Links 12/12/2025

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1. The Rev Kev December 12, 2025 at 7:13 am

   “BREAKING: Bulgarian government resigns amid mass protests ‘

   I like this. So the government of Bulgaria fell, partly because they were forcing the country to adopt the Euro which will mean at the very least that it will double all prices. But then this story ends with this-

   ‘Despite the turmoil, Bulgarian authorities and the Bulgarian National Bank have indicated that euro adoption will proceed as planned.’

   Tough times for Bulgarians when this happens early next year.

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   1. Windall December 12, 2025 at 7:55 am

      Bulgarians could do the same thing Nigerians did with eNaira and not use the euro.

      The changes if this happening are pretty much zero though.

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   2. Adam1 December 12, 2025 at 8:09 am

      Next year as in 3 weeks!

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   3. Mikel December 12, 2025 at 9:06 am

      The article avoided connecting any of the protests to adopting the Euro.
      Dodge and weave…bury the lead.

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   4. OIFVet December 12, 2025 at 11:30 am

      Not exactly. While some of the protesters (by no means the majority) are against the Euro, what brought people out in the streets was a combination of the corruption of the ruling coalition (which is de facto ruled by Delyan Peevski, sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act and an all-around comptemptible figure), the arrogance with which the corruption was being shoved in our faces, and a budget proposal that is geared to more thievery, yet another large increase of salary for the police (gotta provide security for the thieves!). The resultant deficit, coupled with €40 billion that would be freed from the end of the currency board and become available for looting was simply too much to bear, so we took to the streets en masse.

      That said, the protest is by no means an endorsement of the opposition, as much as they want to think that it is. Besides not being a monolit, consisting of everything between hard-right, classic PMC liberals and loonies, they are all basically $hitheads as well.

      So yes, interesting times ahead and frankly I doubt anything will change. I don’t see any new and genuinely statemanlike figures on the horizon, so any change will be mostly cosmetic.

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      1. Adam Eran December 12, 2025 at 3:01 pm

         “yet another large increase of salary for the police (gotta provide security for the thieves!)”

         In the US, police funding has increased more than four times faster than population growth since the ’80s. Meanwhile, US police solve less than 15% of crimes (13.2% in 2022 in California).

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2. Mikel December 12, 2025 at 8:01 am

   US wants to persuade four countries to leave EU, leaked files suggest – Brussels Times

   “Additionally, the secret American strategy is also said to propose a new elite C5 (“Core Five”) forum of world powers comprising the US, China, India, Japan and Russia – aiming to sideline the G7 – to meet regularly for summits with specific themes, such as Middle East security.”

   With Britain and Israel only lurking around?

   If this version of some document is real, pass the popcorn.

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   1. Louis Fyne December 12, 2025 at 8:21 am

      reminds me of US college sports leagues that are always realigning to chase the money.

      Arguably, Indonesia is more/as important to the US than India. And in the near future, ID will have >400 million people.

      but then you gotta draw the line somewhere; otherwise “Core 5” becomes an unwield “Core 20”, lmao

      won’t be surprised if a “Big 5” forum emerges: ID, nigeria, India, Brazil, Bangladesh (or someone else)…that’s almost 40% of humanity right there

      Reply ↓
3. AG December 12, 2025 at 8:02 am

   re: Germany – BSW after latest changes in leadership

   in essence not much changed after the 3rd party congress

   NACHDENKSEITEN´s assessment

   use google-tranlsate

   Quo vadis, BSW?
   https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=143503

   However interesting, the author considers a new national election based on a successful recount – after BSW successfully (!) would have called upon the German highest court, the Constitutional Court – as a real possibility.

   Of course it´s not impossible that the current government parties could use an affirmative decision by the Court to actively seek early new elections although I really doubt it despite the talk in alternative media (especially non-German) that Merz won´t hold out 4 years.

   And even then what would change? Nothing.

