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Links 6/29/2025

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When Did Nature Burst Into Vivid Color? Quanta Magazine

Your Review: Alpha School Astral Codex Ten

Star-Shredding Spectacle: NASA Reveals Brightest Black Hole Blasts Since the Big Bang SciTech Daily

COVID-19/Pandemics

COVID-19 origin still ‘inconclusive’ after years-long WHO study Al Jazeera

How does Marburg virus spread between species? Young Ugandan scientist’s photos give important clues The Conversation

Climate/Environment

In a Sinking Venice, Jeff Bezos’ Wedding Draws Private Jets and Protestors Atmos

Heat dome passes, but climate-fueled waves aren’t going anywhere The Hill

Arctic Sea Ice reaches a Historic Low for late June, with Winter Impacts expected if the Weather Pattern persists Severe Weather Europe

China?

China to pivot $50 billion chip fund to fighting U.S. squeeze as trade war escalates — country to back local companies and projects to overcome export controls Tom’s Hardware

China’s rare earths are flowing again, but not freely Reuters

China Abruptly Dumps $8,200,000,000 in US Treasuries As Dollar Extends Massive Losses The Daily HODL. Note Wolf Richter, in detail, has debunked the “massive losses” story. The dollar has corrected from serious overvaluation to being in a “normal” range by historical standards. That does not mean the dollar won’t fall further, but commentators need to get a grip about where we are now.

South of the Border

Milei’s Argentina: A tale of two pockets Buenos Aires Times

Africa

Six months on, US aid cuts push refugees in East Africa to starvation Andolu Agency

‘We are privileged’: liberal Afrikaners reject Trump’s ‘white genocide’ claims The Guardian

DR Congo, Rwanda sign US-brokered peace deal DW

European Disunion

Climate, conflict and energy security – our research shows how the EU’s industrial policy must change to face this polycrisis The Conversation

Southern Europe roasts as first heatwave of the summer scorches continent Al Jazeera

Did Trump just dump the Ukraine War into the Europeans’ lap? Responsible Statecraft

 

Old Blighty

The UK has published a ten-year industrial strategy to boost key sectors of the economy – here’s what the experts think The Conversation

Tories swipe at ‘chaos and confusion’ in local councils after Reform UK’s takeover of town halls sees a slew of resignations, flag rows, flooding fears and a bitter dispute with firefighters Daily Mail

Israel v. Gaza/Lebanon/Syria/Yemen/Iran

‘Suffering beside the innocent is the last honest thing a man can do.’ Vanessa Beeley substack

US did not use bunker-buster bombs on one of Iran’s nuclear sites, top general tells lawmakers, citing depth of the target CNN

Battle Damage Assessments Meaning in History

“Midnight Hammer” – a Fordow’s Bunker Buster or just Busted [i] Black Mountain Analysis substack

How Islam is Governing Iran’s Response to Israel and the United States Larry Johnson

New Not-So-Cold War

Vladimir Putin’s war threats are why aliens haven’t made first contact, expert claims The Daily Star

Nato has just surrendered Ukraine to Putin The Telegraph

Unjammable fiber-optic drones are taking over and turning Ukrainian forests into spiderwebs of wires, video shows Business Insider

Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web destroyed more than aircraft – it tore apart the old idea that bases far behind the front lines are safe The Conversation

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

New Orleans City Council Considers Ordinance To Adopt Real-Time Facial Recognition Technology Reason

ChatGPT and Privacy: Everything You Need to Know in 2025 Private Internet Access

Facebook’s New AI Tool Asks to Upload Your Photos for Story Ideas, Sparking Privacy Concerns The Hacker New

Imperial Collapse Watch

Toms River tells homeless to move their belongings out of municipal parking garage Asbury Park Press

Decorated Marine Corps veteran, homeless for more than a decade, braces for change Central Oregon Daily News

Trump 2.0

Trump Goes Haywire on AI Regulation After China Agrees to Major Trade Deal Futurism

