Why banks are flying gold bars on commercial flights from London to NYC NY Post
Climate
Here’s the ugliest global-warming chart you’ll ever need to see The Register
Syndemics
5 years after COVID, Americans are split on whether it’s still a threat FOX
China?
China welcomes its new ‘AI civil servants’, but not everyone is happy South China Morning Post
China outlines key tasks to deepen rural reforms, advance rural revitalization CGTN
Political theorist Daniel A. Bell reflects on China’s melding of Confucius and Marx South China Morning Post
India
Why a mega river-linking plan has sparked massive protests in India BBC
Syraqistan
* * * * * * * * * Israel sends tanks into West Bank for first time in decades, says fleeing Palestinians can’t return AP
Israel expands West Bank offensive, says troops to remain ‘for next year’ Al Jazeera
Netanyahu says Israeli army to stay in Syria buffer zone ‘indefinitely’ Anadolu Agency
European Disunion
Germany’s historic election — in charts FT. Commentary:
German election results by age cohort. Young voters shifted massively to the far left (Linke) and to the far right (AfD). The established conservative (Union) and Labour (SPD) parties are but shadows of their former selves. Lesson for all establishment parties around the world:… pic.twitter.com/MkCM3JozQ4
— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) February 23, 2025
Merz vows “independence” from U.S. after claiming Germany election win Axios
‘Perfect fig leaf’: Germany’s far-right AfD party candidate Alice Weidel helps its normalisation Daily Mail
Germany’s conservatives celebrate, but far right enjoy record result BBC
* * * The protests in Serbia are historic, the world shouldn’t ignore them Al Jazeera
Dear Old Blighty
How the UK’s ‘least attractive’ accent is now ‘one of the sexiest’ thanks to TikTok Daily Maild
New Not-So-Cold War
Mariupol defender’s dream comes true as Ukrainian polar explorers fly Azov flag in Antarctica – video Ukrainska Pravda
* * * Economic partnership will protect the Ukrainian people and the US taxpayer Scott Bessent, FT. The deck: “Trump’s bold international leadership aligns interests and benefits all.”
Trump envoy: US companies could do business in Russia if peace deal is reached Ukrainska Pravda
Officer Dmitriev: how a Kyiv-born financier became the main negotiator between Putin and Trump Ukrainska Pravda
* * * Zelensky says he’s “ready” to resign if it brings peace or Ukraine joins NATO Axios
Trump Administration
Ex-Secret Service agent and conservative media personality Dan Bongino picked as FBI deputy director AP
California governor asks Congress for nearly $40 billion for Los Angeles wildfire relief AP
‘Dark MAGA’ spreads as conservatives embrace Musk’s influence on Trump AP
Trump and Musk aren’t the first to make deep cuts. Clinton-era Reinventing Government saved billions AP
Democrat Activist Cited for Battery and Trespass at Republican Town Hall, Legislator Threatened Kootenai Journal
DOGE
Speed up the Breakdown Quinn Slobiian, New York Review of Books. Wll worth a read.
How to DOGE USAID Phenomenal World
The Incompetence of DOGE Is a Feature, Not a Bug Wired
Trump and Elon Musk are floating ‘DOGE dividends.’ Low-income Americans might not benefit. NBC
Healthcare
Dr. Vinay Prasad Embraces Policy-Based Evidence Making Science-based Medicine
Supply Chain
The Sand Crisis No One is Talking About SciTech Daily
Digital Watch
Microsoft Cancels Leases for AI Data Centers, Analyst Says Bloombergd
American AI Is High on Its Own Supply Foreign Policy
If you thought training AI models was hard, try building enterprise apps with them The Register
Class Warfare
Strategic Wealth Accumulation Under Transformative AI Expectations (preprint) arXiv
20 Industries That Are Slowly But Surely “Dying,” According To People Who Have Worked In Them Buzzfeeed
A Radical New Proposal For How Mind Emerges From Matter Noema
Antidote du jour (Derek and Julie Ramsey (Ram-Man)):
Normally I don’t run zoo images, but lions in the snow….
