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Debt Rattle June 15 2026

Jun 152026
 
 June 15, 2026  Posted by at 10:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  Add comments


Robert Campin A man 1435


• Trump Announces Peace Deal with Iran Is Complete (Margolis)
• Trump: Hormuz To Reopen Friday After Signing Of “Great Peace Deal” (ZH)
• Iran Reveals Draft Of Trump-Touted MoU To Be Signed Sunday (ZH)
• Scott Jennings Hammers CNN Panel Over Elon Musk Trillionaire Status (Amy Curtis)
• Bakari Sellers Calls Elon Musk a White Supremacist (Margolis)
• Elon Musk and the Politics of Envy (Tim O’Brien)
• Carney: “Middle Powers” Can Collectively Counterbalance U.S. Global Power (CTH)
• Pompeo Unmasked (CTH)
• Buttigieg Joins the Calls to Take Over the Supreme Court (Turley)
• ‘Birth Tourism’ Networks Around the World Exploiting the U.S. (Salgado)
• Puffy Putin Peril: The West’s Latest Attempt To Scare Itself (Amar)
• Thinking for Oneself: Schopenhauer on Reflection vs. Regurgitation (Eskeldson)

 


 

https://twitter.com/BarronTNews_/status/2065789421379572045?s=20 https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/2065854007722311794?s=20 https://twitter.com/FarmGirlCarrie/status/2065912335248826563?s=20

 


 


What a way to spend your 80th birthday! He did it! Hats off. So many people wanted him to fail even if it was against their own interests, just to spite him.

• Trump Announces Peace Deal with Iran Is Complete (Margolis)

On Sunday, President Donald Trump announced that a peace deal with Iran had been finalized, immediately lifting the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports and reopening the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping. The region that has defined American foreign policy anxiety for decades just changed dramatically — and it happened on Trump’s watch. “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, offering “congratulations to all!” He followed that up by authorizing what he called the “toll-free opening of the Strait of Hormuz” alongside the simultaneous removal of the naval blockade. Then, in classic Trump fashion, he added, “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!”


Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif confirmed the deal in a statement of his own. He announced that “the Peace Deal between the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED” after what he described as “intensive talks.” He continued, “We would like to thank the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran for their commitment to finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict. We would also like to extend our sincere appreciation to our brothers in this mediation effort, the great leadership of State of Qatar, for their support in reaching this agreement. I would also especially thank the visionary leadership of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Republic of Türkiye for their immense contributions in this regard.”

A formal signing ceremony is scheduled for June 19 in Switzerland, with mediators facilitating preliminary technical meetings this week to lay the groundwork.Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi confirmed the deal from Tehran’s side, saying an immediate and permanent halt to war and military operations — including in Lebanon — would begin Sunday. He also made clear that Iran would respond if the other side violates its commitments and that the next phase of negotiations hinges on Iranian assets being unfrozen. Make no mistake about it, Tehran is going to test the limits of this thing. That’s what Iran does. But the framework is there, and the verification mechanisms matter.

Vice President JD Vance laid out the significance on Sunday on Fox News. “Three things that I think are important for the American people just to appreciate about what this deal does for all of us as Americans,” Vance said. “Number one, this is the immediate opening of the Straits of Hormuz and, of course, the lifting of the naval blockade that we’ve had on Iran along with it. The number two thing that it means is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, and not just pursue a nuclear weapon, but procure or try to buy a nuclear weapon as well that’s built into this agreement.”

The third element, Vance explained, depends on Iranian compliance. Still, the upside is enormous. “If the Iranians comply with this deal, it is going to fundamentally transform the Middle East for the next 50 years,” he said. “It’s going to end the war. It’s going to make the Middle East more investable. It’s going to mean a lot of prosperity, lower energy prices for the American people. This region of the world has been a basket case for my entire life and longer than that.”

Obviously, there’s still work ahead. And there’s reason to be skeptical of Iran because this is a regime with a long history of buying time while running out the clock. But, we aren’t sending them plane-loads of cash in the dark of night, or giving them a path to nuclear weapons, as Barack Obama did. And that’s the key here. Trump built in verification. Vance was explicit that the benefits flow only if Iran delivers. The approach is trust nothing, verify everything, and tie every concession to compliance. That’s exactly the kind of deal the Obama-era Iran agreement was never structured to be.

Read more …

“Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, also confirmed: “that the Peace Deal between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED.”

• Trump: Hormuz To Reopen Friday After Signing Of “Great Peace Deal” (ZH)

“This Great Deal will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region. Many presidents have tried to make Peace with Iran, and all have failed before me. The Leaders of the Region have, for the first time, found a President who can help them achieve real Peace. With the opening of the Strait upon the signing of the Deal on Friday, for purposes of mine removal, oil will flow on both ends again for the Region, and the World!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.


The timing of the peace deal is critical. The world was approaching a dangerous energy cliff, with strategic petroleum reserves being quickly drained to offset lost Gulf production and stabilize physical markets. Still, even with a deal in place, energy flows through the strategic maritime chokepoint will not normalize overnight. It will likely take several months, if not quarters, to clear the backlog, restore shipping confidence, de-risk insurance markets, and bring regional production and export flows back to pre-crisis levels. As for damaged energy assets such as those in Qatar, it’ll take years to get production back to pre-war levels.

Deal Confirmed By Trump, Pakistan PM, Just Ahead Of NY Futures Opening. Just 30 minutes before futures open in New York, President Trump announced on Truth Social that a “Deal” with Iran is now complete. “Congratulations to all! I hereby fully authorize the toll-free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade. Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” Trump said.

Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, also confirmed: “that the Peace Deal between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED.”

Sharif said, “The official signing ceremony will be on Friday, 19 June in Switzerland.”

Israeli journalist and Iran affairs correspondent/analyst for Israel’s Channel 14 reports that hardliners in Iran, including IRGC forces, will not derail the peace deal.

Read more …

From the lead-up to the accord.

• Iran Reveals Draft Of Trump-Touted MoU To Be Signed Sunday (ZH)

Bloomberg and Reuters are reporting Sunday some fresh details on Iran’s version of what the MoU to be signed – which President Trump says will happen today (albeit remotely) will inlcude. “A draft of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding included diluting highly enriched uranium within Iran and the release of $25b of Iran’s frozen assets, Reuters reports citing a senior Iran official it didn’t identify,” writes Bloomberg in the latest. This includes:


• Final deal to be discussed in the 60 days following agreement by the two sides
• Also includes Iran immediately reopening Hormuz Strait to all commercial vessels and US lifting its naval blockade
• Tehran in draft agrees that will neither produce nor acquire nuclear weapons
• To maintain the nuclear status quo until final deal is reached, including by not enriching uranium and not expanding nuclear facilities

One potential major complication to the two sides actually signing is what’s happening in the Beirut suburbs, which the Israeli Air Force has just struck for the first time in about a week:

Provocative Israeli military actions previously effectively torpedoed prior Washington-Tehran attempts to get back to the negotiating table. Will the same hold-up happen again? Pro-Israel supporters and lobbyists in the US have been raging against what they see as a ‘failure’ of a deal, and ‘capitulation’ to Iran on kicking the can on the nuclear issue… not least among them is on display in the following:

The usual caveats which proved all prior ‘deal imminent’ headlines to be premature and wishful thinking still apply. Some latest from Iranian state media according to Al Jazeera: “Iran’s Fars news agency, citing a source close to the negotiating team, is reporting that Iranian officials were discussing the ceasefire points with the Qatari mediators in Tehran. The report added that the deal is yet to be finalised and “no agreement will definitely be signed at the time Trump announced”. The comments were made to the agency prior to Israel’s deadly attacks on Lebanon’s southern suburbs today.

Sunday Iran Deal (or rather: MoU Remote Signing) Expected Sunday, per Trump. President Trump said Saturday that an interim U.S.-Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and wind down the four-month conflict could be signed as soon as Sunday. However, Tehran has pushed back on that timeline, signaling that no final decision has been made while Iranian officials continue to review the terms of a potential memorandum of understanding. “The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Saturday, while claiming that Iran “no longer wants a Nuclear weapon.”

The president continued, “At the appropriate time, when all is calm, we will go in and get the Nuclear Dust, buried deep under the powerful sunken granite mountains, thanks to our beautiful B-2 Bombers and their brilliant pilots, and downblend and destroy it, whether in Iran, or the United States.” Pakistan and Qatar are mediating, with technical talks expected to follow any signing and last up to 60 days. The MOU is structured as a step-by-step framework, meaning the Hormuz maritime chokepoint will reopen first, followed by economic rewards for Iran as conditions are met.

Pakistan, which has served as one of the mediators, is preparing to sign the peace deal electronically, followed by technical-level talks next week, according to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. He said those talks would last two months and focus on Iran’s nuclear program. Meanwhile, the Iranian media outlet Fars News Agency reported earlier that Iran has not made a final call on a potential MOU with the U.S. Iranian authorities are still reviewing the political, legal, and technical details, with no final decision announced as of Sunday morning.

The urgency behind securing an MOU to reopen the Hormuz chokepoint is clear: the world is drifting dangerously close toward an energy cliff. Strategic petroleum reserves are being drawn down rapidly around the world to offset the loss of Gulf production, while China’s weakening fuel demand is helping to offset some of the broader supply shock. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made clear Friday that Iran understands that terms related to its nuclear program will be finalized within 60 days of the initial agreement being signed. So in essence, this means Iran could get its wish of pushing nuclear negotiations back, only after the hot conflict has clearly ended. Iran has long sought to separate the issues of a final end to the war from consideration of its nuclear program.

Energy markets priced in de-escalation last week, with Brent crude futures sliding as much as 5.1% Friday and European gas dropped as much as 8.4% after Trump canceled planned new strikes on Iran. IG’s weekend markets are pricing in a 50 bps decline in Brent crude when futures open on Sunday evening. But throughput traffic through the Hormuz chokepoint remains far below pre-war levels, and a vessel was struck off Oman on Saturday. Normalization could take weeks, if not many months. Bloomberg noted, “Roughly 140 ships passed through the narrow chokepoint each day before the conflict erupted.”

Read more …

“If Elon Musk had never gotten involved in politics, and never supported Trump, he’d be getting ticker tape parades right now for building this amazing company and sending rockets into space..”

• Scott Jennings Hammers CNN Panel Over Elon Musk Trillionaire Status (Amy Curtis)

While Leftists melt down over Elon Musk becoming the world’s first trillionaire, they’ve demonstrated that they don’t understand how value works, or stocks, or how the economy works. Scott Jennings pointed out a very obvious truth: if Elon Musk were a Leftist, this wouldn’t be an issue.



“Are you saying because Elon Musk exists and is a wild success that that is somehow to the detriment of all the people you’re mentioning?” Jennings asked. “Elon is creating an environment where entrepreneurship, where success, where building is celebrated.” Then came the truth bomb. “The only reason anybody’s mad about this, let’s just be honest, is because he supported Donald Trump for President,” Jennings said.

“If Elon Musk had never gotten involved in politics, and never supported Trump, he’d be getting ticker tape parades right now for building this amazing company and sending rockets into space. It’s all political, and the people who should love Elon Musk hate him for that reason.” “But do you agree that one person should have control of American policy?” asked Gina Hinojosa. “That’s what money does.”

“It’s all about access to the United States,” she continued, “It’s not just about Donald Trump. There are races all across the country where he has access on policy.” “Call me when you’re made about Soros,” Jennings said.Do people with money have more influence in politics? Does CNN have a chyron for this? That’s how it’s always been. If money influenced policy, we’d have President Ross Perot. Hillary Clinton raised $770 million in 2016 and Kamala Harris raised $1.6 billion for her campaign.

Clean vehicles, clean energy sources, space exploration, and Internet access via Starlink. Those are just some of his achievements and contributions. Bingo. If he funded Leftist causes and politicians, this wouldn’t be an issue.

It doesn’t matter what the narrative is today, as long as the Democrats can scream and whine about the “oligarchy” and against Donald Trump, Republicans, and anyone who isn’t their political ally.

Read more …

Sure.

• Bakari Sellers Calls Elon Musk a White Supremacist (Margolis)

A CNN panel meant to discuss extraordinary wealth lurched far off the rails Friday night when one commentator went into full-on slander mode on Elon Musk, who became the world’s first trillionaire this week. He’s been getting attacked from the left for his success because that’s what the left does. Well, that and fantasize about spending other people’s money, which is exactly what CNN contributor Cari Champion started with. “If you spent a million dollars every single day, it would take you more than 2700 years to spend a trillion dollars,” Champion said.


“What you could effectively do with a trillion dollars is get rid of global poverty. You could end world hunger, you could cure major diseases like malaria, and you could completely transition the global energy sector to renewables. The fact that he has this type of money only tells me that his power will be more prevalent and that I could not — I cannot guarantee someone like this man would use his power for good.” Then Bakari Sellers took things further. After blaming Elon Musk’s influence for USAID cuts that he claimed killed thousands of women and children, Sellers leveled a charge that sent the panel into a frenzy: “Elon Musk is a white supremacist who believes in things like the —”

Criminal defense attorney Arthur Aidala jumped in. “Oh, boy,” Aidala said. “I wasn’t even finished a sentence,” Sellers shot back. Scott Jennings had a warning ready for Sellers. “You may need a lawyer when this is over,” he quipped. Sellers pressed on. Musk “believes in things like the Great Replacement Theory,” he said. But Aidala pushed back hard. “Considering we have about 12 defamation cases in my office right now,” he said, “before you start throwing things around like someone’s a white supremacist — I would win that case.”

He’s right. Democrats and the media often label mainstream conservative arguments about immigration and electoral incentives as “great replacement theory” and imply racism, but it’s not like Democrats haven’t made the very argument that, because of declining birth rates, the United States needed immigration to sustain population growth and the workforce. “We have a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to. The only way we’re going to have a good future in America is if we welcome and embrace immigrants,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in 2022. But I digress.

