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Links 9/2/2025

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‘We’re winning a battle’: Mexico’s jaguar numbers up 30% in conservation drive Guardian (signet)

A Single Mutation Made Horses Rideable and Changed Human History ZMEScience (resilc)

Inca-Quechua astronomy Rebelion via machine translation (Micael T)

Afghanistan earthquake: India sends aid as death toll crosses 800 — shocking photos tell story of destruction, misery Mint

At least 1,000 killed in Sudan landslide, rebel group says BBC

Climate/Environment

a href=”https://phys.org/news/2025-09-key-facts-term-impacts-extreme.html” rel=”nofollow”>Key facts about the long-term impacts of extreme weather and disasters Stanford University

Drought-hit Morocco deploys floating solar panels to protect water reserves South China Morning Post

Victoria warned to prepare for ‘destruction’ with severe weather and snow forecast Guardian

Behind Pakistan’s repeated floods: Melting glaciers, depleted forests Aljazeera

New research has revealed how climate change is intensifying supercell thunderstorms in Europe Euronews

Octopus bloom devastates UK crab industry amid marine heatwave NZHerald

UK’s largest lake faces environmental crisis as rescue plans stall Guardian

Hong Kong sees record number of tropical cyclone warnings this year The Standard

SCO. See Wikipedia for members. No one in Southeast Asia is a member; Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are dialogue partners.

Xi proposes Global Governance Initiative Global Times. As we have repeatedly pointed out, global governance involved ceding sovereignity and is at odds with multipoliarity. How to square that circle?

A New Global Governance – But What Will, Or Can, It Do? Moon of Alabama (Kevin W)

Modi-Xi meet heralds shift to multipolar global economy Asia Times (Kevin W)

The SCO Finally Condemned The Pahalgam Terrorist Attack Andrew Korybko. Conor had many links on the SCO, and most of them were vastly less bullish that YouTube anti-globalists on India and China getting closer, pointing to many fundamental outtrades. One article noted that an Indian readout of a Wang Yi visit to India had the Indian side banging on about the importance of anti-terrorist operations, and the Chinese readout not mentioning that issue. This move looks like a start in China recognizing and taking at least some steps to address India’s concerns.

India blocks Azerbaijan’s bid for full membership to the SCO, citing strategic alignment with Pakistan pIndia (Micael T)

China?

China’s navy is expanding at breakneck speed – and catching up with the US BBC

Taiwan reports surge in Chinese military activity near its territory Business Standard

China property sales drop 17.6% in August, housing slump hits sixth straight month Trading View

China’s Factory Exodus Is Turning Vietnam Into the World’s Assembler Caixin Global

We have featured other clips from these projects, but I can’t get enough. However, the connection to the gender ratio is dubious. A big source of resentment of China across much if not all of Southeast Asia is Chinese men hunting for brides there.

Koreas

South Korea heads for record stretch of growth trailing inflation Chosun

India

Khalistani and Half Pakistani: With Donald Trump’s unhinged stand on India, read about the anti-India elements in his inner circle pIndia (Micael T)

Saudi and Iraqi oil giants suspend sales to Russian-linked Indian refiner: Report The Cradle (Micael T)

Africa

Islamic State massacres in eastern DRC: who are the insurgents and why are they killing civilians? The Conversation

Jihadists take control of strategic Mali town, trigger concern as they impose restrictions Arab Weekly

European Disunion

Europe’s deadly debt spiral Wolfgang Munchau, Unherd

Decline in prosperity in Germany measurable with official data Multipolar via machine translation (Micael T)

Voices from the Global South: “What are you afraid the far-right will do that you haven’t done yet?” Nachdenkseiten via machine translation (Micael T)

I can’t find this story on the English DW site:

Czechs Plan $14 Billion Deficit With Bigger Spending on Defense Bloomberg

Poland plans record defense spending of 4.8 percent of GDP Militaar Artuell

Old Blighty

Norway’s electricity crisis is about to hit Britain Telegraph

Tories pledge to get all oil and gas out of North Sea BBC

Israel v. The Resistance

In Israel, ‘animals in human form’ may be killed Mondoweiss

Aug. 31 resolution of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) Mike Hampton