With Iran, President Trump faces his neocon moment The Hill

Americans reveal which top Trump adviser they trust the most and the shocking stat that unites his Cabinet Daily Mail

What the “12-day war” teaches us about Trump’s foreign policy Vox.com

Musk Matters

Why is Mexico threatening to sue Elon Musk over SpaceX debris? Al Jazeera

Elon Musk finds his Tesla ‘scapegoat’ after billionaire’s White House antics were blamed for cratering EV sales Daily Mail

Elon Musk rips into ‘utterly insane’ Trump-backed megabill CNBC

Democrat Death Watch

Mamdani’s primary win exposes Democrat divide as top leaders withhold endorsements Fox News

They Don’t Hate Mamdani Because he’s a Muslim Radical. They Hate him Because he’s a Muslim Normal The Mizrahi Perspective substack

Top Texas Democrats ponder the state’s future at forum amid questions about what’s next for their party The Texas Tribune

Immigration

How DHS Facial Recognition Tech Spread to ICE Enforcement Reason

Deportation nation: Trump 2.0 is gunning for new records in immigration prosecutions The Hill

Our No Longer Free Press

Press-Freedom Groups File Brief in Defense of Reporter Timothy Burke’s Right to Gather Newsworthy Content Online FreePress.net

LAPD Arrest of Journalist at ICE Raid Fuels Press Freedom Fears

Mr. Market Is Moody

Hedging America: Appetite For The Dollar Is Waning Fast Axios

US goods trade deficit widens in May as exports fall Reuters

Analyst sends alarming message after S&P 500 hits all-time high The Street

AI

Federal Judge Recognizes the Right To Train AI on Copyrighted Works Reason

Modern love: Gen Z turning to AI to do their dating dirty work — breakup texts and apologies NY Post

The AI Backlash Keeps Growing Stronger Wired

The Bezzle

Slavery, torture, human trafficking discovered at 53 Cambodian online scamming compounds Cyberscoop

Lost Pet? Beware of New Scam Involving Fake Pet-Finding Services Greenwich Free Press

Guillotine Watch

Class Warfare

Antidote du jour (via)

A bonus (Chuck L):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here

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60 comments

  1. The Rev Kev

    ‘Suppressed News.
    @SuppressedNws
    An Israeli woman shared a screenshot from an Israeli man’s dating profile saying: “Weirdest gift I’ve given or received: a dog brought me someone’s leg in Gaza.”
    She captioned it: “Stuff you only find on dating apps in Israel.”
    Another Israeli replied: “Delete this, it could go viral and give us a bad reputation.”
    She responded: “Oy, I didn’t think about it. But it’s a terrorist’s leg.”
    The tweet was later deleted.’

    The Internet never forgets.

    Reply ↓
  2. DJG, Reality Czar

    Although I am leery indeed of the site, a so-called East Asia Rise that doesn’t list contact info and seems to have a name cobbled together by a committee of people in China who missed a few of their English classes, I do recommend this video of Yanis Varoufakis to you:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMjLaTiY0vA&t=731s

    Varoufakis is a clear thinker who marshals the facts and lines them up in a way that helps to make sense of the current economic swamp and the collapse of moral authority. (Note how he points out that Western liberals aren’t truly asking for anything anymore.)

    I wonder if East Asia Rise is a bootlegger — I see all kinds of spurious music channels that somehow grab classical-music performances and repost them, some guy from Hanoi or elsewhere who “happens” to have several Ravel masterpieces. Oh.

    But Varoufakis is worth a listen

    Reply ↓
    1. .Tom

      I haven’t watched this video yet but I’ve been keeping up with what Varoufakis has been talking about this year and last and sharing his work with friends. His speech to the left bloc in the the EU Parliament recently was very good and comprehensive.

