Links 7/9/2026

Australian officials ask fans to respect the privacy of Neil, a 1-ton seal who respects nothing AP Why do countries need industrial policy? Global Currents Climate/Environment ‼️ Whopper of a heat dome coming, and that’s no exaggeration! In all aspects: size, longevity, and especially intensity this will be extreme. The heat dome should shatter all-time records for upper level pressure in the Northern Plain States. Actual Temperatures (not heat index)… pic.twitter.com/C3HF7N2nbL — Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) July 8, 2026 Some Monsters are Real The Climate Casino WTF is happening with Earth’s Energy Imbalance? The Tradeoff Pandemics Armed conflict tied to higher measles burden worldwide CIDRAP Measles outbreak confirmed at Arizona immigration detention center Arizona Daily Star Japan Tokyo to Nagoya in 40 minutes? Japan’s 500 kmph Maglev project gets green light Indian Express China? What China really wants from global governance Think China Beijing’s own goal in the Pacific Lowy Institute Duckworth reaffirms U.S. commitment in wake of Trump-Xi summit Focus Taiwan Syraqistan Israel turns Gaza into death camp denser than Srebrenica, forces displacement under guise of voluntary emigration Euro-Med Monitor Israeli settlers now control a fifth of the occupied West Bank New Arab Aftermath of last night’s U.S. airstrikes on the Aq Qala Railway Bridge The United States Targets a Key Rail Bridge Linking Iran, China, and Russia This route was used by Russia to transport its goods since last November, and the volume of freight trains from China had tripled… pic.twitter.com/fh8RMh4703 — Ryan Rozbiani (@RyanRozbiani) July 9, 2026 Ceasefire? The Iran War is Permanent Un-Diplomatic The Empire’s Strategic Patience Sam Husseini Old Blighty Palantir Has a Hand in NIH’s Most Ambitious Health Initiative Mother Jones European Disunion From Tax Haven to War Banker: Luxembourg’s Role in Europe’s Military Buildup Laura Ruggeri Volkswagen weighs closing several German plants, putting up to 40,000 jobs at risk Anadolu Agency Unintended Consequences: Germany Sick Leave Edition Ian Welsh NATO Summit The Ankara Summit Declaration NATO Nato quietly puts trust in Palantir to move troops and identify targets The Times NATO urged to ‘stop treating more nukes in more places as answer to everything’ The Canary The Ankara Summit: NATO’s Strategy is No Longer Victory But Attrition Kautilya the Contemplator A number of countries in Europe admit that they are fully depleted and can’t help the criminal Zelensky regime anymore: 🇧🇬 Bulgarian Prime Minister Radev: “We have exhausted our capabilities for military assistance. I mean weapons and supplies from our warehouses. We have… pic.twitter.com/EFKitoCIyn — Olga Bazova (@OlgaBazova) July 8, 2026 WOW — Danish reporter *goes there* with Mark Rutte “You sit next to Donald Trump at moments when he talks about conquering Greenland, talks about lashing out at allies like Spain — things it doesn’t seem like the old Mark Rutte would approve of. Does this have any affect on… pic.twitter.com/9XYisCYtF3 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 8, 2026 S. Korea, NATO to launch negotiations on basic procurement agreement: Seoul official Yonhap F-35, S-400 details shared with Congress ‘appear promising’: US Rep Turkiye Today Erdogan gifts every NATO leader an engraved revolver and a box of live ammunition Turkiye Today New Not-So-Cold War Do not assume Russia has lost the war Valerii Zaluzhnyi, The Telegraph Trump and Rubio Hopeful Ukrainian Deep Strikes Bring Russia to Negotiating Table Simplicius Trump Says US Will Let Ukraine Build Patriot Systems: ‘We’ll Show Them How to Make Them’ Kyiv Post Trump’s Patriot licence will help Ukraine in its next war with Russia, not this one Intellinews Russia Bans Diesel Exports Amid Heavy Ukraine Attacks On Refineries OilPrice End of the ‘SMO’ Events in Ukraine Imperial Collapse Watch Almost $1 Billion Later, the US Still Can’t Make a Medical Glove Bloomberg Chartbook 457: The metamorphoses of the dollar Adam Tooze Because We Say So. Aurelien L’affaire Epstein Epstein moved millions through mysterious Virgin Islands bank right before arrest Miami Herald US attacks Iran less than a week after blocking extra Epstein file release Skwawkbox Trump 2.0 Trump returning to US on old Air Force One amid Iran threats The Hill GOP Funhouse Senate GOP leaders say they’ve spoken with Mitch McConnell as speculation about his health continues CBS News I spoke to McConnell for about 20 minutes this morning. He said we should end the war with Iran, quit giving aid to Israel, stop spying on Americans without a warrant, and he’s really sorry about how my primary turned out. — Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) July 7, 2026 Democrats Suck ‘Now the Ball Is in the Court of the Democratic Establishment,’ Platner Says as He Suspends Campaign Common Dreams What Biden Changed About American Foreign Policy The Atlantic Senators Introduce Bill to Cap Traditional Medicare Out-of-Pocket Costs at $5,000 HEALTH CARE un-covered Healthcare? How much and why ACA Marketplace premiums are going up in 2027 KFF America’s small businesses are giving up on health insurance STAT Private equity’s joint venture takeover of nonprofit healthcare Private Equity Stakeholder Project Private Equity’s New AI Push Raises Old Questions for Healthcare MedPage Today AI Cheyenne Won’t Take Data Center Wastewater After Meta Contractor Contaminated System Cowboy State Daily Without Subsidies, AI Is Unaffordable Charles Hugh