Christmas At The End Of The World: The Curious Allure Of Festive Apocalypse Films And TV The Conversation
How owl leftovers became the perfect home for ancient baby bees Phys.org
Andersen’s $176M Comeback: The Ghost of Enron Just Went Public Guru Focus
Climate/Environment
Why the weirdest sea level changes on Earth are happening off the coast of Japan CNN
Category ‘6’ tropical cyclone hot spots are growing Phys.org
Trump Administration announces plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research and close its famed Mesa Lab Balanced Weather
The country’s biggest magnesium producer went bankrupt. Who’s going to clean up the $100M mess? Grist
Pandemics
The Lancet: The Threat of Another Coronavirus Pandemic Avian Flu Diary
Blamed for the nation’s historic measles outbreak, West Texas Mennonites have hardened their views on vaccines Texas Tribune
China?
Exclusive: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips Reuters
U.S. announces US$11.1 billion arms sale to Taiwan Focus Taiwan
Syraqistan
800 days of genocide in Gaza Andy Worthington
Netanyahu approves a $35 billion natural gas export deal to Egypt, the biggest in Israeli history AP
Germany signs second $3.1 billion Arrow missile deal with Israel Calcalist
UAE revealed as secret buyer in $2.3 billion Israeli Elbit Systems arms deal The New Arab
The Trump-Netanyahu Schism: Israel’s solution to Trump’s pressure — ‘Let his Gaza plan fail’ Conflicts Forum
🇮🇱🇺🇸🇮🇷| NEW: The WP quoting Israeli & US officials confirm that US-Iran talks were a ruse to strike Iran
US & Israeli officials encouraged media reports to make it look like Israel & US were having a “rift” in order to trick public opinion that a war was not going to happen.… pic.twitter.com/6pfBWNprgT
— Arya – آریا (@AryJeay) December 18, 2025
Killing the ‘brain trust’: How Israel targeted Iran’s nuclear scientists WaPo
The Shortest Path to Zionism: A Network Analysis of the US Nonprofit Industrial Complex University of Michigan
Old Blighty
After the chaos of the Johnson years I’d hoped the election would put relations between the government and the Intelligence and Security Committee back on an even keel, but this is as damning a comment on the state of intelligence oversight as has ever appeared in an ISC report. pic.twitter.com/Zr95EHogM6
— Andrew Defty (@adefty) December 15, 2025
English Outsider On Dirty British Intel And Other Stuff Moon of Alabama
‘Clock is ticking’: Starmer tells Roman Abramovich to transfer money from Chelsea sale to Ukraine fund The Independent
European Disunion
Palantir replied 👇to my post on their French intelligence agency contract with, as expected, a lot of lies and gaslighting.
Their main argument seems to be “there’s no issue and for proof the French are so satisfied they keep renewing.”
This is completely false. The fact is… https://t.co/FSq1WaSiEp
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) December 18, 2025
General strike brings Portugal to a standstill In Defense of Marxism
MERCOSUR protest: Thousands of tractors descend on Brussels to block Parliament and von der Leyen Euro Weekly News
***
Live. ‘We won’t leave without a solution’: EU leaders meet to decide Ukraine financing Euronews
The biggest bank robbery in history Ian Proud
A victory for the @PatriotsEU: the Brusselians backed down, Russian assets will not be on the table at tomorrow’s #EUCO. The Commission now pushes joint loans, but we will not let our families foot the bill for Ukraine’s war. Not on our watch. pic.twitter.com/NlMbOoXrjB
— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) December 17, 2025
New Not-So-Cold War
Putin & Belousov Address Defense Ministry Board Karl Sanchez
As the conflict between Europe and Russia escalates, Putin announced the deployment of a new powerful deterrent – the Oreshnik missile system will enter combat duty within the next two weeks pic.twitter.com/aFw9T67778
— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) December 17, 2025
Drone Attack Strikes Tanker at Russia’s Rostov-on-Don Port gCaptain
‼️🇷🇺 BIG NEWS – Russia’s shadow fleet is protected by military personnel, says Swedish Navy Operations Commander
▪️Uniformed military personnel and armed men – presumably employees of private military companies – have been spotted on Russian oil tankers operating in violation of… pic.twitter.com/KT63wxkhju
— Visioner (@visionergeo) December 17, 2025
Zoomer school stabber Events in Ukraine
South of the Border
Trump Announces Full Naval Blockade of Venezuela’s “Sanctioned” Oil Exports Simplicius
Note how the US government’s propaganda narrative has changed:
First the Trump admin claimed it was waging war on Venezuela because of drugs — a blatant lie (the US supports the worst drug traffickers in Latin America).
