Solid electoral analysis today from... Steven A. Smith?

Apparently Donnie had an even larger haul from a fund raising event yesterday(?). Love that one of the things that's most being talked about in this election is the pissing contest that the rich mega donors are having.

I know there’s a thread about the likely chicken-human spread of avian flu, but I hadn’t realized that cow-cow spread is happening:

https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/04/01/bird-flu-spreads-cow-to-cow-and-to-one-human-in-texas/

Also we’re in the midst of spring migration: https://birdcast.info/migration-tools/live-migration-maps/

I wonder if we’ll see rich wellness people get it from unpasteurized cow milk

The latest simplicius is entirely focused on the military situation in ukraine/Russia so is worth reading if you want to go further than "Russia is winning".

Discussion includes the shifting narratives in the western press, recent ukrainian mobilization age bill, degradation of ukrainian armour/vehicles, paucity of any potential US aid package, and current strategies of the two nations.

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-4324-zelensky-steps-closer

Settler-on-settler violence:
https://nitter.poast.org/WAR3138/status/1776696650708189405

Seeing the cringiest shit on WeChat short videos praising Yellen for being able to use chopsticks at some restaurant in Guangzhou. One comment (seemingly unironically) calling her a 'China expert'.

screenshot under spoiler tag

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Security forces repel warlord’s attempt to storm Haitian presidential palace

Troops thwart push led by Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Chérizier to invade unoccupied residence as firefights break out in Port-au-Prince.

At least one policeman was shot after he and other officers were forced to flee an armoured car that was later set on fire, according to local media reports. Heavy gunfire has erupted in the downtown area of Haiti’s capital as police battled gang members near the National Palace for several hours.

Scores of people were trapped by the gunfire in downtown Port-au-Prince on Monday, while dozens of others managed to flee. One man who declined to provide his name out of fear for his life told The Associated Press that he was stuck for five hours until police rescued him.

“It’s the armoured car that covered us (so we could) leave the area,” he said. The latest gunbattle comes more than a month after gangs began attacking key government infrastructure.

Gangs have torched police stations, opened fire on the main international airport and stormed the country’s two biggest prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates. The violence has somewhat subsided in certain areas since erupting at the end of February, but gunfire still echoes daily.

At least 1,554 people have been reported killed up to 22 March and another 826 injured, according to the UN. The situation forced Prime Minister Ariel Henry to announce last month he would resign as soon as a transitional council is created.

Henry, who was on an official trip to Kenya to push for the UN-backed deployment of a police force from the East African country, remains locked out of Haiti. The proposed transitional council of nine members, which has yet to be formally established, will be responsible for choosing a new prime minister and council of ministers.

On Monday night, Haiti’s government issued a statement raising concerns over its creation, saying the current council of ministers "stumbled over proven constitutional and legal questions. The Constitution and Haitian laws nowhere provide for this institution.”

The government noted ministers met Monday to talk about the transitional council and shared the draft decree with legal experts so they “could finalise it and make it compliant with the laws of the republic.”

The current council of ministers also plans to create a joint commission to oversee the handover of responsibilities. Haiti’s government noted Henry received a list of nine people nominated to the transitional council on Friday and a draft decree establishing the council on Sunday.

Some light Korean history I'll make occasionally posts of

Joseon Era (1392 - 1897)

Korea's first encounter with America, but they didn't know it at the time.

1867, Summer period, the Sherman Incident

Aug 9 to 16

An armed U.S. merchant ship, a centerboard schooner named The General Sherman, sets sail to attempt to force Joseon (Korea) to open up to foreign trade with its holds filled to the brim with cotton cloth, glass, tin plates, and other items bought from China. The captain and crew also had a secret objective of using the opportunity to trade to loot the royal tombs that lie north-east of Pyongyang.

Even though the ship flew the U.S flag, there were only three to five 'westerners' onboard. The Americans owner of the ship Preston, captain Paige, first mate wilson, a welsh missionary Thomas, and some nameless brit. The crew primarily consisted of around a dozen Chinese and a handful of Malay sailors.