Israel is not isolated: A global web of oil and complicity The Cradle (Micael T)

* * *

Belgium to recognize Palestinian state at UN General Assembly Arab News

Belgium announces sanctions against Israel RT

* * *

Iran, Russia, China FMs Reject EU3’s ‘Legally Baseless’ Move to Invoke Snapback Tasnim

Syraqistan

Druze Spiritual Leader Calls for Independence in Southern Syria Amid Rising Death Toll Kurdistan24

New Not-So-Cold War

Bessent says ‘all options on the table’ as Trump administration weighs Russia sanctions Anadolu Agency

Claim of Russian GPS blocking of von der Leyen’s plane false – Flightradar RT

EU works with allies on long-term security guarantees for Ukraine: Spokesperson Anadolu Agency. More circling the drain.

Russia’s Neighbours and Chances for Peace in Europe Valdai Club (Micael T)

America’s Top Aircraft Carrier Faces Russian Submarine Threat: P-8 Sub-Hunters Deployed to Respond Military Watch. Over my pay grade, but the reaction seems excessive.

Denmark gifts foreign ministers pen made from Ukrainian bullet cases YouTube. Micael T: “This is the kind of trophies psychos in crime series collect.”

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

Not just under-16s: all Australian social media users will need to prove their age – and it could be complicated Guardian (Kevin W)

Imperial Collapse Watch

Monopoly Round-Up: Is There a Silicon Valley Plan to Subvert Elections? Matt Stoller. Important.

Ukraine War Leads to Global Shortage of TNT for Military and Mining Use New York Times

Should We Have Kept The American Empire? Maxwell Tabarrok

Trump 2.0

U.S. Warships Near Venezuela Trump Determined to Stop Maduro Drug Cartel Lt Col Daniel Davis, YouTube. IMHO, the part staring at 27:50 is noteworthy, where Davis discusses Trump’s plans to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War and his enthusiasm for going on the offense.

Tariffs

Trump plans 200% tariff on imported drugs, raising risk of higher US prices and shortages Economic Times

Fed Survey Shows Manufacturers Don’t Know How to Price Anything Michael Shedlock

Rural America is suffering an economic crisis as crop prices plunge — ‘U.S. soybean farmers cannot survive a prolonged trade dispute’ Fortune

Trade War Pushes Canada’s Current Account Deficit to Record Bloomberg

Immigration

With Summer Almost Over, the Hamptons’ Largely Immigrant Workforce Worries About ICE Crackdowns Vanity Fair (Micael T)

Our No Longer Free Press

Are Bellingcat and the OCCRP ‘Independent’ Media? Lucy Komisar, The Realist Review. Most readers know the answer, but lots of juicy detail.

Economy

A downturn in international travel to the U.S. may last beyond summer, experts warn PBS.

Mr. Market Is Moody

Silver Nears Historic Levels, Supported by Investments and Global Tensions See

AI

The Big Idea: why we should embrace AI doctors Guardian (Kevin W)

AI has a hidden water cost − here’s how to calculate yours The Conversation (Kevin W)

How This A.I. Company Collapsed Amid Silicon Valley’s Biggest Boom New York Times

The Bezzle

Stablecoins could trigger taxpayer bailouts, warns Nobel laureate Financial Times. That’s a feature, not a bug.

Class Warfare

Rhode Island’s ‘Taylor Swift Tax’ on vacation homes of the wealthy is spreading to other states CNBC

Collapse for the 99% Luke Kemp, YouTube. This is fascinating except for Kemp’s efforts to be optimistic. We are way way way too far from many people practicing subsistence agriculture for collapse to produce anything other that mass starvation and disease.

Explosion at Louisiana Oil Plant Leaves Black Community Coated in Toxic Fallout CapitalB

Antidote du jour (via):

And a bonus (resilc):

A second bonus:

And a third:

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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52 comments

  1. The Rev Kev

    ‘Volcaholic 🌋
    @volcaholic1
    Blue dragons close more Spanish beaches!
    Tourists banned from three Costa del Sol beaches (Cala Verde, El Payazo, and Cala Siret in Villaricos) after venomous Glaucus atlanticus sightings. Stings can cause severe pain, vomiting, and allergic reactions. Experts link the surge to warmer seas and shifting currents.’