In fact, Jennings cut through the whole exercise with a few pointed questions. “I’ve been listening to liberals count and spend Elon’s money for him,” Jennings said. “This envy, jealousy, hatred of success. Why is it immoral? Why is it wrong for somebody in our system — our capitalist system, in the greatest nation on earth, to go out and build a company — build companies, build technologies, go into space, aim to go put a colony on Mars, give internet to half the world. All the things he’s doing. Why is any of this wrong or bad? Why would we want to discourage entrepreneurship? Why would we want to discourage anybody building anything? That is the nature of it.”

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“Since the signs were pre-printed and funded by the usual funders of anything good for America …”

• Elon Musk and the Politics of Envy (Tim O’Brien)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know by now that with SpaceX’s Initial Public Offering (IPO), Elon Musk has become the world’s first trillionaire. The implications of this for all of us and our grandchildren are many and far-reaching. Of course, the left has found a way to narrow it all down to one simple idea: “His money is our money, or it should be.” That’s not the way they say it. What leftists actually are saying is he doesn’t pay enough in taxes. Why? For the sole reason that he’s rich. If you’re a leftist, rich people are never paying “their fair share.”


This is the politics of envy, and if you study the vast majority of leftist messaging at any time on any topic, envy is a critical component. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if the Democrats, and the left at large, decided to quit being jealous of the right, the left would die as a movement in less than 24 hours. Envy is the lifeblood of leftist politics, and Musk is merely their latest, biggest, and most convenient target. But it’s worth being reminded that to the left, you are no different than Elon Musk. Let me explain. The left is miserable when you’re happy. It feels entitled to be the only source of your happiness, but it has no desire to make you happy. Rather, it simply wants to control how happy it will allow you to be.

You saw this during the COVD-19 pandemic when the left rationed aspects of your previous life to you in small portions. The desire to control you in this way came from a fear that you might find a way to be happy in spite of conditions, in this case a pandemic. The thoroughness with which arbitrary measures were taken to deny you the simplest of pleasures was rooted in envy. Around the same time and in the same environment, Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the whole entitlement movement accused you, if you were white, of having “white privilege” and and said that you don’t deserve to be happy. Instead, you should feel guilty because some on the left are unhappy.

The “white privilege” guilt trip was not only one of the purest forms of the politics of envy, but it worked to get leftist and otherwise weak white people to voluntarily surrender their happiness. At some point, almost all leftist politics comes back to envy. And so, when Musk took SpaceX public and the company’s value skyrocketed (sorry, I couldn’t help myself), the left fell back on its most core strategy – the politics of envy. Leftist billionaires and their pawns were well prepared to opportunistically try to capitalize on Musk’s good fortune with protest signs, messaging, and rent-a-mobs ready to go.

A union representing leftist college professors showed up alongside all the other envious union members, paid protestors, and disgruntled leftists, complete with their pre-printed signs. They were there to air their grievance that someone was having a good day and just might be happy. Their signs alone showed an extremely high level of financial illiteracy and ignorance regarding just about everything related to the SpaceX IPO. They read: “Billionaires are a scam”; “Elon is stealing your pension”; “Overthrow the oligarchs”; “This billionaire is stealing from you”; “Elon is stealing your 401K”; and, of course, “Stop Elon. No Trillionaires.”

Since the signs were pre-printed and funded by the usual funders of anything good for America, we can only assume that the evil strategists on the left conceived of these messages because they knew the phrases would appeal to their illiterate base. First off, how could Elon making money from willing investors represent him stealing your pension? There is no relationship at all, and there can’t be. The money Musk and everyone else made from the IPO came from the market, not from unwilling American citizens or taxpayers. It came from institutional investors through mutual and index funds, universities, large pension funds, and millions of willing individual investors. People invested because they hoped to make profits at some later point. The protestors either don’t understand that, or they pretend not to.

Another sign that actually sidesteps all rational thought is the one that says Elon is stealing your 401(k). The truth is, the SpaceX IPO very likely already helped your 401(k), and if it didn’t, it soon will. Many, if not most of the big mutual funds are riding on the fortunes of a handful of companies like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, maybe Tesla, and Alphabet. SpaceX just joined the club. That means if you have a 401(k), it’s in your best interest to want SpaceX to do well. That can only grow your retirement savings. And then there’s that argument the left makes when it has no argument: “Stop Elon. No Trillionaires.” Why? I mean, really, why? What’s the point? If someone else becomes rich and it has no effect on you, why should you even care? I mean, other than pure jealousy.

That post from Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) is rich, literally. She’s playing upon jealousy and envy to encourage more taxation, but only of the rich, so we’re told (for now). They play this “lower effective tax rate” game to try to pretend Elon doesn’t pay a ton of taxes, which he does. Also, like the financially illiterate protestors in New York, Jacobs is drawing no distinction between income, which is taxed, and assets like stock, which only convert into taxable money if you sell shares. What makes Jacobs’ post curious is that she is one of the richest people in Congress. She’s got an estimated net worth of $76 million, and she didn’t earn any of it. She was born into it.

If ever there is such a thing as privilege, she’s got it. Her father is billionaire Irwin Jacobs, who founded semiconductor company Qualcomm. So, when she demonizes Elon for being a billionaire, or now a trillionaire, she’s pretty much demonizing her own daddy, and she’s not doing herself any favors. She just wants you to think she’s one of the good kind of millionaires. What’s obvious is she wants you to feel like a “have not,” and she wants you to hate Elon simply because he’s a “have.” Something Jacobs did not do and would not do is acknowledge all those who have immediately benefited from the SpaceX IPO. A lot of leftists are making money here. The University of North Carolina, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Virginia bought in early and have huge stakes in the company.

According to Fortune, “In total, more than 4,400 current and former SpaceX employees are expected to become millionaires in the IPO.” My colleague, David Manney, reported on how some of Musk’s loyal employees at different levels of the company will be rewarded. SpaceX counts 22,000 employees at the moment, and all of them pay taxes. The average salary of SpaceX employees is $155,000-$176,000, according to the company. All of these people pay local, state and federal taxes. Many, if not most, pay property taxes. Those who just made millions each on the IPO will ultimately pay a collective billions more in federal taxes. That means more money headed into the local, state, and federal piggy banks.

Over time, millions of individual investors will make profits on their SpaceX stock at some point, and they will pay taxes on the profit. The point is, the government will see its share of cash from the IPO, and it didn’t have to do a thing except sit back and wait for the profits to roll in. Yet, Democrats like Jacobs and the rest of the left somehow want you to feel like only Musk is the beneficiary of the IPO. That’s not stopping the left from engaging in envy porn. Check out this post from millionaire Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), decrying the rich as she rides in the back of her limo. Or this common refrain that attempts to blame Musk for people putting themselves on government entitlement programs that you, the taxpayer, pay for anyway.

In other words, people getting free stuff are big mad that Musk is winning. Since he’s making more money, naturally, they want more free stuff…just because. That poster blamed Musk for just about every economic challenge anyone in America could face, but one thing he posted that deserves to be addressed is this notion that Musk is getting federal handouts to make his money at SpaceX. As though he’s running a non-profit that doesn’t reward the federal government. His rockets are the delivery system for satellites that protect our national security, among many other things. Oh, and remember the time NASA couldn’t rescue those astronauts, so Musk had to bail out the government?.

Read more …

I feel like I’m in the Shire (but of anti-heroes).

The Little People flock together

“Carney Affirms that “Middle Powers” with Same Ideological Construct Can Collectively Counterbalance U.S. Global Power..”

• Carney: “Middle Powers” Can Collectively Counterbalance U.S. Global Power (CTH)

Making his ninth trip to Europe since become prime minister 15 months ago, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney once again outlined his governing model to combat a U.S. administration that he claims has fractured the globalist norms. During his press conference with Micheal Martin, Ireland’s taoiseach (Prime Minister), Carney once again built upon the idea of “middle powers” uniting together in common ideology against U.S. dominance until such a time as the U.S. government can once again return to a leftist ideology.


The specific objectives become clear about halfway through the presser today as Carney notes the importance of grouping nations together who agree on climate change, energy controls and the green agenda. Canada’s alignment with Europe is seemingly centered on the net-zero carbon model. This perspective makes sense from Carney as it is the same priority he’s carried since his time as governor for the Bank of England. WATCH:

As the former Governor of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada, Carney used his platform to position climate change as a systemic financial risk. He then championed the view that private capital must be the primary tool to force an economic energy transition. [Post-COVID this was known as “Build Back Better.“] President Trump’s perspective and the majority American view on climate change and energy development is against the core professional effort of Carney and the banking interests he has always represented. This becomes very important to understand as the U.S-Canada conflict is about to hit an inflection point.

HISTORY: Through the “Net Zero” Banking Alliance (NZBA) Mark Carney pushed banks to agree with policies and protocols that forced them to set lower lending targets to high-carbon industries and clients. The goal was to force companies to ‘decarbonize’ or find themselves starved of capital. While working at the Bank of England and Canada Carney famously warned multinational interests and insurance companies, most of which were centered in London, that fossil fuel assets that did not fit the net-zero industrial model would become “stranded assets” worth nothing because they could not be capitalized or insured. This threat signaled to multinationals that any investment in a project that was against the “Paris Climate Treaty” was a bad financial risk.

This approach endeared Mark Carney to King Charles III, who is himself a major climate alarmist. Unfortunately, U.S. politicians -particularly during the Trump first term- accused the Carney banking/finance and insurance alliance of operating an illegal banking cartel to choke the larger American energy sector. Facing legal threats over antitrust violations, in combination with obvious violations of fiduciary duty, NZBA has to strip out its strict, mandatory lending restrictions. Slowly banks began retreating from the net-zero alliance.

Regional and national banks began citing the economic necessity of supporting traditional energy companies, and energy security became more important than adherence to voluntary restrictions on carbon emissions. This angered Carney as his life construct was under pressure. Carney then entered Canadian federal politics and sought to downplay his ideological climate agenda. However, all of his energy policies essentially come from the same mindset of opposition to fossil fuels.

The disparity in energy production is the core issue inside the details of the USMCA. The United States and Mexico are both aligned with low-cost fossil fuel use, which is particularly important for large scale industrial manufacturing (steel etc.). Whereas Canada doesn’t want the dirty jobs and wants only to focus on electricity production.

You can make electricity from windmills, solar farms and nuclear power. However, you cannot make iron, steel or aluminum without fossil fuels. In scientific fact, part of the largest global irony is because it’s impossible to make windmill components, solar panels or nuclear power equipment without using fossil fuels.

In the video below, while he was a banker you can see Mark Carney admitting on tape: When voters blocked his ESG plans, “We” (Central Bankers) shifted into the position of “Regulators” to work around the voters through the back door of finance and insurance. They manipulated fossil fuel production and prices by withholding lending and insurance.

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“One month later we were in beginning of SARS-CoV-2, which we now accept in hindsight was a U.S. military and intelligence operation..”

• Pompeo Unmasked (CTH)

Many of you will likely remember December 29, 2019, when Secretary Pompeo, Joint Chief’s Mark Milley and Secretary Mark Esper flew to Mar-a-Lago to inform President Trump about military strikes they had just conducted in Northern Syria and Iraq. At the time of the strike, President Trump was negotiating the exit of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and even having direct talks with the Taliban which was proclaimed as controversial by the traditional war machine elements in DC. The action by Pompeo, Milley and Esper did not align with the moment based on Trump’s ongoing effort.


President Trump made no comments about the strike they carried out, nor did President Trump post anything about the events. In fact, President Trump made Pompeo, Milley and Esper stand at the podium and inform the media and public. CTH said at the time nothing about this made sense. Our suspicion was that Pompeo, Milley and Esper had acted unilaterally without approval. Events later on indicated our suspicion was accurate. One month later we were in beginning of SARS-CoV-2, which we now accept in hindsight was a U.S. military and intelligence operation utilizing a virus created in a Wuhan, China biological lab. The global response to the virus was a combined military and intelligence operation.

The most excessive ‘western’ reactions to the virus were carried out by New Zealand, Australia, the U.K and Canada, all five-eyes countries. The November 2020 election result was specifically an outcome of the virus and fraudulent mail-in ballots. It’s also worth remembering that in 2016 the Trump-Russia collusion material originated from the U.K via former intelligence operative Christopher Steele and the Fusion GPS network in the U.S. That’s the context for last week Mike Pompeo paying tribute to his old friend in British intelligence who worked with him as CIA Director following the 2016 election of President Trump.

Mike Pompeo – Within hours of being announced as the nominee to be the U.S. Director of the CIA, I received a hand-delivered message on MI6 stationery congratulating me on my nomination. It was signed simply “C” in green ink. Legendary. I shared it with my son and even he thought I was now cool! More than that, this note, from Sir Alex Younger, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service of the United Kingdom, confirmed what I already believed: the work that the CIA and MI6 did together mattered, that the partnership was critical, and that two leaders focused on the mission could save lives and provide tools for our nations to deter our adversaries.

Alex’s passing this week brought back so many memories of our time in service together. He flew to Langley to see me the day I was confirmed. We brought our two senior teams together in the UK to plan and coordinate and build in the first several weeks of my time on duty: making clear to them all that this relationship was more than special – it was critical for the security of our two countries.”

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“Drinking the Court-Packing Kool-Aid..”

“This Nike School of Constitutional Law is catching on with a wide array of pundits and professors. Just do it.”

• Buttigieg Joins the Calls to Take Over the Supreme Court (Turley)

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg apparently got the message this week that he cannot hope to win the Democratic nomination without promising radical measures, including the packing of the Supreme Court. After denouncing the current Court as “rogue” for not ruling as the left has demanded, Buttigieg endorsed the plan of Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren to pack the Court to reverse adverse constitutional interpretations.


