The eight tech titans alone gained more than $600 billion this year, 43% of the $1.5 trillion increase among the 500 richest people tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Greenland’s natural resources are worth many trillions; future drillers and diggers won’t care that it’s cold and distant. As Alaska proves, where there’s value, there’ll be value-extractors
plus, perhaps, a casino or two. Yes, the right kind of development could MGGA—Make Greenland Great Again.
Finally a company showing how to stand up to the bigot racist and calling out the real reasons these groups are demanding these changes. I hope the shareholders stand firm on inclusion and diversity. Hugs
Newsweek reports:
The Costco Board pushed back against its anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) shareholders, who had suggested the wholesale corporation re-evaluate its “illegal discrimination” program.
The Costco board responded to a group of shareholders, unanimously recommending a vote against the proposal to “report on the risks of maintaining DEI efforts.”
The shareholders had suggested Costco employees would potentially become victim to “illegal discrimination because they are white, Asian, male or straight,” which could create “tens of billions of dollars” in legal costs to the company.
The Hill reports:
In its response to the proposal, Costco called out the group for “inflicting burdens” on companies through “policy bias” and said their proposal did not aim to address financial risks but to strike down DEI efforts.
“The proponent’s broader agenda is not reducing risk for the Company but abolition of diversity initiatives,” the board of directors added.
The annual meeting where shareholders will vote on the matter will take place in late January. Earlier this year, Lowe’s, Harley Davidson and Walmart announced the repeal of DEI practices after facing similar pushback from conservative groups.
Hit both links for much more.
(Their email program seems to be off for the holidays! I keep a link; here is today’s.)
| December 30, 1901 The worst year in the 20th century for lynching in the U.S. ended with a total of 130 victims (105 blacks, 25 whites). Ida Wells-Barnett had been a teacher and newspaper editor in Memphis, Tennessee, where she wrote against the evils of lynching in her columns in The Free Speech and Headlight. Forced from the South by threat of violence, she continued her efforts in Chicago. From a letter to President William McKinley from Barnett, published in the Cleveland Gazette April 9, 1898: Mr. President, the colored citizens of this country in general, and Chicago in particular, desire to respectfully urge that some action be taken by you as chief magistrate of this great nation, first for the apprehension and punishment of the lynchers of Postmaster Baker, of Lake City, S.C.; second, we ask indemnity for the widow and children, both for the murder of the husband and father, and for injuries sustained by themselves; third, we most earnestly desire that national legislation be enacted for the suppression of the national crime of lynching. For nearly twenty years lynching crimes, which stand side by side with Armenian and Cuban outrages, have been committed and permitted by this Christian nation. Nowhere in the civilized world save the United States of America do men, possessing all civil and political power, go out in bands of 50 and 5,000 to hunt down, shoot, hang or burn to death a single individual, unarmed and absolutely powerless. Statistics show that nearly 10,000 American citizens have been lynched in the past 20 years. To our appeals for justice the stereotyped reply has been that the government could not interfere in a state matter. Postmaster Baker’s case was a federal matter, pure and simple. He died at his post of duty in defense of his country’s honor, as truly as did ever a soldier on the field of battle. We refuse to believe this country, so powerful to defend its citizens abroad, is unable to protect its citizens at home. Italy and China have been indemnified by this government for the lynching of their citizens. We ask that the government do as much for its own. |
December 30, 1936 above: Workers sit down at GM  Supporters pass in food to sitdown strikers Members of the United Automobile Workers sat down at a General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan. GM, the world’s largest corporation at the time, had refused to recognize or negotiate with the union, despite passage of the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) in 1935 which promised unions the right to organize. The local’s membership adopted a tactic developed by French workers. Instead of picketing outside a factory only to be ignored or forcibly cleared away, the sit-down strike enabled workers to halt production and seize the plant “from the inside.” The strike began just days after the end of a successful sit-down at Ford supplier Kelsey-Hayes. “Master Hands,” a corporate documentary about the Flint plant shot shortly before the strike |
| December 30, 1971 Daniel Ellsberg, a Defense Department analyst, and his colleague Anthony Russo were indicted by a federal grand jury for releasing the Pentagon Papers to the news media. The papers were part of a 7000-page, top-secret government history of the United States’ political and military involvement in the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1971, and described air strikes over Laos, raids along the coast of North Vietnam, and offensive actions taken by U.S. Marines well before the American public had been told that such actions had occurred.  The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers The Post – new movie (2017) watch trailer Why were they being prosecuted? |
| December 30, 1972 President Richard Nixon ordered an end to U.S. bombing of North Vietnam. The most recent air strikes had been retaliation for North Vietnam’s walking out of the peace negotiations in Paris and pressure to force it to submit to U.S. terms. Bombing of strategic targets and Hanoi (the North’s capital) and Haiphong lasted for eight days with a 36-hour break for Christmas. The 20,000 tons (18.1 million kg) of bombs killed just over 1600 North Vietnamese, and a dozen B-52s were lost. North Vietnam agreed to return to the bargaining table. |
| December 30, 1993 The state of Israel and the Vatican under Pope John Paul II agreed to extend diplomatic recognition to one another. |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december30
Mexico tests cellphone app allowing migrants to send alert if they are about to be detained in US
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico is developing a cellphone app that will allow migrants to warn relatives and local consulates if they think they are about to be detained by the U.S. immigration department, a senior official said Friday.