    Maybe it is the blue colour that is associated with toxic elements for that species. Here in Oz we have Blue Bottles who are also, wait for it, blue coloured and you do not want to get stung by them. You see them in the water, you get out-

    https://australian.museum/learn/animals/jellyfish/bluebottle/

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  2. Wukchumni

    Silver Nears Historic Levels, Supported by Investments and Global Tensions See
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Still almost $10 away per ounce from where the Hunt Brothers took it to in the wild silver bubble of 1979-80, my first real financial bubble ever witnessed as an adult and it was a doozie!

    They took silver from $6 an ounce in early 1979 to $48 by early January 1980, and were really the only end users as everything was being funneled to them, but with a twist…

    They wanted physical delivery and it all had to be in pure .999 fine 1,000 troy ounce bars that were Comex deliverable.

    It was easy to buy and sell .999 fine pure silver, but everything else had to be refined, which meant alloyed silver sold at a fairly steep discount off of the spot price as it surged late in the game because the few refiners in the country were hopelessly backed up, as everybody and their mother wanted to turn sterling silver et al into Comex bars to sell into the bubble.

    I knew a numismatist back east, who had been eyeballing the price of silver and when it hit the point where he could make money, he bought the entire inventory of the the Philadelphia Mint’s 1976 3 piece 40% silver Bicentennial commemorative coins they were selling for $9 (which contained a little over 1/2 an ounce in pure content) per set, we’re talking around 100,000 of these!

    They all went to the refiner~

    When it was over and silver settled down to being worth around $6 per ounce again, Nelson Bunker Hunt testified before Congress and a Congressman asked him if he knew that he’d lost billions in the scheme and with a Texas drawl baby-face Nelson replied acidly…

    A billion dollars isnt what it used to be.

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    1. The Rev Kev

      I too remember the time of the Hunt Brothers fiasco and it had a lot of unexpected knock-on effects. One was x-rays which somehow used a bit of silver in their production. Wikipedia says that chaos ensued when the three Hunt brothers were unable to meet the margin call-

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

      I wonder if that was the inspiration for this-

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4SRsGn14PI (58 secs)

      The Hunt brothers should have demanded that those machines be turned back on again.

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      1. Wukchumni

        Silver was needed not only in X-rays, but also all those reels of film too. Used to buy silver bars produced from X-ray film from a firm in LA that processed them back into ingots.

        It was a crazy time-the Hunt Bros Bubble, and a rare effort by the public in being right to sell anything silver into the marketplace. There were lines of argent provocateurs waiting to sell their wares in a few coin stores I was aware of late in the game, and in one of them I was behind the counter helping them as a man Friday pressed into action, and it was all sellers-no buyers.

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        1. Wukchumni

          p.s.

          An ancillary Hunt Brothers bubble occurred simultaneously in that they wanted to corner the market on eastern Roman Empire Byzantine gold coins, of all things.

          Byzantine gold coins were always the cheapest ancient gold coins you could buy in the marketplace compared to Imperial gold coins of the Roman Empire prior.

          The Byzantine Empire only struck bronze and gold coins and no silver coins, as the fiasco with the Denarius being devalued drastically thanks to being able to silver-wash bronze coins to look like the real thing, was still in their minds.

          Anyhow, you could buy a gold coin that was 1,300 years old for a couple hundred bucks, versus more like 5 to 10x that amount for an Aureus of Nero.

          Similar to the Silver bubble, they went up in price and then went straight down.

          This is what they looked like:

          Byzantine currency, money used in the Eastern Roman Empire after the fall of the West, consisted of mainly two types of coins: gold solidi and hyperpyra and a variety of clearly valued bronze coins. By the 15th century, the currency was issued only in debased silver stavrata and minor copper coins with no gold issue.

