☕️ DON’T MENTION THE WAR ☙ Tuesday, August 6, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Media won't connect war dot to dollars; Israel offs bad guy amidst war woes; evidence suggests war looming; unlike media, we CAN connect dots, to nukes; cell tower setback; Google comeuppance; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! Today’s roundup includes: markets recover, slightly, while media keeps ignoring the nuclear rocket on the stock market trading floor; Israel does it again, despite all the U.S. claims we are doing ‘everything possible’ to avoid escalation; headlines show pattern of escalation rather than diplomacy; we connect some nuclear dots to guess why we seem Hell-bent on war with Iran; more evidence of media malfeasance; great but buried story links cell towers to bovine deaths and lameness; and a federal court finally drops the antitrust hammer on Google.

🗞 C&C ARMY POST | MORNING MONOLOGUE 🗞

🪖🪖 Update from C&C HQ. Since we live in Gainesville, a town in the middle of Florida, Hurricane Debbie only delivered minor flooding, transitory power outages, and tons of yard trash yesterday. Some coastal spots, like Sarasota, were much more affected, if by ‘affected’ you mean they are now using airboats and kayaks to get around instead of cars.

Floridians are used to alligators and hurricanes. Florida Man shall overcome.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🚀🚀 Episode 6 of Britain’s unparalleled John Cleese comedy Fawlty Towers was titled “Fire Drill,” or in some releases, “The Germans.”  In the episode, Cleese’s hotel manager character experiences a series of comic mishaps leaving him addled (involving a moose head and a frying pan), just when a group of German tourists arrive to stay at the hotel.

A woozy Cleese immediately becomes paranoid that the staff will inadvertently offend the german guests, and hissed “don’t mention the war” at everyone. Not trusting his workers, Cleese personally assumes serving the Germans, a large bandage swaddling his cranium, but apparently can’t stop thinking about it. While taking the tourists’ dinner order, Cleese starts off joking about some RAF pilots fire-bombing Berlin, and ends up disastrously goose-stepping and Heil Hitlering all over the dining room in front of the astounded Germans.

I am starting to think Fire Drill was predictive programming. The media is doing its ever-loving best to not mention the war. Yesterday saw markets open with a slide but close with a modest recovery. CNBC ran a hopeful story last night headlined, “Biggest concern is the market sell-off becoming a 'self-fulfilling prophecy,' research firm warns.”

Their biggest concern isn’t war, apparently. The real concern, according to CNBC, is people’s fears about bear markets. That’s the biggest concern. The potential for war in the Middle East didn’t even register on CNBC’s list of concerns. That factor wasn’t even mentioned in the article, not even to rule it out. In fact, none of corporate media’s many articles about the markets mentioned people’s rational fears of war at all.

And that is how you know they are pulling a Basil Fawlty on us. The fact they refuse to mention the war is how you know the war is really the markets’ biggest fear. For Portland readers, a third of the world’s oil is produced in the Middle East. Among other things, a broad Middle East war would shut off the oil flow, causing (more) worldwide inflation, hobbling supply chains, and generally wreaking havoc on global business and finance.

Markets are often said to have their own intelligence, smarter than any A.I. Through crowdsourcing, they aggregate millions of individual data points and self-interested decisions, which are all boiled down into handy, easy-to-understand share prices.

I hate to sound like I mistrust everything, but I wonder to what extent yesterday’s market recovery, such as it was, reflected undisclosed government buying to prop up prices, rather than any recovering consumer confidence. It looked a lot like the media version of Basil Fawlty goose-stepping through the Manhattan lobby on his way to the Stock Market’s bar.

But here at C&C, we believe in truth over narrative. So … let’s mention the war!

🔥🔥 Whew. The pace of events over in the Cradle of Humanity is starting to resemble late-stage labor pains. What rough beast, its time come ‘round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born? Yesterday’s news suggested it’s almost like they want to provoke a war with Iran. And there might be a very good reason they are doing it. Let’s connect some dots.

Our war roundup begins with a story almost completely invisible in mainstream media. The Kashmir Free Press quietly ran an article yesterday headlined, “IDF killed Gaza’s deputy economy minister in airstrike, says Israel.”

They did it again! Amidst skyrocketing tensions, and with neighboring countries like Jordan desperately begging the Iranians to exercise restraint, on Sunday Israel blew into smithereens Hamas’ economic minister while he was visiting his mother.  (Mom didn’t make it.)

Things don’t look optimistic for peace. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not appear to be in an accommodating mood. Headline from the New York Times, updated on Sunday:

It’s not just the Prime Minister. Israel’s media seems to accept war with Iran is coming. Yesterday, the Jerusalem Post reported that Iran has officially informed Israel of an imminent attack, something you might call a declaration of war, but since we’re all pretending there is no war, it was blandly characterized as a “message.” Yesterday’s JPost headline:

On an aside, why did the Jerusalem Post choose a picture of a smiling foreign minister to decorate its story on the announcement of an imminent Iranian attack? It seemed like a weird choice. Maybe Kamala knows, since she’s the expert on weirdness. You tell me:

Similarly, also yesterday, the Jewish News Syndicate reported that Iran told neighboring countries that it will not be mollified or pacified, and rather than reporting any diplomatic efforts, Israeli media reported that its government is also preparing for war. JNS headline:

Meanwhile, thanks to President Cabbage and his Proxy War in Ukraine, Russia is gathering behind its new ally, Iran. Headline from yesterday’s Kiev Post:

Until recently, General Shoigu, who now heads Russia’s Security Council, was the top officer in charge of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Yesterday he met with the mullahs in Iran. Is it to be a new proxy war for Mr. Shoigu?