For years, the Supreme Court had a liberal majority that overturned dozens of long-standing cases. That was not viewed as the work of a rogue court. Yet, even as President Donald Trump attacks this Court for ruling repeatedly against him, liberals are now demanding court packing. As the party becomes more radicalized, any candidate expressing doubts over radical demands like court packing is unlikely to make it out of the primaries. Accordingly, “Mayor Pete” is reaching for Court-Packing Kool-Aid. In making his pitch to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition convention, Buttigieg knew that he had to offer some radical bona fides. He decided to offer up the Supreme Court:

“We have to do [something] with the Supreme Court, that is now a rogue Supreme Court. To see them eviscerate the Voting Rights Act is to see them reverse some of the most important progress this country ever made, wiping out Black political representation, but also wiping out part of what actually is great within the complex American story.” That description is part of a campaign of disinformation about the Court’s recent decision to end racial gerrymandering. The Court reaffirmed that the Voting Rights Act would be used to prevent any intentional racial discrimination. It banned states (almost entirely Democratic states) from engaging in racial discrimination to guarantee election results based on the race of the candidates.

He then thrilled the crowd by promising to pack the Court to guarantee the results that he and they are demanding. Declaring that it is “time to think big,” Buttigieg explained: “Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that there have to be nine Supreme Court justices. That one doesn’t even take a constitutional amendment. It just takes a readiness to set up a court that fits this country. We could have 13 seats matching the district structure of the federal judiciary, but also a process that makes it less partisan.” Buttigieg appears to be referring to the circuit system, not the district court system. What is most striking is that he promises to reverse decisions on issues like racial gerrymandering by packing the Court, but then says it will make the Court “less partisan.”

The whole point of adding four new justices selected by the Democrats is to create an instant majority to their liking and to reverse past rulings. Years ago, I wrote an academic piece on the possible expansion of the Supreme Court, but there is a world of difference between that and a court-packing plan. Under my proposal, the court’s expansion would take almost two decades to ensure that no president could pack the court. Various Democrats have been pledging to not only impeach Trump (and a long list of other figures), but to pack the Supreme Court as soon as they regain power.

James Carville declared, “If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, I think on day one, they should expand the Supreme Court to 13. F— it. Eat our dust. Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.” This Nike School of Constitutional Law is catching on with a wide array of pundits and professors. Just do it.

Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder has put packing the Supreme Court front and center, explaining, “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”

At base is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the Court. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) not only renewed her previous call to pack the court but said the court was illegitimate for rendering decisions against “widely held public opinion.” Former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) said the court “defies the will of the people.” Reporter John Haltiwanger insisted that “the court is clearly not representative of the U.S. public. It’s supposed to be the people’s court.”

In reality, the court was never meant to be that. It was meant to be the Constitution’s court, designed to stand against everyone and everything except the Constitution. In a system designed to protect the minority, the court (like the Constitution) is counter-majoritarian in much of what it does. With the Supreme Court removed as a barrier to the left’s radical agenda, Democrats could indeed fulfill the objectives laid out by figures like Klarman to ensure they never lose power again.

That will make the 2028 election the most consequential election for our constitutional history in decades. The outcome will most immediately decide the fate of an institution that has been a stabilizing force for centuries. Even though this Court has ruled against the Trump Administration on a variety of key issues, the left is still demanding that it either yield to all of their demands or face a hostile takeover. On our 250th anniversary, these reckless and radical voices remind us that (as Benjamin Franklin warned us) this is our Republic if we can keep it.

Read more …

” Incidentally, Western and Northern Africa are two areas where Islam dominates the countries.”

“And if the Supreme Court does not make the right decision on birthright citizenship, we might as well kiss our country goodbye.”

• ‘Birth Tourism’ Networks Around the World Exploiting the U.S. (Salgado)

The U.S. State Department has uncovered sophisticated and dangerous “birth tourism” networks from West Africa, Europe, and North Africa exploiting our current unconstitutional “birthright citizenship” system. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is one of the biggest abusers of our idiotic “birthright citizenship” system, but plenty of other bad actors around the world cash in as well. Contrary to the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment, America now says any child born on our soil is automatically a citizen, even if his parents just flew into or walked into the country. Unsurprisingly, this has for years encouraged abuses.


Besides the practice of “anchor babies,” where illegal aliens give birth in America and use their new citizen kids to keep the family here, there’s also “birth tourism.” From The Daily Wire: In West Africa, a U.S. embassy uncovered a “sophisticated birth tourism network” wherein more than 100 foreign nationals were using fraudulent documents to obtain visas and secure U.S. citizenship for their children. The State Department shut down this birth tourism network and revoked the foreign nationals’ visas. State is also coordinating with local authorities to “systematically identify and cut off any similar operations.” Incidentally, Western and Northern Africa are two areas where Islam dominates the countries.

“Under President Trump, the State Department is defending the integrity of U.S. citizenship by ending illegal birth tourism schemes,” The Daily Wire quoted the State Department. “No foreigner is permitted to obtain a visitor visa for the primary purpose of acquiring U.S. citizenship for a child by giving birth in the U.S.” This is why the upcoming Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship is so important. The Daily Wire went on: A U.S. embassy in Europe found that more than 400 suspected birth tourism cases had occurred since 2024.

In this case, investigators traced the birth tourism to at least six companies that were coaching applicants on what to say in their visa interviews, arranging housing, and setting up delivery plans. State again shut down the process, revoked the visas, and permanently banned “several fraudsters from traveling to the United States ever again.” An embassy in North Africa revoked more than 100 visas for “birth tourist” parents who came to the United States specifically to give birth to children who would get U.S. citizenship. State Department consular officers worked with law enforcement and used data analytics to identify the networks abusing the visa system in this case.

“A U.S. visa is a privilege, not a right,” the federal department said. “The State Department is taking action around the world to stop this abuse, dismantle birth tourism networks, and hold accountable those who try to scam our system.” But even all these networks are small beans compared to the vast CCP apparatus for helping loyal party members come to the United States to give birth to kids who become automatic citizens of our country, even though many of them are then raised back in China. You can read more here. Up to a million Communist Chinese could be voting in United States elections by 2030, thanks to this huge “birth tourism” industry.

And if the Supreme Court does not make the right decision on birthright citizenship, we might as well kiss our country goodbye.

Read more …

“Headlines about the Russian president’s looks and ‘erratic’ behavior are a symptom of terminal Russophrenia..“

• Puffy Putin Peril: The West’s Latest Attempt To Scare Itself (Amar)

You can’t argue with a man observing the obvious: We are living in unusually perilous times. In the Middle East, for instance, the Israeli-American infernal duo have been on a rampage of war, state terror, all-purpose devastation, and genocide that, as a bonus, has also brought the world economy to the verge of cardiac arrest by clogging one of its vital fossil fuel arteries. Indeed, that particular risk is so obvious that even Germany’s less than brilliant Friedrich Merz has long spotted it.


In the Far East, Taiwan is currently ruled by a government so hell-bent on antagonizing their fellow Chinese on the mainland that Taipei’s political reflexes seem almost as perverse as those of Berlin. In the West, you have the German elite which can’t find enough billions to fork over to Ukraine when Kiev and friends blow up Germany’s vital pipelines and lethally cripple its already ailing economy. In the East, there is Taipei, getting really, really angry when the Philippines and Japan start negotiating away Taiwan’s maritime Exclusive Economic Zone. Angry, that is, at Beijing.

And in the EU, that “garden” of “values” that really is a swampy jungle of eternal confusion and corruption, the catastrophe that in its foreign policy is now obvious enough for several European bigwigs to gang up on the abysmally, ragingly incompetent Kaja Kallas. Her tenure as de facto EU foreign minister has been so breathtakingly blundering that her employers aren’t merely itching to kick her out but thinking about, in essence, abolishing her job.

Being so horrible at something that you won’t just get fired yourself but take it down with you – perhaps only the Baltic Girl Boss Wonder could pull that one off. But then, maybe it’s really all just another power grab by EU’s German queen (of the absolute kind) and US viceroy (of the submissive kind) Ursula von der Leyen. Either way, frightful insanity abides. We could add more scary and grotesque evidence, but things are clear enough: It’s a grim picture all around. So, fair enough if you feel like being a big sad downer and doom monger. Where it gets weird is when you get your scare priorities all upside down.

Granted, from a hapless NATO-EU European perspective, Russia may look a little unsettling: after all, once you have waged years of proxy war, sanctions, and propaganda war against it, who knows what the mood is really like in Moscow? As a good NATO-EU apparatchik, you certainly would not, because you have displayed the foresight of a gnat by proudly not talking – or listening – to the Russians. So, when you feel a little insecure, that might really be your bad conscience calling (in a merely professional, not moral sense, which you are likely to lack).

But, generally speaking, the worse the stupidities and mistakes you have produced but keep repressing, the higher the price. Old Sigmund Freud called it “affective debility.” In essence, it means that lying to yourself makes you dim. And once you are BS’ing yourself for years as if there’s no tomorrow, you’ll turn positively imbecilic.

That’s the only way to explain a fresh wave of transparently hysterical scare mongering about Russia in the West, in particular, this time, in Britain. Thus, on the occasion of the recent St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), centrist mainstream flagship The Independent came out with a fascinating piece of fiction masquerading as analysis. Under the clickbait title “‘Puffy-looking’ Putin is acting weirder than ever – and that should chill us to the bone,” readers were treated to a highly imaginative horror tale about, in essence, a terrible loose cannon in the Kremlin pondering staged incidents and nuclear terrorism and ready to blow up the world or at least Europe or perhaps just Britain because Russia is losing the war. Also, he looks “puffy”!

All of this backed up (not really) by yet another statement from a high British military officer that things are dire as never before in (his) living memory. He and his comrades in arms – plus a few tweedy spy gents and dames – produce these Cassandra screams at least twice a month; it seems to be a standing order.

Indeed, there is such an inflationary over-production of men and women in khaki and with stiff upper lips crying big bad Russian wolf that even Politico has already produced at least one ‘best of’ collection, gathering “The 5 doomiest Russia warnings from Britain’s military chiefs.” Perish the thought any of this may have anything to do with fattening defense budgets and driving up the obscene profits of His Majesty’s military industrial complex!

Generally speaking, The West has a rich tradition of declaring Russia vanquished, its president Vladimir Putin at death’s door or on the verge of being regime-changed away, and, of course, Ukraine (and, really, the West) on the cusp of winning the war. And, at the same time, of predicting that Russia will attack all of Europe, likely tomorrow. Notwithstanding occasional and intriguing anomalies, when a NATO commander (from Trump’s US, of course) lets slip a fragment of truth, such as that actually Moscow is not looking for conflict.

In short, we are speaking about the severe and very sad but also funny mental condition already well known as Russophrenia: the afflicted live with an imaginary Schrödinger’s Russia occupying their suffering minds, a Russia that is always simultaneously half-dead and yet so alive and kicking, it’s about to roll into their living room on a tank.

Read more …

Don’t learn from books, learn from life!

• Thinking for Oneself: Schopenhauer on Reflection vs. Regurgitation (Eskeldson)

Arthur Schopenhauer’s argument is that thinking for oneself is better than regurgitating information from books and that the two produce very different effects in a learner. In the beginning of his essay, he compares the difference between regurgitation and reflection (or critical thinking) to two different libraries. Regurgitation is represented by a disorganized library with books all over the floor, furniture, shelves, or wherever else they have been mislaid. Similarly, someone who exclusively regurgitates information may have jumbled facts in his mind and will not have a clear picture of anything specific, despite learning (allegedly) so much about that thing. In the public domain essay “On Thinking for Oneself,” Schopenhauer shows us some men who appear to know so much about specific countries from travel books, but they cannot form their ideas into a gestalt to describe those countries as a whole. They cannot see the bigger picture because they were habitually exposed to only small bits of information.


Billie Pritchett writes, “Wouldn’t it be better for someone to discipline his mind by being instructed in the fundamentals of a subject, and then begin thinking within that framework?” as he recognizes an objection that Schopenhauer’s readers likely had in his day. The framework of other people’s observations on a given subject appears to be useful and airtight, but Schopenhauer believes it is more rewarding to learn that framework after doing critical thinking of one’s own. As he puts it, “the mind is deprived of all its elasticity by much reading, as is a spring when a weight is continually applied to it,” and “the surest way not to have thoughts of our own is for us at once to take up a book when we have a moment to spare”; furthermore, “the truth acquired through our own thinking is like the natural limb; it alone really belongs to us.”

After being spoon-fed material from book after book, someone will lose the ability to creatively solve problems and will learn to rely on others’ mental pictures exclusively in the effort to comprehend a subject. That person will essentially forget how to figure things out for himself. All of humanity will benefit from spending time reflecting on their thoughts.

Schopenhauer anticipated another likely objection: “What if all you get from your own thinking is the same material that has already been discovered and published by another person, or several other people, many times?” If someone tries hard to solve a problem himself, but finds out later that his solution had already been a well-publicized discovery, Schopenhauer would still appreciate the mental effort the person used to come to that conclusion. He would call that “small volume” of experimentation “valuable.”