At this time Korea, ruled by prince Yi Ha Eung acting as regent to the young king Gojong, was known as the “Hermit Kingdom” due to its isolationist policies. Policies stemming from Korea being invaded many times over the past years by Chinese and Japanese bandits, soldiers, looters, etc.

Shortly prior to the American incident, the Korean kingdom had rebuffed an invasion attempt by the French who had mounted a punitive expedition on Korea for their persecution of Korean converts to catholicism and the death of seven French missionaries. That last bit is important so keep it in your head for a short while.

Aug 16 to 31

The General Sherman stopped at the mouth of the Taedong River at a government checkpoint, but instead of waiting for the local officials to message the kingdom officials, the captain ordered the ship to continue upriver towards Pyongyang, making occasionally stops for the welsh missionary to step off the boat and proselytizing villagers and passing out bibles.

The governor of Pyongyang dispatched his adjutant general with a small crew to meet and provide food to the crew in order to try to slow them down and hopefully persuade them to leave instead while the governor went to meet with the Regent.

The Adjutant General's journey would take a few days but the meeting with the regent was more faster and his decision more severe. The foreign ship must leave or the crew was to be slaughtered to the last man. The reason for this decision was because the regent thought they were another French warship sent on a punitive expedition and decisive action must be taken to protect the capital from being bombarded by their guns.

Aug 31 to Sept 2

The General Sherman continues upriver until it runs aground in shallow water and becomes stuck. Unknown to them, it was due to rainwater swelling the river larger than its normal size that caused the crew mistake the amount of maneuvering room they had and leading to their current predicament of taking a break in a sandbar

While trying to unstick the ship, some of the crew were dispatched for forage for supplies on one of the ship's smaller boats while another was sent to recon further upriver. Coincidentally the smaller boat that was dispatched for foraging would encounter Pyongyang's adjutant general and his men and decided it was a good idea to take him hostage.

All the while this was going on, the scout boat sent north got shot at and returned back to the General Sherman while the crew and Pyongyang militia would skirmish with each other for days culminating in the ship opening fire on a protesting crowd of Korean villagers with their 12 pound cannons murdering 7 or so.

This would lead to the Korean militia trying to improvise a cannon-armed turtle ship (a precursor to the then-modern western iron clads designed by Korea that saw great use in repelling Japanese invading ships in prior centuries) unfortunately the Korean cannon did not have enough power to penetrate the hull of the general sherman and was repelled shortly after. The decision was then made to launch fire ships at the American ship until it caught fire and sunk.

The first two fire ships failed but the third one succeeded in setting the general sherman alight with all its cargo. The last of the crew that hadn't been burned to death abandoned ship. Many drowned before reaching the shore and the few who did would shortly join the rest of their dead crew after being beaten to death by a mob of angry Koreans.

This incident would be covered by the kingdom of Korea as another skirmish between the kingdom and France. The U.S government would inquire about the missing ship and its crew to which the diplomatic department of the kingdom would reply saying they had no idea what happened to the ship and that there were no Americans in Korea.

The loss of the merchant ship general sherman would give the U.S government enough reason to launch an "investigation" expedition into Korea that would lead to u.s forces temporarily capturing several fortresses over the 'disappeared' General Sherman. But that's enough for now.

Real Progressives Live: Putin’s Russia with Esha Krishnaswamy (~2 hours)

Note: Real Progressives is run by a small group of MMT (Modern Monetary Theory)-literate American Marxist-Leninists that aims to teach MMT as an economics theory to the wider audience (skewing boomer-ish demographics). They have good position on Stalin, geopolitics i.e. China/Russia, and generally supportive of LGBT struggles (at least from my brief interaction with them online since it’s not a topic often brought up).

They run occasional webinars with economics experts and anti-imperialists, and this most recent webinar is about Russia (the title said Putin’s Russia, but it encompasses the Soviet history and also went a bit into China near the end as well - some interesting arguments about China also).

I do think that Esha’s presentation was a bit all over the place, and her answers were sometimes too brief to be satisfactory or she didn’t know too much about the subject (especially when an audience asks how the monetary theory of the USSR was similar to MMT, which I thought even I could have answered better).

But generally I learned a few things about the USSR and Russia I didn’t know about, so if you have an hour or two to spend, take a listen.

https://streamable.com/md7yp9