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Links 2/26/2025

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Readers, the fundraiser for Lambert’s very nearly gold retirement watch + all Lambert’s Water Cooler work done in 2024 is ongoing. The goal is 400 donors; so far, we have 132, or 33% of goal (I am very grateful). Any amount helps! If you can give a little, give a little. If you can give a lot, give a lot! Thank you all so much! –lambert

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Top finance ministers snub G20 as global co-operation comes under strain FT

The Big Picture Project Syndicate. URL: there-goes-america.

The Path to American Authoritarianism Foreign Affairs

Climate

Mechanisms behind a steep rise in temperature Arctic News

Renowned physicist warns of unseen dangers in farming technique: ‘Single biggest destructive force on the planet today’ The Cooldown

Syndemics

Steps to prevent and respond to an H5N1 epidemic in the USA Nature

As Texas measles outbreak grows, parents are choosing to vaccinate kids NBC

China?

China gets taste of victory in US tech war thanks to talent, supply chains, organisation South China Morning Post

China could take peacekeeping role in post-war Ukraine – but at what cost? South China Morning Post

Chinese foodies pose as mourners to try funeral home’s noodles BBC

Japanese “goods” | Chinese “guzi” Language Log

The Koreas

Only 31% of South Koreans think unification with North ‘beneficial’ to them Anadolu Agency

Syraqistan

Trump promotes bold vision for Gaza in video that hints at how ‘Riviera of the Middle East’ could look Daily Mail. Holy moley:

AI slop de slop.

Desperation grows in northern Gaza as Palestinians struggle to rebuild their homes AP

Israel’s West Bank offensive: Prelude to annexation? Anadolu Agency

* * *

Bibas family threatens to sue Israeli govt as official propaganda on hostage killings unravels The Grayzone. Commentary:

* * *

Israel and Hamas strike hostage exchange deal, keeping ceasefire intact EuroNews

‘We are still at war’: Syria’s Kurds battle Turkey months after Assad’s fall BBC

Syria’s New Rulers Are Working To Unify Military Power New Lines Magazine

* * *

More than 160 Gazan medics held in Israeli prisons amid reports of torture Guardian

A brief history of Israel’s theft and trafficking of Palestinian organs Mondoweiss

European Disunion

How Germany’s enduring East-West divide is pushing voters to the fringes France24

Dear Old Blighty

Celotex – A Century of Deaths 3 Quarks Daily. The insulation used in Grenfell Tower. See here and here.

New Not-So-Cold War

Ukraine agrees minerals deal with US FT. Commentary:

And:

‘An Extraordinary Act of Extortion’ Foreign Policy

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WSJ: Ukraine could maintain current pace of war until summer without US aid Ukrainska Pravda

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Kiev Regime Not Just Zelensky Must Go; Trump Outsmarts Macron, US-Russia UN Win, EU/UK Shock (video) Alexander Mercouris, YouTube

Kremlin denies Donald Trump’s claim it agreed to plans for British and international peacekeepers in Ukraine Daily Mail

Lifting sanctions against Russia is off the table for now – Trump Ukrainska Pravda

Poland on opening Cluster 6 in negotiations with Ukraine: it will be tough discussion Ukrainska Pravda. “Cluster” indeed!

South of the Border

After trade dispute, Mexico officially bans the planting of GM corn Reuters

Chile declares emergency as power outage plunges country into darkness Al Jazeera

O Canada!

White House official pushes to axe Canada from Five Eyes intelligence group FT

Liberal party leadership candidates in Canada debate who is best to deal with Trump AP. Tag team, including a Ukromnazi and a central banker.

Trump Administration

US House passes budget resolution to cut taxes and spending by trillions FT. Commentary:

Trump allies circulate mass deportation plan calling for ‘processing camps’ and a private citizen ‘army’ Politico

Fox News White House correspondent blasts new pool policy The Hill

More gusanos, please:

The popularity of the ‘Mar-a-Lago face’ soars in Trump’s inner circle El Pais

DOGE

How Can We Know if Government Payments Stop? An Exploratory analysis of Banking System Warning Signs Nathan Tankus, Notes on the Crises. Important!

