World’s oldest llama enjoys comforting children who are chronically ill AP
Climate/Environment
City fires are likely to increase with climate change, modeling study warns Phys.org
New York: A very large and fast moving fire has broken out on Long Island in the Hamptons. A huge response is underway. There are reports of a mile long front as it pushes across the landscape.
Winds are reported at 35MPH and relative humidities in the low 20th percentile.… pic.twitter.com/TvA5klJFzP
— The Hotshot Wake Up (@HotshotWake) March 8, 2025
The Alps are burning… in winter! 🔥😱
Current drought, high temp = several fires since 5th march
-Roya Valley, 300ha (Alpes Mar, FR) (https://t.co/nhw67F0nzo)
-Vinschgau, 100ha (Südtirol, IT) (https://t.co/ZQYlEToSNu)
-SW of Wendelstein (Bayern, GER) (https://t.co/sYd5PZwefI) pic.twitter.com/058LHfLebw— Melaine Le Roy (@subfossilguy) March 8, 2025
Power for data centers could come at ‘staggering’ cost to consumers Floodlight
Pandemics
Kids keep getting sicker as evidence for COVID immune damage builds The Gauntlet
***
Parents unsure about bird flu University of Michigan Health
After 20 U.P. dairy workers got sick, state criticized for slow response Michigan Live
The world should prepare now for a potential H5N1 flu pandemic, experts warn CEPI
The Koreas
North Korea releases first photos of new nuclear-powered missile submarine NK News
South Korean police brace for Yoon impeachment ruling Al Mayadeen
China?
‘Two sessions’ China Michael Roberts’ blog
China is trying to reshape global supply chains High Capacity
China-US trade war heats up as Beijing’s tariffs take effect The Business Times
O Canada
Ex-central Banker Mark Carney To Become Canada’s Next Prime Minister Huff Post. Commentary:
Mark carney pushing “big change” for a strong economy.
He means more privatization, deregulation, social service cuts, corporate handouts, more for cops, border security military.
Which is all any of them have on offer.
— Critical Criminology (@critcrim) March 9, 2025
Remember, Trump is only the excuse. All the horrible, repressive stuff that Canadian politicians are going to introduce is stuff they have wanted all along. Trump has only given them perfect cover.
— Critical Criminology (@critcrim) March 9, 2025
China to impose retaliatory tariffs on certain Canadian imports as trade war intensifies Euronews
Old Blighty
£6bn of catastrophic DWP cuts and Labour LEAKS the story to ITV News? Kendall clearly hates disabled people. The Canary. Commentary:
Leftists ignoring the pandemic for so long has left them with zero context to interpret the material realities facing us now. Disability numbers & long term sickness numbers have been rising & govts are reacting. Meanwhile there is no opposition, no one has a clue what’s going on https://t.co/oYAAyZtyYi
— Julia Marie (@julia_doubleday) March 8, 2025
Syraqistan
Syria: De Facto Government Forces Commit Massacres and Field Executions in Coastal Region Orinoco Tribune. Commentary:
🇸🇾 Syria will be Balkanised with American and Russian oversight. Reuters reported on Feb 28 that Israel lobbied the US to keep Syria weak and decentralised, including by letting Russia keep its military bases there to counter Turkey’s growing influence.
The massacre of Alawites… pic.twitter.com/zy1WJSVXVb
— Paul Antonopoulos 🇬🇷🇨🇾 (@oulosP) March 9, 2025
Thousands of Syrian Alawites cross into Lebanon to flee violence The New Arab
EU condemns attacks by remnants of Assad regime on Syrian government forces Anadolu Agency
Seyed Mohammad Marandi: Civilians Massacred in Syria & the EU Blames the Victims Glenn Diesen (Video)
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Iran says will not be ‘bullied’ into nuclear talks with US, has not received letter from Trump France24
US terminates Iraq’s waiver for buying electricity from Iran Daily Sabah
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Trump envoy defends his direct talks with Hamas, says US ‘not an agent of Israel’ Times of Israel
Israel to establish ‘migration administration’ to facilitate ethnic cleansing of Gaza The Cradle
All Roads Lead to Doha and Bypass Netanyahu: Qatar’s Brilliant Move on Hostage Talks Haaretz
Qatar Calls for Israel Nuclear Facilities To Be Brought Under IAEA Supervision Antiwar
New Not-So-Cold War
Kursk Collapse Accelerates as Daring Pipeline Raid Shocks AFU Simplicius
Can Zelensky negotiate peace and stay in power? The Times
Trump wants to see more than just a minerals deal to restart aid and intel to Ukraine NBC News
Supporters of Ukraine have unfurled the world’s largest 🇺🇦 flag on the White House ellipse, pushing for the U.S. to continue its aid against the Russian invasion: “Do not abandon Ukraine!” pic.twitter.com/tbiA5Pa5Ig
— Alejandro Alvarez (@aletweetsnews) March 8, 2025
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The World Order’s Restructuring Intensifies as the Ukrainian War Implodes the West and Kiev Gordon Hahn, Russian & Eurasian Politics
A new American empire: Trump, Russia, and the end of globalism Vasily Kashin, Director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, RT
Russia’s Geoeconomic Shift from Greater Europe to Greater Eurasia Glenn Diesen
European Disunion
Matrix of Failure The New Paradigm. “Germany is a country misaligned with its time and place.”