Now they admit that this is actually because Venezuela… https://t.co/pSoGQi3Ivk
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 18, 2025
***
Parsing Trump’s Venezuela Claims: The Oil Case Behind The Rhetoric Forbes
Trump administration asking US oil industry to return to Venezuela — but getting no takers Politico
U.S. Tanker Seizure Has Paralyzed Venezuelan Oil Shipping—Except Chevron’s WSJ
Venezuelan Navy escorting oil tankers through blockade zone — reports
US officials are aware & ‘considering various courses of action’
Source: Mario Nawfal, video depicts US naval blockade pic.twitter.com/ZSLgYzt3tP
— Victor vicktop55 commentary (@vick55top) December 18, 2025
***
4 killed in latest US strike on alleged ‘narco-trafficking’ boat in eastern Pacific Anadolu Agency
Venezuela Denounces US Aggression Before the UN and Requests Urgent Security Council Meeting TeleSUR
Trump allies seek White House visit for Venezuelan opposition leader Semafor
Why Israel is Pushing for Regime Change in Venezuela through Washington Palestine Chronicle
L’affaire Epstein
Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell asks court to set aside her conviction ABC News. “Maxwell’s last-ditch effort for relief from the courts comes as the Justice Department faces a Friday deadline to publicly disclose its investigative files on Epstein and Maxwell in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act…[which] contains exemptions permitting Attorney General Pam Bondi to withhold certain records if their publication could jeopardize active criminal investigations or prosecutions.”
Senators Press FBI Over Failure to Investigate Epstein’s Lawyer and Accountant WSJ
Harvard launches secret probe into students who filmed Larry Summers expressing ‘shame’ for Epstein ties: report New York Post
Trump 2.0
Description of FCC as ‘Independent’ Scrubbed From Agency Website After Chair Says It Isn’t Common Dreams
CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham Will Join MoonPay to Lead Legal and Regulatory Strategy Crypto in America
WH has installed a series of plaques under Trump’s new “Presidential Walk of Fame.”
On Biden: “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President”
On Obama: “One of the most divisive political figures in American History…creation of the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax” pic.twitter.com/BjT19R4waL
— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) December 17, 2025
GOP Funhouse
Senate GOP grows uneasy as Pentagon’s Kelly investigation escalates The Hill
Democrats en déshabillé
About two hours before he tweeted this, Chuck Schumer voted to authorize $901 billion in military spending, $8 billion more than Trump requested. https://t.co/H8LShLb6vw
— Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) December 17, 2025
How I Almost Became a Palantir Democrat Un-Diplomatic
Immigration
U.S. Sends Cubans to Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay New York Times
Border Patrol, ICE and Christian Nationalism Borderland Talk with Jenn Budd
Imperial Collapse Watch
How the US empire creates chaos to disrupt multipolarity Geopolitical Economy Report
All the Dominant Models Are Collapsing Charles Hugh Smith
My Navy SEAL Congressman Can Beat Up Your Navy SEAL Podcaster The After-Action Report
“MAHA”
American Academy of Pediatrics loses HHS funding after criticizing RFK Jr. WaPo
CDC Adopts Contentious Hepatitis B Vaccine Recommendation MedPage Today
Healthcare?