Does Amy Gleason Know She’s DOGE Administrator? New York Magazine

Fired cybersecurity chief for Veterans Affairs site warns that health and financial data is at risk AP

Spook Country

Gabbard to fire more than 100 intelligence officers over “explicit” chats Axios. Smooth move!

FBI Also Wants to Break iCloud Advanced Data Protection Michael Tsai

The Bezzle

Crypto trader’s last post before suicide live goes viral, ‘ask yourself if it matters…’ Live Mint. Commentary:

How to buy your way out of a federal lawsuit Popular Information. Coinbase.

Digital Watch

Satya Nadella says AI is yet to find a killer app that matches the combined impact of email and Excel The Register

Delivering Malware Through Abandoned Amazon S3 Buckets Schneier on Security

Hackers Are Using Fake GitHub Code to Steal Your Bitcoin: Kaspersky CoinDesk

The Final Frontier

Asteroid 2024 YR4 is no longer a threat to Earth, scientists say AP. More here.

Mars once had oceans, ‘vacation-style’ beaches, study suggests Anadalu Agency

Zeitgeist Watch

How people think about being alone shapes their experience of loneliness Nature

Groves of Academe

An Accurate Organizational Chart of Your University McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Can confirm.

Class Warfare

How an obscure advisory board lets utilities steal $50b/year from ratepayers Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic

The Long Nights and Drug Addiction That Drove a Banker to Insider Trading WSJ

What Felt Impossible Became Possible Dan SInker

Antidote du jour (Martin Falbisoner):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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63 comments

  1. gerald

    Re: Liberal Party Leaders in Canada
    Remember that the central bankster is the godfather to the Ukronazi’s son. small world, eh.

    Reply ↓
    1. Colonel Smithers

      Thank you, Gerald.

      That is interesting as the nazi often bigged up the bankster when writing, often the FT and Economist, not the Washington Post so much, and on air, usually the BBC and CNN. Both went to Oxford as Rhodes scholars.

      Further to the small world, the bankster came to the attention of Cameron and Osborne at a gathering at the Cornbury, Oxfordshire, estate of the bankster’s brother in law, Lord Rotherwick*. They are married to sisters. Cameron and Osborne lived nearby, a deracinated elite cluster called the Chipping Norton set. Cameron was MP for the area. *Bankster, too, and colonial business heir and aristo landowner.

      Carney’s allegiance is to his former employer, Goldman Sachs. At the Ministry of Finance, in tandem with minister Ralph Goodale, and, later, at the Bank of Canada, he put pressure on Canadian regulator Julie Dickson to relax rules on banks and align with the US. It was Dickson, not, Carnage, who saved Canada(‘s) banks. I have heard first hand accounts from four different former government officials.

      Reply ↓
      1. Ann

        Thank you very much, Colonel. I watched both “debates.” Do you know anything about Chrystia Freeland? She negotiated trade agreements with the EU and ASEAN. Trump hates her. She said she would go immediately to Mexico and meet with Sheinbaum so we could work together to avoid Trump “picking us off one by one.”

        Reply ↓
  3. The Rev Kev

    “Only 31% of South Koreans think unification with North ‘beneficial’ to them”

    ‘92.4% of respondents believe unification would benefit people of North Korea, according to poll by Korea Institute for National Unification’

    Of course you have to ask yourself what percentage of North Koreans think that unifying with the South would be beneficial for them. The North may be autocratic, but it is a lot more stable than the South where recently the President tried to impose martial law and create a dictatorship for himself.

    Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        For Biden, setting fire to eastern Europe was not enough. The old fool tried to get another war going in the Korean peninsular and ignoring the fact that they have nukes now. Or maybe this was one of Sullivan’s bright ideas. Trump may be causing all sorts of chaos & damage both at home and abroad right now but at least he isn’t sitting in his chair juggling the nuclear football.

        Reply ↓
  4. AG

    re: Germany

    One reason for the unexpected success of THE LEFT is seldomly spoken about – it´s their optimism.

    And that leads me to the odd parallels between Wagenknecht´s realistic but bleak message and her partner Oskar Lafontaine´s role 1990 and his defeat in the national elections.

