Links 2/28/2026

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1. The Rev Kev February 28, 2026 at 7:11 am

   ‘BreakThrough News
   @BTnewsroom
   At the direction of the U.S., the Honduran government under president Nasry Asfura has expelled its Cuban doctors from the country. The doctors were stationed at a free ophthalmological clinic in Colinas, Santa Bárbara and were part of the Operation Miracle program, which provided services to poor and vulnerable populations.’

   the people of Honduras should thank the Trump regime as they are being taught two valuable lessons-

   -Because markets
   -Go die.

   And now that those doctors are going home, you will have more and more Hondurans dying for lack of doctors. Will the US replace those doctors? Of course not. Why? Because markets.
   1. Pat February 28, 2026 at 12:16 pm

      But they can send a hospital ship to Greenland. /s
2. UA962 February 28, 2026 at 7:44 am

   How far back in time can you understand English? Colin Dorre

   This is one of the coolest things I have read in quite some time. Thanks fo rsharing.
   1. Quentin February 28, 2026 at 8:00 am

      Ditto: English going out of focus leaving the reader to flounder in thick mist.
   2. The Rev Kev February 28, 2026 at 8:17 am

      There is a YouTube video of the same title which is also interesting-

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fxy6ZaMOq8 (2:36 mins)
   3. PlutoniumKun February 28, 2026 at 9:43 am

      If that interests you, Simon Roper on YT has some excellent videos.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=842OX2_vCic&t=10s
   4. brian wilder February 28, 2026 at 2:30 pm

      I have no “ear” for language or sounds — an introvert, I read well and listen poorly — but linguistics fascinates.

      I did like both the Colin Dorre Substack and the Simon Roper YTs a lot. British English today still possesses a remarkable density of dialects, which makes any unified path of regression in time toward or beyond Middle English problematic.

      Old English was recorded as a written language, but encompassed at least four dialect clusters. The Britain where Middle English emerged was at least trilingual: English people would have been exposed orally to Latin, Norman French as well as to local dialects of English and, regionally, Celtic languages.

      Middle English emerged as well from trauma: contact with the Danes as well as the Norman Conquest involved a lot of linguistic friction, knocking away inflections and adding vocabulary. The Black Death killed half the population over a couple of generations in the 14th century as the Hundred Years War got underway, which war was a key development driving the beginning of an English national identity.

      As a reader with poor listening skills, I wonder particularly about the re-emergence of literacy in the period of Middle English. My understanding is that the bulk of extant Middle English manuscript texts are Wycliffe bibles, which as attempts to translate the Latin Vulgate must have been more assaults on English syntax and grammar than records of a living language. But, pride of place in defining Middle English for school children belongs to that early master of chancery English, Chaucer, partly because his Canterbury Tales was among the first works printed for secular, commercial distribution a hundred years later. Early Modern English, successor to Middle English, followed immediately as a project in centralizing and standardizing the language on a base of reading literacy.
      1. Revenant February 28, 2026 at 5:15 pm

         Just today, I learnt about Orm and his Ormulum, a guide to priests on how to read in church the set texts for the day *in English*, when the priests may have had fluency only in Norman French and Latin.

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

         It uses a unique phonemic writing system and strict poetic meter which has meant it is the best record we have of how Middle English was sounded and was stressed.

         (I ended up there on a digression from research the slender r in the Christian Brothers guide to Irish pronunciation and being confounded by Gaelic Type and looking up its origin in Uncial type which led me to Orm and his Ormulum)
3. LawnDart February 28, 2026 at 8:00 am

   Huh? Roar of the Lyin’ would seem more apt…
4. AG February 28, 2026 at 8:00 am

   re: NYT & Israel

   Exposing The New York Times
   The Paper of Zionist Record

   A dossier from 2025
   https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/dossier
   1. Otto Reply February 28, 2026 at 8:44 am

      Thanks AG. Picked up a print edition at a radical bookstore. Will share link with friends who keep sending me NYT links.
5. Irrational February 28, 2026 at 8:26 am

   Working indi.ca link: https://indi.ca/war-against-iran-has-begun-some-sources-to-follow/
   1. Yves Smith Post authorFebruary 28, 2026 at 9:14 am

      Apologies, fixing.
6. DJG, Reality Czar February 28, 2026 at 8:27 am

   Wild Rice and the Rights of Nature.

   I happen to have done a fair amount of research into the history and current culture of the Anishinaabe (Ottawa, Ojibwe, Potawatami). There is no one else quite like them.

   So: “By naming manoomin as plaintiff, the suit translated a longstanding Anishinaabe philosophical tradition into the language of contemporary environmental law. In doing so, the case stands as a model for future legal strategies that attempt to advance the rights of nature.”

