Links 2/2/2026

Newborn calf struggling in deep freeze brought indoors to curl up on couch NBC News. The photos.

Urban expansion in the age of liberalism Works in Progress

Climate/Environment

Historic snowstorm for eastern North Carolina, with localized amounts near 20″ along the coast Balanced Weather

Overshoot: The World Is Hitting Point of No Return on Climate Yale Environment 360

The biomass industry promised these Southern towns prosperity. So why are they still dying? Grist

Pandemics

Hotel experiment suggests air mixing can help curb flu transmission CIDRAP

Japan

Traffic mirrors in Japan Beyond The Frame

China?

XI CALLS FOR CHINA’S RENMINBI TO ATTAIN GLOBAL RESERVE CURRENCY STATUS FT

23 WAYS YOU’RE ALREADY LIVING IN THE CHINESE CENTURY Wired (Resilc)

CK Hutchison faces limited legal options after Panama voids port rights: experts South China Morning Post

Syraqistan

How Netanyahu is sabotaging phase two of the Gaza ceasefire +972 Magazine

Israel wants US to attack Iran, but Trump favours tough diplomacy: report TRT World

Two blasts kill four in southern Iran as IRGC assassination rumour denied Intellinews

Iran to hold joint naval drills with China, Russia amid rising US tensions TRT World

Africa

Kenya’s first chipmaker caught in superpower crossfire The Continent

European Disunion

Analysis-Europe’s $955 billion recovery fund struggles to transform economy Reuters

Irish defence minister confirms plans to scrap Irish neutrality The Canary

As Europe rearms, ‘Made in India’ is entering the EU’s defence equation Euractiv

Been spendin’ most their lives livin’ in the free trade paradise China Articles

Italy church restoration probed after Meloni angel lookalike DW

New Not-So-Cold War

Ukraine Suffers Unprecedented Nationwide Blackouts as Grid Teeters on Edge Simplicius

Ukraine faces mounting IMF repayment pressure as February deadline looms Intellinews

More Ukrainian Cowbell From a Delusional British Colonel Larry Johnson

Silicon murder valley Events in Ukraine

Is it time to replace NATO with EATO? Ian Proud

The Great Game

Kazakhstan: Anti-China demonstrators face long prison terms after fiery protest Eurasianet

South of the Border

Venezuela: Delcy Rodríguez Government Surrenders to Trump’s Diktats, but the Chavista Masses Oppose the Destruction of Sovereignty and Will Resist the Corporate Occupation of Venezuela’s Resources – Part 1 Countercurrents

Colombia Faces Its Past as Camilo Torres Reemerges TeleSUR

L’affaire Epstein

Epstein lawyers discussed possibility of cooperation with prosecutors days before his death, files reveal The Guardian

Epstein Files Give More Evidence That Jeffrey Epstein Was A Mossad Agent. The Dissident

“Leadership Would Like Your Help”: Indian Billionaire Tapped Jeffrey Epstein Before Modi’s Visits to U.S. and Israel Drop Site

Trump’s Deputy AG Declares Epstein Document Review ‘Over,’ Angering Democrats NOTUS

MAGA Collapse

Democrat Taylor Rehmet wins solidly red Texas Senate seat in stunning special election upset Texas Tribune

Democrats en déshabillé

House Dem divisions over DHS funding spill out in private call Axios

Police State Watch

Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting ProPublica

How Hackers Are Fighting Back Against ICE Electronic Frontier Foundation (Resilc)

Private prisons are cashing in on Trump’s ICE crackdown. They’re just getting started Salon

How the Pentagon is Quietly Building Trump’s Concentration Camps Migrant Insider

St. Peter police chief intervened and got federal agents to release resident, sources say MPR. Another crazy video.

Wars Come Home

How western wars turned liberal democracies into police states Middle East Eye

Our Famously Free Press

The Arrest of Journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort was a test case. Egberto Off The Record

Imperial Collapse Watch

International law meant to limit effects of war at breaking point, study finds The Guardian

Goodbye dollar dominance, hello global financial anarchy Noah Smith, Asia Times

Healthcare?

