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Links 6/15/2026

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How I Learned to Read Way, Way More John Paul Brammer

Aliens Might Exist, But These 3 Reasons Explain Why They’re Not Visiting Us StudyFinds

Earth’s Underground Fungus Network Is So Gigantic That If You Stretched It Out, It Would Reach to Other Star Systems Futurism

Climate/Environment

A Big El Niño Event is Likely in 2026. But What’s the Context Behind the Headlines, and What are the Global Implications? Daniel Swain, Inigo Insights

Phytoplankton decline hints trouble for north Atlantic food webs Oceanographic

Rethinking forest restoration beyond tree cover Mongabay

Ebola

DR Congo sees Ebola cases spiraling rapidly Anadolu Agency

Pandemics

Ebola, hantavirus, diphtheria: how distrust in health care is fuelling multiple outbreaks across the globe The Conversation

New Study Explores Potential Cross-Species Spread of Chronic Wasting Disease Morning Ag Clips

Water

Glen Canyon Dam dances with deadpool High Country News

China?

Shanghai Lifeline to Wall Street Wall: How China Saved Elon Musk, Yet Was Shut Out of SpaceX IPO George Chen

China may have fewer people living in poverty than the US Global Currents

India

India signals rethink over West Asia Indian Punchline

An Empirical Look at Indo-Russian Energy Trade Asia Cable

Syraqistan

Iran deputy FM says MoU with US to be signed in Geneva on Friday Press TV

Israel Fails to Sabotage Islamabad Accord… At Least for Now Larry Johnson

US military begins construction of ‘huge base’ outside Gaza to oversee Trump’s colonization plan The Cradle

***

Israel expands military control in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria by 1,000sq km Al Jazeera

The cry the algorithm cannot hear: “It matters to me”, the sentiment that will prevail over the annihilation of the future Patrizia Pisino (translation via GeoPolitiQ)

Old Blighty

UK Boards Russian Shadow Fleet Tanker in First Direct Interdiction Operation gCaptain

NHS patients can’t opt out of Palantir’s data platform – but their hospital can The Register

European Disunion

Ukraine and Moldova to enter first phase of EU membership negotiations The Guardian

Albania’s Civic Revolt Demands the Government’s Resignation Tirana Times

New Not-So-Cold War

Politics: reality or simulation? Events in Ukraine

Ukraine’s Naval Drone Program: Origins, Development, and the Organizations Behind It Black Mountain Analysis

How Russia is Responding to New Ukrainian ‘Drone Threat’ to Cut Crimean Corridor Simplicius

The Future of Warfare is Coming Faster Than Most Think Karl Sanchez

Tulsi’s US-Funded Ukrainian Biolabs Disclosure Is Incredibly Important To The National Debate Andrew Korybko

Onward to War Kathleen McCroskey

Imperial Collapse Watch

De-Blob-ification: A User’s Guide Un-Diplomatic

The myth of the belly of the beast Anti-Empire Project

New Military Recruitment Ad’s Hidden Message Ken Klippenstein

US business group says some critical minerals are ‘nearly unobtainable’ from China Reuters

Everything is fine:

L’affaire Epstein

Model scout who sent young women to Epstein: ‘I trusted him’ CNN

Kathy Ruemmler’s Rewrite of History The Epstein Files by Julie K. Brown

South of the Border

Specter of US intervention runs through Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia El Pais

Trump 2.0

Trumpian State Capitalism Phenomenal World

Global HIV prevention declined drastically after Trump aid cuts, U.N. finds WaPo

Scoop: Trump aides fear Haberman and Swan obtained Situation Room tapes for “Regime Change” Axios

Democrats Suck

Democrats Vow ‘Day One’ Epstein Hearings if They Flip House NOTUS

Obama Legacy

A look inside new Obama museum ahead of its Juneteenth official opening AP

The Obama Center is a Monument to the More Effective Evil Black Agenda Report

Sports Desk

Sporting with Steroids Savage Minds. I hate to admit I missed the ‘Enhanced Games’ in Las Vegas last month.