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4. Adam1 December 12, 2025 at 8:12 am

   “US wants to persuade four countries to leave EU, leaked files suggest”

   While I don’t know about the legal implications, but Italy and Austria are also Euro Zone nations. As we all here know, there is no easy reversing your status as being a Euro using country. I would assume you’d need to figure out an exit to the Euro if you also wanted to exit the EU, right?

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   1. Polar Socialist December 12, 2025 at 11:36 am

      Let’s say it’s complicated. Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Vatican, Kosovo and Montenegro use Euro, but are not EU members. Sweden should be using Euro, but has found a way (by not joining the ERM II) to delay that indefinitely.

      Honestly, given the lack of sovereignty in EU and the shackles of Euro, US would be wiser to “persuade” EU to let the members go, or at least stop and reverse the integration first.

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   2. bertl December 13, 2025 at 12:36 am

      It may well become in the interests of the ECB to assert and reinforce its independence from the EU as it stands by declaring that countries which exit the EU can continue use of the euro without impediment and their central banks can continue their current standing, rights and their individual obligations as sovereign states in the ECB with no future liabilities which may result from the future activities of the EU.

      It may well be that the ECB, referencing the behaviour of this and the previous Commission, advises the member states through their central banks and other channels, that it has concerns about the existing structures of the EU with particular reference to the Commission’s authority to withhold funds from and deny its financial obligations to member states, and to declare courses of action which may result in financial obligations which the ECB and member states are reluctant or unwilling to cover which should only be determined by unanimous vote of the Euopean Council.

      It may well be that member states exit and ally with other powers which will willingly take courses of action necessary to ensure the economic and financial security and integrity of those European states which enter into bi-lateral or multi-lateral treaties with another power.

      Going back sixty odd years to my mostly forgotten schooldays, I seem to remember Marcus Aurelius observing that life is in a state of unending flux yet in the end there is only oblivion, that destiny is not obvious, and we must forget pride and make the best of what exists at the moment. The tragedy of Europe is that it is mis-governed by intellectual and moral weaklings who are themselves governed by the corruptions of greed, pride and hatred, and a marked contempt for those they rule but fail to represent, and who think they can control the destiny, not only of Europe, but of states beyond it.

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5. Mikel December 12, 2025 at 8:20 am

   Justice Department drafting a list of ‘domestic terrorists’ – Los Angeles Times

   “The memo also outlines what it says are causes of domestic terrorist activity, including “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality.”

   Would that include all the folks in the Epstein files?

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   1. The Rev Kev December 12, 2025 at 8:31 am

      Nah. After all, it’s OK when they do it.

      Reply ↓
6. Wukchumni December 12, 2025 at 8:24 am

   I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can’t really fathom the news much anymore, so full of deceit and worse.

   Mother Nature isn’t like that though, everything in the wild is at it appears, no bullshit, no AI, no nothing. Money won’t buy you anything in her realm.

   I’m retreating into the void~

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   1. caucus99percenter December 12, 2025 at 9:03 am

      I don’t know about that. Nature can be very nice and elegant, but it’s also full of predation, parasitism, and deceit along the lines of cowbirds or cuckoos killing other bird species’ own offspring while still in the eggshell and tricking them into raising their offspring instead.

      Reply ↓
      1. Wukchumni December 12, 2025 at 3:04 pm

         Wildlife is pretty predictable in their actions-humans not so much.

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   2. Norton December 12, 2025 at 11:05 am

      Cortisol production, another bennie of The News.
      All of it, fit to print or just clickbait, in need of health warning labels. :(
      Decompression and unplugging this weekend. :)

      Reply ↓
   3. John December 12, 2025 at 1:20 pm

      Every day I thank whatever gods there be that I live where I do, a rural area far enough away from the cacophony of “civilization “ that my nervous system isn’t under a permanent state of attack. Is it any surprise that the insanity has become epidemic?

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      1. Wukchumni December 12, 2025 at 4:36 pm

         When I occasionally wander into El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula, the people seem so frenzied.

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   4. Alice X December 12, 2025 at 2:36 pm

      Stiff drink for me. I was already red pilled, but then I suspect that Mickey slipped me another, cause I sure feel like I overdosed.