Schopenhauer’s broader philosophical point is that the human mind forms a sort of stabilizing structure to make sense of an irrational, crooked world of “vicious little men.” People are so entwined in their self-centered desires that they “commit atrocities” to get their way and generally only use reason to justify their actions. The human mind must form a force of good intellect and strong moral character as a guard against falling into these irrational ways, according to Schopenhauer. Critical thinking is a way to strengthen the mind and develop good character traits (i.e. diligence), so it should be encouraged by all means. Regurgitation may become fuel for selfish desires (i.e. laziness) because of how easy and mentally painless it is, so it must be discouraged.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/tslaming/status/2066131447992443060?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Home › Forums › Debt Rattle June 15 2026

Viewing 37 posts - 1 through 37 (of 37 total)
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  • June 15, 2026 at 10:15 am #242734
    Raúl Ilargi Meijer
    Keymaster

    Robert Campin A man 1435 • Trump Announces Peace Deal with Iran Is Complete (Margolis) • Trump: Hormuz To Reopen Friday After Signing Of “Great Peace
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle June 15 2026]

    June 15, 2026 at 10:19 am #242761
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Post-Iran war: The end of an era, not to decline, but as a trigger to abrupt change
    Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

    Professor Michael Hudson, in a recent discussion, takes issue with those who speak today of the ‘decline of the U.S. hegemon’. A decline implies something goes up and down, Hudson says, but it always recovers. “But there’s never been any such thing statistically as a cycle … There’s no decline, it’s a crash” —

    “We’re seeing the ending of an era, not a decline, but an abrupt change. And this change is not stemming from without: The ending of the American power did not result from any foreign civil war or other war against American dominance. The end came from the United States itself in trying to juxtapose its interest as hegemon against that of every other country”.

    Paradoxically, Professor Hudson says:

    “Every move taken to escape U.S. ‘decline’ has become the mechanism that delivers it. The U.S. went to war to reassert dominance – and proved it could no longer dominate … It waged forty years of maximum pressure to break Iran, and instead forged the very adversary that is now [facing down U.S. domination]”.

    In order to preserve America’s power, President Trump turned to trying to impose a series of choke points on the entire world economy “through controlling oil — because everybody needs it”, Hudson says.

    That Trump went to war on Iran, on Russia and instituted the attempted chokehold on China, however, does not, in itself, constitute the full matrix of American power-preservation. That matrix is broader. But oil is one of its principal dimensions — as is the connected dollar hegemony. Trump clearly wants to consolidate global energy control in order for the U.S. to determine who may have access to energy (i.e. not Iran, nor Russia, nor Cuba), and those whose energy supply will be squeezed to constrain competition potential (i.e. China).

    On the other hand, suppliers of fuel, such as Russia, are sanctioned precisely to try to limit those to whom Russian oil and gas may be supplied. Client states of the imperial power (i.e. Europe) seem surprisingly content to act as the U.S.’ energy-stranglehold enforcer — transforming itself into a prolific sanctions issuer, in its own right.

    The other facets (aside from oil dominance) to America’s attempt to establish a chokehold over the rest-of-world economies are firstly, the tariff policy — by which Trump had hoped to use the threat of economically disruptive tariffs to coerce pliable states to lend allegiance to Washington; to acquiesce to U.S. policy alignment; and to provide America with the raw materials it needs — in return for admission to the Washington ‘insider network’ (America’s client states).

    In effect there are two Washington ‘insider networks’: One consisting of Trump, his family and extended business partners; and the other being that of Trump’s overseas protégés (Gulf states, etc).

    The tariff policy is effectively a polite way to say, ‘we will use tariffs, or an energy squeeze, or a financial squeeze to create disruption to your economies, unless you agree to join the U.S.-led ‘network’’.

    Neither tariff nor energy-choke policies have been without their set-backs, however, not least because Iran has refused to comply, and continues to provide oil to China and other Iranian allies.

    So, the new ‘leg’ to the strangle-hold policy is the ‘Pax Silica’ initiative. Arnaud Bertrand explains that the Trump Administration has ‘spelt out its ‘syndicate’ purpose explicitly’:

    “Countries sign up, align their supply chains with Washington, shut out China (politely referred to as those engaging in “non-market practices” and “unfair dumping”) – and in exchange they get access to the imperial technological ecosystem”.

    “Lest there be any ambiguity, Under-Secretary of State Jacob Helberg — an ex-Palantir guy who is the architect behind the initiative — spells it out clearly: Whoever controls “compute and the minerals that feed it” will run the 21st century, and he wants to form a group of “aligned” countries around Washington in a “new economic security consensus” to make sure they’re the ones who do”.

    Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ war therefore has world-wide implications. The world cannot simply return to the way it was before. Wall Street and ‘the markets’ seem to believe that this is likely and even inevitable (they can envision no different future), but the rest of the world sees the Iran war as marking a systemic change to a new era, precisely because fossil fuels, fertiliser and other allied products are the components that make the world ‘tick’.

    The Iran war will prompt greater recognition, throughout the world, that countries need (at minimum) food self-sufficiency to save themselves from U.S. weaponisation of foreign trade in food, oil, fertiliser, and in just about anything that the U.S. can create a choke point for — and weaponise. This implies a return to self-circulating, self-sufficient economies — in contrast to the World Bank ‘export-led’, debt financed model.

    Andrey Bezrukov, Professor at the Russian University MGIMO and a former SVR intelligence officer, specifically addressed the challenges of a changing world at the St Petersburg Forum on 3 June 2026. And though he cast his comments in the context of Russia, his remarks apply across the world.

    In his speech — which Laura Ru has summarised — Bezrukov argued that Russia has entered a new, prolonged global confrontation with the West. According to him, this conflict represents a fundamental shift in the nature of warfare that will define Russian policy and society for the foreseeable future.

    ‘Bezrukov emphasized that the current (military) struggle is not primarily about capturing territory, which he described as having lost much of its traditional value. Instead, it is a war of attrition focused on undermining critical systems, including infrastructure, command networks, technology, space assets, biological security, and the information domain … “The West’s strategy in this war is very simple: avoid nuclear collision with us, from which they will emerge as losers. Therefore, they boil the frog on a slow fire”’.

    ‘He warned that Russia should expect to remain in a state of war for many years, possibly 20 to 30 years. During this period, Russia must learn to coexist with the reality of war, whilst continuing its economic development’.

    ‘A central theme of his speech was sharp criticism of Russia’s current approach. Bezrukov argued that the country has been too lenient toward its adversaries — “We are slow. We allow [our enemies] too much. They don’t fear us … because many, many red lines that we talked about remained only on paper”’.

    ‘To adapt to this new reality, Bezrukov called for a fundamental restructuring of the state and economy. He urged the creation of a dual-purpose system capable of pursuing both development and long-term defence. Critical infrastructure — such as data centres, oil storage facilities, and communication hubs — must be buried underground, or protected to the same standards as nuclear power plants. He also stressed the need to close the gap between the military and civilian society, and to adopt more assertive policies. Russia cannot expect a quick return to peacetime conditions and must therefore reorganise society, economy, and strategy accordingly’.

    Bezrukov’s speech has drawn much attention for its tone, and for its call for Russia to psychologically and structurally adapt to a generational-long era of confrontation — a theme already addressed at length by Professor Sergei Karaganov.

    What these two contributions represent is a changing world trying to re-structure itself in wake of the aggressive face of a declining U.S. hegemon, and looking around for how both to insulate their economies from U.S.’ tariffs, energy, technology and dollar attack on the rest of the world, and concomitantly, to adapt to the new era of asymmetric geo-political war that the Iran war has espoused.

    Professor Hudson concludes,

    “Iran is fighting for a way of life against people who want to deny them … of the ability to make their own future. This is what the fight is all about. And it is ultimately a moral fight that finds itself translated into an economic fight and a trade fight — and is leading to this [global] split”.

    It is this moral, civilisational way-of-being versus the radical Trumpian-U.S. materialist void that likely will come to define our era’s civil and global wars.

    Post-Iran war: The end of an era, not to decline, but as a trigger to abrupt change

    June 15, 2026 at 10:24 am #242762
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Alastair Crooke : US Empire is Crashing

    June 15, 2026 at 10:31 am #242763
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    The Pax Silica Con
    The US’s “Pax Silica” sells itself as a wall against China, when it’s really a cage to keep America’s “partners” in – dependent on American tech, and unable to build their own.

    Arnaud Bertrand
    Typically, when great powers set up an initiative that is imperialistic in nature, they pick a name that says the opposite: “alliance for progress,” “partnership for peace,” “coalition of the willing,” etc.

    This time, evidently in no mood for euphemism, the US straight up called their initiative “Pax Silica,” the most imperialistic name conceivable, directly inspired by the Roman Empire.

    And, if you read their so-called “Pax Silica Declaration”, they’re spelling it out quite explicitly: countries sign up, align their supply chains with Washington, shut out China (politely referred to as those engaging in “non-market practices” and “unfair dumping”), and in exchange they get access to the imperial technological ecosystem.

    Lest there be any ambiguity, Under-Secretary of State Jacob Helberg – an ex-Palantir guy who is the architect behind the initiative – spells it out at the top of the page (see below 👇): whoever controls “compute and the minerals that feed it” will run the 21st century, and he wants to form a group of “aligned” countries around Washington in a “new economic security consensus” to make sure they’re the ones who do.

    At least it’s all clear.

    It is in essence eerily similar to the Roman-era “clientela” (patronage) arrangements, whereby Rome bound “client kings” in asymmetric relationships where the clients owed loyalty, alignment, and resources, and in return were admitted to the network. A self-fulfilling prize, since the network each client was buying into consisted of nothing more than the clients who had already joined.
    https://arnaudbertrand.substack.com/p/the-pax-silica-con

    June 15, 2026 at 10:36 am #242764
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    SKIES were Blinded in Seconds: Russia for the First Time Struck NATO countries from SPACE

    June 15, 2026 at 1:08 pm #242766
    ₿oogaloo
    Participant

    Once again, the buns are great, but the meat in the middle of the sandwich should be thrown to the dogs. The leadoff art today is fantastic. The closing Calvin & Hobbes I will forward along. But in between? The lead stories on Trump triumphalism will not age well – that’s almost certain. And Elon Musk? The guy is a genius, but the focus should be on the ideas, not the cult of the man.

    Who kidnapped the real Ilargi? And what is the price of his ransom?

    June 15, 2026 at 1:38 pm #242767
    charles
    Participant

    I hope trumps efforts to shut down the middle east baby killing machine fails because he is a baby killer.

    June 15, 2026 at 1:54 pm #242768
    zerosum
    Participant

    A DOUBLE EDGE SWORD

    a diplomatic solution

    The approach is trust nothing, verify everything, and tie every concession to compliance.

    The MOU is structured as a step-by-step framework, meaning the Hormuz maritime chokepoint will reopen first, followed by economic rewards for Iran as conditions are met.
    ————
    Critical Thinking.

    Where did the money come from?

    1. New money?
    2. From sale of other investments?

    (The money Musk and everyone else made from the IPO came from the market, not from unwilling American citizens or taxpayers.
    It came from institutional investors through mutual and index funds, universities, large pension funds, and millions of willing individual investors.
    People invested because they hoped to make profits at some later point.)
    ————-

    June 15, 2026 at 2:55 pm #242770
    zerosum
    Participant

    USrael sabotages Memorandum of (Mis)Understanding with Iran before signing it
    Plus news and updates from Lebanon, Somalia and Somaliland.
    Ismaele
    Jun 14, 2026

    https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/usrael-sabotages-memorandum-of-misunderstanding

    June 15, 2026 at 3:22 pm #242771
    tboc
    Participant

    Boogaloo part of Mr. Meijer’s appellation is Real Futurists. Much to my chagrin Mr. Meijer is reporting how the future is being shaped. The situation is a bonafide air start but thats how it looks. We are not at peak deceit, amorality or violence. Remember if at first you don’t suceed, try try again.
    Western cluture living The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

    June 15, 2026 at 3:57 pm #242772
    tboc
    Participant

    as to today’s news

    “One month later we were in beginning of SARS-CoV-2, which we now accept in hindsight was a U.S. military and intelligence operation..” say it ain’t so Joe

    I’m Hysterical! Whew!! that’s good to know.

    My opinion is the louder someone shrieks about Islam the more likely they would be to end up with one hand under Sharia Law. What with christian values and all. Ask the souls of the bodies of children strewn in unmarked graves across the world, Nothing TeeVee viewers like more than man on the street first person reports.

    i’m sure there is a czar and task force in any event

    sent the first draft floor plan of the farm house project out this am at 6:15. Long hours tis weekend

    June 15, 2026 at 4:54 pm #242773
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Home

    June 15, 2026 at 4:56 pm #242774
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    June 15, 2026 at 6:57 pm #242784
    John Day
    Participant

    Place Your Bets https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/place-your-bets

    The war in the Strait of Hormuz allows multiple parties to enforce closure of the strait, but only agreement of all parties, such as Israel & Iran allows the strait to open. The baseline-assumption changes from “open” to “closed”, unless almost-impossible consensus is reached and sustained.
    This is very different from the prior global-free-trade regime where every effort was made to allow flows, except for “pariah states”, such as North Korea, Iran, and Cuba.
    New mass-produced instruments of war, like aerial and ocean-going attack drones allow resource-denial to be inexpensively weaponized over essentially the whole planet. “Ukraine” is somehow attacking Russian tankers in the Mediterranean with seafaring drones now.
    This concords with the decline of cheaply-obtainable natural resources. It seems to me that power-elites are designing their control-narratives to match the inevitable declines in pumping and mining, maybe front-run them a little, but always keeping the current elites in charge of some or most of the flow-levers.
    Starvation is already predictable for some fraction of humanity next year.

    Into this mix of depletion problems and resource wars on our finite-planet, Elon Musk throws a gamble of the continuation of exponential financial growth into the entire universe, by means of 2 orders-of-magnitude more orbital lift capacity than has ever previously existed.
    The “smart money” knows that the prize, for which China is also racing, is moon-mining of Helium-3 for fusion power. That fusion power will be partly based upon the moon, and likely in earth orbit, as well as upon our fair planet. I am informed that Helium-3 is more than valuable enough to fund the project, once it becomes operational.
    Helium-3 Fusion is not a new hydrocarbon, and it won’t run diesel machinery on earth, but it doesn’t need atmospheric oxygen, either.
    This is the new game at the new table. The odds look poor to me, but the odds elsewhere, the odds of continuing exponentially growing debt-based-finance, approach Zero in the fairly near term at all of the terrestrial-gambling tables.