    The older ones might remember that Lafontaine was always close to becoming chancellor but was disliked too much by the establishment to let him. And as such he additionally didn´t sell dreams like THE LEFT did now, and as chancellor Kohl and the CDU did in 1990 – but realism – like Wagenknecht and BSW do now.

    Incidentally both elections 1990 and 2025 ignited over the relationship between East and West Germany.

    While Kohl was in favour of expanding German D-Mark to all of the former GDR and set an exchange rate of 1:1 between both currencies Lafontaine correctly pointed at the longterm risks and opposed Kohl´s move.

    East German voters did not want to hear Lafontaine´s message.
    And German mass media of course abused that and amplified it. Instead of offering a solution.

    And now it is Lafontaine´s partner Wagenknecht who sold the bitter thruth. Unlike THE LEFT. It´s so much easier to agitate against non-existent Nazis and be part of the good guys than fighting the rich in your own quater and admitting ugly truths.

    Is it coincidence that both Lafontaine and Wagenknecht are a couple and closely working together?

    Reply ↓
    1. Schopenhauer

      Thanks AG for your important remarks.
      I would like to add to this picture the full-front campaign against Lafontaine when he became German Finance Minister under chancellor Schröder. Lafontaine and his deputy, the economist Heiner Flassbeck, were determined “to close the casino” called european financial market. from the start of his term he had to deal with heavy pressure from the “usual suspects”, he was even declared “Europe’s most dangerous man” (https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-saturday-profile-oskar-lafontaine-europe-s-most-dangerous-man-1187707.html ). Shortly after that he quit the job and left the SPD.
      Needless to say, but he was completely correct with his idea, 2007 and the following years showed that.

      Reply ↓
  5. The Rev Kev

    ‘JUST IN: President Trump shares a video of an AI vision for the Gaza Strip, ends with Trump having drinks at a pool with Benjamin Netanyahu.’

    For some weird reason, I have noticed a whole bunch of videos popping up on YouTube the past day or two mocking Trump or his son Barron using AI. Here is one example-

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwIzl9fF1U8 (2:46 mins)

    If this is the resistance, it’s not going to do anything.

    Reply ↓
    1. YuShan

      That Gaza video is insane. At first I didn’t believe he actually posted that. I thought it was some kind of fake to make it look like he posted it, but apparently this is real?!

      Best case he is just trolling. But then at the very minimum he demonstrates a level of sociopathy and lack of empathy that is just beyond belief. Sadly, at this point it’s impossible to know if this guy is actually serious or that he really think this is funny.

      Even if he doesn’t care about the people of Gaza, he does enormous reputational damage to his own country with this.

      Reply ↓
      2. .Tom

        Is it beyond belief? Yes, I admit to being really surprised. Otoh, now that I’ve seen it, it kinda fits. I refer you to DJG’s comment earlier today on the Neuberger post

        The genocide going on in Palestine, sponsored by the US of A, is testament to the vileness of the U.S. elites, bipartisan. It is also testament to the rottenness of U.S. culture, which has produced no peace movement, no pastors speaking against war (except the Pope), and no artists dissenting.

        here.

        Reply ↓
        1. S brown

          You are incorrect and unjust. There have been massive protests in the US against the genocide: on campuses and in the streets. A majority of Americans are against it and want to stop arming Israel. What is our government do? Taking away our rights to peacefully protest and speak out against this.

          Reply ↓
        2. flora

          It’s not like people protesting here in the US are being threatened with expulsion from schools, deportation, losing their jobs, or being charged with hate crimes. right? And it’s even worse in UK and some countries in Europe.

          Reply ↓
    2. Carolinian

      Apparently the only people who actually approve of Trump’s Riviera plan would be Bibi and Bibi’s family friend Jared Kushner who is seemingly the source of it all. Kushner has potential real estate development deals with various Arab government financiers

      https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/can-jared-kushners-investment-firm-connect-gulf-money-and-trump-gaza-plan

      Kushner is of course Trump’s son in law. His father was just named Trump’s ambassador to France.

      Reply ↓
  6. flora

    An accounting.