      Reply ↓
7. The Rev Kev December 12, 2025 at 8:29 am

   “Russian support for peace talks rises to wartime high as public sees war goals largely met”

   I’m a bit dubious about this poll. It would be like saying a poll of Americans was taken in January of 1945 and that the public were satisfied that the goals of the war against Nazi Germany were largely met. Right now I believe that there are only two more towns in the Ukrainian defensive belt to be taken – Kramatorsk and Slavyansk – and then that is it. The Russians will be free to liberate the rest of the Donbass territory putting an end to Trump’s moronic idea to turn it into a “free economic zone” whatever the hell that would mean-

   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/11/us-wants-ukraine-to-withdraw-from-donbas-and-create-free-economic-zone-says-zelenskyy

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   1. ilsm December 12, 2025 at 9:09 am

      “Shooting the breeze” toward Minsk 3.0.

      I wonder if the “poll” asked about results of the “shooting the breeze” about ending the Ukraine SMO reversing the achieved “war goals”?

      Time and the shape of the “shooting the breeze” table is on Russia’s side.

      IOW: nothing coming out of Washington or varied Euro meetings sustains Russia’s goals and achievements.

      Polling your enemy is new wave psyop.

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   2. gf December 12, 2025 at 9:33 am

      The same outlet tells us that:

      US revised 27-point peace plan drops ban on Ukraine’s Nato membership Intellinews

      Hummm I just have to wonder.

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      1. The Rev Kev December 12, 2025 at 9:38 am

         I think that it means that whatever Trump thinks or says, in the end it is the deep state that always gets what they want as seen here.

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   3. Darthbobber December 12, 2025 at 12:29 pm

      Its a nothingburger poll. The respondents favor peace on Russia’s terms, and their optimism that that will happen is growing.

      It doesn’t imply support for anything resembling any of the “peace” plans floated by the US, still less those of the EU

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8. Valiant Johnson December 12, 2025 at 8:36 am

   Immigration-Border-Military civil boundaries

   https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-transfers-public-land-navy-support-border-security-and-national-defense

   https://www.blm.gov/press-release/interior-transfers-public-land-navy-support-border-security-and-national-defense

   As this is something that effects my daily life and routine I get quite emotional about it.
   What these releases do not say is that it only applies to the Roosevelt Reservation

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

   The Government press releases and all reporting that I can find do not mention the actual boundaries of the military control even though this is clearly stated by Theodor Roosevelt Presidential Proclamation (35 Stat. 2136).
   In California this strip will be attached to : Naval Training Site Otay Mesa (After long searching I still can’t find the address or site commander)
   The line of control is Sixty (60) feet parallel to the actual border.
   It is my understanding from speaking to many sources, some official and some not,that there is no place along the border where the wall is less than six (6) feet inside the actual border. This means that if you stay more than sixty (60) feet from the wall you will be outside the Military Reservation.
   This means that anyone inside this strip will be trespassing this includes media, locals who use the wall road to access their property and humanitarian aid workers doing water drops in the area.
   For a long time the Powers that Be have been trying to discourage people from approaching the Wall.
   Up until now there has been no law to stop us.
   Now there is.

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   1. Carolinian December 12, 2025 at 11:01 am

      Mr. Trump tear down that wall? In New Mexico I’ve driven the road that parallels what was then a fence. There was very little traffic other than the occasional Border Patrol vehicle. I felt very conspicuous.

      Given everything else that is going on the hue and cry against The Wall in Trump1 now seems almost quaint. It’s an issue that he rode to the White House and obviously still thinks works for him even as some MAGA start to wonder whether he will put them inside a wall. Meanwhile Trump defends using immigrants at his hotel properties since their conditional status keeps pesky unions away. Perhaps similar attitudes among other Repub businesses will keep the whole thing at the level of security theater. There’s also the matter of all the laws he prefers to ignore.