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“U.S. Envoy Witkoff, About to Visit Mideast for Cease-fire Talks, Says Hamas Must Physically Leave Gaza”
U.S. Envoy Witkoff doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about. Supposing, just supposing that it is only the military wing of Hamas that he is talking about. He already admitted in this article that he does not know where they could go to or which country would take them in. North Korea perhaps? /sarc And before they even left this region Israel would be trying to kill them and it would not matter which country they were in or how many innocent bystanders would get killed in the attempt. After all, Israel would just be trying to ‘defend themselves.’
Supposing that they wanted the civil part of Hamas to go too. Now you are talking about many more thousands and they would face the same problems as the Hamas troops would. Where do they go? How do you get them there? Even if, as Witkoff imagines it, that magic happens what then? Does anybody think that all the Gazans left would be Israeli-supporters? That they would tolerate Vichy Palestinians or the West Bank Palestinian Authority – which is kinda the same. Witkoff should just admit that he wants all the Gazans gone to solve Israel’s problems for them. Call it Operation Ethnic Cleansing R US.
I think what Witkoff said broadly – broadly – fits into the US stance since the Gazan elections of 2006. The very same ones that Hamas won, which led the US and Israel to slap an economic blockade on Gaza that persisted all the way until October 7 and the events that followed.
As far back as 2006, the language was – “Hamas must leave Gaza” and a new, presumably collaborationist, government be installed, and then the blockade will be lifted, and the biennial “cullings” (Israeli term, I believe), where Israel bombs a few hundred people out of existence, will cease. And then some version of this rhetoric persisted through every administration that followed, all the way up to Witkoff. Obviously, this was not going to happen in 2006, or 2012, or 2018, nor is it going to happen now, but the statement defines the overall policy objective. Which is then used to justify the blockade, the cullings, what Israel has been doing for the past two years (with US-supplied weapons).
And you will notice that the US always sets maximalist objectives viz. whomever it perceives as its “enemies”, ones that are not really achievable unless said enemies absolutely capitulate, or are physically overcome. E.g. Iran or Russia have to install pro-American puppets and go back to being a Western resource colony, North Korea must completely denuclearize, Cuba must…go back to pre-1960, I guess, but also pay out reparations to US companies with nationalized assets, and so on. And then it becomes an ends justify the means sort of thing, not to mention a good way of stifling any effort to actually find a negotiated solution to this or that crisis.
The real question with Witkoff et al. is – what will the Israelis do now. They’ve tried a direct military intervention, this killed a lot of people, but did not finish the Palestinians off. Do we go for round two, do we just slap an even harsher blockade on the survivors living out in the ruins, do we try and coerce the Egypts of the world to be the tools of our policy (remember the idea from about a year ago to send Egyptian military into Gaza to back a new, non-Hamas government after Israel withdraws). The bottom line is, the Palestinians must surrender to us, or die trying, because that’s been our policy objective basically for the past two decades, realism notwithstanding.
Very well said. Neither the rhetoric nor the underlying policy are new. The trajectory is always the same; it is just a question of how fast or slowly to carry it out and how much effort we put into pretending to do something else.
Can’t have a Riviera unless you get rid of Hamas–oh and all the rest of the Gazans as well. Clearly Witkoff has no further constructive role when it comes to genocide prevention so why send him at all? Trump is going to have to decide whether he can really smell like a rose on the peace question even as the stench coming from the ever deceptive Netanyahu threatens to overwhelm his big moment.
Maybe the surrounding Arab governments can save Trump from his own moral failings on Israel. It may be the only hope for Gaza.
I’ve seen the white and blueprints for Club Meddle, and some early renderings of beads to facilitate commerce there.
Re Mariupol defender’s dream comes true as Ukrainian polar explorers fly Azov flag in Antarctica
Per the Antarctic Treaty of 1959: Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only. There shall be prohibited, inter alia, any measure of a military nature, such as the establishment of military bases and fortifications, the carrying out of military manoeuvres, as well as the testing of any type of weapon.