The move is in response to President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to carry out mass deportations after he takes office on Jan. 20.
The app has been rolled out for small-scale testing and “appears to be working very well,” said Juan Ramón de la Fuente, Mexico’s secretary of foreign affairs.
He said the app would allow users to press a tab that would send an alert notification to previously chosen relatives and the nearest Mexican consulate. De la Fuente described it as a sort of panic button.
“In case you find yourself in a situation where detention is imminent, you push the alert button, and that sends a signal to the nearest consulate,” he said.
U.S. authorities are obliged to give notice to home-country consulates when a foreign citizen is detained. Mexico says it has beefed up consular staff and legal aid to help migrants in the legal process related to deportation.
De la Fuente expects the app to be rolled out in January. He didn’t say whether the app has a de-activation tab that would allow someone to rescind an alert if they weren’t really detained.
The government says it has also set up a call center staffed 24 hours a day to answer migrants’ questions.
The Mexican government estimates there are 11.5 million migrants with some form of legal residency in the United States, and 4.8 million without legal residency or proper documents.
(I wasn’t going to post any news today, but in my interest of world peace, and everyone’s interest in things that are happening, this story is important, and it’s not likely to be in the commercial breaks of the game or whatever. If it comes up again, and/or where regular people see it in regular fashion, something will have already happened. Right now, it strikes me as something of which to be aware. Save reading it till tomorrow, if you like. I just want it here for the record. -A)
The former head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, has been named the new co-chair of the influential Bilderberg Group, which convenes a yearly transatlantic policy conference and has long been the subject of conspiracy theories around the extent of its power to shape global events.and/or
After a turbulent decade at the helm of the alliance’s military, Stoltenberg now takes over at its pre-eminent discussion forum: a fiercely private four-day event frequented by prime minsters, EU commissioners, bank bosses, corporate CEOs and intelligence chiefs.
Stoltenberg’s first Bilderberg was back in 2002, a few years before his second tenure as Norway’s prime minister. His decade as secretary general of Nato saw further visits, and he even gave the keynote speech at the group’s Saturday night banquet in Turin in 2018. His appointment as Bilderberg’s co-chair cements the group’s role at the heart of transatlantic strategy.
In February, Stoltenberg will also take over as chair of the Munich Security Conference, another important defence and diplomacy symposium. With a fellow Bilderberg veteran, the former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, replacing Stoltenberg at Nato, it marks a concentration of control at the top of the Atlantic alliance at a critical time.
Stoltenberg’s tenure at Nato was dominated by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which had begun in earnest not long before he took office in 2014. Stoltenberg oversaw what he recently described as “the largest reinforcement of our collective defence in a generation”, noting proudly that “defence spending is on an upward trajectory across the alliance”.
A number of his new colleagues at Bilderberg have been benefiting from this uptick.