      Reply ↓
9. The Rev Kev December 12, 2025 at 8:42 am

   “Earliest evidence of making fire”

   This is only a brief preview of the Nature article but the BBC did a very good treatment of this important story-

   https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-b9da7a6d-165b-492a-8785-235cd10e2e8e

   Or another article about it-

   https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2025/december/earliest-fire-making-dating-back-400-000-years-unearthed-in-suffolk-england.html

   Those early Neanderthals were no dummies and this site completely changes how we should think about them. They probably invented the idea of the barbecue too.

   Reply ↓
   1. Francis Parker December 12, 2025 at 12:48 pm

      It’s a truly stunning discovery, but the BBC would have done everyone a favor by naming the Neanderthals in the title instead of misleadingly talking about “humans” without any qualifier, referring to them as “we”, and burying the lede until near the end.

      It makes me wonder if early modern humans might have learned fire-making from Neanderthals. If so, what else we might we have learned from them?

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   2. Alice X December 12, 2025 at 2:32 pm

      Compiling a historical record of our antecedents is a grueling and bound to be always incomplete process. Previous biases (which are many) slowly give way with increasing information. I recall understanding that the Neanderthals showed up some 300,000 years before so called modern humans, AND had larger brain cases. The wiki page still writes about Cro-Magnons although I have understood that to be an obsolete term.

      The Neanderthals thus survived some 600,000 years, double what we have so far. I’m not that optimistic that we are going to make it all that much farther.

      Reply ↓
10. The Rev Kev December 12, 2025 at 9:32 am

    “EU to reinterpret sea law to confront Russia’s shadow fleet”

    This is where it is getting nutso. Firstly, by Russia’s shadow fleet what they mean are ships that are not insured in the London market but elsewhere and I heard that there are about a thousand of them. But what they are really talking about here is boarding and seizing any Russian bound ships in the Baltic Sea which would amount to a naval blockade which just happens to be an act of war. As it is, the Russians are already having their Navy escort commercial shipping here but Trump’s stunt in Venezuela might inspire them to try to divert a Russian ship into one of their territorial waters so that it can be seized. They have tried before. These people are losing their minds and they may even try doing this sort of stuff in the Mediterranean as well. Thing is, by doing this you are dragging in other nations that take deliveries from those ships and here I am thinking of China. Does the EU really want to go there? Unfortunately the answer seems to be yes.

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    1. Skip Intro December 12, 2025 at 10:18 am

       No word on finding a legal fig leaf for naval drone attacks on Black Sea tankers I take it?

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    2. jsn December 12, 2025 at 10:22 am

       Its’ all covered in the “Preserving Piracy Act“, the foundational document of the Western Empire!

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    3. ilsm December 12, 2025 at 10:44 am

       The law of the sea abides by the actions of the local gunboats and the biggest guns in locus.

       Retaliation, retribution etc have no legal restraint.

       Effect of attacks on tankers lacking London insurance is limited to Trump’s joy over gasoline being cheaper than last year.

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    4. hk December 12, 2025 at 11:49 am

       The problem is that EU does not have much of a navy to enforce these things…

       Reply ↓
       1. bertl December 13, 2025 at 12:40 am

          But China does, and Russian has an exciting new product line of torpedos.

          Reply ↓
    5. Windall December 12, 2025 at 2:37 pm

       The escalation continues.

       https://www.turkiyetoday.com/region/turkish-companys-ferry-hit-by-missile-strike-at-odessa-port-3211262

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       1. The Rev Kev December 12, 2025 at 6:05 pm

          ‘The vessel operates regular routes between Türkiye and Ukraine, transporting both passengers and freight across the Black Sea.’

          So mercs and heavy military equipment? I am not too sympathetic to Erdogan’s Turkiye. Recently there were two ships hit in Turkiye’s economic zone. So the Turks put a tow rope over one of them, towed it to Bulgarian territorial waters, and then ran back to Turkiye leaving the Bulgarians to deal with that damaged ship.

