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Links 8/6/2025

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Hiroshima marks 80 years as US-Russia nuclear tensions rise Agence France-Presse

Lightning Kills Way More Trees Than You Would Ever Believe ScienceAlert (Dr. Kevin)

Titan implosion that killed all five on board was ‘preventable’, says report BBC (Kevin W)

Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds New York Times

Our Brain—Immune Axis Gets A Jolt Eric Topol (Robin K)

COVID-19/Pandemics

Global outbreak fears surge as virus in China prompts quarantines and thousands of new cases are reported Daily Mail

Climate/Environment

Fire in southern France burns 8,000 hectares Le Monde

The surprising reasons floods and other disasters are deadlier at night Grist

‘Maddening’ Proof Plastics Industry Knew Recycling Was False Solution in 1974, New Document Shows DeSmog

China?

China’s high-speed rail nears 50,000km milestone – but debt and profit concerns mount South China Morning Post

China Deploys its Most Heavily Armed Nuclear Submarine Class For New Operations Military Watch

Africa

Trump’s Africa deal: Peace plan or power grab? Aljazeera

AFRICA/DR CONGO – Ituri youth peace demonstration marked by Komanda church massacre Agenzia Fides

South of the Border

US steps up efforts to help Bolsonaro avoid jail over alleged coup plot Guardian (resilc)

European Disunion

Fyodor Lukyanov: Europe’s last security project is quietly collapsing RT

How a fertiliser crunch made Europe’s defence industry more vulnerable Euractiv

Germany’s bizarre selective outrage: legitimising extremists abroad while delegitimising democracy at home Ciarán O’Regan

Their families fled the Nazis. Facing Trump, US Jews are making Germany ‘Plan B’ France24 (resilc)

F-35 Not Purchased, FCAS is Falling Apart: Spain Faces Sad Prospect of Being Left With 4th-Gen Fighters Defense Express (resilc)

Estonia to solve wild boar meat surplus by sending it to Ukraine err.ee Micael T: “‘…spread of African swine fever’- so now the Ukrainians know what the Estonians really think of them. “

Old Blighty

Rachel Reeves needs to put up taxes to cover £40bn deficit, thinktank says Guardian

Israel v. The Resistance

With No Governing Alternative in Gaza, Israel’s Push for Hamas to Disarm Is a Pretext for Forever War Haaretz (resilc)

Bennett: Israel’s status in US ‘has never been so bad,’ it’s becoming a ‘leper state’ Times of Israel (resilc)

US Congressman Khanna leads push to recognise Palestinian state Middle East Eye. resilc: “Too funny.”

Israel evacuates embassy staff in Greece amid anti-war protests: Media Anadolu Agency

‘World has been turned upside-down’: Sa’ar says UNSC, world must condemn Hamas Jerusalem Post

Iran and the Logic of Limited Wars Rand (Robin K). From July, still germane.

New Not-So-Cold War

US Greenlights $200M More in Military Sales to Ukraine Kyiv Post. Couch lint.

Sanctions on Russia’s partners ‘obvious next step’ – US NATO envoy (VIDEO) RT

The Secondary Sanctions Squeeze Moon of Alabama (Kevin W)

About 50 thousand Ukrainian militants and foreign mercenaries may try to break into the Bryansk region TopWar. Micael T: “So it wasn’t enough with 70,000 dead in Kursk? The bloodlust, the bloodlust.”

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Mastercard wants everyone to have a digital wallet and mDL to make ID like payments Biometric Update. I am opposed to getting a mobile digital license.

Imperial Collapse Watch

The great myth of empire collapse Aeon. Anthony L: “This time will be different. The Holocene is in the mirror.”

The Militarization of Silicon Valley New York Times (resilc). This is news?