   I’d like to point out that so-called Western Civilization — but maybe no longer the U S of A, if ever — has a tradition of reverence for plants. This is especially prominent in the Mediterranean world in the respect for the olive tree, wheat (as bread, the giver of life), and the grape as wine. Bread and wine? Sound familiar?

   And the olive tree was a gift of Athena, as we all know.

   So: this ethic is not unique. The question is why is this ethic dead in the U S of A?

   Meanwhile, Iran: A friend of mine is a scholar of the Middle East / West Asia. He studied in Iran. His brief description of Iranians, rice (and who doesn’t live Persian dill rice?), and portion size: “The more rice, the more love.”

   Sounds dangerous to me.
   1. vao February 28, 2026 at 8:49 am

      “This is especially prominent in the Mediterranean world in the respect for the olive tree”

      Which is why the habit of Israeli settlers to cut down olive trees belonging to Palestinians, and the standard practice of the Israeli army to level entire orchards of Palestinian olive trees appear to be worse than a crime — akin to a mortal sin.
      1. David March 1, 2026 at 5:37 am

         There are olive trees that sre believed to be between 2 and 4 thousand years old. A mote normal life span is 3 to 6 hundred years. But over a thousand is not uncommon. I mean think of that. A living organism that could have survivied through so much.
   2. Judith February 28, 2026 at 9:24 am

      I have been buying wild rice from the White Earth Band of Ojibwe for a long time.

      https://nativeharvest.com/

      (I hope it is OK to recommend this on NC.)
      1. jo6pac February 28, 2026 at 11:00 am

         thanks
   3. herman_sampson February 28, 2026 at 12:23 pm

      If corporations (mere legal fictions) can have rights, moreso should plants, especially with deep cultural ties with indigenous people.
7. DJG, Reality Czar February 28, 2026 at 8:31 am

   I am getting this as the correct link to Indi.ca and “War Against Iran Has Begun”

   https://indi.ca/war-against-iran-has-begun-some-sources-to-follow/
   1. .Tom February 28, 2026 at 10:39 am

      The Telegram links are useful. @PalestineResist is blocked here, reason given: illegal in the US.

      As a Darwin-thumping materialist, my theology is a little unorthodox and I enjoy trying to interpret the famous scriptures relative to my frame so I enjoyed the Quran passage Indi gave too.
8. The Rev Kev February 28, 2026 at 8:42 am

   ‘Brian Hart
   @BrianTHart
   NEW: We just released a groundbreaking @CSIS
   @ChinaPowerCSIS
   database and accompanying report that systematically examines purges within China’s military. Our data shows that PLA purges go far deeper than has previously been understood.’

   As has been mentioned in Comments before, Eisenhower also purged the US officer corps of incompetents or officers who weren’t up to the job before the US even entered WW2. So what if the Chinese are doing the same? They can see that the US will be gunning for them after the Ukraine winds down so now would be a good time to get rid of – as Patton called them – the ‘prancers and the dancers.’ But Kasserine Pass showed that more officers should have been cut loose.
9. Afro February 28, 2026 at 8:45 am

   Regarding the 110 billion invested into OpenAI, it is not clear to me what OpenAI does that its competitors cannot do. Admittedly my exposure to AI is limited (coding mostly), but there’s no evidence that they make the best product even relative to other AI.

   The impression I have is that they’ve been “anointed” the next flagship of American capitalism. Investing in openAI is thus political speculation, which I guess could arguably be the strongest kind of investment. Maybe they have a lot of political connections, Altman has the “right” political ideology, etc.
   1. cfraenkel February 28, 2026 at 1:47 pm

      The point of that tweet was the $110B was mostly made of funding by AWS and Nvidia, to be spent for more AWS and Nvidia ‘goods’. Ie it’s to keep the game of musical chairs going for another 3 ~ 6 mos.

      It doesn’t matter what ‘AI’ is ‘good for’. The only thing that matters is keeping the valuations as high as possible, for as long as possible. It’s vendor financing. Here’s some more funding so you can keep buying our stuff and make us look valuable.
10. lyman alpha blob February 28, 2026 at 9:15 am

    RE: The nine sailors accused of gang ties

    From the article –

    “”The Navy will not tolerate Sailors actively participating in criminal gang activity. Such behavior and affiliation is contrary to good order and discipline, harmful to unit cohesion, and a violation of the oath of service,” the Navy said in a statement to local media.”

    Sure. Because the only criminal gang these sailors are to affiliate with is the US Navy. They don’t like the competition. Now it’s time to go murder some Arabs.
11. .Tom February 28, 2026 at 9:17 am

    Hannah Spencer, Gorton and Denton’s newly elected MP said,

    “But I saw how much harder life is when the things around you are broken, the litter, the fly-tipping, the dirty air.”

    for the benefit of our USian sisters and brothers, fly tipping is a lot like cow tipping but it is a much more delicate operation, requiring different skills and sometimes a suitable tool. Or is it?