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11. Wukchumni December 12, 2025 at 9:53 am

    Billionaire: ‘my family are sharecroppers’

    Reply ↓
    1. jsn December 12, 2025 at 11:10 am

       cropper shares can mean wildly different things…

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    2. jefemt December 12, 2025 at 11:13 am

       Wonder where he stands on right to repair.
       Them hands and cuticles look pretty pretty pretty
       (apologies to Larry David…)

       Reply ↓
12. .Tom December 12, 2025 at 10:04 am

    The video of Amanda Sloat talking to Vovan and Lexus but believing she’s talking to Igor Zhovkva, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine is worth a look. https://rumble.com/v72u39m-prank-with-amanda-sloat.html (10:51 on Rumble).

    I don’t think there’s much news in it for most of us but it’s interesting to see the style, framing and evasive body language. The overall tone is: hypothetically it could have been different but we did our best. Then she says of the question before the war if Ukraine would seek to join NATO.

    “I don’t think Biden felt like it was his place to tell Ukraine what to do then, to tell Ukraine not to pursue NATO.”

    Ahem. Who joins is up to the USA. Ukraine could choose seek membership or not but the USA decides who gets in. And Sloat acts as though Biden felt it would have been bad manners to get involved in that. It’s as though Sloat thinks in PR terms.

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    1. Norton December 12, 2025 at 11:09 am

       Sloat, joining Nuland in the perennial hall of shame.
       Wish they were both in the ICC dock.

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       1. nycTerrierist December 13, 2025 at 10:24 am

          Same here

          the nonchalant attitude toward the disastrous costs of her decisions, mere death after all

          a moral idiot, dressed up in ‘civility’

          Reply ↓
13. flora December 12, 2025 at 11:01 am

    re: German government’s drug commissioner advocates restricting medical care for the elderly – WSWS

    Is Zeke Emmanual – brother of Rahm – consulting to the German drug commissioner? (The answer is no, but the idea sounds similar. ) He wrote a now infamous editorial in 2014. Here’s a recap from UPenn written in 2019.

    A Doctor and Medical Ethicist Argues Life After 75 Is Not Worth Living

    https://medicalethicshealthpolicy.med.upenn.edu/events/in-the-news/a-doctor-and-medical-ethicist-argues-life-after-75-is-not-worth-living

    An aside: For some reason I thought we were in trouble when President B appointed Dr. Zeke to the 16 member C19 presidential advisory board in 2020. /;)

    Reply ↓
    1. jhallc December 12, 2025 at 11:52 am

       Remember this oldie, but a goodie –
       “When you’re ripe, it’s time to go” is a controversial remark attributed to
       John Silber, the former president of Boston University and the 1990 Democratic nominee for governor of Massachusetts

       Reply ↓
    2. Henry Moon Pie December 13, 2025 at 2:16 am

       That is quite an article. What would we do without the Emanuels? This is already the case with prostate cancer. A prostatectomy is not an option for men over 70 with metastatic prostate cancer. Moreover, PSA tests for men over 70 are no longer done.

       Reply ↓
14. Wukchumni December 12, 2025 at 11:31 am

    You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, but Daniel Swain is the best in the business, he’s that good.

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    1. Henry Moon Pie December 12, 2025 at 4:20 pm

       I’ve been listening a lot to “Subterranean Homesick Blues” lately, especially your line and its context:

       Look out kid
       Don’t matter what you did
       Walk on your tiptoes
       Don’t try “No-Doz”
       Better stay away from those
       That carry around a fire hose
       Keep a clean nose
       Watch the plain clothes
       You don’t need a weatherman
       To know which way the wind blows

       That concluding line was the inspiration for the name taken by the Weather Underground, the idea being that the Weathermen would show people which way the wind was blowing.

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       1. LifelongLib December 12, 2025 at 10:57 pm

          It seems to have been lost in the mists of time, but I recall a 70s cartoon where a couple of long-haired young men are sitting in the back of a room while some balding middle-aged men are pointing at various charts, and one of them says “I think we came to the wrong weathermen meeting”.

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15. OIFVet December 12, 2025 at 11:49 am

    ‘Wave of Gen-Z Unrest Fells Its First European Government’, WSJ (archived)

    Despite the breathless title and the exaggerated role being given to Gen-Zs, a fairly informative overview of the situation and a cautious mention of the possible entry into the party arena by the President, Rumen Radev. He is the most popular public figure by far, the only one with net-positive rating. He’s basically the only one who hasn’t been swallowing the Ukraine kool-aide and following the hysterical EU line. Should he decide to enter the political arena, he will likely end up with near-majority.

