Apr 102026
 


Jules Adolphe Breton The Song of the Lark 1884


Whatever’s Happening in Iran and the Middle East, It Isn’t a ‘Ceasefire’ (Moran)
Israeli MPs Furious Over Trump’s Ceasefire With Iran (RT)
Before Donald Trump Ran Up His White Flag, Here Are The Reasons He Did So (Helmer)
JD Vance: EU in Hungary “Worst Ever Foreign Election Interference” (RMX)
Appeals Court Allows Pentagon To Call Anthropic A Supply-Chain Risk (ZH)
Is Anthropic’s ‘Mythos’ a ‘Generational Leap’ Beyond Other AI Models (Moran)
US Moves Closer To Automated Military Draft (RT)
A Billion-Dollar Mirage: Do Ukraine’s New Missiles Match The Hype? (Kornev)
Serious Questions about Our “Democracy” (Paul Craig Roberts)
The Doolittle Question, The Do-Nothing Answer (Helmer)
Panicans and Division (CTH)
WSJ: Greece on The List of NATO Countries That Trump Will Reward (KTG)

 


 

https://twitter.com/xMarketNews/status/2041908107916218822?s=20

 


 


It starts today, guys, not Wednesday or Thursday. The ceasefire comes with the meeting.

“Trump had accepted a secret ten-point plan that the administration felt necessary to keep under wraps.”

Whatever’s Happening in Iran and the Middle East, It Isn’t a ‘Ceasefire’ (Moran)

How confusing is this “ceasefire” between the U.S. and Iran currently in effect, supposedly for the next two weeks, and why is everyone still shooting at one another? “Well, there is a ceasefire. Or perhaps not,” writes old Middle East hand Elliot Abrams in The Free Press. “It includes Lebanon. Or it doesn’t. Iran’s 10-point plan is an acceptable working document for the United States. Or it isn’t the one U.S. negotiators saw. The Strait of Hormuz will be open. Or passage requires Iranian approval and a toll,” he observes.


Donald Trump agreed to stop attacking Iran, and Iran agreed to stop attacking Israel and its Gulf neighbors and open the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has kept up his end of the deal. Iran has not, but the U.S. is pretending Iran is in compliance. When Saudi Arabia complained that a refinery had been targeted by Iranian drones, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said simply that “troops out in remote locations” who didn’t know about the ceasefire yet were responsible.

The confusion over Lebanon is partly Israel’s fault, given that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims he never agreed to a cease-fire for Lebanon. Iran never claimed during negotiations that Lebanon would be included in any ceasefire deal, either. Now they say it is and won’t attend the Friday negotiating session unless Israel agrees. Trump stated that Iran’s ten-point plan “is a workable basis on which to negotiate,” only to have his press secretary Karoline Leavitt claim in a Wednesday press conference that Iran’s plan “was fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely discarded,” and that Trump had accepted a secret ten-point plan that the administration felt necessary to keep under wraps.

And the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. It never opened. If anything, Iran has dug in its heels on the concept that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) controls access to the Strait and is entitled to charge tolls for ships that wish to pass. Lloyd’s List, a shipping industry journal, reported Wednesday afternoon that only three ships had transited Hormuz since the ceasefire. The Free Press: An accounting of gains and losses for the United States is therefore temporary and incomplete. If the ceasefire really breaks down (for instance, because Iran insists that Israel stop responding to Hezbollah attacks, which Israel will not do) the president will have to do something more than the air attacks of last week.

That will mean a broader bombing campaign which, though it will not destroy Iranian civilization, will destroy a number of bridges and power plants. That should not be surprising or unacceptable, because Iran spent the first hours after the ceasefire announcement attacking power and desalination plants and oil sites in the Arab Gulf countries. Or, Trump might decide the time has come to seize some islands in the Gulf. This would all be unwelcome for Trump, who wants the war over, the stock market up, and oil prices steadily (if slowly) descending. He will only do it if the Iranian regime leaves him no other choice.