    Empty Gestures
    How Performative Activism Enabled Mass Persecution

    https://stylman.substack.com/p/empty-gestures

    Reality engineering requires three components: institutional power to create the narrative, social pressure to enforce it, and the deliberate persecution of anyone who challenges either. The COVID era provided the perfect case study in how this machinery operates – and revealed how performative activism serves as its most potent enforcement mechanism.

    Reply ↓
  7. Ben Panga

    https://archive.ph/d1ryQ

    (The FT article: US House passes budget resolution to cut taxes and spending by trillion)

    “The bill instructs the House energy and commerce committee to slash $880bn in spending, a move widely seen as targeting the Medicaid health insurance programme for low-income Americans. Similarly, a call for the agriculture committee to reduce spending by $230bn is aimed at a food aid scheme called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.”

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev

      Maybe it’s part of a cunning plan. Most of the services right now are not meeting recruitment targets but through these two major cutbacks, it means that in Trump America the only way that poor people can eat and get medical services is by joining the military. In the Victorian era, the British Army use to say that their two biggest recruiters were Unemployment and Jack Frost. This would be more of the same. Of course the next generation of poorer Americans will be more malnourished and sicker so not fit for military service but that would be for the next admins to deal with.

      Reply ↓
      1. Ben Panga

        What if the cunning plan is replace the enlistees with drones, and just let/help the poors die?

        Elon can add a “Not economically productive” flag to whatever crappy system his incels install. Then just cut off the money. You know they’ve at least thought about this.

        Reply ↓
        1. Emma

          At the current pace, I expect suicide booths (along with a “voluntary” debt forgiveness for organs scheme) to be floated by June and come into operation by October.

          Our savings grace may be their unwillingness to obtain needed parts from China resulting in a multi-year delay on the implementation end.

          Reply ↓
            1. AG

              thanks!
              (I might have added the booth self-destruct after realizing it failed. But that would have been too anarchic for narrative purposes and more 1970s self-sabotaging style)

              Reply ↓
    2. Emma

      Notice that their undoubtedly inflated report of savings is still more than $2 trillion less per year than the tax cuts and increases to defense and border patrol budgets. I guess that offer to cut defense by 50 percent with Russia and China has been withdrawn.

      I haven’t dug into the details of the resolution but it sounds like they intend to make it up largely by imposing a high tariff on all imported goods. This would have a catastrophic impact on 80-90 percent of the American population who are already essentially living paycheck to paycheck, who will also contend with price impacts from restricting the ability of undocumented individuals from working in agricultural and meat packing sectors.

      Reply ↓
  8. AG

    Anatol Lieven has this short comment on the demise of the progressive Western order:
    The Mask of Imperialism
    https://harpers.org/archive/2025/03/the-mask-of-imperialism-anatol-lieven/

    “American liberal internationalism, with its innate (and intellectually unavoidable) belief in the goodness and moral superiority of Western democracy in general, and the United States in particular, makes this form of empathy far harder to achieve. The result is that liberal analysts prefer the sanctification of allies and the demonization of rivals to objective and informed analysis. If there is only one “right side of history,” and only one path for human progress, then there is no point in studying other countries in any depth.

    This feeds the Manichaean “you are with us or you are against us” strain in American culture; if America represents the only righteous path of human progress, its adversaries must be intrinsically evil. This can lead to the grotesque irony of self-described internationalists engaging in feral, chauvinist hatred of other peoples. Liberal internationalism of this kind also reinforces the dangerous ignorance that Daniel Ellsberg invoked when he remarked that at no point in American history, including when the Johnson Administration began to bomb Vietnam, could a senior official pass a freshman exam in a course on Vietnamese history or culture.”

    He ends with Eisenhower´s Iron Cross speech to then add:

    “Liberal internationalists would probably agree that, in certain respects, U.S. democracy has suffered a grievous decline since Ike was president.”

    One question – was US democracy under Ike really that much better?

    When those who questioned mainstream political views were threatened with prison or the destruction of their lives, when snitches were lurking everywhere. Are the 1950s when there was an omerta on Leftism seriously an example? When an era-defining anti-union picture like “On the Waterfront” got 8 Academy Awards? And the US was lying over the RU threat while it had 10 times as many nukes? Not to speak of Jim Crow realities. Or the lack women´s rights. Or Eisenhower´s Executive Order 10450 which banned lesbian and gay federal workers by 1953.