    That said, I doubt that he’s the answer to the problem with corruption. Some in his circle are known for being ethically challenged, to put it politely, and I say this on the basis of personal experience with some of these figures. At best corruption will be quantitatively smaller and the problem with the captured state prosecution and courts will likely be partially addressed. So steps in the right direction, but that’s about that.

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16. AG December 12, 2025 at 12:05 pm

    Where did this current chatter over Art. 107 of the UN Charter originate (which suggests that in theory Germany, Japan and the other enemy states of WWII could still be treated as such without impunity via UN-SC) or to quote Oxford Law Pro:

    “This chapter focuses on Art 107 of the UN Charter. It discusses the correlation between Art 107 and Art 53 as enemy State clauses that provide for dispensation from obligations under the Charter. Article 107 is applicable only for those actions which were taken or authorized as a result of World War II, but it does not specify the notion of the result of that war therefore it does not have any strict limitations. The chapter then looks into the settlement of unresolved problems with respect to Germany resulting from that war while discussing the treaties concerned with the German process of reunification. It clarifies that the legal significance of Art 107 is linked to the post-war situation.”

    Just because there seems to be no definite written decision it doesn´t make it sensible. It almost appears like a retort/trolling of “not one inch” kinda talk.

    Scott Ritter yesterday briefly alluded to the CHINESE reminding of this in some article??

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    1. Darthbobber December 12, 2025 at 2:53 pm

       Seems silly. How could the threat of UNSC authorized collective security measures be any more hollow than it already is?

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17. flora December 12, 2025 at 12:23 pm

    I wonder what the betting odds are on the EU remaining intact 10 years from now? / ;)

    Reply ↓
18. Carolinian December 12, 2025 at 12:31 pm

    Re WBD-Paramount-Ellison

    In an interview with CNBC on Monday, David Ellison, Paramount’s CEO, argued that his company’s offer would face less scrutiny from US regulators because Paramount is smaller than Netflix and has a friendly relationship with the Trump administration.

    “Friendly”–they aren’t even hiding it. Clearly Netflix needs to steer some under the table money so the administration will be even better friends with them. They have been bidding in the wrong venue.

    Reply ↓
    1. Norton December 12, 2025 at 3:02 pm

       Netflix was (in)famous for that Obama connection.
       Politics permeates life, making any attempted escape from ideology futile. Bah!

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    2. AG December 12, 2025 at 8:45 pm

       Matt Belloni from THE TOWN podcast with Peter Supino from Wolfe Research

       The Empire Strikes Back: Paramount Goes Hostile
       36 min.
       Dec. 9th
       https://podcasts.apple.com/is/podcast/the-ellison-empire-strikes-back-paramount-goes-hostile/id1612131897?i=1000740361594

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19. Carolinian December 12, 2025 at 12:39 pm

    Re SC and measles–this Today show report leaves out some info from earlier reports including that the incubator in my county may have been a charter school. If true then the reason for the upstate locus may also have to do with the public/private virus favored by the area’s very Republican politics.

    Mere speculation of course.

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20. debug December 12, 2025 at 12:47 pm

    Thanks to Conor today and Yves and everyone who does links daily for the continuing COVID and flu coverage.

    Not many comments have appeared about the continuing coverage, but I still rely on NC as a main source of info. I have a friend whose family has been hit hard with the latest variant of COVID that’s going around. Four weeks to some semblance of recovery…

    Be careful out there!

    I followed links and have printed out copies of a couple of the recent papers about short-, mid-, and potential long-term damage to the human immune system from COVID infection. It seems as though at least one of my good doctors needs updating.

    Reply ↓
21. Tom Stone December 12, 2025 at 12:55 pm

    I’m guessing that several buckets of shit will hit the fan before the end of 2026’s first quarter, and that Trump will be the least popular American President in history by January 20, 2026.
    Wadda Maroon.