IMEC’s imperial illusion: Why the US-backed trade corridor will fail The Cradle

Christian Nationalism’s Plot on Civil Society: The Seven Mountains Mandate Matthew Boedy (resilc)

Trump 2.0

Trump Promised to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill.’ The New Rigs Are Nowhere to Be Found Wired. resilc: “Lots of steel in that rig.”

Fighting Wildfires Is Hellish Work. It’s Even Worse Under Trump. New Republic (resilc)

NASA Satellites That Scientists and Farmers Rely On May Be Destroyed On Purpose NPR

Trump Threatens Federal Takeover of D.C. After Member of DOGE Assaulted New York Times (resilc)

Trump may be off the hook for his 2020 election plot, but his allies aren’t Politico. Lead story.

Health secretary RFK Jr. shuts door on U.S. investment in mRNA vaccine research STAT

* * *

Trump Just Got a Fresh Shot at Bending the Fed to His Will Wall Street Journal

Trump rules out Scott Bessent as Fed chair New York Post

Tariffs

What’s It Like to Deal With Brutal U.S. Tariffs? Ask Malaysia. New York Times (resilc)

Russiagate

Clintons subpoenaed to testify in congressional Epstein investigation BBC (Kevin W)

Meet the 30-Year-Old Far-Right Provocateur Nominated by Trump to Investigate Jack Smith Zeteo

Why my liberal friends disowned me Unherd (Anthony L). “Russiagate drove Americans mad”

GOP Clown Car

Trump and Johnson face escalating GOP revolt on redistricting Axios

Early GOP rift emerges as Congress braces for shutdown fight The Hill

Democrat Death Wish

Where are all the Democratic donations? Angry Bear. A must read.

AI

Microsoft CVP thinks we’ll be ditching mice and keyboards in a future version of Windows in favor of AI chats — “The world of mousing around and typing will feel as alien as it does to Gen-Z to use MS-DOS.” Windows Central (Kevin W)

An Illinois Bill Banning AI Therapy Has Been Signed Into Law Mashable

‘We didn’t vote for ChatGPT’: Swedish PM under fire for using AI in role Guardian (resilc)

Google Agrees To Pause AI Workloads To Protect the Grid When Power Demand Spikes The Registe

The Bezzle

The housing market is a rigged game Steve Keen (Micael T)

Foxconn says EV sales are so slow it’s converting a factory to build AI servers instead The Register

So Long to Tech’s Dream Job New York Times (resilc)

Class Warfare

Buy now, pay later is taking over the world. Good Economist

Versus the discussion by Charlie Kirk starting at 28:30. Recall that Kirk is not even remotely a finance guy but does talk to tons of right-leaning young people, mainly men. If he is hearing about a lot of reports about debt overhang and distress when that is the sort of issue he would not be following, this is a real concern. Recall that the likes of the Economist were all for microfinance, which put people (mainly women) in poor countries in debt traps.

About half of US adults say grocery costs cause major stress, poll finds Associated Press. resilc: “Excluding food and energy is the joke the the century.”

Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth Financial Times

For a Few CEOs, Pay Keeps Growing—by the Billions Wall Street Journal. resilc: “Luigisation of USA USA needs to expand greatly.”

Antidote du jour (via):

A bonus (Chuck L):

And a second:

And a third:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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26 comments

  1. Wukchumni

    We got it together didn’t we?
    We’ve definitely got our thing together, don’t we baby?
    Isn’t that nice?
    I mean, really, when you really sit and think about it
    Isn’t it really, really nice?
    I can easily feel myself slipping more and more ways
    That super world of my own
    Nobody but you and me

    We’ve got it together baby

    Ahh, the first, my next to last, my everything
    And the answer to all my Nippon dreams
    You’re my light of a thousand suns, my guiding star
    My kind of wonderful, that’s what you are
    I know there’s only, only one like you
    There’s a way to the will to make bad Hiroshima-fu
    You’re all I’m living for
    Your love I’ll keep for evermore
    You’re the first, you’re the next to last, my everything