      He’s been talking recently of what he calls military Keynesianism. It’s an interesting and provocative name that neatly describes the American bipartisan policy that he insists Europe should not now adopt. That’s all quite right but I worry about this kind of term. Military Keynesianism reminds me of the Military Industrial Complex in that it seem like a term designed to make liberals feel better. The story of the MIC suggests that the problem is one of rot in the administration and democratic oversight of government departments and all we need is reform. This story conceals the true purpose of the Western system, that of absolute domination at any cost. Western supremacy is first of all about power. Money, which has central place in the military Keynesianism and MIC stories, is one of the dimensions in which power operates but is itself subordinate to power. The power is the end in itself. From this perspective the corruption of the MIC actually makes the brutal exercise of Western supremacy less efficient.

      I don’t mind that Varoufakis uses a liberal sop like that to help build a coalition. Politics is like that. I just want to avoid deceiving myself.

      Reply ↓
  3. flora

    A databank potentially very useful in the research for answers to long covid is being shut down. / wth

    ‘Globally significant’ Covid vaccine study biobank to be destroyed
    The Queensland Government says there is “no longer a scientific and public health need” for this valuable biobank and linked data

    The collection of biosamples and data from this comparison set was all the more significant in light of the fact that the Covid vaccine manufacturers unblinded the placebo arms in their randomised controlled trials (RCTs) within months of the trials beginning, preventing the collection of medium-to-long-term trial data on vaccine effects.

    Professor Kerryn Phelps AM, a GP and former president of the Australian Medical Association, said that the QoVAX biobank and dataset was “extremely valuable” to research which is needed to inform diagnostic and treatment protocols for Covid vaccine injuries and long Covid.
    ,,,
    While the overlap between Covid vaccine injury and long Covid has been highlighted in several key studies, doctors and patient advocacy groups say there is still a dearth of research to identify the underlying mechanisms of these conditions.

    https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/globally-significant-covid-vaccine

    Where is the benefit in destroying this database? Who benefits?

    Reply ↓
    1. ambrit

      “Who benefits?”
      The Jackpoteers.
      This is plain old-fashioned Eugenics at work. The Social Darwinists never went away. They just bided their time.

      Reply ↓
  4. DJG, Reality Czar

    Fox News exposes Democratic Party (class / entrenched barnacle) divide:

    Moderate New York Democrats, including Sen. Kristen Gillibrand and Reps. Ritchie Torres, Adriano Espaillat and Pat Ryan, are also yet to endorse Mamdani. Those congressional Democrats, as well as Suozzi, did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital inquiry about whether they planned to endorse Mamdani.

    I don’t know about you, but watching the antics of a certain junior senatrix from New York these last few weeks, I suspect that somebody owes Al Franken an apology.

    The wrong person was bounced out of the U.S. Senate.

    Reply ↓
  5. vao

    Vladimir Putin’s war threats are why aliens haven’t made first contact, expert claims

    The Onion can no longer compete…

    Reply ↓
    1. Dan S

      Note that Nick Pope is ex MoD. The Brits are so Russophobic that it even infects the UAP/UFO crowd. I for one welcome our new alien overlords. How could they do any worse than we have? If they were smart, they’d follow the outline from Tiptree’s “The Screwfly Solution”.

      Reply ↓
    1. Norton

      Collect the links and make a short course intro to economic history, mid-century modern edition. Have incoming freshmen, and grad students, and anybody, benefit from edification.

      Reply ↓
  7. The Rev Kev

    “Star-Shredding Spectacle: NASA Reveals Brightest Black Hole Blasts Since the Big Bang”

    ‘Black holes are usually invisible, hiding silently in space unless something gives them away. Some constantly consume gas and dust, glowing brightly as they feed. Others stay completely quiet for years, only revealing themselves when a star wanders too close and gets torn apart.’

    So of course the question asks itself if we would know if our sun was going too close to a black hole. And if we did, how much warning would we have. Years? Months? Hours?

    Reply ↓
      1. The Rev Kev

        That bit I knew. But those black holes out there in space sound just like interstellar mines. Get too close to one and Whoommmp! Game over, man. Game over!