Chartbook 358 Debt brake dilemmas for progressive economic policy in Germany Adam Tooze, Chartbook
Merz plan to sell Germany. Financialization of German economy The Duran (Video)
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Meet the defense giants that will rearm Europe as the EU eyes a massive military buildup Fortune
Poland Moves Ahead with $6.2 Billion Purchase of 180 South Korean K2 Tanks Military Watch
European arms imports surge, US expands lead as top global weapons exporter France24
EU sees no reason to ‘de-risk’ relations with US: European Commission chief Anadolu Agency
***
Mass protests against PM Fico’s pro-Russian turn continue across Slovakia Bne Intellinews
Romanian electoral bureau invalidates Călin Georgescu’s presidential candidacy Romania Insider
Biden Post Mortem
Trump 2.0
Behind the chaos, Trump prepares to take on China Red Flag
Trump’s Cultural Revolution News Forensics
Air Force intercepts 2 aircraft in restricted airspace near Mar-A-Lago Axios
DOGE
Why the “DOGE dividend” polls well — and why it shouldn’t Polygraph
The Week In Musk: A wall of errors Musk Watch
Democrats en déshabillé
Democrats are reeling. Is Stephen A Smith the way back to the White House? The Guardian. Commentary:
Stephen A. Smith just tore the Democrats apart: “I think the fact that I am a candidate for the presidency, according to polling for the Democratic Party, is the most clear-cut evidence of how pathetic of a state of affairs that exists within the Democratic Party today.
“I have… pic.twitter.com/SfGj9hA9Fh
— George (@BehizyTweets) March 1, 2025
Police State Watch
DHS has begun performing polygraph tests on employees to find leakers NBC News
Columbia Bent Over Backward to Appease Right-Wing, Pro-Israel Attacks — And Trump Still Cut Federal Funding The Intercept
The Trump administration position is clear: The First Amendment does not apply to criticizing Israel or opposing Israel’s policies. The administration is starting to carry out a policy of criminalizing this speech.
— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) March 9, 2025
‘Project Esther’: The Right-Wing Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crack Down on America’s Pro-Palestine Movement Zeteo. From October, still germane.
Challenging ‘antisemitism’ Pearls and Irritations
Antitrust
Monopoly Round-Up: The Mar-a-Lago Accord, and Trump Seeks a Google Break-Up BIG by Matt Stoller
The Friendly Skies
Air India flight forced to return to US over clogged toilets in 10-hour debacle: reports New York Post
AI
It mostly works Internal Exile
So the LA Times replaced me with an AI that defends the KKK Blood in the Machine
The A.I. backlash backlash Read Max
Imperial Collapse Watch
US hopes robo-ships can outwit China’s superior naval numbers Asia Times
What happens if the robot army is defeated? Responsible Statecraft
Class Warfare
Hatching a Conspiracy: A BIG Investigation into Egg Prices BIG by Matt Stoller
The German Peasants’ War: 500 years later Red Pepper
Au Revoir, Noble Bulweriers! The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
‘Peter Stefanovic
@PeterStefanovi2
This is shocking. @itvnews
reporting that even those with extreme disabilities in the unfit to work category are likely to lose money under new government plans. Charities have branded the move catastrophic’
Well Starmer has promised the Ukraine three billion pounds a year for the next 100 years so that money has to come from somewhere. The best part? By keeping this war needlessly going, the Ukraine will have far more people that are disabled so they will need the money more.
And Stefanovic has been a loud voice on X denouncing Russia and demanding more support for Ukraine. Trades Unions in Britain seem totally oblivious to the burning alive of trades unionists by torching the building they took refuge in, in Odessa shortly after the Maiden coup d’etat.