Smith The Accelerationists The rise of the machines The After-Action Report Like “combining alcohol and cocaine”: Meta plans to add gambling to its addictive platforms Oligarch Watch Sports Desk The Tour de France’s Infernal Present Portends Its Impossible Future Defector Our Famously Free Press How The Guardian Sells Imperialism To Progressives Nate Bear “MAHA” US Food and Drug Administration rejects petition to set Pfas limits in food The Guardian Class Warfare Wall Street Wants to Change the Rules for Your 401(k). It Could Put Your Retirement at Risk. ProPublica The Fun Shortage Is Real, and It’s Making America Miserable Bloomberg Nature and Creativity: The Science of “Soft Fascination” and How the Natural World Resets the Brain The Marginalian Skill nostalgia Aeon Antidote du jour (via): See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here. “Erdogan gifts every NATO leader an engraved revolver and a box of live ammunition” Is this Erdogan trolling the NATO leaders? Suggesting to them that when Russia wins the war in the Ukraine, all the bills come due for all the loans to that financial black hole and all their citizens start bashing down their doors as they are responsible for getting their country in such a mess, that all they will be left with will be a quite room, that revolver and a box of ammo. That’s cold, man. it would have been funnier if, instead of a box of ammo, he gave them a single bullet each. With their names engraved on it? Better make it two bullets. NATO leaders are so incompetent that they will probably miss the first time. With “Notices bulge, OwO what’s this?” engraved on it. https://lessonsinmemeculture.com/memes/what-is-the-notices-bulge-owo-whats-this-meme-and-why-was-it-on-a-bullet-casing-limc-explains/ It took both Suchir Balaji and Gary Webb two shots to the head to kill themselves… Why only one single bullet? I was hoping for these misleaders to play Russian roulette with all six bullets. Because apparently they think they will not be hurt in the upcoming war with Russia in 2030. They could now prove it. Chekhov’s gun? Should have been accompanied by a bottle of good Rakısı and a reservation for a nice hotel room on a high floor, away from the elevator. Scott Ritter opinion piece in Swentr news. Scott Ritter: NATO is spending itself into oblivion If bloc members continue to ramp up their spending, they will eat themselves from the inside https://swentr.site/news/642797-nato-military-spending-oblivion/ Revolvers in Ankara: one can only hope that these retards start playing Russian roulette with their new guns. Watching bike racing, and Le Tour in particular, is one of the few sports I can actually watch. The heat hitting Europe may imperil the sport. Already the routes for the Vuelta (the Spanish equivalent of the Tour de France) which happens in late August/early September hav had to stop racing in the southern part of the country. And, it not only imperils the racers, but the their support teams, and the fans. Ice down the back of a jersey when temps are 35C just doesn’t work. “Trump Says US Will Let Ukraine Build Patriot Systems: ‘We’ll Show Them How to Make Them’” I wonder if Zelenski understood how he was being dissed by Trump here. To build these Patriot missiles, they would need a factory that the Russians would agree not to attack, a workforce that would not be raided from time to time by recruiters to send them to the front, the raw materials to even start to build the damn things which would have to be sourced from out of the country, etc. And provided that all these conditions were met, they would have to wait a coupla years until the first of these hand-built missiles rolled off the production line to be used up in seconds. Who cares about building the missiles. The real money is to be made by selling the plans to the Russian and Chinese military. > WTF is happening with Earth’s Energy Imbalance? The Tradeoff >> The downside to only having reliable satellite measurements going back to 2000 means we may never be able to confirm empirically this general expected radiative trend. When I got my Masters in Environmental Science in ’92, satellite monitoring was primitive compared to where it is now, and ozone depletion was a more immediate risk than climate change. Both conditions and technology have advanced faster than anticipated. Climate was not my specialty, but clearly became the big dog of environmental issues, so I followed it enough to see, for example, the immense value of CERES and the difficulty of understanding clouds. I don’t often recommend an article from links, but I will on this one. It does a good job on the history, an excellent job on the complexities, and the links for follow-up and verification. As for the quoted excerpt, please forgive a musing on critical thinking and understanding: The recent link on Feynman’s Formula shows how a certain class of decision solutions must have an end-point to work. For example, an old study showed that ghetto kids mostly weren’t focused on college given a higher likelihood of not living long enough for deferred rewards to be meaningful. There’s a necessary anchor point in the future. The excerpt shows something in reverse. The technology allows new questions to be asked, but the anchor point in the past disallows empirical confirmation. Now we know there’s something we don’t know, we can still perform critical thinking but must rely on supposition to extrapolate. There are decisions that must be made, but the basis can be as flawed as Feynman’s future projections. An