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Links 4/3/2026

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Inside Nepal’s fake rescue racket Kathmandu Post

Artemis II Astronauts Have ‘Two Microsoft Outlooks’ and Neither Work 404 Media

Climate/Environment

Invisible plumes and ‘terrible pollution’: the reality of the US gas sites rated ‘grade A’ The Guardian

India’s winter is fading Down to Earth

Preterm birth attributable to exposure to chemicals used in plastic materials: a global estimate eClinicalMedicine

Cognitive and Educational Outcomes After Preterm Birth or Low Birth Weight JAMA Pediatrics

Pandemics

Covid turns seven while the public turns their back That Katharine

More people requesting ‘unvaccinated’ blood for themselves or their children CIDRAP

China?

Chinese navy arrives in Sea of Japan just as Tokyo deploys long-range missiles South China Morning Post

China opens its capital account on its own terms East Asia Forum

Southeast Asia

Chokepoint in the Gulf: What the US-Israeli War on Iran Means For Southeast Asia’s Food Security FULCRUM

India

Prime Minister Modi put himself at the centre of India’s foreign policy. Now the joke is on him Scroll

Syraqistan

Strikes damage Iran’s historic medical institute as US-Israeli forces expand assault New Arab

Israel Strikes Pharmaceutical Factory in Tehran That Made Cancer Drugs Truthout

Trump warns Tehran ‘more to follow’ after strike destroys Iran’s largest bridge The Guardian

Iran’s largest steelmaker Mobarakeh halts all production after second strike Intellinews

Senior Iranian Official Involved in Attempt at Peace Talks Severely Wounded by US-Israeli Strike Antiwar

Gulf states seek UNSC mandate for force to protect Hormuz; China, France, Russia may veto move WION

THE GROUND WAR BEGINS? Seymour Hersh

***

Israel Is Conducting a Campaign to Ethnically Cleanse Southern Lebanon of Shia Residents Drop Site

Kurdish-Azeri Relations and the Future of Iran 21 Rays

European Disunion

Albania on alert after US warning of potential Iran-linked threats Intellinews

HOW A FAKE IRANIAN TERROR GROUP WAS INVENTED TO PROSCRIBE IRGC IN EUROPE – THE STORY OF ASHAB AL-YAMIN Mint Press News

Panic buying drains French gas stations RT

Italy taps into US gas as Golden Pass LNG deliveries set for June Baird Maritime

A Toxic Dependency: Europe’s Growing Reliance on US Gas Green European Journal

Russia’s LNG exports to Europe hit record high in March as Middle East supplies suspended TASS

Bulgaria requests EU support to fend off election meddling in April vote Politico

Old Blighty

New Not-So-Cold War

Dronefetishists vs infantrymaxxers Events in Ukraine

Gazprom says drone attack on TurkStream entry point in Russia was repelled Turkish Minute

Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy offers expertise on keeping waterways open amid Middle East conflict The Guardian

South of the Border

Russia to send second oil tanker to Cuba, minister says France24

Trump 2.0

The architect of DOJ’s Epstein mess is fired The Epstein Files by Julie K. Brown

Trump weighs more Cabinet changes after Bondi ouster Politico

Is Trump Purging Generals Opposed to a Ground War in Iran, or is it Something Bigger? Larry Johnson

New Hegseth Order Lets Troops Carry Personal Firearms on Base Military.com

“Liberation Day”

Liberation Day May Be a Year Old but the Uncertainty Isn’t PYMNTS

Trump imposes tariffs on pharmaceuticals, adjusts duties on steel, other metals Politico

US Trade Deficit Widens in February As Imports Offset Record Exports gCaptain

Democrats Suck

DCCC chief says tariffs will hand Democrats the House Semafor

This Election Is Too Darn Important To Be Left To Merciful Salad Eaters Defector

The Uniparty

US spends $2.1 billion a day on the Iran War Stephen Semler

Golden Dome, ships and missiles top Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense wish list Defense News

More worry a ‘great deal’ about health costs than economy, poll finds Semafor

Police State Watch

Death of a refugee left at a Buffalo doughnut shop by Border Patrol is ruled a homicide AP