        Reply ↓
  8. Nikkikat

    I certainly hope we take a rest from the internet take over of Bezos and his stupid wedding.i don’t know why or who would care about this jerk and his trashy looking wife. These ridiculous celebrities and the kardasians. I’m sick to death of having to scroll through pages of these trashy looking people and their so called fashion. We don’t care! Enough already.

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev

      What are our chances then of having a GoFundMe for a Russian Oreshnik? I’m sure that all those Amazon workers would gladly chip in. I mean, those people are all gathered together in one small area. Would anybody even get upset if this happened? Just sayin’.

      Reply ↓
    2. Wukchumni

      We sent our regrets for not being able to attend in the RSVP, and I hope Jeff doesn’t take this as a sleight vis a vis our absence on the happiest day of his life, but I had to weed-whack.

      Reply ↓
    3. griffen

      It is encouraging in a sense, just how much can be spent on a lavish overseas wedding with only the best and brightest of this world on the invite list!?! \sarc

      Jeff and Lauren
      Sitting in a yacht
      Jeff started Amazon
      Competition he squashed
      State taxes aren’t his deal
      Small bookstores he crushed with glee
      Same day delivery far and wide
      And a prenup initialed by the bride

      “We” dearly love the wealthy athletes, actors and celebrities but for what exactly, it’s difficult to tell why any longer. I mean I did ( okay always will ) worship, say Michael Jordan as a younger man but realize he just isn’t above reproach.

      Reply ↓
    4. Steve H.

      Nikkikat, Venice was just the Gaza of elite warfare. The grotesqueries are immensely costly signalling devices, in which we outside the modern Versailles hall of mirrors can see, reflected and diffracted through the bullet-proof glass, the flexian positive assortment of who’s-in-whom’s-not, in which rent-a-towns, yachts, implants, even the protests themselves, are the induced selection process amongst larval trillionaire tribes. Those bombastic boobs are the burning babies. Bezos owns the Washington Post and uses it as a flagship to launch his broadsides. Reddit is skewed against the spectacle. Reddit is owned by Conde Nast, which owns the New Yorker, and you can even see how this contest is consolidating regionally.

      > Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. – Eleanor Roosevelt

      Reply ↓
        1. Steve H.

          I had missed that. Still, play with me a moment:

          Owners:

          Advance Publications (30%)
          Tencent (11%)
          Sam Altman (9%)

          Majority owner Advance also owns Conde Nast.

          A tickle to watch out for. Altman feud w Zuck over AI project; Tencent owns WeChat, which is having executive-level difficulty penetrating western market, which could be solved by a western buyer.

          Also, Bezos just lost his AI boss to another company, as yet unnamed.

          The principle being, don’t co-own with rivals. Unless you want to steal their secrets.

          Reply ↓
    5. The Rev Kev

      I thought that Jeff may be a bit of a cheapskate here. I mean, the guy is supposed to have a net worth of some $237 billion and he only spent $60 million for this wedding? For him, that’s pocket lint and he probably earns that much while he is having his dinner.

      Reply ↓
  9. ChrisFromGA

    Let’s get ready to rrrrr-ug pull!

    One of those senators, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, said they won a promise of an amendment vote related to the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Their proposal would end the 90 percent federal cost-share for new enrollees under that arrangement, Johnson said — gutting a key feature of the law known as Obamacare.

    https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/28/senate-megabill-vote-debate-00431389

    If your state voted to expand Medicaid, expect a Mike Tyson uppercut to hit your budget square in the face sometime in the not-so-distant future.

    Reply ↓
    1. chris

      Fellow Chris, it is always amazing to see Lambert’s rule #2 in action (Go Die!). I recall that this exact thing was discussed as a huge problem with the ACA from the very beginning, and a reason why many states decided to not initially expand Medicaid. I’m not sure what it will take to get our country to accept that US Healthcare is an enormous example of a market failure and that we need single payer and other reforms to make it work. But we just went through a terrible pandemic shock and are still coping with the now endemic virus… and you don’t hear a peep about single payer from people anymore. So I guess there really isn’t anything to be done. We will never get it. The people in power refuse to even allow it to be considered.