Groves of Academe

Stanford Students Protest Google CEO’s Speech Over The Company’s Contract With Israel Huff Post

Mr. Market

Markets cheer U.S.-Iran agreement, but some investors caution deal is yet to be signed CNBC

Wall Street Is Gaining Access to New Catastrophe Models to Help Predict Wars Bloomberg

Economy

Our Troubles Are Over: The Average Price Of A New Car Was Closer To $49,000 Than $50,000 In May Jalopnik

Guillotine Watch

Trillionaire Elon Musk’s Destruction of USAID Takes Food Aid From Millions Facing Deadly Hunger Common Dreams

I Hope The Trillionaires Die in Their Bunkers The Sentinel-Intelligence

The Bezzle

As AI companies race to go public, who else is along for the ride? TechCrunch

Crypto Platforms Sold Users on SpaceX IPO Access. The Tokenized Stocks Never Arrived Gizmodo

Bitcoin’s latest plunge revives the debate over owning it—and whether it’s just ‘crypto being crypto’ CNBC

AI

Amazon CEO’s Talks With U.S. Officials Triggered Crackdown on Anthropic Models WSJ

What Washington must do Gary Marcus

From Manhattan to Genesis Communications of the ACM. “The U.S. Department of Energy wants to build a single national platform for doing science with AI.”

Monopoly Round-Up: The Pope and a Silicon Valley Trillionaire Fight Over God Matt Stoller

AI is saving office workers hours — and stealing much of that time back in ‘botsitting’ Los Angeles Times

Class Warfare

The opposite of oppression is not freedom, but time. Kaimataara

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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51 comments

  1. The Rev Kev

    “New Military Recruitment Ad’s Hidden Message”

    As part of that ad, they showed combat footage of a large circle of villagers being bombed. I remember that incident well. The claim was that this was a bunch of terrorists but the truth was they were not sure who they bombed and it was a matter of custom in that region for people to gather in a large circle shape formation to have their meetings. Noticed Hegseth and Trump as part of that video but can’t recall seeing any women or black soldiers come to think of i.

    Reply ↓
  2. Vicky Cookies

    I watched the White House UFC event with left friends last night. I took notes, and will be typing up my reflections when I get the time. The following tune kept playing in my head:

    (To the tune of “This Land is Your Land”)

    This land’s a poor land, this land’s a dry land
    From the data centers in the new AI land
    From the private prisons to the health food deserts
    This land was made for UFC

    As I was walking, I saw a sign there
    And on that sign it said private property
    But on the other side, it said the same damn thing
    That side was made for UFC

    Reply ↓
    1. Wukchumni

      Stellar effort…

      In the aftermath of losing at Stalingrad, Adolf had a ‘total war’ get together to inspire morale, and UFC is essentially total war with no rules really, as far as I can discern-

      My bags got delayed on the flight from Amsterdam and it took forever to go through US customs in Salt Lake City, so I missed my connecting flight to Fresno and the airline bought me a motel room, with the transit van driver weighing in at over 500 pounds…

      Welcome back, I thought to myself-ruefully.

      Reply ↓
      1. Vicky Cookies

        Thanks, Wuk,

        it really is amazing: we just lost a major war and the global economy is on probation with a suspended sentence hanging over its head. Perfect time to have the Marine honor guard escort batterers down marbled steps and into an ad-filled ring. “Look over there”, our rulers shouted, stuffing their pockets with cash and passports.

        Reply ↓
        1. Wukchumni

          A sports coat sans tie, attired in white tennis shoes is never a winning look, but you go with the late stage empire you have-not the one you want.

          Reply ↓
          1. vao

            Can somebody explain why the President of the USA was accompanied in that official circumstance by that ill-dressed bloke (I had no idea who he was, so had to resort to Wikipedia again) rather than by the first lady of the USA?

