also how to read the history of "MANY wars".

— Dances_with_Bears (@bears_with) June 13, 2023

So, I fired back asking if he liked promoting Russian conspiracy theories and was thin-skinned. He's obviously not actually sorry, and doesn't seem to care what conspiracy theory he promotes.

Beyond that, the rest of the paragraph has other bits of conspiracy theory. Yes, Musk owns Starlink, but at least nominally, it's totally separate from his Twitter ownership. And, he's trying to get Warmonger Joe to pick up more of the Ukrainian Starlink bill.

Helmer is informative about the Russian side of things. But, far more than a Mark Ames, he sounds like he's sometimes in the tank. And some of his posts related to that are just silly, like this one claiming "Sweden Wants to Reverse the Battle of Poltava." Really? It's got a 300-year-old grudge? (And, June 12, per that piece was Monday; no word of the Swedes sneaking their Gripen airplane into Ukraine as of today.) 

And, if I wanted to go conspiracy theory, no wonder that, just before the fall of the USSR, it was alleged he had been recruited as a KGB agent.

Beyond that, his cohost on his analysis radio talk show, George Eliason, is a wingnut pure and simple. And, the TNT Radio that hosts both is versed in conspiracy theory.

I may unfollow him on Twitter, and likely will delist him. And, if I wanted to start conspiracy theories, I'd start one about him based on his Wiki page having a claim, rejected by other Russians, that he was once recruited as a KGB agent.

Meanwhile Mark Ames on Wednesday refuted the chuds who claim he's a Russian agent by posting on Twitter this Reuters story about Ukrainian advances and Russian casualties.

Starbucks rightly gets petard-hoisted

Former Philly area regional Starbucks manager Shannon Phillips rightly got $25M from StarBux. As with unionism, a reminder that most companies that appear socially conscious will always throw someone under the bus as needed. Given that the manager of the actual individual store where Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson were arrested was Black, and his assistant was the one who actually called Philly cops, and faced no actions, the suit was reasonable.

Starbucks, in this piece by the Philly Inquirer, claims she was fired because she didn't do anything afterward to address community issues. In the first link (Daily Mail) Phillips expressly not only denied that but listed what she DID do. And, most the stories of several note a Black district  manager spoke up for her.

Here's her claim in more detail via the LA Times:

After the arrest, Phillips, who as a regional manager oversaw nearly 100 locations across Philadelphia, south New Jersey, Delaware and parts of Maryland, said in a 2019 complaint that she had taken steps to allay the community’s concerns and to keep staff and customers safe. She said those efforts included arranging a roundtable meeting with CEO Howard Schultz in Philadelphia and organizing teams of management-level employees to work at the approximately 20 Philadelphia locations because hourly workers feared going to work amid all the protests.

Versus Starbucks on CNN:

Starbucks, which denied the claims at the time, said in a 2021 court filing that after the incident, “senior leaders and members of Partner Resources all observed Ms. Phillips demonstrate a complete absence of leadership during this crisis.” Phillips, the company argued, “appeared overwhelmed and lacked awareness of how critical the situation had become.” Phillips’ manager ultimately decided to dismiss her “because strong leadership was essential during that time,” according to the document.

Given the fullness of the trial, and given what I noted above about Starbucks and union-bashing, I don't believe it. (And, two days later, the WaPost has a longish read about a fired former Starbucks union activist.)

Sadly, among #BlueAnon types, the fact that Hot Air, Red State etc are all playing this up means they'll all downplay it.

Texas Progressives: Arrests, campaigns, more

Off the Kuff wrote about the feds busting Nate Paul, which was somehow only the second-most interesting federal crime story of the week.

SocraticGadfly took a close look at Cornel West's announcement of his third-party run for president.

TPWD will use eminent domain to try to save Fairfield Lake State Park. I expect they'll lose. Or, if they don't lose, per Texas and US Constitutions, how much will they have to pay?

A state appeals court has dismissed Kelcy Warren's lawsuit against Beto O'Rourke.

Twenty-five years later, James Byrd's family wonders how much (or little) has changed.