    Anyway, it’s a good speech. Idk much about the current Green Party in the UK. I have generally thought of eurogreens as PMC but it doesn’t look that way in Gorton and Denton. Otoh by-elections in the UK don’t always predict much. They are an opportunity no-risk protest votes.
    1. hazelbee February 28, 2026 at 3:17 pm

       to help those outside the UK…

       Fly tipping is a scourge. its awful.

       Picture the most beautiful English country lane in spring time. Vibrant green and the bluebells are just about to break through into bloom. And on the side of the lane in the woods a van or flat bed lorry driver has dumped a fridge, or 10-20 bags of house clearance trash (rubbish), or 20 used tyres.

       It’s that illegal dumping of something that should be recycled or disposed of properly.

       in the uk as a householder you can take a reasonable amount of rubbish to a municipal waste disposal site. But as a paid contractor you need to pay to dispose… so the incentive is there to dump it in the countryside.

       It’s awful.
    2. Windall February 28, 2026 at 6:04 pm

       Mercouris seems to think that the Greens in the UK are pretty much Blairites in the end
12. The Rev Kev February 28, 2026 at 9:27 am

    ‘George Noble
    @gnoble79
    In 45 years on Wall Street, I’ve never seen anything like this.
    Sam Altman just convinced 3 of the world’s smartest investors to fund his losses.
    $110 billion. But ZERO profit in sight.
    The largest private funding round in history.’

    So much for the Masters of the Universe. Idjuts. I wonder if these investing corporations – Amazon, Nvidia & SoftBank – are depending on the Trump regime to make them whole when this thing finally goes down in flames. But since Trump likely has blown up his Presidency with the attack on Iran, there may be no way to get both the House and Senate to sign off on such a bailout.
    1. David March 1, 2026 at 5:44 am

       If there is one thing we can be sure of, the American political establishment will pull together to bail out the rich (and themselves).
13. Wukchumni February 28, 2026 at 9:47 am

    A slew of new record high temps yesterday all over the SoCalist Movement, it its around 100 in February, what can we expect in August?
14. The Rev Kev February 28, 2026 at 9:56 am

    “England was ‘close’ to suspending courts after 2024 riots”

    If you read this article looking sideways, what it is saying that people being convicted was not really about if they were guilty or not but how much space there was in HM prisons to just send people there.
15. Es s Ce Tera February 28, 2026 at 11:57 am

    re: What’s the Least You Can Spend to Visit Walt Disney World? Frommer’s (resilc)

    When I was a child (and very poor) Disney was only for the well-off. Every year returning to school after the summer holidays involved the other kids recounting what they had done that summer at Disney World. It became what socially bonded them into a class, separated them from the have-nots, created the conditions for them to look down upon the have-nots.

    Ironic, given the Disney films, e.g. Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, Alladin, Hunchback, etc., which look kindly on the poor and disadvantaged even while the Disney institution itself was doing the very opposite.
    1. Wukchumni February 28, 2026 at 12:12 pm

       I found a bunch of partially used Disneyland admission and attraction coupons when we were cleaning out my mom’s house, and they dated from 1973 to 1976, and it was as low as $4.50 and as much as $6.25 to get in. Five bucks wasn’t gonna break the bank, 50 years ago.

       We lived only 20 miles away and it was a yearly trip the family took that frankly we all got bored with by the time we were teenagers.
       1. Bugs February 28, 2026 at 12:56 pm

          We went there too a couple times during the annual California trip to see the family. Disneyland was not too expensive in the 70s, but the trip there, hotels and meals added up. One time we got food poisoning at a family reunion picnic on the way to Anaheim. Disneyland was so close and so far away. My dad was about to go to the ER it was that bad. We eventually got back there when I was around 14 and my cousin and I were somehow able to sneak off and smoke some weed in the little wooded area near Cinderella’s palace (it was the 70s!). That was actually the most fun I had there. The trip to Mars and the shrinker ride were awesome on pot lol. My cousin came down with schizophrenia in his early 20s, so that was really the last time we hung out as buddies. Bitter sweet. Disney World was awful in comparison. I think they ruined it with the Epcot world village nonsense that was not really the original vision for the place. Though I did enjoy the Michael Jackson 3d movie.
          1. Wukchumni February 28, 2026 at 3:39 pm

             Gondola cars were the best for reefer hadness…

             Never went to Disney World or any of their other properties, heck its been 45 years since I was at Disneyland.