How Health Care Became a Financialized Hellhole Commonplace
Antitrust
Big Tech Zeal to Weaponize Trade Pacts to Fight Competition Policy Exposed in Absurd House Hearing Targeting South Korean Digital Anti-Monopoly Laws Lori Wallach, The Economic Populist
Craftsmanship in the culture industry Archedelia
AI
An AI Bullshit Detector Future Pathways
AI promised a revolution. Companies are still waiting. Reuters
First Micron exited their Crucial consumer-facing memory business, then we heard Samsung may stop selling SSDs and now there’s news that Nvidia may reduce their RTX 50 production by up to 40% next year. pic.twitter.com/rpyyLz9mw6
— Markets & Mayhem (@Mayhem4Markets) December 17, 2025
“The study paints what’s likely a pretty conservative picture of AI’s environmental impact since it’s based on the relatively limited amount of data that’s currently available to the public.”https://t.co/4h54ELCMuu
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) December 17, 2025
Our Famously Free Press
The World At Eleven. Aurelien
Guillotine Watch
Twist In CEO Murder Case: Prosecutors Withdraw Key Interrogation Recordings In Mangione Trial Dallas Express
Class Warfare
Border Agents ‘Interrogated’ Striking Workers In Chicago, Teamsters Say Huff Post
Barista workers arrested at Starbucks roasting plant in York County Harrisburg Patriot News. Striking barista workers.
Power Brokers Harper’s. “What’s really behind your soaring utility bills”
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Live. ‘We won’t leave without a solution’: EU leaders meet to decide Ukraine financing Euronews.
Current headline in this live stream is: ‘I won’t give up,’ says Belgian PM as EU leaders debate reparations loan for Ukraine.
Very right to say that. So far the best criticism I have found on this matter is in the next link:
A Cost-Free Reparation Loan that Costs Billions and Reconstructs Nothing – A Critical Look at the Wrangling over the Russian Assets Held at Euroclear
Main conclusion: And what’s to be gained by taking these risks? The most likely outcome is that Ukraine will not repay the reparation loan and that EU taxpayers will ultimately foot the bill. Why then assume the additional financial, reputational, and geopolitical risks of deploying Russia’s frozen assets at all?
So yes. EU taxpayers on the hook, nothing solved and risks assumed for exactly what? Today we might witness peak EU stupidity. Let’s hope not.
Maybe the EU is hoping that their 20th sanction package will be the one to finally topple the Russian economy. This could be the one. And that would mean that all these EU countries would be able to zoom in and hoover up all those Russian natural resources for free which will let them pay off those debts. If not, the economies of most EU countries will resemble a smoking hole in the ground with guess who lumbered with all those debts – both official and secret.
Well yes. Taking important decisions urgently on the basis of beliefs and hopes without supporting evidence and without serious analysis is a recipe for disasters to come. One question that some hadn’t thought is that, if the seizure is finally done, the people involved today won’t be able to escape blame later.
> nothing solved and risks assumed for exactly what?
Alexander Mercouris, in commentary 2 or 3 days ago, suggested that the emergency procedures contemplated to impose these costs on EU member states would establish a precedent for centralized budgeting and, in effect, taxation on member states.
It has long been noted that the Eurozone needs a centralized fiscal authority to complement its centralized monetary authority. Perhaps there is an element of ‘not letting a crisis go to waste’ at work.
“Trump administration asking US oil industry to return to Venezuela — but getting no takers”
Not hard to work out why. If those oil companies tried to return to Venezuela on the back of a US invasion force, then that would make them priority targets. Their personnel might be killed by insurgents and the oil facilities would be under frequent attack as well meaning that they would be able to pump zero oil out of the country. There might even be attacks on US oil tankers waiting to take aboard oil there. And it would not matter what Machado and her wonky opposition promised as they would not be able to deliver.
let’s hope the Venezuelans don’t start to send out booby-trapped oil tankers through the blockade, knowing that trump the chump , and his dupes would then haul their trojan oil horse right into some US port…. only to have a disaster on their hands. Then americans might actually wake up.
or
maybe chevron just told everyone else….. they “own” Venezuela….and contracts will need to be signed with them before anyone else can help liberate those resources….from those people who actually were born there.