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

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    1. Trees&Trunks

      That was quite a show. I wonder if The Amazing Mister Lifto at Jim Rose Cirkus Sideshow could have done something similar.

      Reply ↓
  4. The Rev Kev

    “Khalistani and Half Pakistani: With Donald Trump’s unhinged stand on India, read about the anti-India elements in his inner circle”

    ‘Pro-Khalistan advocate Harmeet Dhillon and half-Pakistani Omeed Malik are two such individuals who belong to the inner circle of the US president.’

    Trump does not need Dhillon or Malik to wreck US-India relations. That is what Peter Navarro is there for. The guy continues to take a flamethrower to India and when he saw Modi with Putin and Xi, said-

    ‘Shame to see Modi getting in bed – the leader of the biggest democracy – with two biggest authoritarian dictators, Putin and Xi Jinping. Not sure what he is thinking. Particularly since India has been in cold war, sometimes hot war with China for decades.’

    And just to stir some internal troubles in India, said-

    ‘I would just simply say to the Indian people, please understand what’s going on here. You’ve got Brahmins profiteering at the expense of the Indian people. We need that to stop’

    From where I am standing, this looks like a Trump attempt to bend India and turn them into a vassal state like he has done to the EU. And if India buckled to Trump, then Trump would seek to wreck India’s economy like he has done to the EU so that they could never be a competitor to the US. And I think that Modi finally, finally gets it. There is no path to negotiate with Trump that does not end in India’s vassalage. It took India centuries to get rid of their vassalage to Britain and I am sure that they have no wish to repeat the experiment-

    https://www.financialexpress.com/world-news/us-news/shame-to-see-modi-peter-navarro-says-india-needs-to-be-with-us-and-not-russia/3964387/

    Reply ↓
  6. flora

    Good Tucker Carlson episode. utube, ~1hr 50+

    SSRIs and School Shootings, FDA Corruption, and Why Everyone on Anti-Depressants Is Totally Unhappy

    Probably a fifth of the entire American population is on SSRIs. Psychiatrist Josef Witt-Doerring explains why that’s terrifying and dangerous.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnhT77W9mtQ

    Reply ↓
    1. Louis Fyne

      psych drugs as a causation of mass shootings hypothesis needs to be studied a lot more (eg, medical records of mass shooters, brain examinations of shooters, studies of people prescribed drugs, etc.). Compare/contrast mass shootings arising out of drug/gang disputes versus mass shootings on soft targets.

      not holding my breath.

      Reply ↓
  7. Mikel

    Khalistani and Half Pakistani: With Donald Trump’s unhinged stand on India, read about the anti-India elements in his inner circle – pIndia

    The parts about how these circles network made me think: they aren’t organizing online on surveillance platforms.
    And organizations or groups that are truly embattled with another power are not organizing online because it has becone a matter of life or death.

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  8. Carolinian

    Re “animals in human form”–of course the great irony is that such beliefs reveal the Israelis to be typical and the same rather than special and unique since the dominators always believe this about the dominated. There must be some empatheic strain in our natures that has to be suppressed for power to exist.

    Here in the South–no stranger to racism–liberals used to view the prejudiced as victims of ignorance and poor bringing up. After all it’s really self awareness that separates us from the beasts, not some wave of the divine wand.

    So one might be tempted to view the ME nation as a pardoxical remnant of another time. The latest Alastair Crooke suggests that it may indeed be on the verge of doing itself in.

    https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/09/01/israels-new-violent-zionism-as-a-harbinger-of-imperial-geo-politics-of-submission-and-obedience/

    But even if that happens “power” will stick around and along with it the belief in “animals in human form.”

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  9. The Rev Kev

    “Tories pledge to get all oil and gas out of North Sea”

    They’ll want to hurry. At current rates it will be running out in about 14 years from now. At least all the money that came in from those North Sea fields over the decades was spent wisely. /sarc

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/11/bring-north-sea-oil-and-gas-under-greater-public-control-report-urges

    Frankly I wonder what they would do with any money made on those fields. Both parties are more likely than not to send it to the Ukraine and that is the truth.