The system is unsustainable M (is) Living with Long Covid

Mr. Market

Gold, silver, bitcoin and oil slide as ‘metals meltdown’ rattles markets – business live The Guardian

Why the catastrophe bond market is so hot right now CNBC

Kevin Warsh – Wall Street’s man Michael Roberts

“Liberation Day”

US Container Growth Vanishes With World Trade Flows ‘Moving On’ Bloomberg

Economy

The Human Cost of the Warsh-Palantir Economic Framework Frame the Globe News

The Boomcession: Why Americans Hate What Looks Like an Economic Boom BIG by Matt Stoller

Hard Times in the Delta as Farmers Consider Letting Crops Rot New York Times

AI

Farmland in the crosshairs: Balancing energy expansion and agriculture Farm Progress

Short on resources, special educators are using AI – with little knowledge of the effects The Conversation

OpenClaw (a.k.a. Moltbot) is everywhere all at once, and a disaster waiting to happen Gary Marcus

The Bezzle

Bitcoin Break Below $80,000 Signals New Crisis of Confidence Bloomberg

Emails Show Even Epstein Thought Crypto Pumps are Unethical Gizmodo

The fruits of anger Aeon

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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8 comments

  1. TimH

    From “Goodbye dollar dominance, hello global financial anarchy”

    Gold rose in the pandemic, but it didn’t really take off until 2024. This wasn’t because of US inflation, which was coming down rapidly at the time. In fact, we don’t know exactly why gold started going up; we just know that a bunch of central banks started buying it. Maybe they knew something we didn’t.

    Maybe we’ll find out what central banks knew when/if Germany asks for some of its physical gold back…

    Reply
  2. The Rev Kev

    ‘Tameqqrant
    @tizemtmarxism
    learning that so many of the victims of Epstein’s reign of sexual terrorism were orphaned and impoverished Eastern European girls is unfortunately demonstrative that it was the Pedophile’s Den unleashed and catalyzed when the USSR was dissolved; the dissolution of the Soviet Union produced a vacuum of protection and accountability proved advantageous to international networks of sexual enslavement rings embedded in criminal world economies sustained by imperialism.’

    Yesterday my daughter made the astute observation that if the testimony of the women victims was actually believed and acted on, that you would only need the Epstein files as supporting evidence.

    Reply
  3. Wukchumni

    Goooooooooood Mooooooooorning Fiatnam!

    A number of dogfaces in the platoon had requested apanthropinization, as the situation back in the world was really eating at their morale, I mean imagine your leaders in both politics and business were not only pedophiles, but likely cannibals as an added bonus?

    Permission granted~

    Reply
  4. TimH

    More from “Goodbye dollar dominance, hello global financial anarchy”

    So if the world goes through a transitory period of financial anarchy, in which the dollar is temporarily replaced by gold, China might conceivably stabilize things by buying up much of the world’s gold and using this to make the yuan the reserve currency — if everyone uses gold and China owns the gold, it’s easier to convince the world that the yuan is as good as gold. China’s vast economic heft would, of course, be another powerful argument.

    One problem with this theory, however, is that China has shown absolutely no sign of wanting to do this.

    My understanding is that China has been accumulating gold for quite a while, so perhaps this is exactly China’s medium term plan.

    Reply
  5. eg

    “Irish defence minister confirms plans to scrap Irish neutrality”

    About the dumbest idea I have heard since, well, the Swedes and the Finns rushing onto a sinking ship …

    Reply
    1. The Rev Kev

      Same feeling here. The Irish really had it with their neutrality and were respected for it. With this being abandoned, what is the bet that Irish armouries will be emptied of military gear so that it can be sent to the Ukraine and demands will be made that Ireland send billions to Zelensky as well.

      Reply
  6. Wukchumni

    MLB kept players out of the Hall of Fame despite hitting the most home runs, most hits and most every other thing, and we have an opportunity to clean house thanks to the Epstein revelations-if we’d only act on it, to ban them from what passes for polite society.

    They seem to like islands, so lets put them all on the most remote island in US Territory, Palmyra Atoll. It’s 3,300 miles of open ocean to the US mainland, or NZ from there.

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

    Reply

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