I believe the crux of the matter is explained towards the end of the article:
“Years of sanctions, insufficient investment and political turmoil have since turned what had been a top oil-producing country with vast deposits into one that industry representatives have called a junkyard.”
A dilapidated oil extraction and processing infrastructure, which would sustain further damages (through bombing or sabotage) in case of a military intervention by the USA. Those oil majors are reluctant to invest billions upon billions to restore all those derricks, pipelines, and terminals even if the access to the oil fields of Venezuela are secured by the military of the USA.
I suspect that, assuming an intervention ordered by Trump succeeds in overthrowing Maduro and placing the economy of Venezuela under the control of the North American hegemon, the situation will evolve in a way similar to the one after the invasion of Iraq: despite their privileged position, corporations from the USA were reluctant to take over, which gave the Chinese and Russian firms an opportunity to swoop up the Iraqi oil assets.
Trump Administration announces plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research and close its famed Mesa Lab Balanced Weather
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My great grandfather saw the moon with his eyes, my grandfather saw the moon through a telescope, my father and I watched the moon landing together, my children watched the moon through a telescope, and my grandchildren only ever see the moon on their phone.
Bond dismisses charges against plastic surgeon: what bullpippy! That doctor committed fraud – vaccines are beside the point. He signed up for a government program that he either knew he would not follow or should have resigned from when he resolved he would not follow. That is how trust is lost. Did he also commit insurance fraud with falsified vaccines? He committed theft by destroying vaccines- he could have returned them when he stopped providing them.
I was a mere bench chemist but the overriding principle in my work was honest reporting – fraud disqualifies one’s status as a scientist.
This is absolutely correct. There are so many egregious abuses of trust on all sides, you just cannot keep up with it anymore.
There were all kinds of reasons going on not to trust the case being made by the federal agencies during COVID. I talked about them all the time right on this site. Almost all of that skepticism has now been shown to be valid. They simply had thrown out generations of medical practice, ethics and science. And what they did in their actions affected so many lives in so many ways. The trust has been lost for a generation or two. This trust has been lost not only by the public but also a sizable chunk of the profession. I see it unfortunately every day.
There are certainly ways to bring forth valid concerns without defrauding patients or anyone else. One of the big issues we must figure out going forward is how we are not going to allow those bringing up good faith concerns to be censored and silenced. I think this is of the utmost concern. Intense vigorous public debate is the only way. Unfortunately, I do not get the idea that many of the censors have learned that lesson. For one example, the vaccine mandate. Any and all of us on the ground knew the disaster that was – especially politically for the Dems. I have no doubt that single thing was a huge reason Trump won. I talked to way too many angered Dem patients and all kinds of family members who were equally upset. And it was all for naught – the vaccine was known to be non-sterilizing at the time the mandates began. The definition of hubris and stupid. But the issue is, listening to these same people in my profession today, I have no doubt they have failed to learn a single lesson. They would happily do it all over again today. A fellow practitioner like me can see why this surgeon thought he was doing the right thing; however, what he did was clearly not the way.
Honesty, truth, and transparency on all sides…….the very essence of science. We have fallen so far away from that ideal it is incredible for me to fathom how far. To be clear, my profession has never fully lived up to that ideal. There have been huge egregious moral and ethical mistakes even in our lifetimes. But the unfortunate difference I see now that Pharma, Insurance and Hospital have taken over is that going forward, the problems are likely to get more egregious and the correcting medical ethics and history ever more ignored.
“Category ‘6’ tropical cyclone hot spots are growing”
When the article posted in Links a week or so ago about the reforecast failure of the AMOC in the North Atlantic, my first thought was that hurricanes in the Caribbean and Gulf would likely get stronger as less heat was moved north out of the region by the AMOC.