            Reply ↓
            1. Dr. John Carpenter

              Because the first lady hates his guts, can’t stand UFC and was off with Jared Kushner working on Epstein Island 2.0.

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        2. earthling

          The Xitter post said the evening was “peak America”. No, peak America I think was in the 60’s when MLK and RFK stood down the segregationists, and eventually, with help and work from an imperfect LBJ, the Civil Rights Act came into being. It has been downhill from there, because people we trusted to be our leaders began to sell us out to the highest bidders. Here we are, and it’s hard to say if we are more of a kleptocracy, idiocracy, plutocracy, or gerontocracy; anything but a democracy.

          Reply ↓
    2. KLG

      Vicky, Woody would approve!

      I clicked on the link of the walkout and flyover. I hope that somewhere deep down the Naval aviators and Air Force pilots realized they were playing parts in a farce.

      Reply ↓
    3. t

      You are truly doing the lord’s work. Wishing you and your eyeballs a speedy recovery!

      The bots and perhaps live humans who are tragically misinformed were all over social media this weekend ranting whatabout boxing matches on the white house lawn and pride events as though there is any precedent for Easter egg hunts or a “County Fair” taking weeks to set up and costing more than the annual budget of dozen rural counties.

      Reply ↓
    2. Samuel Conner

      I was half expecting to see a novel by Dustin Gunther* on the shelf.

      —

      *Not the real Dustin Gunther, but the pen name of the novelist favored by Monica Everett’s familiar, Nero, in “Secrets of the Silent Witch”

      Reply ↓
  6. The Rev Kev

    ‘Acyn
    @Acyn
    Hegseth: Nobody makes better or more munitions than the US.
    Brennan: But there is a crisis with those stockpiles right now.
    Hegseth: That is a manufactured story that the media wants to peddle.
    Brennan: You testified under oath that it would take years to rebuild those stockpiles.’

    Such a doofas. You wonder if when this war wraps up and Trump is looking for a scapegoat to take the blame away from himself, if he will decide to throw Hegseth under the bus. He is the obvious target. What about trust you ask? With trump’s relationships, trust only goes one way.

    Reply ↓
    1. Samuel Conner

      It gets better. At around 1:40 of the embedded clip, SoW PH says, “you don’t have to read back to me what I testified …”

      Reply ↓
  7. Sibiriak

    Democrats Vow ‘Day One’ Epstein Hearings if They Flip House
    ———————————————————————————————–

    The Democrats see the Epstein class as their sworn enemy. Blood will flow!

    Reply ↓
    1. vao

      So they assure us that the very first day of Epstein hearings — probably dealing with lots of formalities and prolegomena — will take place, but do not guarantee that “day two”, “day three”, etc, will be held. Seems legit and perfectly in line with what one can expect from the Democrats.

      At least that is how I parse their announcement.

      Reply ↓
    2. TomDority

      I have been hearing about the Epstein files for years…….it leads me to believe the Dems have been sitting around for years with fingers in their ears making them deaf to, not only the Epstien files but, the plethora of other issues upon which they carefully choreograph kabuki theater to avoid them duties to serve.
      I guess those hearing will result in more creative episodes of dramatic nothingness.

      Reply ↓
    5. Ben Gunn

      How will they deal with their own Epstein Class members? Is throwing Clinton under the bus on the table? I’d guess they have a plan to minimize damage to themselves.

      Reply ↓
  8. DJG, Reality Czar

    Margaret Kimberly. Always worth reading. Black Agenda Report.

    The library as empty suit: “Now Obama, ever the smooth talking, shape shifting, neo-liberal has erected a monument. But to what? This center is technically not a presidential library. Presidential libraries hold archives on-site which are maintained by the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA). NARA is digitizing Obama’s papers but those will be held in Maryland, not at the Obama Center in Chicago.”

    Oh.

    And digitizing the presidential papers means being able to trace the searches and searchers. That’s the scary thing about books in this techno-drenched era. Books are still a private experience. They aren’t mediated by one’s telephone or located by GPS.