      Reply ↓
  10. Terry Flynn

    Reform was always just a protest movement led by a guy who likes to snipe and get money from his many jobs.

    Governing isn’t what they’re about. I am a little surprised the Mail did this hit piece but I sense they’re not yet sure which right wing party to back. They should have mentioned what I *think* was the first Reform councillor to resign (here in Notts before a week elapsed and we still don’t know why).

    Here in Notts the previously ruling Conservative Party and now official opposition are following the maxim of “never interrupt the enemy when he’s making a mistake” and just watching from the sidelines as I strongly suspect Reform will start losing by-elections rapidly. Meanwhile, cutting funding for flood defences in the East? That’s their CORE territory! When realpolitik kicks in I don’t think other parts of the UK will be willing to accept Lincolnshire refugees from sea level rises when we can’t even house our own most deserving cases. Basketcase party!

    Reply ↓
  11. jefemt

    Q: What is Capitalism (X/Twit tape- 5 minutes). Anyone know who the interviewee is?

    While he did not answer the question, his diatribe was spot on and quite interesting. It will be shared. Tnx!

    Reply ↓
    2. griffen

      I believe that is Scott Galloway, a professor at the NYU business school after I ran a few different efforts at sleuthing around. He looked familiar but I couldn’t readily place him. He’s given some qualitatively quite rational interviews* on CNN Smerconish weekly show, both leading up to last year’s election and also after the election was completed.

      *those interviews centered around the supposed, broad state of affairs and the outlook for the American youth, particularly for young American men. As to the above video linked today,well it goes back to the now maybe classic adage from Warren Buffett, and his views on a class war.

      Reply ↓
    3. rob

      Considering whose show he was on; I would guess he is ” another guy”….. they won’t have back on.
      My guess

      Reply ↓
    4. JP

      It was good. No new news but a concise synopsis. It dovetails nicely with today’s take down of Milton Friedman.

      I have often said that if I could go back in time and assassinate any historical figure, it would not be Hitler or John W Booth, it would be Milton Friedman.

      Reply ↓
      1. Michaelmas

        I doubt that terminating Milton Friedman from the timeline would actually provide much of a jonbar point.

        Friedman was only a popularizer who knew how to dumb down neoliberal thought sufficiently to make it broadly understandable to Americans and sell it in the US. If not him, Charles Koch and his group would have picked others for the job.

        Reply ↓
  12. Carolinian

    Re Mizrahi

    As an Arab Jew with artistic and intellectual tendencies who grew up under white Jewish Ashkenazi supremacism, I cannot help but chuckle when I see the Zionist reaction to Mamdani.

    Or, in other words, if antisemitism is a bad thing then surely philosemitism is also bad since both are based on racial stereotypes. If tribalism is bad then all tribalism is bad regardless of who is doing it. Of course this entirely reasonable assertion–the equivalent of MLK’s quest for “colorblind” (religion blind?)–bumps up against the realities of power, the quest for which is also seemingly universal.

    But there’s certainly a case to be made that “DEI” is merely a smoke screen for a class war that wants to pick it’s villains and paint itself as virtuous. By that view Mamdami’s real sin is the threat to money and power with NYC being USA money/power ground zero. MLK got this too. Then they shot him.

    Reply ↓
  13. griffen

    Breaking up with a lover or significant other is so very hard. So you need, wait for it, an assist from AI to hone or enhance those skills? If it doesn’t destroy the human race it’s definitely going to dumb things down several ways from Sunday. Goodness. ” Get off my lawn ” moment for my Sunday morning, possibly and yes I am older but not that old….

