Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Links 2/5/2025

Does Trump’s Attempted “Dismantling” of Spook-Infested, Regime Change Agency USAID Herald a New Foreign Policy Era?

It looks more like an attempt to bring under control rogue agencies that were hostile to Trump during his first term in office as well as a shift in the type of “values” the US will support abroad. 

Life After Lambert Update: KLG to Provide Weekly Health/Pandemic “Coffee Break”; Still Seeking Help in Finding New Site Contributor(s), Including for Other “Coffee Breaks”

Announcing KLG’s upcoming Coffee Break feature, and seeking reader help for more Coffee Break and other site content candidates.

Michael Hudson: Trump’s Tariffs Could Cause Huge Global Crisis

Michael Hudson and Ben Norton take a deep dive into Trump’s contradictory and potentially disastrous economic plans, starting with tariffs.

Trump Commits to Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza

Trump and Netanyahu have gone all in on ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

2:00PM Water Cooler 2/4/2025

~ Today’s Water Cooler: Politics, pandemics; DOGE: Fresh lawsuits and probes; DNC follies; How one programmer’s thoughts on bitcoin changed; Oldest known portrait. ~

Rob Urie: To End Oligarchy, End Finance Capitalism

One prescription for rolling back oligarchy.

Links 2/4/2025

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What Just Happened to UK TBTF Lender Barclays’ Online Banking Services, and What Could It Mean for the Wider World?

“[W]e have this house of cards where you’ve got an awful lot of institutions working co-operatively with each other, but if one messes up the system, then the whole system fails.”

New Filing Details How Crooked Attorney Ann Oldfather and Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman Conspired to Sell Out Underwater Pension Funds and Taxpayers to the Tune of Hundreds of Millions, Even >$1 Billion, in Lost Recoveries

As more legal filings and reviews show, Ann Oldfather and Attorney General Russell Cameron are shafting Kentucky taxpayers for their benefit

AI’s Impending Information Crisis

AI coverage whistles past the graveyard of its lack of enough content to generate good output, assuring garbage in, garbage out.

Tankus and Kelton on Musk’s DOGE Seizing Treasury’s Payments Chokepoint. But Where Are The Lawyers?

What attack surfaces does DOGE present?

2:00PM Water Cooler 2/3/2025

~ Today’s Water Cooler: Open Thread ~

Links 2/3/2025

Trump Declares Economic War on Just About Everyone That Matters. Is a Smash-Up a Feature and Not a Bug? Update: Mexico One Month Pause. Who Blinked?

Trump is opening up a multi-front economic war by imposing tariffs on America’s biggest trade partners, with the EU next in line. What gives?