    PS: Michaelmas (above) recommends Stoller’s piece about Musk and his big world of nothing versus the pope, curator of an institution with plenty of problems but at least still animated by figures like Saint Francis and Saint Claire (his co-conspirator). And it is a good essay on the dilemma now in high relief in the US of A between techno gas bags and what remains of so-called U.S. religion.
    –And then you have Obama and his simulacrum of a library. Obama, the pseudo-intellectual, likely would compare this touristico-real-estate phenomenon to a short story by Borges. Stoller and Papa Francesco have other ideas.

    Reply ↓
        1. The Rev Kev

          I had forgotten how fugly that building design was until I saw that image in the “A look inside new Obama museum ahead of its Juneteenth official opening” article. It has no relationship to the land that it is on nor the buildings that it is near. And why so few windows? You read that article and it is obvious that it is in no way a Presidential Library but a sort of Disneyland trip in Obama’s honour.

          Reply ↓
          1. vao

            It somehow reminds me of a WWII Flakturm.

            The interior looks like a kind of museum, with all those exact reconstitutions of various White House rooms.

            Reply ↓
  9. leaf

    This comment will probably be put in moderation due to not being fully relevant, but this weekend there has been a mass media campaign with thousands of posts like the one below, either coordinated or through mass (AI powered) psychosis, from Hindutva supremacists running the narrative that China had and still has an Indian style caste system. It seems some genuinely believe it. I’m not sure what the goal of this campaign is (promote or ridicule the caste system?) but it has been amusing to observe.

    https://x.com/Isotope_239/status/2064934893818454411?s=20

    Reply ↓
  10. t

    I’d love to read more, but I

    am no longer single.

    The best way to read, for me, these days, is take a book and leave the house for a couple of hours.

    Same for many of my friends.

    Reply ↓
    1. Sibiriak

      Thanks! I wasn’t exactly chomping on the bit to watch another Iran war video, but that one was certainly worth it.

      Reply ↓
      1. flora

        I wonder why T was suddenly so vehement that this deal get done now.

        My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that this Iran debacle, a debacle propping up Isr – the most internationally disliked country in the world – is destroying the T brand around the world.

        How are the T international golf courses doing just now? The T name has been removed by court order from the Kennedy Center. (Another issue less related to brand name than to overstepping his authority.) The Albanians are revolting against a T son-in-law buying an island to create another T “paradise.”
        https://www.the-journal.com/articles/what-to-know-protests-grow-over-trump-family-linked-resort-in-albania/

        T might not care about rising prices or the American economy, but he’s keenly interested in his brand name’s cache:
        Big, Beautiful, The Best, The Most Amazing, Golden.
        The longer this nonsense goes on the more the brand reputation sinks, imo. From gold to… what… lead? That’s some alchemy.

        The T brand is no longer golden around the world.
        T knows it. The question is how far down the T brand goes.

        That’s my 2 cents.

        Reply ↓
  12. The Rev Kev

    ‘user avatar
    Julia 🇺🇸
    @Jules31415
    Everything about the UFC Freedom 250 opening ceremony at the White House is peak America, from President Trump’s walkout with Dana White to the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds flyover during the Zac Brown Band’s performance of the National Anthem 🇺🇸’

    They had some footage of this event on the news tonight and I noted two things. The first was that – like the FIFA cup – that there were empty audience sections which could not be hidden. The second was that there were whole sections that were filled with service personnel. This would seemingly confirm a report from the other day that they had difficulty in filling those seats and were resorting to bringing in service people to hide this fact.

    Reply ↓
    1. Wukchumni

      Wasn’t the whole event catered to appeal to young adult males of voting age?

      Benedict Donald gave an hour and a half talk with local boy turned twitch streamer/compulsive gambler Adin Ross, in the run up to the 2024 election.

      His approval ratings currently must be all evangs, and nobody else.