    I find it seriously odd to paint such a rosy picture of that era as has become so common nowadays.

    Had the 1950s been such a honeymoon where did the anger of the 1960s come from…

    Reply ↓
    1. Carolinian

      Yes Ike was a FP horror show and only sounded his warnings on the way out the door. JFK then ran as a cold warrior himself, made some peacenik noises once in office and was killed. It seems dubious that the cold warriors felt the need to do this for their sake but who knows? We are the United States of Deja Vu.

      Reply ↓
    2. David Gutknecht

      In addition, according to historian Alfred McCoy, in his eight years as President, Eisenhower approved 170 major covert operations in 45 countries: “In effect, clandestine manipulation became Washington’s preferred mode of exercising old-fashioned imperial hegemony in a new world of nominally sovereign nations.”

      Reply ↓
    3. schmoe

      Are things more corrupt now than before, or does the greater access to information via social media just open people’s eyes to what was always happening (for those who wish to look)?
      A few items are definitely worse:
      1) The MSM is essentially TASS for PMC and Neocons. Even in the 1980s there were actual debates on foreign policy on CNN on topics such as funding the Contras. Unthinkable at this time re: Russia. The MSM did a very poor job on Vietnam, including silence on bombing Laos to bits, but Walter Cronkite did note during the Tet offensive that the war was not going well.
      2) The total insanity in the Middle East increased after the Camp David peace accords as that gave Israel carte blanche for Lebanon massacres of the early 1980s, although massacres of Palestinians started in 1948.

      That said, reading about Churchill, our (to me) inexplicable entry into WW I, and various other events shows that questionable activity “behind the curtain” was prevalent. Huey Long stated “Corrupted by wealth and power, your government is like a restaurant with only one dish. They’ve got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen”, so it was not all peaches and cream prior to the rise of PACs and systematic corruption of mind-blogging portions.

      Reply ↓
  9. Lieaibolmmai

    Really appreciated “What Felt Impossible Became Possible , because it is something I see it happening, probably even more quickly than in the 20’s.

    The Klan—like this new batch of fascists currently occupying the White House—were massively corrupt and power hungry and that corruption and internal struggles for power lead to their undoing.

    The will eat their own faces off faster than they can botox them back together. To me this is all linked to the bitcoin rug pull suicide and Trumps deranged Gaza video. People in the 1920’s were seeing wealth inequality but nothing like it is today. So everything is quicker, and more fragile in my mind. My only fear is that what follows will be a Greater Depression”.

    This is why poor Jesus is out of favor and rich Jesus is the ideal now, it is all about wealth inequality. Everyone is scared of losing what they have, preferring Mammon over God (I use those terms metaphorically).

    Reply ↓
  10. caucus99percenter

    The front page of Michael Tsai’s website (source of the link about the FBI demanding a backdoor that breaks encryption) bears a link to an excerpt from a commencement address by the noted physicist Richard P. Feynman warning against “cargo cult science”:

    https://www.atmos.albany.edu/facstaff/rfovell/NWP/Feynman_cargo_cult_science_excerpt.txt

    Are those who claim to be the voice of “Science” in public discourse (and other figures who urge us to “trust” It = them) living up to Feynman’s criterion of scientific integrity? I’ll try to remember always to ask myself that question from now on.

    Reply ↓
  12. mrsyk

    Chinese foodies pose as mourners to try funeral home’s noodles,

    “”I heard the noodles here were very good,” they wrote. “I thought about how short life was, and got another bowl.”

    Reply ↓
      1. AG

        “Wedding Crashers”
        4 min.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4D5zScOFKU
        (the meat loaf scream)

        I was never sure what to think of “Crashers”, never found it that convincing, it´s fame a bit out of proportion?
        anyhow
        Ferrell used the same idea here in “The Other Guys” (dir. Adam McKay) – average dude has hot wife/girl-friend and is in fact a womanizer which makes no sense to his hot male pal, Mark Wahlberg:
        9 min.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hdD_Xel6yo

        p.s. it is interesting how Wahlberg made a career over combining clichés of conventional male hotness and dumbness with a twist (ballet-dancing cop e.g.).

