Links 4/28/2025

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1. The Rev Kev April 28, 2025 at 7:15 am

   “Scoop: Trump admin game-planning for potential North Korea talks”

   With all that Trump has got on his plate, why would he decided to expand to North Korea now? Isn’t the China trade war, the Ukraine, DOGE and Gaza enough? Does he want a deal where he will swap lifting some sanctions – maybe – in exchange for North Korea not supplying military material to Russia? Maybe he wants an easy win with North Korea like he got the first time he was President so that he can finally get a win on the board. If he is going to pick so many fights, he should sequence them instead of all at once. in any case, are the North Koreans even interested?

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2. ChrisFromGA April 28, 2025 at 7:21 am

   Re: Trump wants Ukraine-Russia peace deal in ‘2 weeks or less’

   And in other news, I want a rainbow-colored pony.

   When the pony fairy is a no-show, what will he do about it? Call up Mike “Swamp Stooge” Johnson and get the band back together for one more aid package? Close the US Embassy in Kiev? Call up Starmer and tell him to stop undermining peace or else “big tariffs on Britain?”

   Take a good, deep whiff, Donald … that’s the smell of manure, and there isn’t a pony nearby.

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   1. The Rev Kev April 28, 2025 at 7:58 am

      You notice that Trump has changed his tune. He said a few weeks ago that the war will be solved by the end of the month or the US walks. Now he is waffling and saying a coupla weeks more – for now. The US will never leave the Ukraine and after all the weapons and money that Biden allocated to the Ukraine before going out the door have run out, Trump will have to go to Congress and ask for tens of billions of dollars more for the Ukraine. This is something that he will not be able to do by Executive Order and his MAGA base is going to be seriously unhappy.

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   2. ilsm April 28, 2025 at 8:33 am

      Trump wants a Minsk 3 where he, and his EU sycophants, will send arms, trainers and neo nazi war tourists while claiming he wants peace! Just as from 2014…… to now.

      Another operation in the “seize the heartland” Mackinderism of the Atkanticists.

      Lavrov did good on CBS!

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      1. NotTimothyGeithner April 28, 2025 at 9:06 am

         Trump wants a “win” where Russia plays like it surrendered. The GOP looks at the conflict through the lens of “liberals are French.”

         Minsk 3 won’t constitute a win in Trump’s mind. Euros ate hyperventilating about the Crimea proposal. The question isn’t about Crimea but what will be left of Ukraine. Trump’s promises were made with the cable news and meme assessment of the conflict.

         Trump has moved onto the “Putin is a meanie” phase of the conflict in a bid for sympathy. The only step left for this White House is to appoint Kamala Vance the Ukraine Czar.

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         1. urdsama April 28, 2025 at 9:25 am

            Crimea isn’t the real issue. Zelenskyy is. No way, no how does he go along with what Russia wants. He’ll alternate between sneering and groveling at Trump, because he fears death more than Trump.

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            1. The Rev Kev April 28, 2025 at 9:48 am

               Zelensky will never keep his end of a deal. Putin has declared a three day truce for Victory day but you just know that Zelenski will use it to hit civilian targets. Trump goes on about Putin hitting civilian targets but always forgets when the Ukraine does it-

               https://www.rt.com/russia/616431-putin-victory-day-ceasefire/

               In response, the Ukraine demanded a 30 day ceasefire-

               https://www.rt.com/russia/616440-ukraine-ceasefire-response/

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3. Michaelmas April 28, 2025 at 7:38 am

   Let me recommend the Nefarious Russians piece, ‘Too Hot To Work’ to NC readers who think they mightn’t be particularly interested in such matters.

   The author starts thoughtfully with the fact that she’s seeing among younger American the repetition of a social phenomenon she first observed among Russian women in the Yeltsin years, then widens the lens on the corollaries from there. And she’s quite correct.

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   1. DJG, Reality Czar April 28, 2025 at 8:27 am

      Michaelmas: I agree. Evgenia’s essay at Nefarious Russians is worth a read.