Big Brother Is Watching You Watch

LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer Browsergate

Imperial Collapse Watch

Sanctity Lost: Even Neocon Pantheon Declares US a ‘Rogue Superpower’ Simplicius

Reproducing U.S. Hegemony in the Digital Finance Era: Assessment of the Trump Administration’s Cryptocurrency Strategy by MA Bo and TU Yaling ChinAffairs

Agriculture

Fertilizer traders cash in on war profits, farmers pay the price Bloomberg

Economy

Amazon to issue 3.5% surcharge on fulfillment services as fuel, logistics costs rise Modern Retail

Let’s Be Very Clear: Trump’s Iran War Is Making You Poorer Common Dreams

All roads lead to stagflation Michael Roberts

The Divergence of Exchange Values and Use Values in U.S. LNG Wawick Powell

Gas turbine prices soar 195% as market faces supply-demand crisis Wood Mackenzie

AI

Sycophantic Chatbots Cause Delusional Spiraling, Even in Ideal Bayesians arXiv

How OpenAI Hacked The Military-Industrial Complex The Lever

Class Warfare

May Day General Strike Movement Continues to Grow Payday Report

‘We Just Want Life to Be Sustainable’: LAUSD Workers Near Strike in Contract Fight Capital & Main

A Woodchuck’s DaydreamHickman’s Hinterlands

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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66 comments

  1. Wukchumni

    Leavitt to Believer

    In this perhaps last segment, Karoline enters the fray with a larger than usual gold cross draped around her cherubic not so little neck, and you know how the boss has a gilt trip going on.

    Tulsi would like a word, and disguised as a Fox reporter, gets called on for the next question, and thrusts off her overcoat to reveal a striking Lamé top that more than matches a bigger, better cross… game on.

    1. Revenant

      And Kirsti Noem’s husband throws open his gabardine and its a dead heat in a Zeppelin race!

  2. Wukchumni

    The only thing that stops a bad military guy with a gun is a good military guy with a gun…
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    The directive tells installation commanders to presume approval when troops request permission to carry a privately- owned firearm for personal protection on base, reversing policies that largely limited personal weapons to law enforcement or training. The move follows a string of shootings on military installations and raises questions about enforcement, safety and how armed personnel will operate alongside existing security forces.

    1. Tom Stone

      Wuk, if someone decides to go postal on a Military base they are unlikely to be concerned about a regulation that forbids them to carry a personal weapon.
      Violently insane people are not law abiding.
      Allowing people who are trusted to fly apache helicopters, drive tanks with honking big cannon and machine guns, fire mortars and so on to carry a personal weapon on base seems reasonable to me.
      Of course they could, you know, try to reason with someone who is in the act of murdering their fellow soldiers.

      1. Christopher Mann

        Tom, I would argue that anyone who willingly joins the US military at this point is violently insane. They are clearly the stormtroopers of an evil empire who are commiting horrific crimes against civilians even as we speak.

        1. Duke of Prunes

          “Violently insane” or economically disadvantaged trying to make something of their life, willing to roll the dice (most soldiers survive war, never kill anyone, lots of non-combat positions) to feed themselves and their families, maybe use the gi bill to go to college. Drive through any poor rural area and you’ll see many armed forces recruiting billboards.

          1. albrt

            Having been in the military myself, I accepted this excuse for voluntarily joining in war crimes for too long.

            No more.

          2. In Cold Chud

            It is quite interesting how disapprobation is distributed, when it comes to participation in the machine. The highly personal aspersions against ICE agents (not necessarily wrong), somehow never apply to engineers working for defense contractors, who are, after all, just following the incentives. It really brings to mind Alexander Cockburn’s question: Is your hate pure? For many on the left, the answer is, pretty clearly, no; it’s heavily diluted with the desire to kick down, and the willingness to absolve others of one’s own class background. Personally, I think everyone should be judged for participation in the system (yes, all of it) beyond what is necessary for survival.

            1. Taner Edis

              Maybe.