    In you, I’ve found so many things
    A love so new only you could bring
    Can’t you see if you
    You make me feel this way
    You’re like the first ever fallout
    On a brand new day

    I see so many ways that I
    Can love you, ‘til the day I die
    You’re my reality, yet I’m lost in a dream
    You’re the first, the next to last, my everything

    I know there’s only, only one like you
    There’s no way they could have made two
    Atomic Age you’re my reality
    But I’m lost in a dream
    You’re the first, you’re the next to last, my everything

    You and me Little Boy
    Just you and me
    Ya you are the first, the next to last
    My everything

    You’re the First, the Last, my Everything. by Barry White

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2dwSG1×984&list=RDf2dwSG1×984

    Reply ↓
  2. Lazar

    The Grayzone
    US backed ethnic cleansing of Serbs, top diplomat secretly told Croat leader
    https://thegrayzone.com/2025/08/04/us-ethnic-cleansing-serbs-croat/

    The ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Serbs by a US-backed Croatian leader was premeditated, according to newly-uncovered files revealing the operation’s planning. After the bloodshed subsided, Richard Holbrooke, a top US diplomat, assured him: “We said publicly… that we were concerned, but privately, you knew what we wanted.”

    August 4, 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of Operation Storm. Little known outside the former Yugoslavia, the military campaign unleashed a genocidal cataclysm that violently expelled Croatia’s entire Serb population. Dubbed “the most efficient ethnic cleansing we’ve seen in the Balkans” by Swedish politician Carl Bildt, Croat forces rampaged UN-protected areas of the self-declared Serb Republic of Krajina, looting, burning, raping and murdering their way across the province. Up to 350,000 locals fled, many on foot, never to return. Meanwhile, thousands were summarily executed.

    …

    Reply ↓
    1. DJG, Reality Czar

      Lazar:

      In Conor Gallagher’s excellent post of this morning, One of the World’s Most Powerful Countries Ruled by…, he quotes Quinn Slobodian: ‘Existing autocratic polities like Dubai serve as rough prototypes for how nations could be dismantled into “a global spiderweb of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of sovereign and independent mini-countries, each governed by its own joint-stock corporation without regard to the residents’ opinions.”’

      I’d argue that Yugoslavia’s breakup, largely sponsored by Germany, was the dress rehearsal. Living as I do in Italy, I now read regularly in Italian commentary how much of a disaster the end of Yugoslavia was and has been for Italy. Italy was much better served by having a sizable, stable country to its east, not nostalgic republics of Montenegro and vassal states like Kosova.

      Reply ↓
  3. spc

    kursk 70000 dead >> lol>> you mean 10k to 12k dead with total force emplyed 35k to 45k. 50k maybe, maybe.This is realistic.
    Not a brain rot of twitter. Will Schryver anyone.

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev

      Those are western estimates of Ukrainian casualties which have proven to be nothing more than garbage. Russia’s defence ministry says Ukrainian forces suffered more than 76,000 dead and injured soldiers in Kursk so you would reckon it to be at the very least about 25,000 dead gong by one dead to two wounded. Wouldn’t want to be a foreign merc in the Bryansk region though. By the end of the operation in Kursk, the Russians were no longer interested in taking mercs prisoners anymore so it would be the same in Bryansk.

      Reply ↓
      1. Mass Driver

        25,000 is notably less than 70,000, and more realistic. Large percentage of those were just left to rot, and ended up in those freezer trucks we saw in the news.

        Reply ↓
        1. The Rev Kev

          The Ukrainians don’t seem keen to retrieve their dead, hence the large numbers in freezer trucks. I suspect that the reason is so that commanders can continue to collect the pay of those soldiers by keeping them on the books which makes it tough on their families. Saw a Russian drone video once of a Ukrainian truck dumping the bodies of some of their soldiers out in the woods so tend to believe this story.