             Roy Disney caught a fat hog in Florida with that Reedy Creek deal that DeSantis tried to give the kibosh to a few years back.

             Roy wasn’t a skier and had really little interest in pursuing the Mineral King ski resort, but used the threat that Disney wanted to pursue the building of that more than Disney World in Florida, and oh boy did they cave!

             The mistake with Disneyland is that Disney didn’t control anything outside the park, they fixed that in a big way~
    2. curlydan February 28, 2026 at 12:46 pm

       Reading the article made me think that Disney pricing and U.S. health care are very similar–opaque systems designed to confuse and take your money before you realize or can even think of an alternative.

       A friend once suggested to me that the U.S. health care could be greatly improved by simply requiring prices to be published. Pfft! was my initial response. Having worked in corporate settings, I realized that any system (including seemingly innocent trips to theme parks) can be made so complex that price lists will still not prevent a thorough fleecing of the consumer.
16. Bugs February 28, 2026 at 12:00 pm

    “A Russian drone approached France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle at the Swedish port of Malmö on Thursday before being jammed by Swedish forces, officials said”

    If really a RF drone it was, the Russians are perhaps scanning for A-bomb parts being potentially shipped on for assembly in the Ukraine. They seem to take that possibility very seriously.
    1. David March 1, 2026 at 6:07 am

       Why would you put a bomb parts on a french carrier, ship them to Sweden, then send them from there to Ukraine?
17. tegnost February 28, 2026 at 12:49 pm

    It’s worth a few minutes to use the interactive fed chart
    1. cfraenkel February 28, 2026 at 1:53 pm

       Agreed
       The one complaint / quibble was with the choice of income / wealth groupings. They chose top 1%, then 20% bands; as opposed to top 0.1%, 1%, 10% which would have been more illuminating. (probably why, tbh)
    2. Revebant February 28, 2026 at 5:20 pm

       Yes and it really helps to study them individually to see the size of the change clearly.
18. Jason Boxman February 28, 2026 at 12:51 pm

    Meanwhile, in the ongoing Climate Crisis

    Wildfire Seasons Are Starting to Overlap. That Spells Trouble for Firefighting. (NY Times; paywalled)

    Converging wildfire seasons around the world are increasing the risk that firefighting agencies will be less able to share resources like ground crews and water bombers, according to a new study.

    The study, published this month in the journal Science Advances, found that the extreme weather conditions that stoke wildfires around the world are happening on more days each year, causing fire seasons in different regions to overlap more.

    “If a fire season is increasing and eventually overlapping, it will shrink the window of opportunity to help each other in terms of firefighting,” said Cong Yin, a climate scientist at the University of California, Merced, who led the new study. “These changes are attributable to climate change, so we need to mitigate climate change if we want to avoid this future.”
19. flora February 28, 2026 at 1:22 pm

    Glenn Greenwald’s latest, public excerpt:

    Trump Starts a Major Regime-Change War with Iran, Serving Neoconservatism and Israel

    This is the definitive war of choice. It is the exact type of war that Trump and his movement spent a decade vowing to end. And the potential for destruction is infinite.

    Glenn Greenwald
    Feb 28, 2026

    https://greenwald.substack.com/p/trump-starts-a-major-regime-change
20. flora February 28, 2026 at 1:41 pm

    Re: Threatened cabinet ministers – convicted of harassment and unlawful threats – Aftonbladet via machine translation.

    One is reminded that in the 1400’s in Italy, after the Medici’s and the high Renaissance, came the time of Girolamo Savonarola to public prominence and his Bonfires of the Vanities.
    —
    One consolation of reading history is recognizing repeating patterns. It’s a small consolation.
21. flora February 28, 2026 at 2:13 pm

    re: antidote du jour.

    Sheep may safely graze. – J.S.Bach

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1nyzGR3tUE
22. Jason Boxman February 28, 2026 at 8:21 pm

    Generative AI strikes again

    The AI child exploitation crisis is here (NBC)

    The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said it received over a million reports tied to AI-generated child sexual abuse material in just nine months.
23. AG February 28, 2026 at 8:39 pm

    re: WMD new book
    
    Belfer Center Studies in International Security:
    Atomic Backfires: When Nuclear Policies Fail
    Edited by
    Stephen Herzog,
    Giles David Arceneaux,
    Ariel F. W. Petrovics
    The MIT Press
    
    free pdf
    https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/6076/Atomic-BackfiresWhen-Nuclear-Policies-Fail

    Pavel Podvig on his X:

    “A good chapter by Kristin Ven Bruusgaard. She essentially argues that US drive to “fill the gap in the escalation ladder” by low-yield Trident etc. was a response to a threat that doesn’t exist. Check it out in “Atomic Backfires””

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