Several of the group’s 31-member steering committee have senior roles in the defence industry. The billionaire former Google boss, Eric Schmidt, chaired the recent National Security Commission on AI, and is now busy launching a kamikaze drone company aimed at the lucrative Ukraine market. Meanwhile, the hugely wealthy Swedish industrialist Marcus Wallenberg is chair of defense manufacturer Saab, which enjoyed a 71% boost in orders in the first nine months of 2024, largely due to the war with Russia.
The tech luminary and Donald Trump insider Peter Thiel founded the fast-growing robotics company Anduril and the booming surveillance and AI giant Palantir. His loyal lieutenant Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, was voted on to the board of Bilderberg a few years ago. Karp, who claims his company is “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine”, recently told the New York Times that the US will “very likely” soon be fighting a three-front war with China, Russia and Iran.
In some respects, the geopolitical mood today is not so different from how it was in the 1950s, when Bilderberg was born. (snip-MORE)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/25/jens-stoltenberg-bilderberg-group-trump-presidency
Before I share the clips a personal note. I spend the morning with Ron. We went to get blood work done. Then we did some other things. Then he went shopping while I did housework. Then after he got home I started working on a computer project a friend asked me if I would do for him as he couldn’t do it. I agreed to. I still have a lot of work on it but I will get it done today I think.
The lab work came back and I think I have a reason while I have been so tired, short of breath, and not able to concentrate or think clearly. My blood work shows I am very anemic again. I once had it get so bad I collapsed as I was entering my allergist office. They thought I was having a heart attack and I ended up in the hospital. Turned out my heart is great, but my damaged large bones don’t produce enough red blood cells. Their solution was to eat more red meat and take iron supplements. For a long time they watched for it but as I always managed to stay right inside the ok zone they stopped worrying about it. But my diet changed, red meat got too expensive and I just don’t eat much anymore. But my lab work showed my hematocrit is very low. So I imagine the doctor will ask me to do some more tests. I hope I don’t need a blood transfusion, that sucks. Now on to the clips, enjoy.
Some days I read this, and wonder how/why people want to allow some historical happenings to repeat, while ignoring history that ought to be recalled to keep earned progress. Then there are items that make me smile to recall how they were so bad when they happened, but wouldn’t it be great if misspellings were what is so bad these days?
| December 21, 1919 Amidst a strike for union recognition by 395,000 steelworkers, the “Red Scare” was launched with the deportation of Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, and some 250 other radicals. They were deported to Russia aboard the S. S. Buford (“The Soviet Ark”).  Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman also organized against World War I J. Edgar Hoover, heading the Justice Department’s General Intelligence Division, advanced his career by implementing to the fullest extent possible the government’s plan to deport all foreign-born radicals.  S.S. Buford “Sasha & Emma” Read more about Emma & Alex |
| December 21, 1956 The Montgomery, Alabama, public buses were officially integrated. This happened following a successful boycott of city buses led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and initiated by Rosa Parks’s refusal to move to the back of the bus.  “UH UH, I’m not going your way!” Bus Boycott cartoon by Laura Gray from 1956 |
| December 21, 1965 American political activists Tom Hayden, Staughton Lynd, and Herbert Aptheker began a visit to Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam. Invited by the North Vietnamese, they went despite the U.S. travel ban. Lynd and Hayden wrote “The Other Side” following their trip, explaining the Vietnamese perspective. |
| December 21, 1968 Hundreds of supporters visited jailed Vietnam War resisters at Allenwood Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, organized by the Fellowship of Reconciliation. |
| December 21, 1982 President Ronald Reagan signed, after Congress had passed it unanimously, the first Boland Amendment. Representative Edward Boland’s (D-Massachusetts) legislation prohibited the use of U.S. funds for either overt or covert efforts by its intelligence agencies to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. |
| December 21, 1989 Vice President Dan Quayle sent out 30,000 Christmas cards with the word beacon misspelled “beakon.”  “May our nation continue to be the beakon of hope to the world.” — The Quayles’ 1989 Christmas card. |
| December 21, 1991 Eleven former Soviet republics and Russia peaceably declared an end to the Soviet Union and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States. Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine agreed to cooperate on the basis on sovereign equality. |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december21
It’s been one heck of a week, both on the public front, and here on the home front. It’s Friday afternoon, though, so here’s a toon about the public front from Clay Jones.