As badly as Trump wants the war to be over, he can’t end it as it currently stands. Abrams believes that “at the end of two weeks allotted for negotiations, two more weeks will be allotted, and then two more.” I don’t think Trump will string these ceasefire talks out for very long. Donald Trump is going to go big before he goes home. What that means is anyone’s guess, but it certainly won’t be good for Iran. The religious fanatics who were previously in charge have been replaced by Iranian nationalist fanatics in the IRGC. This is not “regime change.” The IRGC fanatics running Iran were responsible for the 35,000 Iranian protesters gunned down in the streets.

Add to that the fact that Iranian communications have been smashed, and a paranoia approaching hysteria, never seen in a modern state, afflicts the current leaders in Iran, and we’re a long way from any real “ceasefire.” I think we can expect another round of fighting with both Israel and the U.S. upping the ante in Lebanon and on Iranian infrastructure.

Read more …

So there’s no ceasefire, but they’re furious about the ceasefire.

“They have described the development as a “political disaster” and PM Netayahu’s worst strategic failure ..”

Israeli MPs Furious Over Trump’s Ceasefire With Iran (RT)

A ceasefire deal struck by Washington and Tehran is a “disaster” and “failure,” several prominent Israeli politicians have said. Israel was left out of the equation, they argued, calling it a strategic mistake on the part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. US President Donald Trump announced a two-week pause to the US-Israeli war on Iran to negotiate a long-term solution to the conflict on the basis of a 10-point plan put forward by Tehran. It reportedly includes Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, acceptance of its uranium enrichment, the lifting of sanctions, and the cessation of war on all fronts, including Israeli attacks on Lebanon.


Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday it “supports” Trump’s decision while maintaining that Israel would continue its military campaign against the Iran-linked Hezbollah group in neighboring Lebanon. “There has never been such a political disaster in all of our history. Israel wasn’t even at the table when decisions were made concerning the core of our national security,” said Yair Lapid, parliamentary opposition leader and the head of the centrist Yesh Atid party.

“Netanyahu failed politically, failed strategically, and didn’t meet a single one of the goals that he himself set,” the lawmaker said in a post on X. Former Deputy Economic Minister Yair Golan, who leads the Democrats party, also branded the development a “total failure” in a social media post, adding that Iran emerged from the conflict stronger than before. MP Avigdor Liberman, the head of the Yisrael Beytenu party, also claimed that peace with Iran under the conditions listed in its plan would only lead to another conflict later.

The US and Israel launched an unprovoked bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic in late February, openly stating they were seeking regime change and an end to Iran’s nuclear program. The conflict killed thousands and caused unprecedented disruption to global energy supplies, mainly due to Tehran’s effective closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

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Some people like to think the US lost to Iran.

Before Donald Trump Ran Up His White Flag, Here Are The Reasons He Did So (Helmer)

President Donald Trump has been defeated on the battlefield near Isfahan over the weekend. He was then defeated on the morning of Tuesday in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in his attempt, manipulating Bahrain, to legalize the use of force against Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.


Finally, minutes short of his announced genocide deadline “before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!” and “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again”, Trump bit his tongue on his threat: “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Instead, Trump announced that as a favour to his Pakistan ally, Asim Munir, “subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East. We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated. On behalf of the United States of America, as President, and also representing the Countries of the Middle East, it is an Honor to have this Longterm problem close to resolution.”

The official statement, issued in Teheran by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, said that Iran is “considering announcement by POTUS about acceptance of the general framework of Iran’s 10-point proposal as a basis for negotiations”. The Iranian agreement, Araghchi went on, then preserved the new regime for the Strait “via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces and with due consideration of technical limitations.”

Trump and his tweet supervisor, Stephen Miller, then swallowed their tongue by tweeting the text of Araghchi’s tweet. Exact and official wording of Iran’s 10-point proposal is not published. However, this summary published by the Tasnim News Agency, a platform of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), comes close. The IRGC has added the interpretation: “By accepting these conditions as the basis for negotiations, Trump has retreated from his desperate threats and bluffs.”

Humiliation reversed. CIA Director John Ratcliffe and War Secretary Peter Hegseth had repeatedly declared in their April 6 press conference, celebrating the weekend pilot rescue, that the Iranians had been “embarrassed and, ultimately, humiliated by the success of this audacious rescue mission”, and “Iran’s military, and we know this, is embarrassed and humiliated, and they should be”. With Benjamin Netanyahu by his side, Trump had declared last December: “Iran has been greatly reduced in power, prestige. I don’t want to use the word humiliation because, you know, they’re trying to build up again.”