But I guess as with the banning of Russia from international sports, the banning of political symbols at sports events – rigorously enforced against Palestinian flags but not Ukrainian or Israeli, the Treaty is subject to the rules based international order, ie the west decides what is approved or banned, and the rest of the world can go hang.
The rules based international order? That must include the rule that says-
‘It’s OK when we do it.’
But can you imagine what would happen if somebody raised the Palestinian flag in Antarctica? What if it was raised at the South Pole? If the Israelis objected, would they launch their own expedition to the South Pole to take it down? Now that would be funny.
Correct link to Mondoweiss and the article about the Israeli misuse of the Bibas family:
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/02/there-is-no-evidence-hamas-killed-members-of-the-bibas-family-israel-is-using-their-death-to-manufacture-consent-for-genocide/
“Why banks are flying gold bars on commercial flights from London to NYC”
Is that wise? Are they sure that they would get it back? Especially if Trump said that any of the depositing countries “owed” the US? Several years ago Germany was in a fight to get their gold back from the US leading to a popular movement to bring Germany’s gold back home. The US was really trying to slow walk this happening. Not sure if Germany ever did get their gold back from NYC. A 2017 newspaper article had the German’s celebrating that they had finally gotten all their gold back. Well, except for 1,236 tons of German gold in New York (36.6%) and 432 tons (12.8%) in the bank of England that is. Damn barbarous relics-
https://apnews.com/general-news-87d81f4087764275be6adf152c1d0665
Why banks are flying gold bars on commercial flights from London to NYC NY Post
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Movie pitch: Treasure of the Altostratus
Utilizing an AI version of Humphrey Bogart, 3 intrepid gold seekers work a claim on high by flying a Gulfstream G800 really close to a commercial flight with color on board.
As both planes are linked by a titanium airlock, the trio comes on board startling the air marshal who demands to see their badges, the request of which is politely refused with much emphasis.
As transfer of the gold is happening, there is a rip in the airlock and all of the gold plummets into Davy Jones Locker for safekeeping.
Seaborne option vanished when those gold bars were tossed off the Titanic! /s
p.s.
Been thinking about opportunity Knox… and that DOGE will hunt, and more importantly-they control the entire narrative lock stock and barrel.
What would a video of Elon chainsawing (yeah-that’s not gonna cut it-but what a visual!) through a gilt tungsten bar (available from Alibaba-get yours today!) inside the depository do for them?
p.s. to the p.s.
The great thing about donning a Reynolds Wrap toque when penning those lines above, is that when you’re done writing, all you have to do is turn it over and it makes a nice boat for your pet hamster Ralph.
You ever notice how the name DOGE can also be pronounced as dodgy?
About the first three articles about DOGE and USaid: what I gather is that USaid is not some sort of benign developmental aid organisation but in fact closely aligned with Wall Street. I don´t think the world would lose much if DOGE axes USaid. Curiously non of the articles mentions the well known connection between USaid and the CIA. One number came up that really shocked me: 1,2 Billion for Ukraine. It is a well known fact that 9 out of 10 media organisation in Ukraine existed because of US money. I was in Kiew when it was announced that no more money is forthcoming. I stayed then with a friend, an anarchist and self employed graphic designer. This man is basically imprisoned as he can´t the leave the house without risking to be snatched up by goon squads that deliver people to the front lines. And that although my friend is 48, has a medical condition and is officially unfit for service.
One morning about 3 weeks ago he was very happy. All the LGBTQ influencers, patriotic youtubers a.s.o. were suddenly begging for money. USaid had been cut off. Whatever else it seems to me as if at least regarding USaid the muskrats are doing humanity a favor. Most likely not by design but nevertheless.
re: Speed up the breakdown.
Some clever omissions. “anti-New Deal conservative think tanks”. No mention of the anti-New Deal Dem party establishment, (they just don’t say it out loud).
“The Twitter deal—bad business on paper—both contaminated a site of (already often contentious) public conversation and gave Musk a megaphone for his own political positions ahead of the election. ”
No mention of the govt agency shenanigans … er … forced content meddling at Twitter when Musk bought it, and let Taibbi and crew go through the files to discover the govt suggestions for content. ahem.