      There is a certain twist to it, and it is interesting to follow Evgenia’s logic — and most of the essay is tightly argued, which is her style. The vogue for Too Hot to Work and tradwives is something that she saw in Russia as it was being looted by predatory capitalists, including peeps from the U S of A.

      This summation gives one pause: “I think Russia having lived through societal collapse and going full barbarism and cannibalism in the aftermath of this collapse, is a good example of where this THTW sentiment logically leads you.”

      This observation is important: “I feel like I have to state the obvious — the majority of women throughout history have always worked.” In particular, U.S. bourgeois feminists don’t understand women who worked in arts, crafts, agriculture, in workshops, as weavers, as lacemakers, as potters as being women who worked. The U.S. definition of work is very limited — only the marketing department does work, eh. So she isn’t stating the obvious — at least not to Americans.

      A few years ago, I read Anu Partanen’s book / essay, The Nordic Theory of Everything. Partanen made many observations much like the closing paragraphs of Evgenia’s essay: Only a socialist society can free men and women from the misery of capitalist amoralism, greed, and pointlessness — from the idiocy of daily life in late capitalism.

      https://www.anupartanen.com/the-nordic-theory-of-everything/

      Unfortunately, Partanen, likely under the influence of HarperCollins and it marketing department, seems to spend much time denying that Finland (her home country) is socialist. Yet her description in her book of U.S. women and their anxieties about marriage (he’s got to make a lot of money) and childbirth (who can afford to have a kid?) fits in very well with Evgenia’s statement that only socialism can correct the relationships between people.

      PS: I’m not sure that I understand Evgenia’s obsession with incels. These seem to me to be semi-mythical creatures like Gollum. Surely incels are not determining U.S. culture and economic policy.

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      1. Polar Socialist April 28, 2025 at 9:12 am

         Partanen is about as MSM as journalists come, so I wouldn’t be surprised she feels she has to prove, especially to US audience, that a society designed to support it’s members is not socialist, but individualist (maybe even a bit libertarian, if you please).

         That said, Finland with it’s current right-wing government is on a fast lane to a semi-dystopian “nanny-state” where social security is scarce and comes with humiliating treatment and strings attached.

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   2. The Rev Kev April 28, 2025 at 9:07 am

      She certainly has a bee in her bonnet about tradwives but there is another category that I call tradewives that should be mentioned. When I go to Bunnings – a local hardware chain – I see them sometimes. They are there buying building materials for their partners and sometimes they have young kids in tow. They appear to be competent and know what they are looking for. You can have wives in partnership with their partners and not just stay at home mums. You sometimes see this sort of relationship on some of those home renovation programs. And more that a few times I have come across historical references where the guy would be running a business while the wife would be doing the books and even the negotiating. There are other possibilities.

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      1. Michaelmas April 28, 2025 at 9:13 am

         There’s a spectrum of possibilities, yes.

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      2. Michaelmas April 28, 2025 at 9:23 am

         Rev Kev: You can have wives in partnership with their partners

         There’s a spectrum of possibilities, yes.

         But regarding the general theme, I just read an LRB piece whose concluding words are to the point:-

         ‘Today’s builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers, and that those who fall along the way are losers,’ Francis wrote in his last meditations on Good Friday. ‘Theirs is the construction site of Hell.’

         https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n08/james-butler/on-pope-francis

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4. The Rev Kev April 28, 2025 at 7:51 am

   “US treasury secretary says ‘there is a path’ with China over tariff negotiations”

   ‘The Chinese will see this high tariff level is unsustainable for their business,’ says Scott Bessent’

   The only path that Bessent will accept is for the Chinese to buckle and accept his demands. Not sure but I think that Bessent was one of the rocket scientists behind the tariffs scheme. Of course over time the shelves at places like Walmart and target will get empty which will be hard for the admin to explain away. After a meeting with Trump, the CEOs begged the Chinese to keep on shipping goods as they realize that this will happen and make Trump look bad. I don’t think that Bessent has worked out yet that the US economy needs China more than China need the US so probably the Chinese will bite the bullet and wait the Trump admin out – as supplies run down and then run out.