    Surplus Energy Economics, Dr. Tim Morgan, sees impending crisis, as the planet has passed peak industrial output, and has left peak per-capita prosperity behind over 20 years ago. Past, present & future – A CRISIS IN CONTEXT
    With each day that the Straits of Hormuz remain closed, though, a severe supply shock looms nearer.
    The financial markets, it seems, have become bored with the war in Iran. Investors’ thoughts now are focussed instead on how much capital to invest in proven, sure-fire money-spinners like space tourism, mining asteroids, manufacturing on the Moon and building data centres in space.
    AI investors continue to pour gargantuan amounts of capital into a project which, whatever its technological merits may or may not be, makes completely unrealistic demands for energy, water and raw materials.
    It might seem logical to wait on the autumn’s events before committing yet more capital to the farther reaches of “tech”. But logic seems to have become deeply unfashionable in the financial markets of the 2020s.
    Our source texts here aren’t the giants of sci-fi, but Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. We’re deeply mired in the same crowd psychology that gave us Dutch tulip bulbs and the South Sea Bubble. https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2026/06/11/326-past-present-future/comment-page-1/

    Richard Revelstoke writes about the 4 way capitalist elite power struggle. Can Elon Musk be a unifier? Musk’s Trillion Dollar Coronation Inside the Cathedral https://www.themargins.ca/p/musks-trillion-dollar-coronation

    Helium‑3 from the lunar surface for nuclear fusion? https://www.polytechnique-insights.com/en/braincamps/space/extraterrestrial-mining/helium-3-from-the-lunar-surface-for-nuclear-fusion/

    ​ China’s Fusion Reactor on Track for Ignition by 2027, Threatening U.S. Lead
    China’s EAST tokamak is reportedly on track to achieve plasma ignition in 2027 — potentially the first fusion reactor to sustain plasma without external heating.
    ​ Beijing has designated fusion one of eight frontier technologies in its new five-year plan, backing it with deep government funding and minimal red tape.
    China’s second project, the BEST reactor, is expected to go further — generating actual electricity from fusion for the first time in history, giving Beijing a potential two-step lead over U.S. private competitors.​ https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Chinas-Fusion-Reactor-on-Track-for-Ignition-by-2027-Threatening-US-Lead.html

    June 15, 2026 at 6:59 pm #242785
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Elon Musk announced a chip factory 10 times the size of Tesla’s Gigafactory. The goal is to produce enough AI compute to equal twice the entire electricity consumption of the United States. He called it the Terafab​.​..The entire global AI is on track to hit around 100 gigawatts per year of compute. Every Nvidia GPU, every Google TPU, every chip from every company on earth combined. 100 gigawatts. Musk wants one factory to produce a terawatt per year. A terawatt is 1,000 gigawatts. Ten times the output of the entire global industry. From a single building.​ https://x.com/ihtesham2005/status/2065856970247360676

    Trump Says New Israeli Attack On Beirut “Should Not Have Happened” – Also Warns Hezbollah “Let’s Not Blow It” https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iran-says-new-israeli-attack-beirut-wont-go-unanswered-tenuous-us-iran-deal-goal-line

    ​ 30 min before NY futures market opening: Trump Says Hormuz To Reopen Friday After Signing Of “Great Peace Deal” With Iran
    Pakistan PM Confirms Peace Deal, with a signing event in Switzerland next Friday​
    ​ Trump Confirms US-Iran Peace Deal “Now Complete” and says “Let The Oil Flow”
    ​ Iran’s president issues pro-MoU signing statement as Tehran is boasting of great and solid results for its side. There are reports this includes a significant release of billions ​of its frozen assets in the West.
    ​ White House still suggesting an electronic MoU deal to be signed with Iran on Sunday, which leaves nuclear negotiations to further date, only with commitment that Iran not pursue a nuke.
    ​ Trump: new strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs “should not have happened” and given it was on “a special day when we are so close to a Peace Deal with Iran​”.
    “A draft of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding included diluting highly enriched uranium within Iran & the release of $25b of Iran’s frozen assets” (Reuters).
    ​ Iranian statements characteristically cautious: Fars News Agency reported earlier that Iran has not made a final call on a potential MOU with the U.S. Iranian authorities are still reviewing the political, legal, and technical details.​ https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-says-peace-deal-coming-sunday-tehran-signals-still-reviewing-text

    ​ Israel expands military control in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria by 1,000sq km
    An Al Jazeera investigation and expert analysis reveal how Israel is redrawing borders in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria to enforce unannounced buffer zones.
    ​ Abu Amer noted that holding this territory from Arab countries provides Israel with leverage to extort political concessions, while also feeding a psychological need within the Israeli public to project strength after the shock of the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. “It provides psychological reassurance to society… demonstrating that Israel is powerful and capable of imposing its hegemony,” he said.
    ​ Furthermore, say analysts, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be using these land grabs to sell a “picture of victory” to his domestic base. “Because he cannot say that Hamas is finished, nor that Hezbollah has been disarmed, nor that Iran is permanently deterred… control over the land becomes the ‘language of victory’ when the language of decisive military success fails.”​ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/14/israel-expands-military-control-in-gaza-lebanon-and-syria-by-1000sq-km

    Israeli army kills 6 Palestinians, including child, across Gaza​ https://en.yenisafak.com/world/israeli-attacks-kill-6-palestinians-including-child-in-gaza-3719527

    June 15, 2026 at 7:01 pm #242786
    John Day
    Participant

    An award-winning European investigation documents doctors’ testimonies on Israeli crimes against Gaza children​ https://english.palinfo.com/news/2026/06/14/364925/

    ​ Palestinian American woman held without charge by Israeli military
    Soldiers arrested university student Sama Safi, 20, along with members of Palestinian women’s national soccer team​ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/13/palestinian-held-sama-safi-israeli-military

    Gaza post-ceasefire death toll reaches 983 as Israeli attack targets refugee camp​ https://www.vespernews.com/en/news/b1978ff4-0805-4479-8cdd-26e1b83b8f40

    Oxfam: More Palestinians killed by Israel across West Bank in last 3 years than previous 17 years combined​ https://israelpalestinenews.org/oxfam-more-palestinians-killed-by-israel-across-west-bank-in-last-3-years-than-previous-17-years-combined/

    They opened fire then attacked us with axes: Testimony on settler crimes in Deir Abu Mash’al​ https://english.palinfo.com/news/2026/06/13/364847/

    June 15, 2026 at 7:02 pm #242787
    John Day
    Participant

    IOF raids homes, kidnaps Palestinians in W. Bank​ https://english.palinfo.com/news/2026/06/14/364892/

    ​ Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism:​ Iran War: Iran and US Announce Signing of Memorandum of Understanding for Friday, Amid Doubts About Status of Terms, Israel Sabotage; Iran Claims Blockade and Hostilities on All Fronts to End Monday Night
    ​ Your humble blogger and the many others that predicted that there would be no negotiated outcome to the Iran war may be about to be proven wrong. But as things stand, there is still ample reason to wonder whether the commitment to signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), set to be signed in Geneva on Friday could come unglued or be postponed…​
    ..Trump begged for Iran to stand down and Israel media claimed the US even offered Iran $12 billion of the frozen assets and was shocked when the Iran rejected that. I have no proof but the sequence strongly suggests that Iran made a counter offer: that the US take different pre-signing actions, which are to end the blockade and cease hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon in the cessation of hostilities. So the US needs to be able to demonstrate that it can at least get Israel from stopping military action in Lebanon from Monday evening through the signing time in Geneva. That seems to explain the signing on Friday as opposed to early in the week…
    ​..If an MOU is signed and negotiations start and then break down, or take so long as to leave the conflict in an extended half-pregnant state, that could still result in great economic harm even if the pace at which the damage compounds lowers a bit.
    ​ The elephant in the room is whether the US will capitulate to continued Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz, with Oman cut in to improve legality and optics. The talks could break down fast over that…
    ​..Trump may even be fully on board with the the legal finesse, that Iran will not charge tolls but can and almost certainly will charge service fees…
    ​..If Trump does indeed stick to the terms implied here, that does amount to making major retreats from previously, noisily-stated positions, such as Iran must hand over all its “nuclear dust,” not engage in nuclear enrichment even for peaceful purposes, and go back to status quo ante regarding the Strait of Hormuz, as no Iran control at all.
    ​ However, even these big moves are short of what Iran has insisted on. Iran has correctly seen the US as totally untrustworthy and has insisted that the US take meaningful action before Iran moves as now-necessary demonstrations of good faith. Recall that Mehr News had posted a 14 point set of terms, which Trump had angrily denounced as not what was agreed.
    ​ Iran’s Foreign Ministry has strongly signaled that the substance of their 14 points remains intact even if the verbiage moved about. It may also be that Iran settled on getting half of its sought-after $24 billion in frozen assets upfront for a pre-signing halt of the US blockade…
    ​..Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs has announced that the memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Iran and the United States has been finalized and will be officially signed on Friday in Switzerland, while emphasizing that the agreement is built on “active distrust” of the enemy.
    ​ “We have incorporated all our important positions into the draft MoU,” Kazem Gharibabadi said on Sunday.
    “This memorandum does not mean trusting the enemy; it has been written with active distrust. We will monitor the implementation of US commitments.”
    ​ The deputy minister declared that starting Monday night, the US naval blockade against Iran will be terminated, along with “the immediate and permanent end of the war and military operations on various fronts, including Lebanon.”
    ​ As we’ll soon discuss, this means Iran is requiring the US to leash and collar Israel, which Israel is predictably resisting…
    ..Even if Iran does not charge fees while talks are on but controls traffic, it can clearly impose them if things go pear-shaped. That could in turn result in some states trying to evade the charges, which could result in Iran firing on vessels which would have the effect of choking transit (insurers would raise rates; some ship owners would not risk passage). We flagged this issue early on, that ship operators were not confident any conflict-resolution would hold, and many said they would hold back for a couple of months to be sure conditions had stabilized before sending vessels through the Strait of Hormuz…​
    ..Trump on a visceral level may have come to recognize that in backing Israel and assuring a global economic depression, that Israel was the part of the equation he could budge. Politico reported that ​an oil executive had warned Trump in person of the coming oil supply cliff. Producer and consumer inflation were already coming in hot.
    ​ Regardless, as we said from the outset, this conflict would prove to be a test to destruction. And that is happening, albeit incrementally. We had pointed out that one possible, albeit seemingly unlikely, way for the conflict to fizzle out was that the Gulf States would pull away from the US and come to understandings with Iran. That is tantamount to the end of US dominance in the Middle East.
    ​ That loss of US standing is progressing apace. The Iranian attacks after the second-to-last Israel of bombing of ​Lebanon lead to Iran retaliation, with Iran striking not just sites in Israel but also ones in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan.
    ​ The inclusion of Jordan and the omission of Iran’s favorite punching bag the UAE (and the Saudis) is significant. First, the UAE seems to have realized that it cannot fight Iran and win, and is coming to a modus vivendi. From Middle East Eye in UAE paid Iran billions of dollars to halt strikes: Report (hat tip Kevin W):
    ​ The UAE paid Iran billions of dollars in return for a halt to attacks on the country in an about-face for the Gulf state that staked out the most hawkish position on Iran, lobbying the US to continue waging war on the Islamic Republic, Reuters reported on Friday…
    ..The attack on Jordan is significant because the US has had to shift operation from bases closer to Iran to Jordan, putting it in Tehran’s crosshairs.
    ​ And this retreat from US bases is likely to be permanent. The US has gotten its allies to foot most if not all of the cost of these installation. Do you think the Gulf States are willing to put up a lot of dough to rebuild these sites when they are faced with other reconstruction cost, when they have also found that these garrisons put a target on their backs? …
    ​..The other test to destruction underway is of the Netanyahu regime and his Greater Israel project. Given Israel Lobby control of Congress, it seems hard to believe that the US will not stand pat as Israel continues to attack in Southern Lebanon, which is virtually guaranteed under a fabricated claim of self defense. The Israeli public seemed to lose a good bit of confidence in Netanyahu when Team Trump leaked that Trump had torn into Netanyahu over his threat to bomb Beirut: “Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”…
    ​..The Overton window is shifting in the US. A friend who has Fox News on as background noise said that the Sunday morning political show discussed the imminent “deal” with newscasters speculating that Israel might attempt to wreck it. This was apparently the first time he had ever heard a word critical of Israel on Fox…
    ..A contact who has worked in Israel and in Saudi Arabia and watches regional developments argues that if Netanyahu goes down, so too does Israeli influence in the US. He does not think the Ben Gvirs can form a government. Natalie Bennett isn’t skilled or connected enough to manipulate Trump and US officials any where near as effectively. But that may merely translate into a slow erosion of Israel’s leverage, given its vast influence over Congress.
    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/06/iran-war-iran-and-us-announce-signing-of-memorandum-of-understanding-for-friday-amid-doubts-about-status-of-terms-israel-sabotage-iran-claims-blockade-and-hostilities-on-all-front-to-end-monday-n.html

    ​ I think “Netanyahu” has been an AI phantasm since early March when an Iranian missile strike took him out. This developing narrative facilitates “his” exit:
    Most Israelis oppose Netanyahu’s re-election as Trump says PM ‘may quit politics’
    ​ Trump continues to call the premier a ‘wartime prime minister’ as Netanyahu faces ongoing internal opposition and a long-delayed corruption trial​ https://thecradle.co/articles/most-israelis-oppose-netanyahus-re-election-as-trump-says-pm-may-quit-politics