          Reply ↓
      2. ChrisFromGA

        Keeping 50k men in reserve while Pokrosvk falls (with all those mines and rare erfs that Blackrock had their eyes on) seems like the equivalent of putting your best cover CB on the fat, slow receiver while Randy Moss gets to run free.

        Which means either:

        1. Zelensky really is the worst military strategist ever, or
        2. The story is a bunch of bunk.

        I lean towards door number 2.

        Reply ↓
        1. Yves Smith Post author

          I see pieces like this as Ukraine disinfo. They aren’t directed at Russia since Russia has more than enough ISR to know if Ukraine troops in meaningful numbers are moving or otherwise being assembled.

          So this is for the likes of the US and European media/social media, which needs regular doses of Ukraine hopium in order to keep the faith.

          Reply ↓
          1. ChrisFromGA

            The element of surprise would certainly be lacking. After the last debacle, it is hard to see how Russia hasn’t reinforced all the borders and it would likely turn into a kill zone.

            Desperate animals do crazy things when cornered, though.

            Reply ↓
        2. moog

          Zelensky knows that Pokrovsk is lost anyway. What really worries him is another dash towards KIev, and he must have some reserve speedbump forces for that eventuality (if only to buy him time to pack his bags and get on the last train heading west).

          Reply ↓
          1. The Rev Kev

            Zelensky is smart that way. He must remember how when Afghanistan’s leader fled the country by plane when the Taliban were taking over, how he had to leave cases of cash on the runway because the plane could not take off with all that weight. With a train, Zelensky can take the lot, including the Ukraine’s entire financial reserves to fund his government in exile from one of his many mansions.

            Reply ↓
  4. The Rev Kev

    ‘Karim Wafa-Al Hussaini
    @DrKarimWafa
    Both the famines in Palestine and Sudan have crossed beyond stage 5. This means they’ve reached a level of no return. Beyond fixation. The starvation has changed the very genetics of our people. I will never forgive the world for what it allowed to happen. We are beyond tired.’

    The evidence of this famine in Gaza will be in the bones of the people living there. Was watching a doco about how they were excavating an archaeological site by a church and they located the grave of a bishop from centuries earlier. A forensic examination of those bones revealed that that bishop suffered from starvation when a young child and in spite of reaching lofty heights, the evidence of his youth was still in his bones. So it will be for the people of Gaza.

    Reply ↓
  5. Wukchumni

    Lightning Kills Way More Trees Than You Would Ever Believe ScienceAlert
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    I walks a bit in the High Sierra and it isn’t unusual to come across solo scorched trees from a lightning strike fire, and sometimes as many as a dozen torched trees in the surrounding area from the instigator.

    About 5 years ago in our cabin community in Mineral King, a Lodgepole pine got hit in the premath of Thor’s Hammer not far from a cabin, and a sizable chunk of tree’s trunk fell to the ground-the power!

    Reply ↓
  6. Wukchumni

    Titan implosion that killed all five on board was ‘preventable’, says report BBC (Kevin W)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Lime and limpid long green a second scene
    Now fights below the blue you once knew
    Floating down, the sound resounds
    Around the icy waters underground

    Famous Hamish is on Titan
    Costrophobia can frighten

    Blinding lack of oxygen signs flap,
    Flicker, flicker, flicker blam, pow, pow
    Still life portrait stare, $250k a dare, who’s there?

    Lime and limpid long green, the sounds around
    The icy waters under
    Lime and limpid long green, the sounds around
    The icy waters underground

    Astronomy Domine, by Pink Floyd

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJh9OLlXenM&list=RDpJh9OLlXenM

    Reply ↓
  7. The Rev Kev

    ” ‘World has been turned upside-down’: Sa’ar says UNSC, world must condemn Hamas”

    Chutzpah much? Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is demanding that the UN and world media condemn Hamas for the starving condition of those hostages. But the whole world knows that the reason that they are starving is that they are eating the same amount of food as Gazans, hence their condition. And it is the Israelis who are starving some two million people to death. When this war is finally over and Israelis start going on about how they suffered because of the Holocaust and everybody owes them, I think that a lot of people will just tell them to shut the hell up about the Holocaust as nobody is interested any more. Nobody cares. Gaza wiped that slate clean.