              One of the reasons I like the teaching-oriented academic position I have is that as a physicist, one of the main alternatives is weapons research or something adjacent to it. (A lot of funding goes that way.) I get to avoid that. But I’m not entirely independent of weapons research—one major reason even my sort of liberal-arts STEM gets funding is that we train students who make their way to the military-industrial complex eventually.

              So my hands are not clean. But how dirty are they? Does it count in my favor that physics attracts international students, some which very likely fall into the military orbits of countries that might resist domination by the Epsteinian West?

              1. In Cold Chud

                I wouldn’t imagine your degree of complicity is any greater than, say, that of a better-paid teacher in a Connecticut suburb that depends on property taxes from workers at Raytheon or General Dynamics. Benefiting from something does not necessarily mean contributing to it–although, in practice, most people who knowingly benefit from the thing do end up at least de facto politically supporting it. The nightmare aspect of military Keynesianism is that it is impossible to undo. I may have recently alienated a sometime MIC-adjacent friend who was the least touchy on this subject. He was not the first.

                1. Giovanni Barca

                  I believe Aquinas calls it “remote material cooperation” witb sin/evil. And it is part of the horror of American society (surely others too) that we are almost all of us remote material cooperators if not worse.

    2. The Rev Kev

      Hey, maybe this will cause both officers and NCOs to be more polite to enlisted personnel.

  3. The Rev Kev

    “Is Trump Purging Generals Opposed to a Ground War in Iran, or is it Something Bigger?”

    ‘Trump also fired Attorney General Pam Bondi last night and The Atlantic reports, citing sources familiar with White House planning, that discussions are underway about the possible departure of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, FBI Director Kash Patel, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer from the Trump administration.’

    I’m starting to notice a trend here. If you are a female Cabinet member or top official, then your head is on the chopping block. First was Kristi Noem, then Pam Bondi and now maybe soon Tulsi Gabbard & Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Soon it will be only johnsons as far as they eye can see. He is obviously aligned with Hegseth who has deliberately blocked the promotion of female officers. That should play well with women voters come November.

    1. Wukchumni

      You’ll notice the trend of females with names ending in ‘i’ that get shitcanned…

      Kristi, Bondi, and then Tulsi and Lori.

      1. jefemt

        I guess that means we won’t have Susie Wiles wild-eyed reactions of incredulity as she reacts to the boss-man’s verbal ejaculations? I will miss that look, those eyes…

      2. ambrit

        In advertising that is referred to as the Male ‘I’. (For instance, you do not see many “Fast Car” sales commercials featuring cute, muscle-bound guys now, do you? [I have always been a proponent of those commercials being required to run a banner crawl: “Girls extra.”])
        Speaking of jonsons, the silent “film” by Welles, “Too Much Jonson.” It too perfectly reflects today’s Empire policies.
        Per the above, I will dare to edit the famous old saying thus: “First as tragedy, then as farce, finally as Armageddon.”
        See (31 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n9P55BTwOk

    2. TimH

      Pam Bondi singlehandledly destroyed the credibility (presumption of DOJ good faith by courts), and left acolytes in the senior positions since the moral seniors either left or were kicked out. DOJ needs an Aegean Stables cleanout and then, only then, a rebuild. Not holding my breath.

    5. David in Friday Harbor

      If this all sounds remarkably familiar, it’s because it is.

      Our ass-hat-in-chief’s only true ”success” in life was his turn as the host of the “reality” television game show The Apprentice. The show is generally acknowledged to have been heavily manipulated and edited by producer Mark Burnett (formerly of the British Parachute Regiment in Northern Ireland and the Falkland Islands) in order to create a “constructed reality” of phony set-ups, “shock” plot-twists, and player “embarrassments” in order to justify the climatic weekly “firing” of contestants in the dramatically-lit stage-set “boardroom.” Somebody’s got to go every week.

      This is quite evidently the farcical persona that Trump is attempting to re-create as President. The bigger farce is that no one is calling him out on it.

  4. Tom Stone

    I wish Joy to all who seek to follow the path that Jesus trod, it is not an easy one.