Jerk In The Box by Clay Jones
Remember, MAGAts…you voted for this Read on Substack
I’m going to use a colleague’s cartoon to point something out. Right-wing gaslighting lying fucknut Steve Kelley has a cartoon of a reporter asking White House Spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre to clarify who she’s talking about when she says “the president,” Joe Biden or Donald Trump. In Steve’s defense, it’s hard to write even adequate cartoons when you’re a lying racist MAGAt.
Steve might be a little slow on his civics but the answer is President Joe Biden. How do I know this? Because for one thing, Jean-Pierre works for President Joe Biden so you would have be a real idiot to believe she’s referencing the other guy. Second, President Joe Biden is the current president. The third thing is, Donald Trump is NOT president right now no matter how hard he’s trying to destroy the nation before he’s sworn into office.
Other fucknut cartoonists may also believe Trump is the leader of our government. Look at this bullshit from Idiot One Gary Varvel and copied days later by Idiot Two Dana Summers. I don’t see how Trump sitting his fat ass at MAGA-Lardo grifting his Trump Bibles as Christmas gifts while trying to destroy the government he’ll inherit on January 20 is leadership, but whatevs.
Trump is pushing for a government shutdown, saying he’s OK with it either way. If there’s a shutdown, he’ll blame Biden even though he’s the one shitposting on Truth Social that Republicans shouldn’t cooperate with Democrats, but they should raise the debt ceiling so that he can give asshole billionaires such as himself and Elon Musk tax cuts in 2025.
Remember, Republicans hate raising the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is to cover expenses Congress has already legislated but Republicans think it’s authorizing future spending. Trump is looking at future spending and wants the ceiling raised or done away with altogether. For once, I agree with Trump and the debt ceiling should be scrapped. Republicans won’t go along with that because for them, it’s a tool to hold the nation hostage.
Elon wants a shutdown because he wants to destroy the government except for the parts of it that pay him billions of dollars in government contracts. But he’s howling for a shutdown and that’s when Trump changed his mind. Elon did invest $277 million to get Trump elected, so his stake in that orange fat ass may be higher than Putin’s. And how much does Elon expect to reap for his quarter-billion-dollar purchase?
House Speaker Mike Johnson filed a stopgap spending bill Tuesday night which went to shit after Elon went into a tweet(X) frenzy consisting of over 100 posts in one night against a deal negotiated with Democrats. The bill would have provided $100 billion in disaster aid funding, billions in farm assistance, and other assorted projects like fighting cancer in children and kept the government running.
Among Elon’s tweets were lies that the bill included a 40 percent increase in congressional pay, $3 billion for a new stadium for the Washington Commanders, funding for bioweapon labs, and protecting the Jan. 6 Committee from being investigated. Why didn’t he also tweet it would fund Critical Race Theory, Drag Queen Story Time, trans men in women’s sports and restrooms, and buffets of cats and dogs to be eaten by illegal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio?
Here’s the thing: If you have to lie your tiny South African balls off, you’re on the wrong side of the issue. The reason creepy goons and idiots like Elon and Trump have to lie is that the truth doesn’t help them. They also know they’re lying because Google’s search engine works for Republicans too.
As of this writing, there are only about eight hours left to pass a funding bill to prevent a shutdown. Trump says the shutdown will be Biden’s problem, but the idiot doesn’t realize he’s inheriting this problem in January. Or maybe, he thinks Elon will inherit it. Just go play golf, Tiny. Elon’s got this (sic).
During his last administration (sic), Trump told Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi he’d be glad to take the blame for a shutdown. When that shutdown happened, he blamed Schumer and Pelosi and eventually negotiated a deal where he lost funding for his stupid racist wall.
Trump is as good of a negotiator as George Constanza who negotiated his and Jerry’s salary for their NBC TV pilot down from $13,000 to $8,000.
The leader of this nation until January 20, 2025, is President Joe Biden, but the leader of the Republican Party is not Donald Trump or even Mike Johnson. It’s unelected Elon Musk.
This is a preview of the next four years. Republicans are in a rush to destroy this nation and they’re starting early.
Music note: I listened to Audioslave.
Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-click through to help him out, and watch him draw!)