    FFS. Maybe just maybe, stream of find some sappy 70s or 80s love song…How about a few offers by a Fleetwood Mac track, to sample. You can go your own way….Go your own way…

    Reply ↓
    1. ambrit

      I have had moments when Harry Nillson’s “avant-garde” ditty “You’ve Broken My Heart” would fit perfectly.
      NSFW!!
      “You’re breakin’ my heart
      You’re tearing it apart
      So f— you”

      Reply ↓
  14. pjay

    – ‘With Iran, President Trump faces his neocon moment’ – The Hill

    LOL! When I saw this headline I naively assumed it would be a warning for Trump to resist neocon pressure. Instead, it is a call for him to fully embrace his inner neocon and finish the job in Iran to complete their project for a New Middle East!

    The author’s bio is interesting, though not exactly in the way of most neocon warmongers publishing in The Hill. A half-term Republican Congressman who apparently switched parties in opposition to Trump (and after losing multiple elections in overwhelmingly Democratic Hawaii) and was rewarded by the Biden administration for supporting Biden in 2020.

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

    Reply ↓
  15. Carolinian

    The AI versus copyright ruling.

    Alsup states that authors “cannot rightly exclude anyone from using their works for training and learning as such.” While it’s perfectly reasonable to expect people to pay for access to copyrighted material once, making everyone pay “for the use of a book each time they read it, each time they recall it from memory, [and] each time they later draw upon it when writing new things in new ways” would be “unthinkable,” ruled Alsup. Likewise, it is fair use for AI companies to use legally acquired copyrighted works to train LLMs “to generate new text [that is] quintessentially transformative.”

    Of course the notion that you can own a thought–intellectual property–is itself an entirely constructed thing like AI and didn’t exist before the industrial revolution where the new laws fostering this were meant to encourage innovation. The real question is whether AI is indeed “transformative” or just another tech bubble.

    Reply ↓
    1. ambrit

      I’ll go out on a limb here and assert that AI really is ‘transformative.’ It will transform our gold into lead.

      Reply ↓
      2. Terry Flynn

        Thanks. I have more or less said before but will clarify that AI won’t ever in its current form help people to run the discrete choice experiments that were main tool of my career.

        95% of the time I worked within a multidisciplinary group (which for health stuff had a highly specialised clinician and I had to rapidly learn their lingo to converse! ). Thus the “imaginary but realistic” scenarios respondents had to chose between were informed by input from variety of sources, judgement drawing upon (for instance) what a clinician of the calibre of IM_Doc or KLG considered “not available right now but given research likely to be available soon”. To use economics parlance, we “moved northeast of the production possibilities frontier” which by its nature isn’t out there to be scraped by AI.

        Certain people like Steve Jobs could do a fair amount of this stuff due to innate intelligence and “gut feel” for the market but that’s v v rare. An AI is far more likely to just make stuff up.

        Reply ↓
          1. Terry Flynn

            Unfortunately, yes, you are correct. I closed my business after 4 years post-academia: not because I was making losses. It was because I could see which way the wind was blowing. Politicos didn’t want “bit more expensive and correct” when they could buy “cheap and giving them the answer they wanted, which their pets at the Guardian/Daily Mail/NYT etc would lap up”. *sigh*

            Reply ↓
  16. The Rev Kev

    “Did Trump just dump the Ukraine War into the Europeans’ lap?”

    That was always the plan. Militarize Europe to tie down the Russians. Force them to spend 5% of their GDP on militarization so that they end up buying a lot of US weaponry meaning they become even more dependent on the US. Encourage Europe to turn themselves into a fortress of some sort, no matter what the costs are for ordinary Europeans. Cut pensions, cut heaklthcare, cut infrastructure but keep on spending money on the military. And if a big chunk of that money ends up in the bank accounts of their leaders, who cares?

    With this being done the US can turn their attention to the Pacific to militarize the entire region against China. Already there are demands by the Trump regime for all the nations in this massive region to spend 5% of their GDP on their military forces and trade demands that they stop trading with China. Make the whole region a series of missile sponges so that it will be easier for the US to threaten China. So maybe Taiwan can be the next Ukraine. Fun times ahead.