Rural school districts, especially in West Texas, continue to struggle financially. Forrest Wilder argues the Lege and the Christofascist backers of many members, and even more the executive branch, want it that way, focusing on an interview of Fort Davis ISD's super.

The Observer offers its wrap on the "awful" Lege session. (And we haven't even gotten to Strangeabbott's special session[s].)

NO Collin County Republican leaders will condemn Allen Premium Outlets' mass murderer Mauricio Garcia's racist beliefs.

Gannett New Craphouse (actually it was OLD Craphouse) journos at the Austin Stateless are on strike.  Good luck; in all likelihood you won't get a real win, and certainly not one that's long-term.

William Rehnquist: Racist before he became Chief Justice, and also racist AFTER he became Chief Justice.

RIP James Watt. A black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple have surely been invited in his honor as honorary pallbearers, which quote is sadly not mentioned in NPR's milquetoast obit.

RIP Roger Craig, who had multiple St. Louis Cardinals connections. Weirdly (maybe he didn't teach Bruce Sutter directly) Bruce Sutter is not mentioned among big-name early practitioners of the splitter.

Harvey Kronberg says we're asking the wrong question about the forthcoming Senate trial of Ken Paxton.

Therese Odell had her bottle of indictment champagne ready.

The Dallas Observer advises you on how to tell if your man is listening to Andrew Tate.  

Houston Landing provides a guide to applying for federal Internet subsidies. 

 In the Pink is deeply skeptical of that Catholic charter school in Oklahoma.

Just war, Russia-Ukraine, and horrible framing by Cécile Fabre

Meduza, where Kevin Rothrock, whom I follow in Twitter, is the managing editor, had an "interesting" interview about the Russia-Ukraine war and "just war" with French philosopher Cécile Fabre.

First, the issue of "just war" in the modern west still ultimately traces back to Augustine. And, given that Fabre opens her book "Spying through a Glass Darkly" about the ethics of espionage with a pair of biblical quotes means she's probably coming from there. Related? The fact that the CIA, yes them, posts a generally highly favorable review of the book makes me more skeptical yet.

First, there is the issue of bad framing. I mean, the piece ignores entirely the eight years from the Maidan to the war, ignores the Minsk Accords, and their violation by both sides, and per Angela Merkel, the use of Minsk to deliberately string Putin along. So, to that matter, Putin did, arguably, try diplomatic negotiations, and, whether or not he fully knew it at the time of the invasion, he was getting "used."

Related is the issue of how long one goes down "Road X" before war is the last choice. And, it seems to be that she's saying, the consensus of the international community says so. But, isn't that a version of a tyranny of the majority?

Then, there's her books, beyond the review of one linked above. "Economic Statecraft" appears to justify much of the sanctions regime. But, that would seem to directly conflict with her twist on just war (considering sanctions as war by other means) in "Cosmopolitan War," where she says all individuals deserve equal treatment and just war should be based on individualist and not primarily communitarian angles. (That also sounds pretty naive."

Then, per her website as well as this piece, there's her focus on retributive justice. And, per Walter Kaufmann's "Without Guilt and Justice," I question the overarching validity of the whole idea. I also question the idea of "just war" from this angle as well. And, related to Kaufmann, I believe many things are not either 100 percent moral or immoral. Something can be 90 percent "black," but not 100 percent.

Color me not highly impressed with either her reasoning or its background.

And, when I followed him, despite Media Bias Fact Check calling Meduza "left," I didn't realize that Rothrock was connected to the (Woodrow) Wilson Center. I mean, the Wilson Center? Despite claims to be scholarly, Nick Adams, yes, THAT Nick Adams, the Aussie-American MAGA-racist piece of shit, is on its board of directors. (And, per that Wiki link, that's not his real name.)

And, the Unz Report (yes, take that with a grain of salt) has a scathing piece on him. The likes of Mark Ames follow him for his stupidity, I guess?

And, with that, I can see why he cherry-picked Fabre.

And, that's the first real "ding" I have on Media Bias.