    Reply ↓
  10. MicaT

    GPS blocking?
    Paper maps? No one uses paper maps.
    Nor paper charts which are the landing instructions basically.
    Forever pilots have used tablets called EFB which have all the maps and charts in them updated all the time and the planes themselves have all the same info. These devices are both independent gps/cell and linked to the planes internal gps and INS. And they also use GNSS which is separate satellite system. Not to mention the INS uses ground based radios for triangulation/location as well as its own internal guidance.
    The falcon 9000XL is a highly advanced airplane with all of the best and lastest avionics. To say they got lost is not possible.

    To have gps fail is not an issue and that’s why planes use multiple redundant systems.

    This whole thing sure seems to be completely untrue.

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    1. Carolinian

      Surprisingly airplanes were able to navigate for decades without GPS. True in the early days they liked to find a highway to follow to be on the safe side. My onetime pilot uncle used to do this too.

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        1. Wukchumni

          A friend is a pilot and uses IFR (I Follow Roads) and truth be said they are interstates, but that would ruin the acronym.

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          1. Carolinian

            In Mesa,AZ east of Phoenix there’s a hillock with “Phoenix” on the side written in giant white letters and an arrow. This is probably a remnant of the Air Mail days when that area didn’t even have paved roads.

            Maybe East Europe govts needs to paint some mountains to help out the EU’s flaky GPS receivers.

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              1. Carolinian

                I think I knew that it had been repainted.

                Of course now you locate Sky Harbor because it’s in the middle of a giant city.

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            2. hk

              Ireland used to have “EIRE” in big letters at multiple locales during WW2 to warn military aircraft of combatant powers that they were entering neutral Ireland’s airspace. Much debate continues as to how much of Luftwaffe bombings of different Irish cities and towns were due to intent or mistake…

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    2. OIFVet

      Thank God they had them paper maps aboard. It’s fire season still in Bulgaria, so smoke signaling the plane from the ground would have escalated an already dire situation. /sarc

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        1. OIFVet

          Revival are certifiable nutjobs and Kostadinov himself is just a huckster and perpetual party nomad out to enrich himself. He runs Revival as a cult and this is his latest stunt to promote himself as “Mother Bulgaria’s savior.” He isn’t.

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  12. eg

    Even for Munchau (and that viper’s pit of neoliberalism which is the Unherd comments section), “Europe’s Deadly Debt Spiral” is shockingly bad.

    Not content merely with citing Reinhart and Roghoff’s execrable and discredited This Time is Different Munchau blithely asserts “The old trickle-down economic model worked well in the days of unbridled, global financial capitalism, a period that for the UK started in the mid-Eighties and ended in 2008.”

    Really? “worked well” for whom?

    In a just world, Munchau would be forbidden to publish any more of this dreck until he had read (and demonstrated an actual understanding of) Mark Blyth’s Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.

    Reply ↓
  13. Mass Driver

    America’s Top Aircraft Carrier Faces Russian Submarine Threat: P-8 Sub-Hunters Deployed to Respond Military Watch. Over my pay grade, but the reaction seems excessive.

    From my pay grade this looks like a shipload of bollocks. It’s so poorly scripted that even Tom Clancy fans wouldn’t fall for it.

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      1. Mass Driver

        American submariners say that there are two sorts of submarines – based on whether they receive commands over Trump’s Truth Social account or not.

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  15. OIFVet

    Russia and China sign agreement to build Power of Siberia-2 gas pipeline.

    Brian McDonald:
    Not sure people grasp how huge this is. With Power of Siberia-2 signed, the map shifts for good. Russia’s Arctic gas, the lifeblood of Western Europe’s factories for half a century, will now flow east to China through Mongolia. This is the loss of fuel that helped deliver consistent economic growth and underpinned Germany’s erstwhile status as the world’s leading exporter.

    For years Beijing was reluctant; wary of being too dependent on Russian gas. Something has shifted (perhaps renewed EU hostility, maybe Trump’s threats). Either way, Western Europe won’t see cheap reliable gas again. China gets it now. The game is over. And it will only be as time passes that consequences will be fully understood.