Slobodian makes a good argument, provided I accept his opening premises. I’m not sure I do, couched as they seem to be in the its-all-those-other-guys-fault. There’s a reason the Dems lost the last election that had more to do with the way Dem party has treated its voters than with salesman T. And, it was the O admin which created the department currently renamed DOGE. O created the tools T and Musk are using. / my 2 cents.
This reminds me of a para in Taibbi’s latest article:
The Internet may have been the ultimate surveillance tool, but its designers only thought in terms of small cells of terrorists or insurgents whose efforts to connect online would be easily followed. Apparently no one considered the problem of discontent spreading to huge pluralities or even majorities. The spy tools became useless. Congratulations, you’ve detected and mapped your own mass unpopularity. Now what? The only choice was to re-aim the Internet at its users, and reconfigure it not just for surveillance, but manipulation.
https://www.racket.news/p/the-internet-needs-to-be-smashed
“The era of big government is over.” –Bill Clinton
Since the Clinton wing of the party is still dominant it seems a bit inconsistent for them to complain about all the cuts. Clinton even wanted to turn SS over to Wall Street. You can’t fight something with nothing and that’s exactly what we have with the Democrats. When things went south in 2008 Obama even foamed the runways for the plutocrats. It’s all the same bird. Two wings.
And Musk was a big user of Twitter during his rise with Space X and especially Tesla so undoubtedly he did have business motives for wanting to own it. Meanwhile Twitter was blocking conservatives and even blocked Trump, another big user. So the Dems have been passive against financialization but aggressive against their political rivals for the control of government.
If the Dems seem passive now it’s because they ran up the white flag years ago. The best they can do is to get their house media to complain loudly.
In fairness, the Democrats are still capable of putting up a fight on the most important issues:
“Democrats across the Capitol were outraged Thursday at news that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior Pentagon and military leaders to plan 8 percent cuts from the defense budget in each of the next five years…”
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5156520-pentagon-cuts-defense-budget/
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that after a heroic effort, the Dems will be able to convince their Republican brethren to save most of those crucial jobs and government contracts in the DOD – though they may have to swallow some reversals on the DEI rhetoric.
First they came for the intellectuals, and I did nothing because they didn’t really contribute to the GDP, and besides we’d banned any mention of the words ‘Climate Change’ so who needs ’em now?
https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2025/02/science-national-park-system-taking-hit-employee-firings
Sorry to say this, but our visionaries’ plan for parks appears to have a Disney theme. NPS finalizes rule to modernize commercial services contracts , National Parks Sevice.
WASHINGTON – The National Park Service (NPS) has finalized and will implement a regulation to govern the issuance of hospitality services contracts under the new Visitor Experience Improvements Authority (VEIA) given to the NPS by Congress. The rule will go into effect in 30 days.
This appears to be bipartisan,
“ Date: January 16, 2025”
“ The National Park Service Centennial Act, enacted on December 16, 2016, establishes a new concessions contracting authority within NPS””…”
“ In January 2022, NPS published a proposed rule for public comment and accepted comments for 60 days…”
Who needs nature when we’ve got Mickey Mouse?
Well, looking for a silver lining, perhaps as in my youth, Disney will have guided tours in National Parks with tartan skirted young misses-complete with riding crop & fox hunting cap, oh me oh my!
https://davelandweb.com/townsquare/tours.html
As a user of federal parks (when I can get in) I’ll affirm that the parks (and BLM and USFS lands) have been neglected and understaffed for years, scraping to pay their own way, and now they will hit a new level of dysfunction, while developers push for privatization of the last good things about the USA. The fact that our parks, our crown jewels, the envy of the world, are treated like homeless panhandlers in DC, while trillions are cheerfully whisked off to foreign war zones, is pathetic.
We clearly state to foreign tourists, and to our own people: you are worthless, and these priceless unique natural landmarks are worthless. Only greedy private enterprise and bomb manufacture are worthy of our dollars.