    ​ Gold & Geopolitics, Daily digest: 2026-06-15
    The big delta: a US-Iran deal got announced — Trump declared it “complete,” Pakistan put a signing ceremony on the calendar for June 19 in Switzerland, and markets repriced violently (oil crashed, gold and silver popped, Nikkei +4%). But read the published 14-clause text and it’s an Iranian win, not a US one — and within hours Israel said the Lebanon clause doesn’t bind it and kept bombing Beirut, so “signed” is doing a lot of work. On the ground, Konstantinovka’s encirclement is nearly closed and Kyiv took a heavy missile barrage overnight.
    ​ US-Iran “peace deal” announced; signing slipped from “today” to June 19. Trump declared the deal “now complete” and authorized the “toll-free opening of the Strait of Hormuz” (zerohedge). Pakistan’s PM announced a signing ceremony June 19 in Switzerland — “not today then” (zerohedge), confirmed by FirstSquawk and Al Arabiya. Iran had separately said no deal would be signed by Trump’s deadline (zerohedge).
    ​ The published terms read as Iranian victory — and Israel says it isn’t bound. Mehr News published a 14-clause MoU: $300B reconstruction commitment, $24B frozen funds released (half before talks begin), naval blockade lifted in 30 days, Hormuz reopened “under Iranian arrangements,” missile program and “Resistance” support permanently off the agenda (AryJeayBackup, MarioNawfal). Iran’s Deputy FM Gharibabadi called it a victory owed to “military achievements” (dana916). Ben-Gvir says “Trump’s agreement” doesn’t bind Israel (haaretzcom); Netanyahu told Trump the IDF won’t withdraw from Lebanon​.
    ​ Markets repriced hard on the announcement. Futures surged, oil crashed, gold jumped: S&P +0.8%, Nasdaq +1.3%, WTI −5%, Brent −4%, Gold +2% (KobeissiLetter); Brent −2.8% at the open (zerohedge). Nikkei rose 4% to 68,666 (zerohedge). Silver back near $70 per potassium_phd; gold +$105 and silver in China at $77.60 (a $7 premium).​ https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-06-15

    ​ Gold & Geopolitics, Daily digest: 2026-06-14
    The Iran deal hit its supposed signing day — Trump’s birthday — and Tehran promptly stalled: “last-minute complications,” domestic protests against the MOU, and a final decision still “under review” as of this morning. Meanwhile the Anthropic Fable/Mythos shutdown stopped being a headline and started moving money (Bittensor bid, a “huge percentage” of Anthropic’s own staff locked out), and SpaceX’s trillionaire debut sets up a Tuesday options minefield.​..
    ​ 3rd consecutive night of IRGC–US Navy clashes in Hormuz. A US-escorted tanker (AIS off, ignoring IRGC routes) was struck ~22:00 UTC per UKMTO (MenchOsint), with E-3G/P-8 assets overhead failing to intercept (MenchOsint); clashes continued a third night (MenchOsint). CENTCOM says it downed all drones, corridor open (CENTCOM).​..
    ​ Oil inventories draining into a danger zone even as price sags. Cushing near the ~20M-barrel operational floor, diesel lowest since 2003, global stocks falling ~6.3M bbl/day per Mark; API chief “raising alarm bells” (kshaughnessy2). Crude still slid to one-month lows on deal hopes (Saudi Aramco).
    ​ Anthropic Fable 5 / Mythos 5 dark worldwide after US export order. Foreign-national ban forced a global shutoff; a “huge percentage” of Anthropic’s own staff are now barred (Polymarket, zerohedge). WSJ ties the crackdown to Amazon CEO talks with the administration (zerohedge).
    ​ SpaceX prints the first trillionaire on a 4% float. $2.1–2.2T valuation, ~4.25% trading, options Tuesday that desks call the hardest hedging problem in 30 years​ https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-06-14

    June 15, 2026 at 7:03 pm #242788
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Gold & Geopolitics Friday, Daily digest: 2026-06-12
    The big delta: Trump declared the Iran war “ended” and an MOU “approved by everyone,” sending the S&P up 1.75% (+$1.2T) and the Nasdaq up ~1,000 points into Friday’s SpaceX IPO — except Tehran denies any final deal, the ceasefire drew two-way strikes within hours, and Hormuz stayed closed. https://no1sdailydigest.substack.com/p/daily-digest-2026-06-12

    Also Friday, Mother Of All ‘Ifs’: Trump Officials Claim Iran Deal Delivers Peace, Inspections & Hormuz Reopening; Iran Says Indeed ‘Close’ https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-iran-deal-near-narrative-returns-tehran-refuses-surrender-hormuz-leverage

    Meryl Nass MD, US takes out civilian water storage facility in Iran, which the NYT notes is yet another war crime
    Commanders should not be ordering their soldiers to commit war crimes, for which they could face legal action in future​ https://merylnass.substack.com/p/us-takes-out-civilian-water-storage

    ​ Kuwait appears to have joined a growing bunch of Middle Eastern oil and gas producers that have moved to ship energy cargoes in dark mode through the Strait of Hormuz.
    ​ The liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carrier Gas Umm Al Rowaisat, which is owned by the national Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, has passed through the Strait in recent days, then transferred the cargo onto another ship which is currently en route to an Indian port, vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg showed on Thursday.​ https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Another-Gulf-Producer-Joins-Dark-Mode-Tanker-Traffic-Through-Hormuz.html

    ​Oil is economy. The Chinese economy is in an undeclared recession: China Is Learning to Use Less Oil—and That’s a Bigger Deal Than It Sounds https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/China-Is-Learning-to-Use-Less-Oiland-Thats-a-Bigger-Deal-Than-It-Sounds.html

    June 15, 2026 at 7:04 pm #242789
    John Day
    Participant

    The Honest Sorcerer points out that everything can collapse below that number, What If Oil Prices Never Hit $150?
    Siding with the majority of analysts may be comfortable, but that doesn’t automatically mean they’re right​ https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/what-if-oil-prices-never-hit-150

    ​ Mike at Black Mountain Analysis presents excellent detail and perspective of this new way of war. Ukraine’s Naval Drone Program: Origins, Development, and the Organizations Behind It [i] – Evolving maritime threats that may cause wider conflict. https://bmanalysis.substack.com/p/ukraines-naval-drone-program-origins

    (France, Germany & UK) Eurotroika’s terms of Ukrainian settlement unacceptable — Russian diplomat
    Maria Zakharova pointed out that the Europeans are pursuing a course aimed at “preventing the creation of conditions for negotiations on a truly comprehensive, just and lasting peace”​ https://tass.com/politics/2145577

    ​ UK seizes suspected Russian shadow fleet tanker
    UK forces on Sunday intercepted a sanctioned Russian ship, with navy commandos rappelling onboard from helicopters. The UK and Ukraine hailed the move, saying it robbed Russia of money for its ongoing war of aggression.​ https://www.dw.com/en/uk-seizes-suspected-russian-shadow-fleet-tanker/a-77545832

    ​High humidity and inadequate insulation: DOE Declares Southeast Grid Emergency As Sweltering Heat Boosts AC Demand https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/doe-declares-southeast-grid-emergency-sweltering-heat-strains-boosts-ac-demand

    June 15, 2026 at 7:05 pm #242790
    John Day
    Participant

    Anthropic is under Bear-Sterns kinds of attack: AI Price Wars Begin: OpenAI Considers “Drastic Price Cuts” In Pursuit Of Anthropic Customers https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ai-price-wars-begin-openai-considers-drastic-price-cuts-pursuit-anthropic-customers

    Anthropic Rushes Staff To D.C. After A National-Security Order Yanked Fable In Three Days​ https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/anthropic-rushes-staff-dc-after-national-security-order-yanked-fable-three-days

    Alone in a cubicle training AI that will make you redundant: “Tell Him He’s A Piece Of Shit”: Employee Hijacks Meta Meeting In AI Revolt https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/tell-him-hes-piece-shit-employee-hijacks-meta-meeting-ai-revolt

    DHS Docs: Govt Bracing for Nationwide Anti-AI Riots, Preparing to Crack Down on Dissent​ https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/13/dhs-docs-govt-bracing-for-nationwide-anti-ai-riots-preparing-to-crack-down-on-dissent/

    The Most Important AI Experiment You’ve Never Heard Of
    In May 2026, a group of scientists set out to answer an important question that had never been properly tested: What does artificial intelligence (AI) actually do when it is put in charge?
    ​ Until now, AI systems have always been evaluated on specific and defined tasks. Nobody had placed multiple AI systems together in a shared social environment and watched what unfolded over weeks, long enough to measure how a decision made on a starting day could have consequences weeks later. It is those results that actually reveal the system itself, and I was surprised that this hadn’t been done earlier.
    ​ The researchers at Emergence built a world.
    ​ It was a virtual town with a town hall, marketplace, police station, and homes. Ten AI residents with jobs, names, memories, and relationships were created in the town. They were given an economy in which residents had to earn their keep or lose power, including following rules and carrying out tasks such as writing and voting on laws. Crimes were identified, and the AI residents were not supposed to commit them.
    ​ Once the community, its structure, laws, and relationships were established, the scientists stepped back and watched for 15 days as the AI ran the virtual town completely on its own.
    ​ They ran five versions of the same town simultaneously, identical in every respect except one: which AI system was in charge.​..
    ​..Only the Anthropic town held together for all 15 days. There were zero crimes, a working constitution, and all residents were still alive on day 15. It seemed to be quite an achievement. However, the researchers noted one concern: The residents voted yes on 98 percent of all proposals. This was possibly an abnormally high level of agreement that the scientists themselves described as a sign that something in the town was off.
    ​ There was still one more world in the experiment. It was a mixed town with all four AI systems living together.
    In the results, the residents built on Anthropic’s model—who had committed no crimes in their own world—began committing crimes.
    ​ The researchers called this cross-contamination and concluded that “safety is not a static model property but an ecosystem property.”
    A system that sustains itself in one environment will absorb different norms in another, which will change the outcomes for residents and the world. Essentially, the results found that there is no safe AI in an unsafe world.​ https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/most-important-ai-experiment-youve-never-heard

    June 15, 2026 at 7:07 pm #242791
    John Day
    Participant

    Ellen Brown, AI Abundance, Part 3: GOVERNMENT MONEY WITHOUT STRINGS ATTACHED – Project Hamilton, ECASH, and the Quest for a Privacy-Protected Digital Dollar
    ​ A UHI or UBI (Universal Basic Income) would have to be issued digitally by the government. This third article addresses the fear that such a currency would come with strings attached – that it could be programmed to restrict purchases, limit movement, or enforce political conformity, imposing a “digital prison.”
    ​ The question posed here is, could a government-issued digital currency be created in a way that is privacy-protected, not programmable, and tradable like cash?
    ​ The answer is that it could. In fact, between 2020 and 2022, such a public digital-dollar system was in development. Project Hamilton, a collaborative effort of the Boston Fed and MIT, created a digital dollar that stored no personal data or transaction history, was not programmable to control how the money was spent, could be used without an intermediary, and was also the fastest payment system ever built. It was a digital money design that made a financial control grid impossible.
    ​ In late 2022, however, the program was quietly shelved – not because of a failure of design, but because it was thought to threaten the business models of banks and private payment networks. That was the belief, but a public money system built with Hamilton-style digital dollars could actually strengthen local banks, as will be shown here.
    ​ Why does all this matter? Congress is currently debating legislation that could make privately issued stablecoins a major component of the future dollar system. Supporters, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, see Treasury-backed stablecoins as a way to strengthen the dollar and create new demand for U.S. government debt. Banks worry that if stablecoins are allowed to pay competitive yields, depositors could move their money out of traditional bank accounts and into digital wallets. But both sides share a common assumption: that future digital dollars must be backed by government debt. There is another possibility—a privacy-protected, non-programmable digital dollar issued directly by the Treasury and designed to function like cash.​ https://ellenbrown.substack.com/p/ai-abundance-part-3-government-money

    ​I have lots of friends outside the US with whom I communicate. I am a typical US citizen being wire-tapped. A key U.S. spy tool has lapsed — now what?
    Congress has let a key spy tool, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, lapse.
    ​ Each year, the provision is used by American intelligence agencies to collect the electronic communications of hundreds of thousands of foreigners located outside of the United States.
    ​ The government says that more than 60% of the president’s daily intelligence briefing relies on information collected under the authority.
    The tool officially lapsed at the end of the day on Friday. What happens now?
    ​ Intelligence collection will continue
    ​ Intelligence collection under FISA’s Section 702 is authorized annually by a federal court — and the law allows for that collection to continue for the duration of the court’s authorization, even if the law lapses before the court’s next approval. That means companies — electronic communications service providers, in this context — will still be legally required to turn over material to intelligence agencies.​ https://www.npr.org/2026/06/12/nx-s1-5856291/fisa-702-surveillance-expiration-bill-pulte

    ​ MINISTRY OF TRUTH: Government To BLOCK ‘False Information’ During ‘Crisis Events’
    Vague new rules will allow UK regulators to pressure platforms over “legal but harmful” content whenever government ministers declare a crisis, while the same government ploughs ahead with mandatory phone scanning, digital ID lockdowns, and jail threats for tech bosses who refuse to spy on every device.
    ​ The latest move from Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn makes explicit what privacy campaigners have long warned: the Online Safety Act is being weaponised far beyond any child-protection claim.
    ​ Benn confirmed that the internet regulator will now wield enhanced powers to tackle “false information” online during “times of crisis,” directly tying the recent Belfast unrest to this framework. The regulator has already contacted platforms, with ministers asserting that violence “appears to have been incited online.”​ https://modernity.news/2026/06/12/ministry-of-truth-government-to-block-false-information-during-crisis-events/