    Over the decades i have heard a few things that have brought me closer to the now.
    from Swami Ashokananda “There are two paths to God, Not this, Not that and Yes this Yes that”

    From George Hubbard, who sang the Blues ” If you want to be happy, do what happy people do”
    And who asked me a question that changed my life. “Does your skin separate you from the World, or connect you to it?”
    It is a choice.

    From David Bettencourt Realtor.
    “If you can’t be grateful for where you are and what you have you can always be grateful for where you are not and what you do not have”

    Buddhists seek to realize that they are one with everything, to directly experience the unity of all things which is shielded from us by Maya, illusion.
    Bliss.
    I’ve visited there twice and it’s better than Chocolate, ask HMP if you don’t believe me,

    For myself I greet the sun every day and say “Thank you” to the Universe, asking that I may percieve the beauty surrounds us all throughout the day.
    Sometimes it works, for a while.
    My prayers are simple “God please take away my fear, let me not speak or act from fear or anger”.
    Sometimes that works, for a while
    I do have a Higher Power, she laughs a lot and has great legs.

    May there be Peace in your heart, if no where else.

  5. Bugs

    “Prime Minister Modi put himself at the centre of India’s foreign policy. Now the joke is on him”

    There’s something that’s not really obvious about Modi ji when seen from the West, that you do notice when you’ve spent time in India and hear him speaking and interacting with others. He gives off the air of a very naive and socially clumsy man, but with a certain astute cunning, a precise ability to time his few words to impress his followers at the proper moment, and a talent for using symbols that provoke fury in the Hindutva true believers. It’s a phenomenon that’s hard to pin down and the opposition can’t seem to turn the corner on the play around him.

  6. Mark Gisleson

    The Defector link on Rahm Emanuel is too delicious. Glad I read it before checking the overnight war youtubes.

    1. Bugs

      Yeah, that’s a must read. Really funny little essay that I think will age well and is circulating rn to the connected Millennials in the Beltway.

      1. cfraenkel

        Agreed. The one quible was “which is that Rahm Emanuel is, uhh, basically Rorschach from Watchmen

        Rorschach was one of the good guys, as far as that goes in Watchmen…. I wouldn’t give Emanuel that much credit.

    2. Lefty Godot

      The quoted description of Rahm standing foursquare against “the leftist lurch” of the Democrat party apparatus is too apt. The media keep talking about “leftism” as if it has nothing to do with class and labor, and is instead all about handing out upper level symbolic capitalist jobs (even up to the level of President/Chief Drone Murderer) to the right BIPOC/LGBTQIA+ actors. The real left has been defeated by being redefined out of the conversation. I’m sure Newsom, Pritzker, Shapiro, and all the other “serious” Democrat candidates that the Zionist media relentlessly promote, until one becomes “inevitable”, will likewise be foursquare against that hallucinated lurch and will therefore be portrayed as tough and realistic and able to attract those hallucinated Republican crossover voters that the Democrats base their entire excuse for a strategy on.

  7. The Rev Kev

    ‘nxthompson
    @nxthompson
    Pretty wild. The first image represents objects in Earth’s orbit at the end of the 1950s. The second is Earth’s orbit now.’

    It is pretty wild. But Elon Musk saw the same images and decided what he wanted to do was to launch a million more satellites in orbit because capitalism and greed.

    1. Wukchumni

      I once suffered ‘Kessler Syndrome’ in my 20’s when drinking too much cheap whiskey, with one hellova hangover.

    2. hereweare

      He hopes to be on Mars or the Moon (each ~10 satellites) by the time they all crash into each other.

    3. hamstak

      Around 1993 I was working in a grocery store in Omaha, NE, where they were displaying drawings by local 10-ish year old pupils with an environmental theme. The left side of each was a sketch of the planet as the child saw it then, and the right side how they imagined it would be in a few decades or so. Most of them were optimistic, portraying a polluted Earth at the time and an improved environment in the future. But one student had drawn a black, steely enclosure around the planet as his projection for the future, accompanied by the ominous words “IT’S COMING”. That was one prescient child.