        Owen Wilson from “Wedding Crashers” worked in a similar direction along a more traditional, refined Cary Grant line. Handsome but inept for life, either for being too intellectual or too childish.

        Reply ↓
  13. DJG, Reality Czar

    The way I read the links and twiXts, and they way I am trying to digest the technical details, the deal on rare earth minerals is indeed a way for the U.S. of A. to continue the war by other means. The U.S. gets to loot Ukraine overtly and actively.

    The tell was Boris Johnson, I have to admit. Anything Boris Johnson is for, I likely oppose.

    This post with analysis by Yves Smith, Brian Berletic, and John Helmer is worth a reading or another reading:

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/02/minority-reports-how-endowment-effect-would-make-ukraine-mineral-deal-as-a-tar-baby-brian-berletic-on-us-preserving-usaid-regime-change-capabilities-john-helmer-on-shambolic-us-conduct-of-ukraine-n.html

    The plan for Gaza Vegas and for Ukraine as Turnip with Blood Sucked from It are simply Trump’s more meretricious takes on imperialism. Pecunia non olet.

    In the case of Biden and family, the difference was that they were determined to be respectable (the old cliché of “lace-curtain Irish”) so that the money grubbing had to be done in the shadows.

    And in both cases, Ukraine and Palestine, the U S of A is sponsoring genocides (just a gentle reminder, as your utility company writes you these days… of what goes around comes around).

    Reply ↓
    1. DJG, Reality Czar

      To keep the discussion rolling, I am going to paste a pertinent comment from Yves Smith here:

      https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/02/minority-reports-how-endowment-effect-would-make-ukraine-mineral-deal-as-a-tar-baby-brian-berletic-on-us-preserving-usaid-regime-change-capabilities-john-helmer-on-shambolic-us-conduct-of-ukraine-n.html#comment-4180443

      As I’d interpret the current overly volatile situation: Peace has nothing to do with it.

      Reply ↓
      1. Carolinian

        Several commentators have said that Trump throwing in with the Russians at the UN shows that he really is washing his hands of Ukraine. If so the talk about the minerals–which had already be signed away to others–could be mere PR to make it look like we somehow came out even. Since events seem to be moving fast no need to speculate as we will soon know the situation. It will either be Trump gives Putin all of Putin’s demands or the war continues for a few months with the weapons already sent.

        Reply ↓
  14. Bugs

    The Long Nights and Drug Addiction That Drove a Banker to Insider Trading WSJ

    Spoiler alert – not only is this whiney, entitled perp blaming his obviously immoral and illegal acts on Adderall (for which he admits to lying about symptoms to get a script), he ratted out his accomplices!

    And check out the Ralph Laurenesque photo shoot. Omg what a maroon.

    Reply ↓
    1. Wukchumni

      The 3rd Reich had ‘Panzerschokolade’ to keep the troops alert & awake, while our Unabankers rely on Adderall to alert them to arbitrage possibilities and/or being woke.

      Reply ↓
  15. timbers

    Michael Tracey

    “Trump is framing the continuation of US support as a great deal for US taxpayers because now we’re supposedly going to make a lot of money from rare earth minerals in the Donbas.” All USA has to do is send in troops to protect it’s “investment.” That’s only right and good, because those minerals will belong to America.

    Trump says a lot of things. Who knows what he says is real and what is not.

    But, just like in Syria, will US troops be sent to Ukraine to secure oil…err…minerals?

    That’s “smart” because you…err the oligarchs…are getting something in return, something Biden never did. Oil from Syria, minerals from Ukraine. Smart. So Trump is smarter for America than Biden was.

    Of course Russia does have a hammer if she will use it – allowing it’s military take out the electric grid. That might speed up things in Russia’s favor.