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22. Jeremy Grimm December 12, 2025 at 1:08 pm

    “Everyone is Gambling and No One is Happy”
    I tried reading this link. I guess I am just too old and out of it. I cannot follow the flow of the argument and many of the terms and word usages, and apparent base assumptions are alien to me. The reasoning seems bizarre. This summary from near the tail of the link nicely captures the strange flow of the bloggers thoughts: “So here’s where we are: caught in a compound crisis where economic stress reduces cognitive bandwidth, reduced bandwidth enables extraction, extraction deepens economic stress, stress plus overload erodes trust, loss of trust prevents coordination, coordination failure leaves problems unsolved, and unsolved problems deepen the crisis.” Somewhat further down advocates, among a list of other strange notions achieving: “..the very simple and small task of eradicating crony capitalism and developing some sense of shared reality.”

    I was surprised by the blogger’s impression that the Sunset, iPhone 11 shown at the end of the post was “…one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve seen.” To me, the sunset pictured is commonplace and hardly an outstanding beauty which leaves me wondering how many sunsets the blogger has seen.

    The final observation about Jimi Hendrix “meeting people where they’re at” left me baffled. I assume anyone who is attempting to communicate to someone else tries to meet them “where they’re at.”

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23. Mildred Montana December 12, 2025 at 3:52 pm

    >San Francisco woman gives birth in a Waymo self-driving taxi AP

    I clicked on this. Now you don’t have too. Non-news. You’re welcome. Women have been giving birth in taxis for one hundred years. Thanks AP. Next story.

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24. Mildred Montana December 12, 2025 at 4:09 pm

    >BlackRock’s Larry Fink Joins Trump Team Talks to Rebuild Ukraine Bloomberg

    Hey! I got an idea! Let’s use private equity to rebuild Ukraine. The only question is, what can be stolen during the “rebuilding”? We’ve all seen how successful PE has been in the US.

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25. Wukchumni December 12, 2025 at 4:40 pm

    With all the new Epstein revelations coming out today, are the wheels finally coming off the pram?

    Reply ↓
26. Wukchumni December 12, 2025 at 4:45 pm

    Leavitt to Believer:

    In this week’s episode, Karoline claims that there was no deflation in terms of the age of the young women in the Epstein photos with Benedict Donald, all she could see were inflationary numbers such as 19 or 21, at a minimum.

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27. Tom Stone December 12, 2025 at 5:14 pm

    I have wondered whether there was a parallel operation in Europe to the one Epstein ran out of New York.
    If so I would expect it to involve little boys as well as little girls and be based in either Brussels or London.

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28. Sam Culotte December 12, 2025 at 5:18 pm

    >Everyone is Gambling and No One is Happy Kyla Scanlon

    So I scanned the article and I could tell the writer was never going to get to what its headline implied. That is, the point. Therefore, as an NC service, I will do so.

    As a gambler for fifty years (only horse-racing) I think I can safely say that today’s young people with their phones and their unlimited and continuous betting “opportunities” are playing with fire.

    It is an axiom of addiction that the frequency of use correlates with the strength of it. Fifty years ago betting opportunities were few and far between, maybe a half-an-hour at the smallest if one were talking about horse-racing which, outside of lotteries, was about all there was back then.

    I despair for young people today. Everywhere for them lies temptation (instantaneous on-line gambling and credit-card debt). Nowhere lies for them opportunity (they have been excluded from society at large by exorbitant rents and house prices with only the prospect of a lifetime of a gig jobs with few or no benefits).

    No wonder they choose gambling as their only option for redemption. Unfortunately, it all can only end in disaster for most of them.

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    1. Wukchumni December 12, 2025 at 10:41 pm

       As a once upon a time horseplayer at various oval offices, I concur.

       Action kills!