“Kids keep getting sicker as evidence for COVID immune damage builds”…not just kids, everyone. I have had a long history of weird blood tests, so my doc finally started getting serious for some reason after 20 years. Ordered a blood smear and some wonky stuff came up, so she ordered a blood cancer test (MPN Hotspot Panel) and gave me a referral to hematology and for a sleep study. When I called, both offices told me the soonest they could get me in was five month from now. I asked them both if this was new, and they said; “Yes, ever since COVID. very long wait times.”
Plus, my friend came into town with a deep gross cough he said he had fro weeks. I said “Dude, go to a Doctor.” Turns out both he, and his mother, had walking pneumonia.
Oddly enough, I have never felt better in my life. Just staying as healthy as I can so I can deal with Bird Flu…
>Merz plan to sell Germany. Financialization of German economy The Duran (Video)
Well Merz is a former Blackrock executive after all…
https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/2025022447/a-former-blackrock-exec-is-set-to-lead-germany-what-analysts-expect-now
“North Korea releases first photos of new nuclear-powered missile submarine | NK News”
Of course the implication is that North Korea does not need to develop nukes with super-duper long ranges anymore but just pack a few medium-range ones into one of those boats and then have that sub pop up to the surface near Subic bay or Diego Garcia to rattle Washington’s cage.
> Democrats are reeling. Is Stephen A Smith the way back to the White House?
He could be their best candidate. He’s been angling into politics for awhile, he wrangled a hundred-million dollar contract while ESPN has been firing its critical thinkers, and he just picked a fight with LeBron about *the biggest name in sports* son and exposed his abandonment of his own children. (and he believes everyone should know he likes women with big butts.) He’s played the race card so often I doubt he could pull more black votes than Kamela, and he’s apologized for suggesting women provoke their own beatings.
In other words, a hypocritical philandering neocon. He’s perfect.
Dems have more problems than Smith and their bench. There have been recent articles raising questions about the propriety of the fund raising through ActBlue, another spigot of mother’s milk* in American politics.
*Money is the mother’s milk of American politics, attributed to the late California pol Jesse Unruh.
Roberts is quite a bit more sanguine on China than others. I find it hard to parse through and understand what actually is going on with that economy, given that it seems that every analyst has a different and somehow incompatible position with each other. I wonder how much we can trust the data? (An honest question is how much we can trust the data in the US as well, given that GDP growth seems not to capture what seems to be a catastrophic economic situation unfolding.) It is curious that Roberts trusts the figures, given he is a Marxist and the figures, insofar as I understand, are based on a neoclassical framework, but then again maybe we just have to work with what we have, trustworthy or not.
I think he captures the crux of the issue quite well at the end:
Will it work? I suppose it remains to be seen.
Picking up on a comment left in yesterday’s links, something from Charles Hugh Smith:
The Stoicism of the Caregiver
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmar25/caregiving3-25.html
I’ve been finding CHS’ pieces very good. He seems to be a latter day Illichian (in the sense of Ivan Illich, of course), with a sharp critique of modern institutions. Caregiving is a generalized and painful reality nowadays; the only solution, in my view, would be having socialized care in some form, but this is not likely to happen, to say the least.
>Hatching a Conspiracy: A BIG Investigation into Egg Prices BIG by Matt Stoller
When an industry starts profiting more from *not* producing than from producing, it’s a sign that something isn’t right. It could be an innocent bottleneck. But when it lasts for three years on end with no relief in sight, it’s usually a sign of something else that’s pervasive in America — monopolization.
…the abundance of small producers with excess capacity, [contributed to] a significant surplus of eggs in the country.
Higher prices routinely led farmers to get into the egg business to make money, and that in turn regularly reset the market with more supply. Price spikes were short-lived. Shortages were unheard of. America was a land of egg plenty.
Then, everything changed.
Stores in Central PA are now better stocked and prices are falling, somewhat. I bought a container of 18 “cage-free” brown eggs for ~$10.00 this pat weekend. When I retire I hope to get a chicken coup and control my own so supply…at least that’s my fantasy.
Forget it. Those very same egg corporations will goose all the local Counties to ban people owning chickens at home on the grounds that it will spread bird flu or they wouldn’t be hygienic or some such. I read years ago how these very same egg corporations would bring back to their plants any unsold eggs and mix them into cartons of fresh eggs. An egg might take two or more such trips until some unlucky consumer cracked one to find that it was off.
