This article from INET, Industrial Policy Is a Good Idea, but So Far We Don’t Have One, is worth rememebering,

Does the whole amount to an industrial policy, creating new American competitiveness on the world stage? This seems quite far from the case.

And will all the sound and fury make a difference to voters in 2024? That too remains to be seen. But if so, it will be due mainly to effective marketing of the narrative, and not much to actual achievement of the stated goals.

The Analysis News has the article The IMF Connection with the Ukraine Crisis.

The economic doctrine promoted by the IMF after the fall of the Berlin Wall brought massive damage in the countries now at war. Prabhat Patnaik looks at how the role of the IMF was instrumental to the advance of Western metropolitan powers in the post-Soviet region. Lynn Fries interviews Patnaik on GPEnewsdocs.

This explains the ulterior motives behind the Ukraine crisis. It all has to do with global oligarchs making money and subjugating the rest of the world to their will.

Multipolarista has the article CIA has trained Ukrainians to kill Russian-speakers since 2014 US-backed coup.

CIA paramilitaries have been active in Ukraine training elite special operations forces to kill Russian-speaking Ukrainian separatists since soon after the 2014 US-sponsored coup. The US spy agency boasted that its influence “cannot be overestimated.”

Reports like this miss the western oligarchs’ financial interests in all of this. The IMF and the EU wanted the Ukraine to be so indebted that they had to sell off the countries assets to the oligarchs. Democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych was looking to Russia for a better deal. The USA and Europe could not accept this, so he was overthrown for an administration that would agree to the rotten deal the IMF was offering. To get a full appreciation of this second article, you need to understand the information in the first article above.

BIG by Matt Stoller has the article Why Are Judges Encouraging Inflation?

A conspiracy to raise prices can be understood as price-fixing, and price-fixing is a felony according to Section One of the Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in 1890. The statute says “Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce.. is declared to be illegal.” From the 1890s onward, explicit price-fixing with no other context except profiteering, was understood as illegal. What Unilever is doing, signaling of pricing moves in a concentrated industry, known as ‘tacit collusion,’ is potentially such a conspiracy. In the 1970s the Federal Trade Commission and judges considered that exchanging information while moving prices in concert was an illegal method of fixing prices.

But for years, courts have been loosening antitrust law, including those against price-fixing. In 2017, for instance, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, in a case called Valspar Corp. v. E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co, not only found that tacit collusion was legal, but that in the case of a concentrated industry, it’s rational. And so they wouldn’t even let it get to a jury.

I knew that the courts were facilitating monopolies, but this article gives details that I had not known.

What’s also interesting here is the breakdown of ideology. Typically antitrust observers see conservatives as more hostile to antitrust enforcement, and progressives as more favorable to it. But in this case, that line didn’t hold. The Third Circuit is ideologically mixed. In the Valspar case, two out of three judges were appointed by George W. Bush, and one was appointed by Bill Clinton. With a 2-1 vote, the judges adopted a strong pro-big business posture, and the lone dissenter was one of the conservatives. The Ninth Circuit is considered a more progressive place, and the judges in this case were all appointed by Democrats – William A. Fletcher (Clinton), Johnnie B. Rawlinson (Clinton), and Cathy Ann Bencivengo (Obama). Fletcher in particular is known as a stalwart left-winger, with strong progressive views on the death penalty, immigration, free speech, the environment, gun control, gender equity, etc. And yet, on the question of big business, these progressive legal minds were in lockstep with the Fortune 500.

The Daily Kos has the article and videos Jon Stewart offers awesome smackdown of Fox News in only 6 seconds.

Below is the 6 second part.  To stop the video on a particular item, click on the video and then move your cursor away to see the whole item.

The rest of The Daily Kos article has the video of the whole Daily Show segment.

Remember this post if anyone ever asks you to prove to them that Faux Noise ever told a lie, just one single lie. I have been challenged that way.

The Daily Kos has the story ‘I’m white, call them twice bitch’.  I am not sure you can imagine what this story is from its headline.  But the story and the thoughts of the commenters are a sad commentary on

Just another day in post-racial America.

Something else about the story occurred to me.  If you were white and the recipient of this tirade, would you have thought twice about calling the police?  Has it ever occurred to you wonder what it says about what non-white people in this country have to live with? Think about the impression some white people have of what the police will let them get away with. Think about the evidence you have heard recently that gives credence to that impression.

I post the link to my problem report, youtube-nocookie domain has problems in Firefox, but not in Google Chrome,  because I use the “youtube-nocookie” domain when I embed YouTube videos in this blog.  I do that at the suggestion of YouTube because I presume that avoids putting cookies on your computer when you watch the video.  That presumption may be false, but that is a matter for another post.

I have reported the problem to Mozilla the owners of Firefox.  It seems that Mozilla and YouTube just point the finger at each other.  Since the problem is as yet unsolved, I gave you the link so you can follow the back and forth until the problem gets resolved.  You may also find this entertaining and educational if you have experienced this problem on your own, and have been wondering what the issue is.

I have also replied to a YouTube support forum question.  I have had a response from someone who wants to look into the problem.

March 9, 2015

My Final response is https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/youtube/6JmM2mr_r10/Cr4L0HvM1McJ

I should have pointed out that the file http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLT2nV3sWtw does exist, but the file http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/watch?v=TLT2nV3sWtw does not. The file is on the www.youtube.com server but not on the www.youtube-nocookie.com. You’d think that would be an easy oversight to fix. You wouldn’t think it would take YouTube this long to notice the problem, or that I would have to be the one to point it out. I think YouTube should send me a cookie for finding the problem for them 🙂

If you click on the link of the file that doesn’t exist, it appears to be blank. If your browser shows URL titles in tabs, then you will see the title “404 file not found.” You have to be wide awake to notice that this is how YouTube is trying to deliver the message to you. Would you normally look to the title of the file that surprisingly shows up empty?

Remember, this is a problem that shows up in Firefox and some other browsers, but not in all browsers.

The file that does not exist, does not exist for all browsers. The issue is that YouTube only tries to use the non-existent file for some browsers. So it is not the browser’s fault that YouTube does this to them.

I found out exactly how YouTube screws things up for other browsers. When I insert a YouTube video in this blog, I use code that accesses a file like https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/TLT2nV3sWtw in an iframe.

When YouTube constructs the contents of the iframe for Firefox, it sets up a video player and gives the player the URL https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TLT2nV3sWtw. When YouTube sets up the same player in the Google Chrome browser, it give the player the URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLT2nV3sWtw. It is smart enough to take out the “-nocookie” in the domain name. In other words when it sets up Google Chrome, it gives it a URL that exists. When YouTube (owned by Google) sets up Firefox, it gives it a URL that it knows does not exist.

Of course Google wouldn’t sabotage browsers from other companies. It just made sure that the setup worked for its own browser, and didn’t bother to do the same for the other browsers. I am sure it was just an oversight. Google’s motto is “Do no harm”, right?

March 11, 2015

There is now a reply on the Google Product forums.

ytcrschmidt 9:36 AM (50 minutes ago)

Hi all,

YouTube developers are aware of the problem, and are working on a solution. I apologize for the inconvenience.

March 12, 2015

I have verified that YouTube has fixed the problem. I checked one of the many videos that requests no cookies be used and it is now playing again.

However, if you click on the YouTube icon at the bottom right corner of the video, you still do not get to a working version of the video on YouTube. You get what looks like a blank page. The title of that blank page is “404 Not Found”. Google developers are still working to fix that and whatever other problems continue to lurk.