      Reply ↓
    2. flora

      Yesterday was Flag Day in the US, where households will fly the flag on their porch or doorway and the main streets in towns will fly the flag on street corners. It’s an old custom going back to the US Civil War. Call it a gentle patriotic display.

      This is the first year I didn’t see any American flags flying on the main street or private residences. Nobody I know is excited about the US 250th anniversary. It seems like another country now rules D.C.

      This admin has done more damage to US morale than even W did. That’s quite the…uh… accomplishment? / my 2 cents

      Reply ↓
  13. AG

    re: Nordstream 2 lawsuit revealed

    BERLINER ZEITUNG

    google-transl.

    Nord Stream 2: Now the operator is suing against the EU’s withdrawal from Russian gas.

    The pipeline company Nord Stream 2 AG is demanding the complete repeal of the EU regulation. The lawsuit was not previously public knowledge.
    https://archive.is/TMexn

    “(…)
    According to a procedural notice published Monday in the Official Journal of the European Union, the operating company, Nord Stream 2 AG, filed a lawsuit against the European Parliament and the Council of the EU at the end of April. However, it only became public knowledge now.

    The lawsuit challenges EU Regulation 2026/261, which aims to phase out Russian gas imports from 2027 onwards. The case is being heard before the General Court of the EU under case number T-264/26.
    (…)
    The company argues (…) that the regulation amounts to a de facto expropriation without compensation.
    (…)
    Furthermore (…) should have been enacted on a different legal basis.
    (…)”

    Can take years though. Outcome unclear according to this report.

    Reply ↓
    1. vao

      I have not followed this for a while, but at some point Nord Stream 2 AG had filed for insolvency. I wonder what exact kind of reprive that firm was given if it still exists as an entity able to launch a judicial process in a court of law.

      Reply ↓
  15. pjay

    – ‘De-Blob-ification: A User’s Guide’ – Un-Diplomatic

    – ‘The myth of the belly of the beast’ – Anti-Empire Project

    – ‘New Military Recruitment Ad’s Hidden Message’ – Ken Klippenstein

    Thank you for posting these. Taken together, they provide an excellent answer to the age-old question, “why no socialism – or “revolution” or even much of a “left” – in the US?” The Anti-Empire Project essay gives us a comprehensive summary of the multi-level mechanisms of ruling class hegemony in the US. Former Blobster Van Jackson’s description of the Blob, and its take-over by the even more reactionary MAGA cadre, is very useful (I’d add Ray McGovern’s very descriptive acronym ‘MICIMATT’ to better define Blob elements). And Klippenstein’s example illustrates the effects of Blob take-over by the even greater war-mongering Zionist MAGA faction. These all appear under the Imperial Collapse Watch heading. Unfortunately, each illustrates why we are still waiting for that to happen.

    Reply ↓
  16. In Cold Chud

    Re: I Hope The Trillionaires Die in Their Bunkers

    For me, the endpoint of a kind of hope something like what the author is describing is that, once the human species has exterminated itself, the biosphere will recover without us. Is there an argument for being attached to this species while eschewing individual or tribal graspings? Why is it so important that human consciousness witness everything? There is no reason to believe that anything humans build after this will be any better than the nightmare we have created for ourselves now.

    Imagine hating this planet so much that you devote your entire life to trying to escape it, to go live on a dead red one.

    The essential ugliness of the idea of space colonization cannot be stressed enough. It is the belief that the Earth is an empty beer can to be crushed against one’s forehead, perhaps while loudly belching, and cracking open another.

    Reply ↓
  17. pjay

    – ‘Scoop: Trump aides fear Haberman and Swan obtained Situation Room tapes for “Regime Change” -Axios

    Very interesting for a lot of reasons – if true. It is Axios, after all, but at least Barak Ravid didn’t write this story. There are some obviously important implications if the story is indeed factual. But even if not, if the administration believes it to be there could also be some significant fallout. At least they can’t blame it on Tulsi, since she was never allowed into the room with the Big Boys and Girls.

    Reply ↓

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