    Reply ↓
    1. MicaT

      It’s going to take many years before they even break ground on the rare earth mines or is it lithium? Surveying it, moving equipment, building materials handling equipment, power lines, roads, water lines.
      And that’s without a major war moving in that direction.
      And then after you’ve done all that where do you refine if? Sure could build refineries in Ukraine, and that’s a whole other big project to fund and construct
      Hard to see it as anything other than a sales pitch

      Reply ↓
    2. ChrisFromGA

      US security guarantees are specifically excluded. So Tracey is making shit up. Or just extrapolating past Trump behavior (Syria) to current circumstances, which are very different.

      Reply ↓
  16. pjay

    – ‘The Path to American Authoritarianism’ – Foreign Affairs

    Once again, against my better judgment, curiosity got the better of me. I had to know how this Foreign Affairs article was going to to depict our “path” to “authoritarianism.” Fortunately I didn’t have to wait long; here’s the first sentence:

    “Donald Trump’s first election to the presidency in 2016 triggered an energetic defense of democracy from the American establishment.”

    I thought that was an interesting opening statement given the authors’ primary fear:

    “But authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category… Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out. And once in a while, incumbents lose… But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.”

    So “competitive authoritarianism” involves “deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics.” But what the Establishment did during the Russiagate era and the lawfare offensive that followed was energetically defending “democracy”. It’s Trump that’s going to “weaponize” the state!

    As always, the article’s long, long list of potential Trumpian dangers is not without some truth value. But Trump is simply the culmination of decades of bipartisan rot that has concentrated wealth and power and turned our “democratic” institutions into mere rubber stamps for the oligarchs. The authors have no interest in providing the real history of this process, however. How could they, in the Establishment’s flagship journal?

    Reply ↓
  17. AG

    re: Germany and conscientious objectors

    Hardly reported in the mass media was a landmark decision by the Federal Court of Justice from Jan. 16th. 2025.
    (It is different from the Constitutional Court – as former is subject to German DoJ.)

    It stated that Ukrainian refugees who are conscientious objecters have no right to demand asylum as Ukraine has been subject to an attack under violation of Art. 51, a war of aggression.

    Today NACHDENKSEITEN have reminded of this decision stressing the threat to German conscientious objectors in case of war via a door that has been left open by the court.

    LEGAL TRIBUNE ONLINE reported on the decision here 12/2/25
    German-language (use google it´s free access site)

    “Conscientious objection does not protect against extradition”
    https://www.lto.de/recht/nachrichten/n/4ars1124-bgh-kriegsdienstverweigerung-russischer-angriffskrieg-ukraine-auslieferung

    NACHDENKSEITEN with an interview with lawyer Rene Boyke 26/2/25
    here too use google – currently archive.is won´t archive machine-translated sites:

    “In the event of war, there will be no right to conscientious objection in Germany”
    https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=129326

    4 years ago I would have ignored this. But now acknowlegding that we are in fact ruled by mad man and women anything has become plausible and must be reckoned with – (which would make for a fine essay over the term fascism and its political-aesthetic origins in the 1920s and Mussolini and how it applies to the present protesters to alleged Nazism in this country.)

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  18. Wukchumni

    Blighted city gonna set my soul
    Gonna set my soul on fire
    Got a whole lot of money that’s ready to burn
    So get those seaside highrises up higher

    There’s a couple million Palestinians out there
    And they’re all livin’ devil may care
    And I’m just the devil with a lot of dare
    So Viva Gaza Vegas, Viva Gaza Vegas

    How I wish that those Gazans
    Weren’t in the way
    And even if there were no more
    I wouldn’t miss a minute of sleep anyway

    Oh, there’s casinos, and casitas, and seaside ideal
    A fortune won on every Jared deal
    All you need is a mass exodus and a nerve of steel
    Viva Gaza Vegas, Viva Gaza Vegas

    Viva Gaza Vegas with your ersatz fascism
    And the local population crashin’
    All their hopes down the drain
    Viva Gaza Vegas turnin’ the rubble of a hubble
    And turnin’ consternation into condos
    If you seize it once, you’ll never have to seize it again

    I’m gonna keep on my campaign run, I’m gonna have me some fun
    If it costs me my constituents their very last Dime
    If they wind up broke up well
    I’ll always remember that I had a swingin’ time
    I’m gonna give it everything I’ve got
    Lady luck, please, let the dice stay hot
    And let me shoot a seven with every shot