    Good thing the EU agreed to import American LNG 🥲 But seriously, solar and wind are A) unsuitable and B) unreliable and inadequate for the re-industrialization the EU bleeths about. I suppose that explains why the European Peoples Party is making noises about the return of coal, coupled with environmental deregulation. We will have to learn to say “I love the smell of burning coal in the morning!” if these eejiots have their way.

    The above is assuming that Europastan can even get its hands on raw materials necessary for industry and building stuff, because Russia Nad China are unlikely to keep selling them to us under our present course. There are precious few of those raw materials in Europe and where they are, people like me are fighting plans to extract them tooth and nail, as they happen to be either where there’s fertile land, unspoiled nature reserves or threaten already dwindling water supplies.

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    1. The Rev Kev

      Another reason why Beijing was reluctant to commit was because they wanted a direct Russia-China passage of that LNG whereas the Russians wanted to route it though Mongolia. Guess that the Russians managed to convince Xi that it is better this way.

      Reply ↓
  16. Vikas

    re: long term impacts of extreme weather, point 4: “Public disaster relief programs can save lives and money.”

    True, until back to back to back events drain the public coffers. At that point, the legitimation crisis will be the least of the disruptions.

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  17. Mass Driver

    Ukraine War Leads to Global Shortage of TNT for Military and Mining Use New York Times

    Poland had been the Pentagon’s sole authorized supplier of TNT. But it has been sending much of what it makes across its border to Ukraine, which is using all that it produces for its own military purposes.
    That comes as two of the other main sources of TNT, Russia and China, have stopped exporting to the United States, the officials said.

    So, a global shortage means USA shortage.

    Judging by the frontline footage, Russian sappers have ample supplies of it. Countless videos of them destroying mines, and unexploded ordnance, and other things, with orange 200g bricks of TNT (probably made in USSR).

    Reply ↓
  18. Jason Boxman

    From Ukraine War Leads to Global Shortage of TNT

    I gotta tell you, our foreign policy is really really managed by stupid people

    But according to officials in the civilian blasting industry, those sources have dried up as the U.S. military has elected to keep older weapons in its arsenal since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

    Poland had been the Pentagon’s sole authorized supplier of TNT. But it has been sending much of what it makes across its border to Ukraine, which is using all that it produces for its own military purposes.

    That comes as two of the other main sources of TNT, Russia and China, have stopped exporting to the United States, the officials said.

    …

    In recent years, the Pentagon has relied on a single factory in Poland for TNT it has needed. But it appears that the Defense Department may have secured other sources of TNT as well.

    (bold mine)

    There aren’t any words. None. The total, abject disfunction of the United States in general, originating from hopelessly incompetent management, is so clear. Trump is exhibit A, constantly gratifying himself, with policies that simply serve no other purpose except delivering said gratification.

    America is going great!

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  20. The Rev Kev

    “A Single Mutation Made Horses Rideable and Changed Human History”

    It’s more than just being ridable but also the ability of horses and humans to bond together so well. You see that across different eras and different cultures. Last night we lost our oldest horse here in our paddock. She was the daughter’s first horse and posted his death to FB. She has had dozens of people comment back saying how they remember that horse and told stories about him. You don’t get that with cars that are finally wrecked. He was a horse that did many sports and would do whatever you asked of him, even if there was a broken arm or two along the way. RIP.

    Reply ↓
  21. JBird4049

    >>>Four AfD candidates in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany died “suddenly and unexpectedly” before the September 14 vote — Welt

    My, that’s not suspicious at all! /s

    Really, my knowledge of German politics is minuscule, but what does it say that having suspicions about political assassination is not unreasonable? It would not shock me, if it was just happenstance because that is life, which can be very surprising, but I am not confident that any of the major Western governments and their security agencies are competent. I certainly don’t believe that they work for us. For the Americans and British, I do have some questions about their connections to reality.

    I know about the CIA’s history of assassinations (or at least what can be publicly known. And now the American-European-Russian-Ukrainian decade plus kerfuffle, which includes assassinations. Is the one American Empire is getting worried?