It must have been a dark and stormy night when the Indomitable Rice relinquished the will to carry on the proud tradition of four decades of bad fictional exordia.
What, gentle readers will be next? The banishment of the Stella Shouting Contest, the quintessence of Tennessee Williams French Quarter Culture, to the Internet? The seriously senseless siloing of the Faulkner Prolixity Project to the august pages of the Times Literary Supplement?
It is a sad day indeed to realize that the race to come has gone.
We’ll always have the mustache of understanding, Thomas Friedman, to mangle metaphors and wrestle wild wisdom from the world’s taxidrivers…
“So the LA Times replaced me with an AI that defends the KKK’
Can’t wait until the LA Times AI states that the holocaust was all about the Nazis trying to defend themselves.
As they were, mostly against the Commies.
I was thinking more along the lines of present-day Israel committing a genocide while saying that they are only defending themselves.
Slovakia, riots against Fico pro Russian…… I thought USAID was shut down.
Rumania?
We have it on “good” sources that the USAID has become the EUAID. As the kids say today, EU be EU.
I read a few weeks ago how at least Germany and France already had their own “aid” organizations doing the same sort of stuff for years now but I forget their names. These would be the same ones supplying and paying all those protestors in places like Georgia and handing out signs and EU flags.
Re: The Peasants’ War
A peasant revolt against the clergy, the PMC of its day.
Re: The world should prepare now for H5N1
I know I should be worried, but when I drilled down to find out who CEPI was, all I found was Bill and Melinda Gates and the WEF.
The AI Kool-Aid
Sung to the tune of, “The Harlem Shuffle”, written by Bob & Earl. As performed by the Rolling Stones
Melody
Whoo!
You move somebody’s cheese, yeah and you go for the sleaze
You move it to the right, yeah if profits take all night
Now take it kinda slow with a whole lotta plot holes
Don’t replace ’em too fast – just make it last
You scratch-off all the code monkeys, yeah ya do it real cool
You slide the HR bimbo, whoa, how low can headcount go?
Now come on, baby, don’t want no thinking skills now
Just line up right here, drink the AI Kool-Aid
Yeah, yeah, yeah, drink the AI Kool-Aid!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, drink the AI Kool-Aid!
Whoa-wow … Wow!
[key change]
Hitch-hike, hitch your fortune to Wall Street whores
Whoa, whoa, whoa, I can’t stand it no more
Now come on, baby, now get into your slide
And just ride, ride, ride with Scam’s cronies, ride, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, drink the AI Kool-aid!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, drink the AI Kool-Aid! (Jim Jones flavor, child!)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, shake yer Dow Jonestown, baby!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, shake yer Dow Jonestown, baby!
C’mon now!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, drink the AI Kool-Aid!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, drink the AI Kool-Aid! (Jim Jones flavor, child!)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, drink the AI Kool-Aid!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, drink the AI Kool-Aid!
“Iran says will not be ‘bullied’ into nuclear talks with US, has not received letter from Trump”
So that last bit raises a few questions. Did Trump actually write and send a letter? If he did, was it intercepted by someone who did not like it? Or was this Trump once again shooting his mouth off and this thing about sending a letter is like somebody saying that ‘The check is in the mail.’ With Trump you never know.
Why the “DOGE dividend” polls well — and why it shouldn’t – Polygraph
“Here’s how Musk described the so-called “DOGE dividend” at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC):
“It’s money that’s taken away from, from things that are destructive to the country…and from organizations that hate you, to you. That’s awesome. I mean that’s like, glorious. The spoils of battle, you know?”
Monopolies? Organizations the put harmful chemicals on food? Financial scammers?
And the cult of the entrepreneur is going to have to see the difference in outcome between monopolies/cartels and all the other businesses.
A difference that will grow more and more detrimental.
Mark Carney? Really? What are you doing Canada?
The banksters win again?
What happens if the robot army is defeated? – Responsible Statecraft
I read this and the scene from the horror film “When A Stranger Calls” popped into my mind.
“The call is coming from inside the house.”
Just spitballin’…but if I wanted to take down the biggest military in the world, what better way than to make it almost as easy as turning off a switch or cutting a wire?
What happens if they are hacked and switch sides? It’s not like they swear an oath or anything.
Does it have to be hacking?
The hard cold reality on the ground:
All software is hosted on hardware located in a place – hardware that has to be maintained.
But it’s most likely that something isn’t going to work on the battlefield because someone neglected to pay for an upgrade or missed installing some BS update.