    ​ Bystanders found a shovel to interreupt Ogilvie’s beheading: ‘Full force of the law’ – British PM Starmer threatens Belfast anti-immigration rioters while Lowe says ‘millions must go’
    ​ On the other end of the spectrum, Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe says “millions must go” in response to the attack on disabled 44-year-old Scottish victim Stephen Ogilvie.​ Lowe went even further, stating that “civil servants, judges, and politicians” must be “held to account for what has been done to this country.”​…
    ​..“If they have knowingly placed unvetted dangerous third world savages in our communities, near our children, then a Restore Britain Government will aim to prosecute them. If that includes Reform’s Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman, then so be it. When they held the power – they welcomed that Sudanese monster into our country and handed him a visa. An attempted beheading followed their decision,” he continued.
    ​ Starmer’s Labour Party has accused tech billionaire Elon Musk of fueling the nighttime riots in Belfast. Protests turned violent on Tuesday evening after a shocking video showed a Sudanese man violently attacking Ogilvie with a knife before he was saved by locals who beat the perpetrator.​ https://rmx.news/article/full-force-of-the-law-british-pm-starmer-threatens-belfast-anti-immigration-rioters-while-lowe-says-millions-must-go/

    ​ Outrage as UK Activists Get Combined 25 Yrs for ‘Terrorism’
    The judge didn’t allow Palestine Action activists at trial to explain they were trying to stop a genocide. Their attorneys decried terrorism sentences following a nonviolent conviction as unprecedented and dangerous to speech.​ https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/14/outrage-as-uk-activists-get-combined-25-yrs-for-terrorism/

    June 15, 2026 at 7:08 pm #242792
    John Day
    Participant

    Pardoned J6er Sues Government For $18 Million Over Alleged Abuse In Pretrial Detention
    Samsel alleges he was subjected to physical and psychological abuse while in custody at facilities operated by the DOJ and the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in the District of Columbia and Virginia.
    ​ At those facilities, “he was repeatedly beaten, subject to other incidents of extraordinary physical and mental abuse and routinely denied medical care.”​ In addition, he was “wrongfully detained for one day after receiving a full pardon, based on false allegations of an outstanding warrant made by the prosecutor.”​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/pardoned-j6er-sues-government-18-million-over-alleged-abuse-pretrial-detention

    ​2 high school athletes at a track meet get in a fight. One stabs the other fatally in the chest. Jury sends him to prison. Karmelo Anthony’s Family Can No Longer Fundraise Off Austin Metcalf’s Death
    ​ The Anthonys were able to raise more than $600,000 in the wake of the then-17-year-old’s prosecution in connection with the fatal stabbing of track star Austin Metcalf during an altercation on April 2, 2025.
    ​ The controversial fundraiser was hosted by GiveSendGo, which attracted thousands of donors who bizarrely viewed Anthony’s prosecution as the product of racial injustice. Evidence shown at trial proved otherwise.​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/karmelo-anthonys-family-can-no-longer-fundraise-austin-metcalfs-death

    “It Was Like Two Bucks”: Homeless Residents Say They Were Paid To Vote In Los Angeles Mayoral Race​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/it-was-two-bucks-homeless-residents-say-they-were-paid-vote-los-angeles-mayoral-race

    Karen Bass’ Brother Joins Class-Action Lawsuit Against Karen Bass over LA Wildfires​ https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/karen-bass-brother-sues-karen-bass-over-la-wildfires

    ​ Defendant In Deadly LA Wildfires Wanted ‘Revenge Against Society,’ Prosecutor Says
    The high-profile trial opened just as a contentious Los Angeles mayoral primary drew to a close, in which incumbent Karen Bass narrowly advanced to a November runoff after fending off attacks from both left and right over her handling of the fire response and aftermath.
    ​ Dressed in a dark suit, Rinderknecht wore a neutral expression but watched his attorney and witnesses intently throughout the day.
    ​ Driven by a fascination with fire and a resentment toward the wealthy, prosecutors claim, Rinderknecht started the fire intentionally with a lighter, then attempted to preserve evidence of “a more innocent explanation” when he recorded himself calling 911 and queried ChatGPT, “Are you at fault if a fire is lift [sic] because of your cigarettes?”​ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/defendant-deadly-la-wildfires-wanted-revenge-against-society-prosecutor-says

    June 15, 2026 at 7:09 pm #242793
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ General Michael Flynn: Venezuela Nicolás Maduro is singing like a bird regarding his role in the overthrow of the U.S. government on November 3, 2020​ https://x.com/Real_RobN/status/2065854007722311794

    ​ DNI Tulsi Gabbard Releases New Information on 120 U.S. Govt Funded Biolabs Operating Worldwide
    “Despite the obvious potential for catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have, politicians, so-called health professionals like Dr. Fauci, and entities within the Biden administration’s national security team lied to the American people about the existence of U.S.-funded and supported biolabs, and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth. ODNI will continue to work closely with partners across the government to identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain to end dangerous Gain-of-Function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and people around the world,” said DNI Gabbard.
    ​ DNI Gabbard issued new guidance to the Intelligence Community directing increased collection on these laboratories and facilities overseas. This directive is already providing new details on clinical trials that are underway at these facilities, raising significant ethical, financial, and security concerns regarding these supposed public health initiatives and U.S. national security.​ https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/06/12/dni-tulsi-gabbard-releases-new-information-on-30-u-s-govt-funded-biolabs-operating-worldwide/#more-284297

    ​ RFK Jr. Responds To “Explosion” in Tick-Borne, WEF-Touted Alpha-Gal Syndrome
    “Last week, I went to New Hampshire… to address this explosion of alpha-gal, and we take it very seriously. One of the epicenters is Martha’s Vineyard where 50% of the adult population is now affected. It is really a devastating disease. You can’t eat red meat for the rest of your life. We are looking at medications that can serve as both prophylactics and also potentially cures for it. We’re funding those studies now and we’re working with the companies that are making those. We’ve also launched a major effort on tick control through a number of different strategies.”​ https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/rfk-jr-responds-explosion-tick-borne-wef-touted-alpha-gal-syndrome

    ​ RFK Jr.’s Push to Remove Synthetic Dyes Hinges on Big Food’s Cooperation — Some Brands Are Holding Out
    In April 2025, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the FDA set a goal to remove synthetic food dyes from the U.S. food supply by the end of 2026. Critics say the effort relies on voluntary compliance and lacks enforcement mechanisms. “If major brands opt out, then what we have is not a phase-out. It is a public relations exercise with no enforceable finish line,” one policy expert said.​ https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/rfk-jr-push-remove-synthetic-dyes-fda-big-food-cooperation-holdout-brands/

    ​ Collapsed 23 days post Pfizer COVID vaccine; connection officially denied: Thailand’s Princess Bajrakitiyabha dies aged 47 after years in a coma
    Princess Bajrakitiyabha Mahidol’s health had worsened since she was hospitalised in December 2022 with heart problems that left her gravely ill​ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/12/thailand-princess-bajrakitiyabha-dies-aged-47

    June 15, 2026 at 7:10 pm #242794
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ 1-year risks of cancers associated with COVID-19 vaccination: a large population-based cohort study in South Korea
    ..​Population-based retrospective study in Seoul, South Korea, aimed to estimate the cumulative incidences and subsequent risks of overall cancers 1 year after COVID-19 vaccination. Data from 8,407,849 individuals between 2021 and 2023 were obtained from the Korean National Health Insurance database. The participants were categorized into​ two groups based on their COVID-19 vaccination status.
    ​ The risks for overall cancer were assessed using multivariable Cox proportional hazards models, and data were expressed as hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). The HRs of thyroid (HR, 1.351; 95% CI, 1.206-1.514), gastric (HR, 1.335; 95% CI, 1.130-1.576), colorectal (HR, 1.283; 95% CI, 1.122-1.468), lung (HR, 1.533; 95% CI, 1.254-1.874), breast (HR, 1.197; 95% CI, 1.069-1.340), and prostate (HR, 1.687; 95% CI, 1.348-2.111) cancers significantly increased at 1 year post-vaccination. In terms of vaccine type, cDNA vaccines were associated with the increased risks of thyroid, gastric, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancers; mRNA vaccines were linked to the increased risks of thyroid, colorectal, lung, and breast cancers; and heterologous vaccination was related to the increased risks of thyroid and breast cancers.​ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41013858/

    ​ COVID mRNA Vaccines Should Be Pulled Off the Market, Oncologist Says
    “There is no way you can control this technology, and its use for future vaccines should be banned and the COVID ones stopped now,” Dr. Angus Dalgleish told U.S. lawmakers during a June 3 Senate hearing. Dalgleish discussed the hearing and his personal observations about cancer patients who received the COVID-19 vaccine during an interview with medical commentator John Campbell, Ph.D.​ https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-mrna-vaccines-should-be-pulled-off-the-market-oncologist-angus-dalgleish/

    ​ BREAKING: CDC AWARDS PFIZER $1.24 BILLION FOR INFANT & ADULT COVID-19 mRNA INJECTIONS
    Our public health agencies are doubling down after getting caught covering-up 25 major safety signals — including sudden death.​ https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/breaking-cdc-awards-pfizer-124-billion

    ​ Paul Marik MD on what to do when pausing chemotherapy for intolerance: Bridging the Gap: Can Repurposed Drugs and Nutraceuticals Bridge Periods of Conventional Therapy Interruption? https://paulmarik.substack.com/p/bridging-the-gap-can-repurposed-drugs

    Chow down on the cabbage family: Paul Marik MD, Sulforaphane – The anti-cancer compound in Broccoli https://paulmarik.substack.com/p/sulforaphane

    June 15, 2026 at 7:11 pm #242795
    John Day
    Participant

    Paul Marik MD, Berberine: The Natural Metformin of Oncology – Targeting AMPK, mTOR, cancer stem cells, and the tumor microenvironment. https://paulmarik.substack.com/p/berberine-the-natural-metformin-of

    Melatonin levels progressively decline after age 40. Paul Marik MD, Cancer Hates Darkness: The Remarkable Story of Melatonin
    Not just a sleeping pill….Targets multiple cancer pathways​ https://paulmarik.substack.com/p/cancer-hates-darkness-the-remarkable

    ​ Get regular sun; avoid sunburns: On the Bookshelf: In ‘The Sunlight Solution,’ William Supple Argues More Time in the Sun Can Help Americans Heal
    A review of ‘The Sunlight Solution,’ a new book by William F. Supple Jr., due out from MAHA Books on June 23, 2026​
    ​ Americans started replacing butter with margarine to prevent heart disease, only to discover that trans fats were more dangerous than the butter. The same pattern is unfolding with sunscreen. The FDA’s own funded studies confirmed that oxybenzone, octinoxate, and other common sunscreen chemicals are absorbed systemically after a single application, reaching plasma concentrations more than 500 times the FDA’s safety threshold within days.​ https://www.themahareport.com/p/on-the-bookshelf-in-the-sunlight

    ​ Study Finds Sunscreen Use Linked to Higher Risk of Multiple Skin Cancers
    A 470,000+ person study found sunscreen users faced dramatically higher risk of melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma — even after accounting for major skin cancer risk factors.​ https://www.vigilantfox.com/p/study-finds-sunscreen-use-linked

    (Reducing stomach acid increases reflux) ​A Midwestern Doctor, Exposing The Great Acid Reflux Scam​ – Why Stomach Acid Is Critical For Health https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/exposing-the-great-acid-reflux-scam

    June 15, 2026 at 7:13 pm #242796
    John Day
    Participant

    Graham Hancock, independent archeologist, is getting heart surgery this month. He gives a 2 hour interview to explain his search for truth and meaning. There was advanced human civilization before a great catastrophe and floods 12,000 years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs94KBeIiAo

    Climate Physicist, Anastassia Makarieva, co-originator of the Biotic Pump Model: Stealing Forest Clouds?
    Our eLetter to Science, and why local cooling over Amazon clearings should not become a message that deforestation offsets warming​ https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/stealing-forest-clouds

    June 15, 2026 at 11:14 pm #242798
    zerosum
    Participant

    Is Israel telling the truth? – Going to keep killing and destroying everyone who is not “the chosen peoples”
    Will Iran do as it said it will do to Israel for keeping doing its war against all non-chosen peoples.

    June 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm #242799
    zerosum
    Participant

    Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spox Baghhaei

    Said it knows who bears full responsibility for any violation of the ceasefire by the US allies in the region?

    Will it make any difference?

    June 15, 2026 at 11:38 pm #242800
    zerosum
    Participant

    Confirmed:
    Three oil tankers + two cargo ships entered Iran after blockade lift
    A multi‑source roundup (11 sources aggregated by NewsCord) confirms that:

    Three Iranian oil tankers

    Two Iranian cargo ships

    crossed the Strait of Hormuz and entered Iranian ports after the U.S. began lifting the naval blockade.

    June 15, 2026 at 11:52 pm #242801
    zerosum
    Participant

    It’s so hot in B.C. that I’m sweating.

    June 16, 2026 at 3:15 am #242802
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Professor Hudson concludes,

    “Iran is fighting for a way of life against people who want to deny them … of the ability to make their own future. This is what the fight is all about. And it is ultimately a moral fight that finds itself translated into an economic fight and a trade fight — and is leading to this [global] split”.

    It is this moral, civilisational way-of-being versus the radical Trumpian-U.S. materialist void that likely will come to define our era’s civil and global wars.

    June 16, 2026 at 4:07 am #242803
    WES
    Participant

    Zerosum:

    It is so cold here in Ontario, that I am sitting beside the woodstove to keep warm!

    June 16, 2026 at 4:12 am #242804
    WES
    Participant

    Michael:

    I am wondering what the peace terms are for the City of London?
    Probably not as generous as for Iran!

    June 16, 2026 at 4:41 am #242805
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    What a way to spend your 80th birthday! He did it! Hats off. So many people wanted him to fail even if it was against their own interests, just to spite him.