    Reply ↓
  22. Jason Boxman

    ‘Who Am I Without Birth Control?’ (NY Times via archive.ph)

    As social media and wellness podcasters bombard young women with messages about the pill, many are questioning what they’ve long been told.

    and

    Earlier this year, a study by public health researchers at La Trobe University found that among the top 100 TikTok videos about reproductive health, just 10 percent were from medical professionals, and about 50 percent of creators made comments rejecting hormonal contraception. The top 100 most popular posts on TikTok about birth control had amassed some five billion views.

    In more than a dozen interviews with young women of different political leanings across the country, many said these TikTok videos and podcast clips were making them feel at turns curious and anxious, wondering whether to trust their doctors or the influencers promising greener, healthier pastures far from conventional medical guidance about contraceptives.

    (bold mine)

    Given how wrong medical professionals are about COVID, like, overwhelmingly, comically wrong (no it isn’t just a cold), there’s legitimate reason for skepticism sadly, on virtually any topic within the purview of the medical profession. What a sad place we’ve come to.

    Until recently, it hadn’t seemed like this moment — with influencers promising bliss and mental clarity post-birth control — was leading to any change in how women in the United States were using it. But last month, Trilliant Health, a health care analytics company, conducted an analysis for The Times and found a decrease in the use of hormonal birth control pills among some women ages 18 to 44. In 2019, 13.1 percent of women said they used the pill; in 2024, that number fell to 10.2 percent.

    Although, I do wonder if COVID plays any role here. Given its stark population level impact, it will forever be an open question going forward, one that will be strenuously ignored.

    And it’s well known that doctors often ignore women

    At the same time, the messaging on social media is resonating with women who feel as if they have been brushed off by their doctors when raising valid worries. Nearly a quarter of women between 15 and 49 either take hormonal pills or have an I.U.D., and many are prescribed birth control before they’re sexually active, to help with managing their periods, acne or symptoms of endometriosis.

    “They kind of want to throw birth control on people and not listen to every individual’s concern,” said Jaden Moretti-Leipf, 23, who works as a dog trainer in Rhode Island and earlier this year stopped using hormonal birth control. “I think they cover it up and say take this, and that’s the end of it.”

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  23. The Rev Kev

    “Norway’s electricity crisis is about to hit Britain”

    There was a similar article not that long ago along the same lines. The whole thing is so stupid however. So the Norwegian government was making big money sending energy to Great Britain, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. They could have turned around and used some of that profit to make energy cheaper for Norwegians who actually paid for all that infrastructure and kept them onside. Nope. Can’t do that. The government wanted all that money which meant that this whole issue became electoral poison and now that there is a water crisis in Norway, they are only now cutting those energy deliveries. This is one well that has been well and truly poisoned and the Norwegian government only has themselves to blame.

    Reply ↓
  24. QABubba

    Re: Xi’s Global Governance Initiative
    China firmly believes in the Westphalian model of a nation state. They firmly believe in International Law. They believe in the United Nations.
    What they don’t believe in is the foreign interference in the internal affairs of a nation.
    This is not a surrender of sovereignty. This is simply agreeing to abide by the law between nations. This may very well wind up being without the UN, since it has been so thoroughly corrupted, but with a UN type organization.

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    1. Yves Smith Post author

      You should talk to people in Southeast Asia and get back to me. Few would agree to your views, starting with Myanmar. Loos and Cambodia are basically captives due to China’s control over the flow of the Mekong.

      Reply ↓
    2. Socal Rhino

      I think we are headed toward spheres of influence with China a regional hegemon. What China appears to oppose is US global supremacy.

      As I recall, when McNamara met with Vietnamese leaders after the war and cited the US motivation for war being fear of Vietnam becoming a Chinese puppet, the Vietnamese were shocked and asked if he was unaware of hundreds of years of history of Vietnam resisting Chinese expansion. And while India has a history of friendship with Russia they remain distrustful of China for historical reasons. I am not well informed about politics in that region but I don’t think China is viewed as entirely benevolent.

      Reply ↓

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