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   1. griffen April 28, 2025 at 9:10 am

      He was featured over the weekend and appeared again today in the 8am hour on CNBC. The administration seems to fervently believe the US has still the upper hand, as the bounty of goods that China exports to here is so dramatically greater than the amount the US exports to there.

      Hey they’re just all playing checkers and the US is playing dimensional chess. Remit the tributes required and find agreement so that the spice will flow! Not sarcasm, unfortunately. It’s late April, I wonder what the big shopping events of the second half in 2025 will bring?

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   2. Michaelmas April 28, 2025 at 9:39 am

      Not sure but I think that Bessent was one of the rocket scientists behind the tariffs scheme.

      Bessent and Miran. If you haven’t, you should read the latter’s little manifesto ‘Rebooting the Global Economy.’

      The Chinese, in any case, have every incentive not to drop their tariffs and sanctions once the US comes bleating and threatening and pleading, on the basis that the US began the aggression in the first place and now they, the Chinese, will finish it. Boeing can survive for only months without Chinese parts and materials, and then COMAC will have the global aerospace market with Airbus.

      And so it will go in other industries and realms. US hegemony is done, kaput, finished. Maybe even the country itself, too.

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   3. Unironic Pangloss April 28, 2025 at 9:52 am

      Bessent really comes across as smarmy, smug, and intractable on sunday TV…..

      congrats my brothers, you did it…, a gay man (didn’t ask, don’t care, but it got shoved in my face by the media regardless) can be as asinine as any cis-white male!

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5. timbers April 28, 2025 at 8:32 am

   Russia wants guarantees that a ceasefire will not be used again to strengthen the Ukrainian Armed Forces and that arms supplies must stop.

   I hope Lavrov Putin and Russians have observed as I have, that Trump has exerted zero pressure on Europe and only pretend pressure on Ukraine to fall in line with US Imperial policy being formulated by the WH regarding its fake peace plan. That’s a big tell. Because when the Europeans rebelled against the start of project Ukraine (which was clearly against their own interests) around the time Obama imposed sanctions on Russia, Saint Obama and his angels gave the Euros a talking to and they folded into line but quick. So presumably Trump could do this too, but has not. So Russia I hope understands these peace fantasies are just that – fantasies. Because Trump has not lifted a figure to get the Euro puppets in line. I don’t even think he is very much aware his puppets are in rebellion. And if the Russians know this, they must also never agree to fake pretend Western peace offers and Trumps actions are misdirection and nothing more.

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   1. The Rev Kev April 28, 2025 at 8:44 am

      I saw that line too about guarantees too. But that Trump peace plan allows the Ukrainians to build up their army again and have the west supply them with everything that they can. I don’t think that the Russians will go for that. And like you say, Trump hasn’t lifted a finger to bring the EU into line. When he tried to put together a Black Sea grain deal 2.0 together, the EU straight away said that they would never honour it and Trump folded like a cheap, lawn-deck chair.

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   2. ilsm April 28, 2025 at 8:54 am

      Trump needs to worry about NK, with its nukes, becoming a Pacific Rim version of Kiev.

      Russia could do for NK what Obama, Trump, Biden and Trump 2.0 are doing against it, with no restraint since the CIA/Nuland/ISW Kiev coup.

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   3. urdsama April 28, 2025 at 9:39 am

      I see nothing from Lavrov or Putin that is different from before. They know that the US is agreement incapable, and the Ukraine even less so.

      They also know that there are multiple red lines that look perfectly acceptable based on the Ukraine’s losing position, but will be completely unacceptable to Zelenskyy and most likely Trump as well.

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6. Patrick Donnelly April 28, 2025 at 8:42 am

   Citizens and workers are assets.
   So why are they being degraded in the UK and USA?

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7. Patrick Donnelly April 28, 2025 at 8:44 am

   To catch up with China …. yes, catch up, what does the West need to do?
   Cull parasites and their corporate weapons?

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8. VTDigger April 28, 2025 at 8:44 am

   whoa: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/04/28/spain-portugal-and-parts-of-france-hit-by-massive-power-outage

   Iberia, meet Cuba?