    Reply ↓
    1. Christopher Mann

      “Gaza wiped that slate clean.”

      It is worse than that. Many people are now questioning the Holocaust narrative. Ordinary people are getting a little niggling questioning in the back of their minds – “What if Europe’s Jews were really the nefarious cabal that antisemites said they were? They must have done something wrong to be so despised! There can’t be any smoke without a fire!?”

      I think it was Alhon Mizahri who pointed out that Zionists love to be hated so this will totally delight them.

      The Gaza genocide has irreparably besmirched Judaism (a terrible injustice for the righteous ones among them). Zionism has discredited the West. The response from Germany, France, UK, USA has been grotesque. With legitimacy lost, the West will now have to resort to increased authoritarianism. Many of us must be wishing for the Western sh|tshow to implode already and hand over the reins to Russia and China to lead us out of this hell world. We have a very interesting decade ahead of us.

      Reply ↓
  8. moog

    China Deploys its Most Heavily Armed Nuclear Submarine Class For New Operations Military Watch

    Trump will immediately respond by deploying two most heavily armed nuclear submarines for new operations on Twitter.

    Reply ↓
  10. eg

    “Buy now, pay later is taking over the world. Good”

    Now more than ever The Economist needs to be burnt to the ground and its fields sown with salt.

    Where this particular vomit-worthy offering is concerned I see information asymmetries and phishing for phools — it will all end in tears …

    Reply ↓
  11. The Rev Kev

    ‘Amanda Goodall
    @thejobchick
    WTF
    Atlassian laid off 150 employees via pre-recorded video???
    Workers had to wait 15 minutes after watching it to find out if they were cut.
    Then came the email.
    Then came the laptop lockouts.
    The reason?
    “AI can do it now.”
    Welcome to the future of work… or shall I say… layoffs?’

    By coincidence, came across these two tweets earlier today-

    ‘Stop the Forever Wars
    @DoctorFishbones
    Billionaire: “DeepAI, should I fire half of my workforce and give them no severance or warning or reason”
    DeepAI: “Yes! Studies show this is the correct thing to do. The world will be better”

    Stop the Forever Wars
    @DoctorFishbones
    Isn’t it weird how the all-knowing AI always produces the answer the billionaires want’

    Reply ↓
  12. eg

    ‘We didn’t vote for ChatGPT’: Swedish PM under fire for using AI in role

    What — have the Swedes run out of chickens to gut? Are there no bones to cast, nor flights of birds to scry?

    I’d as soon trust a Prime Minister who employed a medium to consult with his dead dog …

    Reply ↓
      1. JohnA

        Ha, despite the number of parties in parliament, the uniparty is always at the controls in Sweden. I was amused by the Unherd article by a woman who used to be married to a Russian. And how all their liberal friends totally swallowed the Russiagate and unprovoked attack on Ukraine propaganda. It is the same in Sweden. When I was in Stockholm not long before Sweden joined Nato, I was socialising with friends there. They asked me what plans I had. I replied I was thinking of going on the No to Nato march that Saturday. The look of sheer horror and disbelief on their faces was a sight to behold.

        Reply ↓
  13. Neutrino

    About that plastics recycling, I wouldn’t be surprised by a future study that found microplastics in tobacco plants. Big plastic and big tobacco, two industries that have hired the alleged scientists to support their public relations and legal flaks.
    In the end, they really didn’t have any decency.

    Reply ↓
  14. Ben Panga

    A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians (Guardian)

    “Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe

    …According to three Unit 8200 sources, the cloud-based storage platform has facilitated the preparation of deadly airstrikes and has shaped military operations in Gaza and the West Bank…”

    Reply ↓

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