That 3-yr lower Colorado River water cuts deal may be precarious

To refresh your memory, per blogging here two weeks ago, that's the deal the three lower basin states of the Colorado River Compact made to cut water use over the next three years (at which point the whole Compact is due to expire, and the shit really hits the fan then).

Per Pro Publica, the claims by the Southern Nevada Water Authority that Las Vegas still has 3,900 acres of non-essential grass that can be ripped out is overstated by two-thirds or more. Also, SNWA exempts more than 3,000 acres of golf courses.

Many people may think they've heard about these courses using recycled wastewater. And they do. But, water on grass, unlike other recycled water, doesn't recycle again and go down to Lake Mead, where Vegas and neighboring cities get water credits for SNWA. That water, on golf courses and other grass, soaks into the ground.

Pro Publica adds that, even a more realistic number on acreage, removal rates since the Nevada Lege mandated this in 2021 are behind schedule to meet the 2027 deadline. And, that's not to mention the three years ahead. And SNWA has added to the resistance with a waiver process. 

Fight like this, and miscalculations like this, show that getting other Lower Basin cities to reduplicate even SNWA's past, lower-hanging fruit of success will de difficult. And, of course, that's not the problem. AS PP notes, it's agriculture (paging Johnny Thompson!) — followed by industrial users, even as Aridzona tries to recruit things like Facebook data centers.

Ted Kaczynski: Counterpunch vs Jamie Gehrig, and others

At Counterpunch, Bruce Levine says Ted Kaczynski wasn't really mentally ill and Jeff St. Clair excerpts from an old book to paint somewhat the same picture. A day earlier, St. Clair revives an old piece written with Alexander Cockburn about Kaczynski participating (voluntarily) in CIA-derived mind control work while at Harvard, also referenced by Levine.

Especially versus Levine, I contrast Gehrig's "A Madman in the Woods." Ted may not have been criminally insane, but he was nuts, and while an undergrad psych class may have intensified pre-existing issues, he did have pre-existing issues.

And, just because he was not the only escapist near Lincoln, Montana, doesn't mean that he still wasn't off his rocker. (And, maybe that some others aren't, or actually, are, either.)

Also, none of this makes Kaczynski into an environmentalist, hunters' or non-hunters' version. Per Gehrig, he wasn't really that, either.

Having blogged about "Anarchists and Twitter bullshit" earlier today, let's be honest about what Ted was: an anarchist. Anarchists aren't environmentalists, or leftists, or many other things. Like it or not, we can't go back to a Roussellian "state of nature" that, contra Rousseau, never really existed any way. Environmentalism today requires management in some way, shape and form. And, even in relatively non-hierarchical American Indian tribes here in the US before Columbus, that management, whether prescribed burns or whatever, required organization, decision-making, and group cooperation.

Now, the issue of Kaczynski, his family, and his "criminal insanity" legal defense to dodge the death penalty? First, I put "criminal insanity" that way as both reference quotes and scare quotes. In reference quote terms, he did not have such a defense literally, unlike John Hinckley Jr., sent to a psychiatric unit, and later released. I put "insanity defense" in scare quotes because, per Wiki, its definition varies, a bit, at least, from state to state, and much more so, the idea of criminal insanity legally doesn't square with psychological ideas of "insanity," where in fact the word is rarely used today. As for whether Kaczynski had mental health problems, and if so, what they were, per his Wiki bio, while being a genius or near-genius mathematician is not a guarantor of schizophrenia, there are ties to mental health issues on that psychological axis.

As for raising the issue of his mental health to save him from execution? Wiki says that "some authors" suggest his mother and brother did this. It notes that his original public defenders did this, and Ted thereupon fired them. 

Trying to make him a martyr for the cause he espoused with less than full sanity, or for other causes, also doesn't treat Ted Kaczynski on his own terms, or rather, on "neutral" terms, to the degree that, pace Husserl, we can talk about "neutral" terms. 

Update: Leah Sottile, a former reporter for High Country News, offers thoughts about both Kaczynski's and James Watt's deaths at her Substack, Watt first. THIS about his Unabomber manifesto:

The manifesto is about many things; quite honestly, I think any extremist can find something to excite them in the document — from the leftest of lefties, to the rightest of the right.