Re ‘Clock is ticking’: Starmer tells Roman Abramovich to transfer money from Chelsea sale to Ukraine fund
This is classic western media propaganda by omission and false reporting. Abramovich actually agreed that the proceeds of the enforced sale of his asset – Chelsea soccer club – would go to ‘victims of the war in Ukraine’. And by that he clarified that victims on both sides of the divide should receive support. Of course, the perfidious British demand that only Ukrainian victims are ‘worthy’ of support and financial aid. However, the way things are going, the 2.5 bn, were the British to win the case, is likely to be sent straight to Zelensky as part of the war effort to keep Ukraine afloat.
As with the attempted Euroclear blackmail by the EU to seize Russian funds, it is unlikely to succeed, but if it were to, how safe and secure would anyone’s personal assets be in future? Social media support for Palestine or any attempts to present a more balanced picture of events in Ukraine, heaven forbid depicting Putin as anything or than a monstrous dictator determined to conquer the whole of Europe, could be grounds to freeze your bank accounts and seize the contents. Graham Phillips reporting from Donbass suffered that, and of course Jacques Baud has been sanctioned this week for not toeing the official western line.
Details are a bit hazy on my part but there was a young, German female reporter that was showing what was happening on the other side of the hill in her video reports. The German government took umbrage at that and if she returns to Germany, there will be a prison cell waiting for her. They not only froze her bank accounts but I think her mother’s as well.
Yes, that is correct. In the case of Graham Phillips, in freezing his bank account, his mortgage payments could not be made, and his house was repossessed. IIRC, his parents tried to intervene to help him avoid losing his house, but they were prevented from doing this. His ‘crime’ was to report on the ground in Donbass what was actually happening. Reporting that sharply contrasted with the BBC coverage, let alone the fiction provided by Luke Harding of the Guardian, who, when forensically interviewed by Aaron Mate about ridiculous inaccuracies in his book on Putin/Russia, put forward the defence “I am a storyteller”, before hanging up before the end of the interview.
Larry Summers’ contrition here again appears to be limited, only for the poor judgement of his relationship with Epstein,blah blah. I haven’t seen any contrition or taking responsibility for his atrocious behavior towards women, as he documented in his emails to Epstein. A sequences of them were read in a podcast I listened to. Summers is a creep and so far did not cop to that and apologize.
Now two students are in trouble from Harvard for documenting his statement before he began a lecture. I’m guessing this is the video they are in trouble for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnfg2dkH5kA (30 seconds)
‘Arya – آریا
@AryJeay
🇮🇱🇺🇸🇮🇷| NEW: The WP quoting Israeli & US officials confirm that US-Iran talks were a ruse to strike Iran’
I have no idea why but people that do this sort of crap have a need to boast of it to show that they were the smart ones and that they got one over on the other guy. Does not matter if it makes negotiating ten times more harder afterwards, they can’t resist the temptation. They are telling the Iranians not to trust them as they will lie their faces off. It’s like the Minsk 3 agreements with the Russians where the main signatories – Merkel, Poroshenko & Holland – have come out and said that the agreements were bogus and they did it to give the Ukrainian army time to build up so that it could fight the Russian army. Anybody think that the Russians will be interested in a Minsk 3 agreement?
Thoughts on Trump’s speech last night from the commentariat?
I’ll start: if anyone needed convincing that Trump and the Republicans are in for a trouncing in the midterms, have them watch Trump’s diatribe.
From what little I could stomach I gathered:
1. Everything is Biden’s fault
2. The economy is just fine, nothing to see here
3. Illegal immigrants…. blah, blah, blah
4. Something, something, men in women’s sports
5. Did I mentioned everything is Biden’s fault?
This, coupled with the insane Rob Reiner take, among the latest gaffes, should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that Trump is cooked.
I just fear what comes next.