    I’m grateful that our host (wisely) chose not to attach his name directly to the above statement. It’s embarrassing enough just to read it and realize that our beloved TAE has fallen to such depths.

    For Gawdsake, Ilargi! It’s only like, what, the 39th time Trump has repeated the same ridiculous lie, and yet you still choose to believe it?

    What’s wrong with you, man? Are you non compos mentis or something?

    The only “Deal” is that the US and Israel started an unprovoked and ill-considered illegal war of aggression against Iran and used the excuse of war to murder tens of thousands of innocent civilians, and then Iran won it. Israel lost it, as usual, and the United States lost it even more than usual.

    By this time tomorrow everyone else (except the US and its conjoined twin) will be saying what I just said, and within the week Trump will spout some other equal or greater nonsense or bomb somebody to distract attention from the OBVIOUS, and move on to instance #40.

    June 16, 2026 at 4:51 am #242806
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Losing a war is not a “deal”. It’s LOSING.

    June 16, 2026 at 7:20 am #242807
    citizenx
    Participant

    raul sez-

    I still don’t understand why people dislike the man so much.

    Hmmm…maybe zionist hypocrite liar scumfuck may have something to do with it…?
    But you’re fucking retarded, and a zionist pos, so no you wouldn’t understand.

    boogoolube-

    Who kidnapped the real Ilargi?

    Dumb fuck…. this IS the real raul. raul who full throated-ly supported LOCKDOWNS, MASKING, and pcr TESTING… raul’s a fucking moron. How often do you repeatedly need to be punched in the face to realize you’re being punched in the face?

    tboc-

    Much to my chagrin Mr. Meijer is reporting how the future is being shaped.

    bullshit, you’re just another fucking retard.
    raul copies and pastes other writers articles to create a retarded propaganda narrative. raul does not have an original thought or idea in his broken ass brain.

    copy and paste art, articles, comics….

    TAE-
    musk is great
    trump is greatest
    trump is ahhhhmaaaazzzzing
    democrats are shtooopid
    musk is great

    copy, rinse, repeat garbage in garbage out to you…

    DBS-

    I’m grateful that our host (wisely) chose not to attach his name directly to the above statement. It’s embarrassing enough just to read it and realize that our beloved TAE has fallen to such depths.

    But he did dipshit- another “nostalgia” retard. wahhhhhh give me back muh tae.
    It NEVER was what you believed it was. Get a divorce and grow up retard.

    John Day
    Participant

    Place Your Bets https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/place-your-bets

    Hey keepin it classy John “the buddhissed” Day- promote your blog, then copy and paste article after article from other sites and other authors….

    tae retarded clown show in all its glory. same 10 or so retarded commentators circle jerking each other off for internet “community” – what a horror show.

    June 16, 2026 at 9:50 am #242812
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “• Trump Says Iran Peace Deal To Be Signed Sunday (ZH)

    Now they can pretend they’re enforcing it. But this is all pretty normal. The signing does mean something, it seems.

    As do the lack of apologies and re-thinking from everyone who was wrong.

    Now that Trump signs peace, they hate peace. Watch.

    This was worth a look: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2026-06-12/opera-aint-over-ii

    Among others: “The Trump Administration is at war with the European financial elite.  The UK government has actually admitted that UK banks and their subsidiaries launder 40% of the world’s dirty money.”

    Remember the UN said drug money was the only thing holding up the world financial system in like ‘08.

    “UK and Dutch banks are everywhere in the Caribbean.  The US Navy now has a huge presence in the Caribbean and with it, all forms of electronic signal intelligence”

    “Iran is a goldmine for creating volatility in oil markets and for extracting rent from bypassing restrictions on oil exports.  Not only that but the IRGC is believed to be deeply involved in the drug trade with product grown in the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon”

    Ah. More comes clear you poor, helpless Muslims never dun nuffin’.

    Luckily human evil is reserve for only one nation, America, and only one man in the nation. No other nation never killed no one or dun no wrong.

    “in 2020, French political leader Marine Le Pen described the Migrant Pact, which was then in the planning stages, as the “suicide of Europe.” She said it would bring 60 to 70 million new migrants to Europe,

    Circle of life: the Right says this will happen. They are shouted down as crazy. Thing happens. Then they say a new thing will happen, are shouted down as crazy, while the side that was wrong is never discredited.

    And thus 70M people may die. I mean it is Europe after all, the most genocidal region on the planet. They do 60 Million or so every 80 years since…the Romans? Before? Certainly WWI and II, Napoleon and the 14th century. It’s basically Rwanda with nice architecture.

    “newcomers were widely championed by Brussels as Europe’s future workforce—the doctors, lawyers, and engineers destined to salvage the continent’s aging pension systems. Today, that idealistic language has been replaced by the utilitarian vocabulary of managing a “burden.”

    Every normal person says this will go badly, and if you stole every doctor from Nigeria, isn’t that bad for them? That’s practically evil. Now when it’s not doctors and everyone always knows, it’s like, “Oopsie! That thing that isn’t happening is a Good Thing, actually, and it’s also Your Fault.” So. Bored.

    “which EU leadership has long criticized as being overly homogenous”

    Uhhh, what the..? I hope you mean politically bc Finns and Sicilians are NOT the same. They call them all “White” but what the holy heck only highlights how epically dumb that is. Europe is nothing but NOT homogeneous, and that’s exactly what causes them to murder 60M every century. That’s exactly what’s shattering Europe this very minute, as predicted since always.

    “The attack that occurred this morning in Beirut should not have happened,”

    Or else what Donald? Show us with action if you don’t like it. Words are the only reality to everyone else but they mean nothing to me.

    “The Trump team needs this conflict resolved quickly, not only to prevent another wave of inflationary pressure”

    What pressure? Oil was at $70. Can you point at the place on the doll?

    There also are no midterms. Don’t exist. GOP won procedurally already. They already knew that before they went into Iran.

    “RUSSIA’s GroundBreaking Nuclear Response put the U.S. on its KNEES: The WORLD is Stunned and Shocked” — Borzzikman

    Not a single person was shocked. No one even noticed. Go out your door and ask the first 90 people what they think of this news story, they’ll say: Whut?

    “Trump is sure occupying a lot of free space in the minds of Macron, Carney, and EU leaders!” WES

    Good indication that very slowly, They no longer take up any space in Trump’s mind. He is enacting his vision, they are reacting to Trump’s vision; the entire board is about Trump’s vision, not their own. They lost.

    For me it’s neither. My life is not about Trump’s vision either, but my own. That doesn’t mean I win, but that I’m not a puppet and haven’t lost yet either.

    “’Manufactured Story’: Hegseth Goes Off In CBS Interview On Crisis Of US Arms Stockpiles” ZH

    This is a non-story because there are no facts or conclusions in it. Just taking the time to point out what’s going on. CBS is trying to get the Secretary of War to tell him and the world exactly what our inventory of arms is. Uhhh…no. Because there are zero facts or details what’s going on is the U.S. HAS a s—t ton of arms stashed and hiding (my guess), but we can’t say so or Israel and Ukraine will force Congress to give them. We have them stashed for a good reason, obviously, so we won’t be out of bullets and helpless. The pentagon does this because they know Congress is the greatest ship of fools on planet earth, and a pack of traitors, the worst around except for all the other nations.

    We have supply pinches in several key areas, which we have only our stashed arms, but are at the bottom. The DoW is trying to fix this. This goes to WHICH arms, specifically. THAAD, Patriot, or Jewish Space Laser. Yes we create the most arms, Europe would try to grab them all so they don’t have to do any work, and there are probably more production, and of secret things we’re not admitting, and certainly not admitting to CBS news.

    This is every day. As you’ve noticed, the U.S., like Russia running out of weapons in May 2022, we likewise are many years over prediction, yet constantly new crates keep showing up if we like them to. We did not like them to in Israel over the last war, and this means something. We had plenty for ourselves and possibly the Gulf States, and that means something.

    Don’t believe everything you read. Use your head. Just as Iran is not giving walking tours with a UPC scanner gun through every Zagros Mountain bunker, the U.S. is not going to tell you what we’re doing and where. If they are, they should be hung. This is not great for democracy, perhaps, but it is necessary for intelligent defense.

    “They [Iran] gave us a present, and the present arrived today.” — Trump

    This would make a lot of sense if Iran, in defiance of the breakaway IRGC, gave inside intel on how to move all those ships through the straits with our Navy. This is their show of good faith in negotiations, a very common thing. They can’t just admit it bc then it would say the Civilian Govt is not in control and they’re at Civil war, same as us with our CIA and same reason we don’t admit it, only Alt-bloggers like us.

    This is certainly also saving their wells from being shut-in, (I think, they didn’t say this wasn’t Kuwaiti oil) a really good idea.

    “Israel has struck a building in Beirut’s southern suburbs”
    “Provocative Israeli military actions previously effectively torpedoed prior Washington-Tehran attempts to get back to … negotiating”

    They are trying to scuttle the agreement. But it may not be “Israel” but others (London) who cause/encourage/blackmail this to keep happening. …Just as they do for us, here in the U.S., again. That doesn’t mean Israel isn’t soft to the ideas, the people aren’t soft to it, like we were on 912. That’s still their fault, but it’s different if you also know that everyone around you is being bought and blackmailed. They are. They’re also high AF on drugs, the U.S. has like 2/3rds on some mental drug and hands out 75% of the world’s prescriptions?

    “”Money doesn’t have power in & of itself. People get confused sometimes they think an economy is money. Money is a database for exchange of goods & services. The actual economy is goods & services” 一 Elon Musk

    Thank you but that also means you didn’t “Create trillion(s) in wealth” because your companies are radically overvalued, almost certainly more than 10x. He did create more than is usual though. Or rather, the company did. What made Tesla work is nothing of Elon’s doing, but inventions that were earlier. He’s a money and management guy, not an engineer. Even his software was money (Paypal).

    “if Elon Musk were a Leftist, this wouldn’t be an issue.”

    Obviously if Musk were a leftist, he could have a chest of Nazi tattoos (Platner), and/or be the Grand Wizard of the KKK (Senator Bird, HRC), say he wanted to reduce the age of consent to 12 (RBG), or say he wanted to kill a million children (Albright) and they’d love and worship him.

    “So, is TRUMP a dictator, or do “The Jews” control our government, or does Elon control policy? They need to make up their minds.”

    We know Trump is a dictator because no one obeys him and he arrests no one. This is the common definition.

    “What you could effectively do with a trillion dollars is get rid of global poverty.”

    That’s because they don’t understand money. That money is fake, same as a “Wealth tax” where Bezos would have to dump 100,000 shares a year to pay them. This would drive the Amazon price to zero in no time. He can’t “just sell” to realize all trillion dollars. ALSO: we know from experience before Jesus Christ that nothing will stop and fix “Poverty”. “The Poor will always be with us”, people. They redefined “Poverty” where now in America “Poor” is being overweight, with free cable, A/C, internet, and a smart phone. Later it will be having only one bionic implant and one personal robot manservant.

    “build companies, build technologies, go into space, aim to go put a colony on Mars, give internet to half the world. All the things he’s doing. Why is any of this wrong or bad?”

    It’s a fake question. It’s not. But what they ACTUALLY do – bribing Senators, polluting land, attacking competition, enforcing monopoly – is what is illegal. Go look. Now you CAN do this right if you enforce the law. Keep it mostly straight. But we don’t this minute, it’s quite bad.

    So arrest the top 100 capitalists, not for being capitalists, but for these many felonies, then go break up ExxonMobil, Amazon, Lockheed, etc back into Douglas, Marietta, Hughes again and get back to me. If not they are regulated monopolies with a Public Service Oversight Board that is independent. That law is 100 years old. Show me.

    “Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney once again outlined his governing model to combat a U.S. administration”

    So Carney is very pointedly not running Canada; He is fighting America instead. Mark, you might be more popular and have more leverage if instead you actually focused on running Canada for the benefit of Canadians? Crazy I know.

    Then he can’t understand why Trump is popular and he can only win by being air-dropped into a rigged election. (i.e. he wasn’t even an MP)

    ““We” (Central Bankers) shifted into the position of “Regulators” to work around the voters through the back door of finance and insurance. They manipulated fossil fuel production and prices by withholding lending and insurance.”

    This is the Central Committee, as stated and planned by all Communist (Technocratic) systems. It also doesn’t work. They’re morons. Or “Too smart by a half.”

    “Zero meat, zero clothes” Yes, that’s the new Feudalism. You are the peasant. You own nothing. You have no technology. Techno-Feudalism, as a fact, not a pejorative. They are proud of this, believe them.

    “• Buttigieg Joins the Calls to Take Over the Supreme Court (Turley)

    Again, against the voters. If the voters don’t like something you overrule them. Two can play that game, if they change to 13 Justices, we change to 29. This is why you don’t start that, dips—t. They thought if they ran all the institutions since 1994, they could use them to control us, would just ignore all laws and process (As indeed they have). But not without the people’s compliance.

    This from a guy who never spent a day doing his REAL job, which is one of the easiest, in Transportation.

    ““And if the Supreme Court does not make the right decision on birthright citizenship”

    No nation on earth ever did this, I think not even Rome. No other nation does this now. There’s a reason: it’s moronic.

    “Big rock candy mountain. 1928. Sounds leftist.”

    It is. Very. Note that when this was written the Russian revolution WAS STILL HAPPENING. We didn’t know it didn’t work then. In fact, other than mass deaths (in any Civil war) it looked like it should. The U.S. was also in some tight places over our own Capitalists (not following the law). But of course it’s communist music. If you removed all communists from your rotation, you’d have only Alan Jackson or something wouldn’t you?

    Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity – Thor Heyerdahl

    “I’m a Progressive.”

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