  8. Mr. Woo

    “Sycophantic Chatbots Cause Delusional Spiraling, Even in Ideal Bayesians”

    Just skimmed this and it seems that they didn’t really prove anything empirically but created a statistical model that shows this effect despite trying to prevent spiralling.

    Anybody with more academic bona fides that can elaborate?

  9. .Tom

    The highly theatrical nature of American and Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity is so obviously showy that I wonder what it is for. Is it a compensation behavior for insecure people who think it establishes the appearance of their strength? Do they believe making a big show of vile criminality helps achieve war goals or political ones? Is domestic political PR or international posturing, e.g. maintaining the appearance of the Ledeen Doctrine?

    So many questions, I know and I’m sorry. Perhaps I find it hard to imagine my way into the head space of people who make these choices.

    1. Carolinian

      Taibbi–I remember him….used to be a thing.

      Does he even still do videos with Kirn? Tracey is not a step up.

      1. AG

        It´s certainly not.

        (I haven´t listened enough though to give such a critical verdict. Tracey has his merits. But I guess it´s offering way less wisdom and insightfulness due to the narrower intellectual corridors now gauged also the trajectories of T&T are too similar to create something extraordinary.)

        But perhaps it´s a way to go back to the “roots” at least as Taibbi is concerned.

        Which is sad because the other thing did open a door for something new and important.

        I believe they said Kirn needs a pause and the format too.
        Whatever that means in reality.

        2. Carolinian

          Tracey’s contrarian shtick is several years out of date. There’s only one real story at the moment and NC is covering it.

          And in that sense it matters not even one teeny tiny little bit whether the zeitgeist is being unfair to Epstein. Heck even Russiagate is looking a lot better if you substitute the name of the country that is really–and perhaps always has been–controlling Trump.

          1. Michael Fiorillo

            Indeed, especially when we recall that the real opening bell for Russiagate was the indictment of Michael Flynn, who was defenestrated for calling up the Russian ambassador to the UN as a favor for the Israelis.

            1. AG

              Interesting angle.
              But so far how much do we know about ISR involvement in Russiagate becoming “Russiagate”.

  11. TomDority

    DCCC chief says “The American people see the damage that’s being done” and “they want folks who are going to stand up for them,” DelBene said.
    Has the DCCC chief actually found folks who are going to stand up for them?? I have not found any with actual plans…just a bunch of old clothes stuffed with straw… scarecrows propped up on stage.
    Why pass a bill to remove qualified immunity for Immigration jackboots when you can just create theatrical chaos for political points while Fing with people’s paychecks –
    As for all the spending on prison warehouses for people, data centers to burn fuel, war spending to kill people, …. Its the economy which, as everything else, has become a cause for national security and defending democracy. The people who have horded the treasures, the 1%- who like dragons of lore, sit atop their heaps ever paranoid of marauders …. understand that the money needs to exponentially roll in to sustain their lair of treasure from the marauding bands of debt service.
    Without all this paper trading and investment in illusionary/non-tangible AI and larded expenditures in arms, the prison industrial complex, law and order….why, the economy would show its human-tangible immiseration of the masses…. .. the perfect breeding ground for a Strongman/narcissist/dictator-like/imperialist……like Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip in ‘It Can’t Happen Here’ by Sinclair Lewis –
    The parallels are freaky

    1. Bugs

      Read the Defector essay on Rahm Emanuel. He’s the one that the DCCC will pull the trigger on. Problem solved ✔️

    1. ThirtyOne

      Also on Covert Action Magazine, an essay that takes me way back.

      “Deep State” Researcher Mae Brussell Was a Visionary Who Foresaw the Rise of Fascism in America

      Reading some ten newspapers a day, along with hundreds of books on assassination and espionage, Brussell was a pioneer researcher into the John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinations.

      She was also way ahead of her time in recognizing the hidden CIA involvement in Watergate, the Jonestown massacre, Charles Manson killings, Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), and murder of John Lennon among other “deep-state” crimes.

      https://covertactionmagazine.com/2026/03/24/deep-state-researcher-mae-brussell-was-a-visionary-who-foresaw-the-rise-of-fascism-in-america/

      I used to listen to Mae on KLRB (Carmel By The Sea) weekly in the ’70s. One of the main things she would research was hidden capital flows and the role of banks.