    Reply ↓
  17. Carolinian

    Think this may have been linked here yesterday but this article is chock full of information.

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/27/iran-us-israel-strikes-dia-bomb-facilities/

    The main takeaway is that, assuming Iran did remove the nuclear material, they no longer need Fordow and have other locations available to enrich to bomb grade. That still means testing to prove it works but allegedly Israel itself only did one test off of South Africa and nuke knowledge a lot more established than it was in 1945.

    So Iran could easily take on a stance of “nuclear ambiguity” to match that of Israel. Strangely none of TPTB seem to object to the latter.

    Jaw jaw better than war war. Somebody tell the egomaniacs in Israel and the one in the White House.

    Reply ↓
  19. Ignacio

    Thank you for this link Haig

    Climate, conflict and energy security – our research shows how the EU’s industrial policy must change to face this polycrisis The Conversation.

    The paper linked within by Hickel et al, which is the basis of the article, is proof that alternatives to neoliberal thinking are achieving maturity and there is the possibility that these might be integrated in new or existing political platforms. Most likely new because the traditional parties are so sunken in neoliberal tradition. Though this paper explores the contradictions within EU industrial policies its implications go well beyond. It should be complemented with a new financial framework not focused on debt creation, wealth extraction and ever increasing asset inflation. These guys, the post-growth economists, have a few interesting things to say that need to be translated into new political frameworks. Does anybody know about any existing ‘post-growth’ political platform in any country?

    Reply ↓
  20. The Rev Kev

    “China’s rare earths are flowing again, but not freely”

    I’m reckoning that China will only issue licenses for refined rare earths on a very strict basis. That they will issue only enough for American car manufacturers and the like. The production level of cars, for example, will tell them that they are being used there and only there. But if they see that those materials has been diverted into weapons manufacture, then when the six months is up they will yank all licenses on the grounds that the Trump government has been lying and cheating. So long as they keep this big spanner inserted into US weapons manufacturing, they know that it will buy them years to make their own preparations as the US will not be able to manufacture the weapons to threaten China with.

    Reply ↓
    1. Ignacio

      If there is shortage of rare earths there will be price hikes. Re-armament efforts could drive spikes in the cost of cars (specially electric ones), wind turbines and all kinds of “smart” things in all the CW but particularly in the EU.

      I have read somewhere that rare earth production is so energy intensive that the mere use of these rare earths in renewables results in increasing GHG emissions. (This assertion might be challenged i am not sure if the calculi made in that paper are correct).

      Reply ↓
  21. Mikel

    Re: How China is revolutionizing hospitals!

    A quick glance at the freeze frame where the video starts had me hoping for a high tech air filter and ventiliation system.

    Reply ↓
  22. The Rev Kev

    “What the “12-day war” teaches us about Trump’s foreign policy”

    Maybe not the lessons suggested in this article. People will learn that Trump is now totally aligned with the Neocons at the cost of his America First supporters. That he will take pride in helping arrange attacks in the middle of advanced negotiations – like the Japanese did in 1941 – with him calling them ‘head fakes.’ That he is agreement incapable. That he will always side with Israel to the point of protecting them from themselves. That he put’s Bibi’s welfare above Israeli justice. That you cannot trust any agreements with him as he will break them if he sees an advantage.

    And not only did Iran see this but the whole world saw this and all those other countries will act accordingly.

    Reply ↓
    1. Wukchumni

      It’d be one thing if Benedict Donald was in the process of destroying yet another business deal gone awry, do and say anything to keep the project alive, initiate lawsuits and obfuscate, always pumping yourself up in the process.

      But the fact is, he’s the USA as far as other countries are concerned, and Germany & Italy requesting a quarter trillion worth of their ‘rare earths’ back from us, is an indication of how they feel.

      It’s only been in our custody since WW2

      Reply ↓

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