    Viva Gaza Vegas, Viva Gaza Vegas
    Viva Gaza Vegas, Viva, Viva Gaza Vegas

    Viva Las Vegas, performed by Elvis Presley

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MO1KyNUOIs

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  19. The Rev Kev

    “How people think about being alone shapes their experience of loneliness”

    The media seems to be the one shaping the idea that loneliness is always horrible. I have read accounts at how the kids of the present generation cannot stand being alone for any amount of time. But there is a need for balance. How can you appreciate being with people if you are never lonely? And of course being alone should not be mistaken for being lonely. Ask any husband or wife whose partner goes away for a few days and the freedom it brings (clothing now optional). So maybe it is a case of when you are lonely, to embrace it so that when you are with people again it means more to you.

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    1. Michaelmas

      Rev Kev: I have read accounts at how the kids of the present generation cannot stand being alone for any amount of time.

      I’m just an old school traditionalist fuddy-duddy like Jean-Paul Sartre on this, I guess.

      Hell is other people.

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  20. The Rev Kev

    “Top finance ministers snub G20 as global co-operation comes under strain”

    No real surprise here. Ever since the war began in the Ukraine – and for years previously – the western countries in the G20 have always tried to have an anti-Russia statement in the final communique. In addition they have tried to hijack the agenda for each G20 meeting and make it all about – you guessed it – the Ukraine. So I think a lot of countries have seen how the western countries are wrecking the G20 to the point that it is hard to get stuff done anymore and so are now looking at a more serious organization which is all about making deals – BRICS. The best part? There are no western countries to put up with. It is an organization where the adults can get to work without outside interference.

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  21. t

    Loneliness and being alone – I suppose it makes sense that many in the media have a negative view of being alone and portray being alone as bad because they’re not properly mature people and rely on external validation.

    Or they have such lousy personalities that any kind of intimacy is an impossible goal. Being with others is lonely because others just won’t agree you, the lonely person, are the GOAT, the legend. Being alone is lonely and miserable because you, the lonely person, spending that time alternating between fantasies of being adored and fuming over imagined insults.

    At least that’s how it looks to me.

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  22. The Rev Kev

    They’ve done it again. Remember how Romania cancelled their election because the non-globalist candidate – Calin Georgescu – was going to have a decisive win? Well they have just arrested him-

    ‘Romanian police have arrested Calin Georgescu, the front-runner in last year’s annulled presidential election, and conducted dozens of raids on his supporters and people tied to his campaign, local media reported on Wednesday.

    The Romanian Prosecutor General’s Office is reportedly investigating Georgescu over allegations of involvement “in a fascist organization and the promotion of controversial ideologies and historical figures in the public space,” G4Media outlet reported, citing sources close to the investigation.’

    https://www.rt.com/news/613335-georgescu-presidential-romania-arrested/

    Even the Trump White House won’t be happy about this. I guess that this is more of those European values at work.

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  23. johnnyme

    Senior District Judge William Alsup, presiding over the case regarding the mass firing of probationary government employees, will be holding a public Zoom meeting tomorrow afternoon:

    In the matter of American Federation Of Government Employees, AFL-CIO et al v. United States Office of Personnel Management et al, 3:25-cv-01780-WHA, the Motion For Temporary Restraining Order and Order to Show Cause is set to be heard on 2/27/2025 at 1:30 PM (PST). The Court’s Zoom Webinar set-up will allow for up to 1,000 listeners. The public may listen in to the proceedings using the following link:

    https://cand-uscourts.zoomgov.com/j/1605814655?pwd=ZGZOVGs1Q1RzVWoxZkUzUVliQm5Hdz09

    Webinar ID: 160 581 4655, Password: 791667

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  24. thoughtfulperson

    https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/25/documents-military-contractors-mass-deportations-022

    ——————————–

    I read this yesterday after some friends commented. This story is based on a proposal by a bunch of former blackwater c suite types. As far as we know it has never proceeded further than the blackwater types sending in a propsal.

    Of course it’s not surprising as Reagan’s Contra operations were worse (as far as creating a private army), so there’s already precedent.

    For me the jury is still out on this one.

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