          1. Patrick Lynch

            That’s a blast from the past! WRFL 88.1 used to run his radio show as “The History of the Future” in the 1990’s. Sometime around 1996, I was going through stations locking in the presets for a stereo I had just installed in my car when I landed on Emory’s show. He was talking about the then upcoming 2000 election and that George W. Bush would be the president because of the Supreme Court and it would be over the count in Florida. At the time, I laughed out loud because I already knew who GWB was and considered him a clown thinking there was no way he’d be president of anything let alone the entire country.

            So the night of the 2000 election, everything happened just as Dave Emory predicted three or four years earlier. I remembered that broadcast and was chilled to the bone thinking of it. He has a website here: https://spitfirelist.com/

    1. hereweare

      The words “tries to” seem to indicate it’s not having much luck, at a time when Gulf states would presumably be instantly snapping up anything that proved capable.

  14. Lee

    “Sanctity Lost: Even Neocon Pantheon Declares US a ‘Rogue Superpower’ Simplicius”

    Two weeks ago we had seen arch-neocon Robert Kagan making surprising comments to fellow neocon grandee Bill Kristol about Israel essentially being a burden to the US. This came as a shocking canary-in-coalmine moment signaling a kind of revolt amongst the deep state against the excesses of the current administration.

    Now Kagan himself has penned an oped in The Atlantic outright calling the US a rogue state…

    Confirmation of Mearsheimer’s recent observation that the deep state is in a state of uproar over the Israeli/U.S. war against Iran. As was sometimes the case during my misspent youth, I awaken surprised to find myself in the presence of strange bedfellows.

  15. Jason Boxman

    In other news, America is not a serious country

    Wealthy Donors Are Hiding Political Money in Secretive Nonprofits (NY Times; no luck with archive.ph)

    Using philanthropy for campaign donations is illegal. But an exception for some nonprofits has allowed Democratic billionaires like Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg to remain anonymous when they want to play politics.

    fun

    So-called dark money is not new. But a review of new election filings and internal fund-raising documents obtained by The New York Times shows a stunning increase in the use of these shadowy philanthropic groups to raise money on behalf of candidates in federal elections. This is particularly true among Democrats, who have sharply escalated their reliance on them since 2020, far surpassing Republicans.

    Meanwhile, Democrats are playing the Supreme Court card again?

    Liberal Group Warns That Trump Could Have Two More Supreme Court Picks

    Demand Justice plans to tie Republicans running for Senate this year to a possible fight to fill vacancies that could emerge on the Supreme Court.

  16. abierno

    Thanks for the link on the deliberate bombing of the Pasteur Institute – should be an immediate topic at the Security Council. One of the primary Institutes addressing issues of orphan disease and vaccine. Hopefully, in addition to the very detailed, in depth military planning, this facility was hardened for such assault. A war crime that threatens any and all on the planet. Again, in some ways as critical to world well being as the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. This war crime needs to be widely publicized and condemned.

  17. AG

    re: RU & Arctic trade route

    Andrei Martyanov with just simple graphics suggesting that Arctic Sea Route will become big for RU who have the technical means to use it.

    http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2026/04/meanwhile-in-russia.html

    Quoting Arctic Council

    Fishing vessels are the most common type of ship in the Arctic, representing 40% of all ships that entered the Arctic Polar Code area. The second most common ship type is general cargo ships. Between 2013 and 2025, the ship type that saw the greatest increase in the Arctic was crude oil tankers, which saw a 396% increase over the 12 years. The second greatest increase was bulk carriers with 156% more in 2025 than in 2013. Cruise ships have also increased significantly, with 123% more cruise ships in 2025 than in 2013.

  20. Mikel

    Panic buying drains French gas stations – RT

    File under: “Let’s make a bad situation worse”

    1. vidimi

      hasn’t been my experience in my part of the country, though I go top up even when I use up only a quarter tank. I assume that fuel prices now are the cheapest they are likely to be for a long time

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