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29. AG December 12, 2025 at 8:12 pm

    HARPERS

    Liberal Totalitarianism
    by Pankaj Mishra
    https://harpers.org/archive/2025/12/liberal-totalitarianism-pankaj-mishra-western-hypocrisy/

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    1. Martin Oline December 12, 2025 at 9:07 pm

       Thank you for this link AG. This article is surprising to me because of where it was published – Harper’s magazine. I had a subscription to it during the 1970’s and stopped some time around 1977. It had become too establishment for me and I would no longer pay for the world it embraced. I am quite surprised at how much they seem to have changed since then, but then perhaps the work of Pankaj Mishra does not reflect the magazine as a whole and is an outlier.

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30. raspberry jam December 13, 2025 at 1:30 am

    The Time The FBI Tried To Get Meir Kahane’s Jewish Fascists To Murder Black Panthers | Forever Wars

    From the piece:

    Many of you will be familiar with COINTELPRO, the Bureau’s infamous 1960s-70s secret-police operations to infiltrate, discredit, neutralize and kill left-wing, Black, Puerto Rican, Indigenous and other minority social and political movements. For those who don’t: this is the program that yielded a 1964 attempt to make Martin Luther King Jr. commit suicide. COINTELPRO is the FBI’s DNA, the bureau distilled to its purest form, no matter how many FBI former officials promote the bureau on cable news as a bastion of lawfulness, and no matter how much any one of them decries the lawless Donald Trump. It’s the bureau as it is known to former special agents who thought they were there to do good only to learn that they served something monstrous. It is not ancient history. It is right now.

    In the hefty section of the book that reproduces the FBI memos on destroying movements for Black liberation, I came across a memo written in September 1969 for Director J. Edgar Hoover by the head of the New York FBI. That was John F. Malone, the longest-serving field-office chief in FBI history. Malone pitched an initiative against the Black Panthers. “Initiative” is a mild way of putting it. The FBI was trying to find cutouts it could instigate into murdering prominent Panthers. Malone had a guy in mind: Meir Kahane.

    Kahane, a violent Jewish supremacist from Brooklyn, was at the time a disreputable thug. Today he’s best understood as a harbinger of the regnant fascist politicians in Israel. Kahane, starting in the 60s, created and commanded a street gang called the Jewish Defense League. In Laurelton, Queens—at the time a Jewish neighborhood transitioning into a Black one; it’s where JFK airport is—the JDL harassed my mother and her friends because one of her friends’ prom dates was Black. (That friend, a dear person in my life, is now a rabbi.) Thirty years after that, one JDL member, Baruch Goldstein, committed one of the most noteworthy atrocities in the history of Zionism—quite a crowded field—when he murdered 29 Palestinians while they prayed at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron in 1994.

    There is no evidence the plot actually went through but just a little WTF for your day.

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31. bertl December 13, 2025 at 1:43 am

    I’m surprised that no one has commented on the conclusions reached in Norman Finkelstein’s new book.

    I’m also surprised at the lack of commentary on the strategic implications of the Chinese and Russian Security Council abstentions on Trump’s plan for Gaza which, it seems to me, was Realpolitik as ruthless as one of a series of killer moves in Go or chess.

    When a wannabe peer competitor (adversary?) starts to dig a hole that has every possibility of turning into his grave, you don’t stop him by exercising a veto – not least because he will use another, possibly more effective, means to achieve his ends.

    But abstention is the silent killer. You have yet to make up your mind, and the General Assembly will hope to guide you, as will your partners, and any other parties who might wish to discuss the issue with you, perhaps with the intention of influencing your view of the matter in a wider context.

    It also allows you the opportunity to measure the domestic support favouring the Trump plan or not favouring the Trump plan and thereby building up a base for action or inaction via God’s great gift of social media and internet commentary in general.

    The Security Council vote also establishes a precedent which will likely come in handy at some point in the future.

    But, first, the grave.

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32. ISL December 13, 2025 at 2:08 am

    RE:

    To my ignorant mind, anyone anywhere developing a new drug is a win for team human if it works, but to Prof Emeritus Ong Choon Nam, its all competition. So which team is he on, if not Team human? Team profit?

    Innovative drugs: The new battleground in US-China rivalry ThinkCHina

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