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   1. DJG, Reality Czar April 28, 2025 at 9:58 am

      VTDigger: We will have to await a report from Ignacio.

      Meanwhile, thinking of Barcelona, and its endless problems with AirBnB, I pick up this line from Fatto Quotidiano’s article: “Difficoltà, invece, si registrano anche per i pagamenti contactless per quasi tutti circuiti bancari e per le centinaia di migliaia di turisti ospiti di bed&breakfast con i cancelli automatizzati.”

      No payments. Lots of peeps locked in or out of their short-term rentals.

      I suppose this means that Glovo is out of action for the day. That’s a darn shame, too.

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9. Henry Moon Pie April 28, 2025 at 8:50 am

   National Forest equines–

   After trying corporate law as a summer clerk in a large law firm back in my K. C. point of origin and being thoroughly disillusioned during another summer clerkship for a union general counsel in D. C., I headed for the hills, rather the Sangre de Cristos of northern New Mexico. After passing the bar, I put up my abogado shingle and took whatever walked in the door. Before long, in walked two young fellows needing representation; they had been charged in state court with burro rustling from the National Forest.

   Now these burros were wild, not like the pack and riding animals of the story in Links, and the feds didn’t really give damn, but the local DA was convinced that this family, which had four grown brothers living at home in the family compound, was responsible for a large portion of the crime in that part of the county, so when Benji and Alfred were caught with these burros, the DA was ready to use this as a way to get Benji back in prison. We had a preliminary hearing, my first, in the little courthouse in Mora. The judge was a local guy who had graduated from Georgetown Law School, and he was very sympathetic to my clients. Despite my inexperience, he found a way to dismiss the charges–pretty bizarre for a prelim–and the brothers went on their way.

   I ended up defending another brother in my first jury trial about a year later. He was charged in what was something of a local sport: driving around in a pickup firing shots at oncoming vehicles. And the targets were Tejanos with places at the local ski resort owned by Clinton pal and coke importer extraordinaire, Dan Lasater. Adding to the excitement of my first jury trial was the threat I received from the oldest brother, one of the burro rustlers, that I had better get his brother off or else. Thankfully, a highway patrol cop, who was the prosecution’s main witness, lied on the stand, and once I exposed him on cross, there was going to be no conviction. The jury hung 10-2 in favor of acquittal with two gringo ladies holding out. The case was eventually dsmissed.

   The older brother, Benji, came to a bad end. He had a sweet girlfriend, who was like a little mouse whenever I was around her. One night, after Benji came home drunk and passed out on the bed, she took the revolver he kept on the bed stand and shot him in the head. The burros of the Carson National Forest were safe once again.

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10. timo maas April 28, 2025 at 9:22 am

    #IndianNavy Ships undertook successful multiple anti-ship firings to revalidate and demonstrate readiness of platforms, systems and crew for long range precision offensive strike.#IndianNavy stands #CombatReady #Credible and #FutureReady in safeguarding the nation’s maritime…
    — SpokespersonNavy (@indiannavy) April 27, 2025

    That’s BrahMos, hence the recognizable Oniks-like launch.

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11. The Rev Kev April 28, 2025 at 9:26 am

    “Webb Telescope Reveals What Happens When a Planet Spirals Into Its Star’

    Hopefully there was nobody on that planet, especially with a sentient species. Worse yet if they did it themselves-

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUFtgep9sj4 (2:51 Mins)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Earth_Caught_Fire

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12. Munchausen April 28, 2025 at 9:33 am

    Tanks rolling into Brussels’ downtown park on a sunny Sunday, right by the European Commission. What’s this military exhibition really about? Are we prepping for war or just showing off? Who’s the enemy—Russia, China, or some vague “threat”?
    — Eldar Mamedov (@EldarMamedov4) April 27, 2025

    Those are not tanks, but lightly armored wheeled vehicles. Useful against insurgents and civilians, not so much in case Russia/China visits with real tanks. That should answer the “Who’s the enemy?” question.

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