“Israel delays Palestinian prisoner release after Hamas’ ‘humiliating’ treatment of hostages, Netanyahu says”
‘Under international law, any handover of the remains of [the] deceased must comply with the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, ensuring respect for the dignity of the deceased and their families,” the United Nations Geneva said on X, attributing the quote to High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.’
The Palestinians were in a dispute with the United Nations about this very point. When Israeli dead were handed over you had the whole deal with coffins and honour guards and all the rest of it. When the Palestinian dead were returned, it was in the form of body bags on the back of a truck that were dumped on the ground.
A big-picture exploration of Tech Bro Spring through the cinematic lens of The Blues Brothers and 2001: A Space Odyssey, featuring guest appearances by Fernand Braudel, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and, above all, Jacques Lacan.
https://www.beyondwasteland.net/p/tech-bro-spring
That’s a great image of those lions in the snow. Had to nab myself a copy.
Accents, adding that West Midlands edit Black Country alongside Estuary and Cockney. One solution is to watch shows with the subtitles on and the sound off. Oh, bruvver.
“5 years after COVID, Americans are split on whether it’s still a threat’
Because Fox News listened to old Joe when he said that the pandemic was over? Lots of holes in this article. Such as-
‘Forty percent of Americans believe the U.S. would handle a future health emergency better than it handled COVID.’ – I wouldn’t bet on it.
‘Since the pandemic, Americans have largely learned that they are responsible for their own health and for “making individual decisions about bolstering their immunity to infectious diseases,” ‘ – Public health? Whassat? You’re on your own, bud. And my favourite-
“Studies show there were developmental abnormalities from both face masks and lockdowns.” – Conservatives really hate the idea of lockdowns and I am not sure if it is because of ‘mah rights’ or because Fox’s owners really hated them. For the first time in decades, lots of workers had a chance to get out of the rat race and actually think what they were doing with their lives. Business people can never permit this to happen ever again!
Lambert, I don’t know if this is your last Links page but in any case I want to thank you for all the efforts you’ve put in to Naked Capitalism over the years. The rest of us have profited immensely from them. Thank you!
Re: Data Centers not looking so hot, MS cancelling leases
And, just like that, AI entered it’s tragic bubble-bursting arc.
Coincidentally (or not) NVDA stock did a classic bear move this AM – a “pop and drop.” Who knows if this is the beginning of the end, but the end is coming.
When fraudulent, greased AI finally collapses, it will make dot-com look like a bunch of pikers.
Perhaps MS realizes all fed funds for AI going to Musk?
In the Buzzfeed 20 dying jobs article, there is another one I would add, librarians. I’m an artist who worked in libraries for 34 years, 28 at the same public library at a full time job that paid just well enough to keep a roof over my head during the dry times when I couldn’t find enough homes for my paintings. In the late 80’s, the idea of the “business model of libraries” was being taught at the nearby university’s library school. By the end of the 90’s it had thoroughly infected my workplace, by the late 2000’s/early 2010’s it was replaced by the even worse “retail model of libraries”. I had never seen a place so determined to commit institutional suicide, so determined to get rid of as many books as possible, deskill its workforce and forsake its original mission of being the guardians of and passer on of our culture and knowledge from one generation to the next.
As an artist, I had a decent enough career until AI came along. Got 12 paintings stolen by LAION-5B in 2023 which used my work to train its AI, and then Meta got everybody twice since then. For a good while, I sold most of my work through Facebook until Zuckerberg decided to turn on the fire hose of crap and flood the platform with AI. What artists I could still see in my feed were all decrying the massive drop in their reach and discovering they too had their work fed into the gaping maw of training data. The more famous artists were discovering AI fakes of their work out there and others finding they were losing jobs to it. None of us could swim through the flood of garbage because we were fighting a losing battle with the algorithm. I’ve sold nothing the last three years. There are other factors in addition to AI as to why being an artist is an endangered line of work, which Naked Capitalism covers in so many ways every day but artists were the canary in the coal mine for all of the careers AI is doing serious damage to.
The artists quoted in #13 of the Buzzfeed piece have my complete empathy.