epistemological dark mirror. One of the German national lampoons, the one and only Schwachkopf, lands his next job Former federal children’s book author Robert Habeck, who played a major role in Germany’s economic decline as Minister of Economic Affairs, has landed a job as a senior advisor at the Danish investment firm Urban Partners, and the German media have seen this as a “fishy deal” because the former heat pump manufacturer Viessmann—which benefited greatly from Habeck’s decisions as minister—is a minority shareholder in the firm. Der Spiegel addressed this under the headline “Former Minister of Economic Affairs—Does Habeck’s New Job Smell Fishy?” And of course, Der Spiegel—which is a longtime fan of Habeck—made it sound in its article as if there were nothing wrong with this; after all, Viessmann holds only a minority stake in the firm, and besides, Viessmann sold its heat pump business long ago. Der Spiegel quotes all parties involved, and of course they all claim there is absolutely no connection. For Der Spiegel—the self-proclaimed flagship of critical journalism in Germany—quoting these denials settles the matter. RT-DE criticizes Habeck’s new job under the headline “Berlin: Even More Unaffordable Housing Thanks to Real Estate Lobbyist Habeck” for a different reason: Urban Partners builds high-priced apartments, which doesn’t align with Habeck’s justification for taking the job—since he claims on Instagram that he wants to work at Urban Partners to “also provide affordable housing in German cities so that people with average incomes aren’t driven out of the cities.” That sounds noble, but when you hear the rest of Habeck’s statement, you realize that his job is about something else, because Habeck also says: “In Copenhagen, I took a closer look at how the Scandinavians actually finance their infrastructure. Basically, it works like this: pension funds invest in infrastructure, meaning they make long-term investments on behalf of their savers.” It’s clear to everyone that Habeck won’t get a job at any company in the private sector that requires specialized knowledge and expertise. For private companies, Habeck’s strength isn’t his expertise (because he doesn’t have any), but rather his network of contacts. He has become a lobbyist tasked with attracting money and advocating for laws and regulations that benefit his employer. Accordingly, *Der Spiegel* quotes a spokesperson for Habeck’s new employer as follows: “His role is to support the company on issues of sustainable urban development, urban transformation, and the mobilization of private capital for investments in cities.” If we skip over the blah-blah about “sustainable urban development” and “urban transformation”—since Habeck brings no experience or expertise in these areas from his past—what follows is the crucial point, namely support for the “Mobilizing private capital for investment in cities.” So, in essence, the idea is that Habeck, as a lobbyist, is supposed to funnel money into the company’s coffers. Now we just need to remember that the federal government has just given the green light to pension reform and that part of the reform involves people in Germany building up a funded pension in the future, for which they will soon be required to contribute two percent of their salary to a pension fund that, of course, has to invest that money somewhere. That is exactly what Habeck meant when he spoke of the Scandinavian model, in which “pension funds invest in infrastructure.” Now that the funded pension plan has been approved, the battle behind the scenes is beginning over the billions that German workers will soon be required to contribute to the new funded pension plan. Although the money is supposed to flow into the state fund for financing nuclear waste disposal (Kenfo), that fund still has to invest it somewhere. And that’s where various providers and investment vehicles will compete with one another: Should the money be invested in stocks, real estate, or government bonds, for example? Or will it be divided among different investment vehicles to spread the risk widely? But how much will then flow into which investment? And which funds will be awarded the contract by Kenfo? After all, we’re talking about high double-digit billions that will have to be distributed each year starting in 2028. And it’s about the exact details—that is, whether commissions can be paid, how high any administrative costs may be, and so on. For the funds, these are important levers for increasing their profits. Whenever the German government has ventured into the realm of funded pensions, it has always been very lucrative for the funds and banks—just not for the investors. Just think of the Riester or Rürup pensions. Habeck’s task, then, is likely to be securing particularly lucrative terms for his new employer when designing the funded pension plan that the federal government now intends to introduce. He doesn’t need any specialized knowledge for this, because the company will tell him what to work toward. Habeck just has to use his old connections and get in touch with the right people. Habeck may be capable of almost nothing, but during his time as Minister of Economic Affairs, he demonstrated on several occasions that he is well versed in the skillful use of corrupt networks that funnel taxpayer money to certain individuals, NGOs, and companies. That is exactly what he is now expected to do for the Danish real estate fund. https://anti-spiegel.ru/2026/warum-hat-habeck-den-job-beim-daenischen-immobilienfonds-bekommen/