🚀🚀 It certainly seems like the Biden Administration and Israel are provoking another Proxy War. Why? Is this a ‘Wag the Dog’ election strategy to prop up the Biden Regime? Perhaps. But there is a simpler dot that we could connect. Consider this Fox News headline from about two weeks ago:

Two weeks ago, Secretary of State and rabid neocon Anthony Blinken announced Iran was only two weeks away from getting nukes. Remember that.

Back in 2010, NYU professor, Oxford PhD, think-tanker, and regular media commenter Alon Ben-Mier published a long article in the International Journal on World Peace, describing Israel’s doubtful view about Iranian nuclear prospects. The whole thing is worth a read if you want to fully understand current events (note: a free account allows access to the article).

Israel is a tiny country the size of New Jersey, surrounded by enemies sworn to its destruction. Of them all, Israel views Iran as the biggest single threat, mostly because Iranian leaders keep promising to wipe Israel off the map, and funding “resistance” groups like Hezbollah that constantly launch rockets into Israel. Ben-Mier explained two critical dynamics: (1) Israel needs the United States to win a war with Iran, and (2) Israel must prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons at all costs.

Mr. Ben-Mier described three conditions under which Israel would attack Iran to stop it from getting nukes:

However catastrophic it may be. Remember that one, too. Ben-Mier’s three conditions have now been satisfied. Negotiations and sanctions have failed to stop Iran from enriching weapons-grade uranium. And, at least according to neocons in the Biden Administration, Iran is now ‘on the verge’ of acquiring a nuclear device. So check, check, check.

Once, in college, I visited a country bar with some friends. A drunk local started yelling at my date. So, with some difficulty, I managed to get his attention and, backing up toward the bouncer station, began taunting him. Once we got almost to where the bouncers were, I yelled something insulting I couldn’t take back; he lunged, I dodged, and the drunk ran right into a six-foot-eight bodybuilder with an earpiece. He got bounced, and I returned, nonplussed, to my date.

I’m not proud of my dissolute period during my college years. But the point is, I got that particular job done by provoking a troublemaker into throwing the first punch.

Could Israel be employing a similar tactic now? Could Israel be provoking Iran into throwing the first punch, and lunging right into the American bouncer? Does it have to play out this way, with Iran attacking first, to make it politically possible for the Biden Administration to start its next Proxy War against Iran? Obviously, I don’t, and can’t, know for sure.

But it does make a lot more sense than coincidence.

🔥🔥 It wasn’t just my imagination. One of my regular news sources, the Ground News website, has a feature showing the left/right tilt in reporting on various stories. Yesterday, its calculator showed left-leaning media was more or less completely ignoring the bad stock market news:

Remind me again, who are the low-information voters?

🔥 Speaking of media ignoring stories, a couple years ago the Scottish Farmer ran an intriguing and hard-to-locate bovine story headlined, “French farmer wins battle to turn off 4G antenna after claims of damaging cow herd’s health.”

Plucky French dairy farmer Frédéric Salgues sued a cell phone provider  earlier this year claiming that, since the cell tower’s July 2021 installation about 200 yards away from his farm, 40 of his 200 cows died, and milk production decreased by 20% — starting mere days after the antenna was switched on.

Hard to believe, but there it was.

After evaluating the evidence, the French court agreed. The court-appointed expert testified that, "I have no medical explanation for the sharp drop in milk production, from 15% to 20%, in the days following erection of the antenna.” The judge ordered cell provider Orange to temporarily disable the tower, while the expert evaluates whether the remaining cows recover.

Farmer Salgues was joyful at the win, but the cows were ecstatic. “Moo!”, they told reporters, over and over.

Could a cow start the revolution against 5G towers? You never know. Cows have made history before. A cow once knocked over farmer Kate O’Leary’s lantern and started the Great Chicago Fire, allegedly, although Miss O’Leary’s cow, Daisy, denied it to her hamburger-bed.

UPDATE: Alas, the decision appears to have been overturned by a higher French court. Progress, in fits and starts.

🔥🔥 In more terrific legal news, the Associated Press reported the shocking news yesterday that “Google illegally maintains monopoly over internet search, judge rules.” You don’t say.

The decision capped a years-old lawsuit filed by President Trump’s DOJ. In what AP called a “setback” for Google, Federal Judge Amit Mehta entered a whopping two hundred and seventy-five page ruling, longer than a normal novel, finding that Google has illegally monopolized search. Among many other things, Judge Mehta noted that Google spends almost $30 billion dollars a year to ensure its service is set as the default on nearly every device in the world.

“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Mehta wrote. Google “enjoys an 89.2% share of the market for general search services, which increases to 94.9% on mobile devices,” the ruling explained.

The order didn’t prescribe what happens next, such as whether Google should be broken up. (Yes, please.) But the court scheduled a follow-up hearing on September 6th to discuss the remedy. Google has vowed to appeal, a process that could tie things up for years.

But even better, commenters expect a whole new crop of class-action lawsuits citing the judge’s findings, arguing that advertisers were gouged by Google’s monopolistic pricing.

One wonders. Had Google not abandoned its original motto of “Don’t Be Evil,” might it have avoided the DOJ’s crosshairs? Once again, we see the example of a big corporation that decides to dabble in politics and then discovers what happens next. (Ahem, Disney.)

As a libertarian-minded conservative, I generally object to government meddling in markets. But there is a place for anti-trust laws, and I can’t think of a more deserving target of scrutiny than this particular search giant. Thus, it’s progress.

Have a terrific Tuesday! And log back in tomorrow morning for more dot-connecting essential news and commentary.

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