Is exactly what I'm getting at, and which the gang at Counterpunch took a pass on, to extract "their" point of view.

None of this is to excuse Harvard prof Henry Murray. But, Ted himself said that this did NOT influence him, a flat statement flatly ignored by both Levine and St. Clair/Cockburn. But, it's always easy to turn a dead person into a martyr for something (even if the latter pair actually did it while Kaczynski was still alive.) Wiki also notes (which I don't think I knew) that, while in grad school in Michigan, he had fantasies of sexually transitioning. (It says "gender" but "sex" is clearly what's meant.)

Update 2: Per Oliver Bateman, here's another good angle on Kaczynski that ties directly with his troubled older childhood years: He never grew up. Bateman ties that with the fact that most extremists are similar and "can't accept life's disappointments." (Bateman's piece has its own issues, like claiming history is cyclical and Ted couldn't accept that, either.)

Anarchists and Twitter bullshit

What's prompting this brief piece is a dude on Twitter a week ago. He added me to a list called "Posturing Fascists."

I suppose that, to an anarchist, arguably everybody's a fascist. Anyway, in reality, I'm a leftist and it's not true. So, I Tweeted to him,  politely but firmly telling him that, and telling him that in addition, I don't like being added to Twitter lists in general and if I weren't removed, I'd have to block him.

Twenty-four hours later, having heard nothing, I did so. I couldn't remember his handle, but when I Twitter-searched for "posturing fascists," my reply to Sherlock Hemlock was first hit.

I've disliked semi-professional anarchism ever since the old Black Bloc hit Seattle in 1998. It's part of why I was leery of the original Zuccoti Park Occupy Wall Street movement — anarchist fellow travelers at Adbusters making the call for the movement. This all intersected with the bullshit claims that it was leaderless vs the actual "hipster-anarchist" leader, Malcolm Harris, discussed in detail here.

It's why I drew a gimlet eye on the so-called Antifa, and beyond any violence against people, or unnecessary violence against property, the often Whiteness of them horning in on local Black Lives Matter and others. And, beyond the violence level, many academic anarchists or quasi-anarchists aren't so good on information and analysis, as David Graeber showed years ago and later in his posthumous book.

I also think that most anarchists have an ox-gored version of hypocrisy on anarchism. If I took a blowtorch to THEIR personal property, they'd be up in my face in a New York minute, most likely. In short, at core, it strikes me as really being an extremely solipsistic version of libertarianism.

And, if there's something truly closer to "posturing fascists" than me, setting aside wingnut culture warriors, it would be solipsistic libertarians.

Counterpunch's Eric Draitser presents more illogic on Ukraine

Counterpunch Radio's Eric Draitser is back to beating other leftists over the head on them having insufficient fealty to Ukraine. Volodia (assuming this is the Volodimir I've read earlier) Artiukh may be earnest, but that doesn't mean I find him acceptable. I wasn't that impressed by him in electronic print then, and given Draitster's preview, know I wouldn't be impressed with an hour-plus interview.

To get to the heart of the matter? Artiukh may be a real leftist. But, Volodymyr Zelensky is not, and he runs a government two-thirds as repressive as Putin's Russia, and one that is even more kleptomaniacal. Draitser and Artiukh both know that, or should. If they proclaim otherwise, they're liars.

The reality is, that as Messrs. Mossadegh, Arbenz, Allende and others know, the US not only does not support leftist governments, it often launches coups against them. Or, as in the case of the Maidan in 2014 (and no, I know Yanukovich was not leftist), semi-coups. Too bad Draitser won't (I expect) ever have Ivan Katchanovski on. Or, say, John Helmer, which would probably start hilarious and turn acrimonious.

So saying we should support Ukraine because "our thief is not so bad as theirs"? Gee, per your boss Jeff St. Clair, Eric, I think you can find out we did that nearly 30 years ago, with Croatia's Franjo Tudjman vs Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic. Pass.