Read more …

This could lead to a bitter fight between Trump and the EU.

JD Vance: EU in Hungary “Worst Ever Foreign Election Interference” (RMX)

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance used a high-profile appearance in Budapest alongside Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to accuse Brussels of carrying out “one of the worst examples of foreign and election interference” he had ever seen, claiming EU officials had targeted Hungary because they “hate this guy” and want to weaken his government ahead of the country’s election.


Speaking at a joint press conference in the Hungarian capital on Tuesday, Vance said the “bureaucrats in Brussels have tried to destroy the economy of Hungary,” had sought to make the country less energy independent, and had “tried to drive up costs for Hungarian consumers.”“They’ve done it all because they hate this guy,” he added, pointing at Orbán.

The U.S. vice president cast the vote as a test of national sovereignty and told Hungarian voters to ask not who was pro-Europe or pro-America, but “who is pro-you” and “who is pro the people of Hungary.” He caveated his address by insisting he was not telling Hungarians how to vote, and urged the “bureaucrats in Brussels to do the exact same thing.”

Meanwhile, Orbán hailed a new “golden era” in ties with Washington under President Donald Trump and said the return of Trump had transformed bilateral relations after years without a visit by such a senior American official. He said 2025 had been a record year for economic cooperation and that 2026 was already bringing further momentum, pointing to expanded collaboration in defense and space technology as well as new U.S. investment.

Both men used the press conference to present Hungary and the Trump administration as ideological allies. Orbán said the two sides were in constant contact on migration, “gender ideology,” family policy, and global security, while Vance said the partnership was rooted not primarily in economics but in “moral cooperation.”

“What the United States and Hungary together represent under Viktor’s leadership and under President Trump’s leadership is the defense of Western civilization,” Vance said. He said that meant defending the idea that children should be educated “and not indoctrinated,” that families should be able to afford their energy bills, and that the West remained grounded in “Christian civilization and Christian values.”

The vice president also praised Orbán’s handling of energy policy, saying the Hungarian leader had been “the single most profound leader in Europe on the question of inter energy security and independence.” He argued that other European governments were now paying the price for failing to follow a similar path, saying Hungary’s energy price pressures were still less severe than those seen in much of the rest of Europe.

Both leaders argued that Trump’s return to power had strengthened the cause of peace in Ukraine. Orbán said Hungary had lived “in the shadows of a war for four years now” and repeated his long-held claim that the conflict would never have begun had Trump been in office in 2022. He also accused Brussels of obstructing peace efforts, saying that if European leaders had not been “blocking the peace efforts of the president, peace would prevail” in Ukraine already.

The Hungarian prime minister also used the appearance to accuse Ukraine of taking steps designed to damage Hungary before the election. He said Kyiv had earlier blocked a gas pipeline route and had now also blockaded an oil pipeline that he described as “the umbilical cord of the Hungarian economy.” Orbán said Hungary had been forced to tap its reserves, but insisted he had a plan to force Ukraine to reopen the route after the election.

“We have to force the Ukrainians to reopen the pipeline, and we have a plan to do that,” Orbán said. “After the national forces win the election here in Hungary … there will be no option left for the Ukrainians than to lift this blockade.”

Vance echoed that confrontational line, saying there were “elements within the Ukrainian intelligence services” that had tried to “put their thumb on the scale of American elections” and Hungarian elections too. He said that behavior was “just what they do,” though he added that Ukraine, like the United States, contained both “good people and bad people.” At another point, Vance was asked whether the United States would work with a different Hungarian leader if Orbán were defeated. He replied that Washington would work with whoever won because it loved “the people of Hungary,” but immediately added: “Viktor Orban is going to win the next election in Hungary.”

Read more …

1) How do we know the court knows enough about AI?

2) Are all other Ai models also supply-chain risks?

Appeals Court Allows Pentagon To Call Anthropic A Supply-Chain Risk (ZH)

In a significant development for the intersection of artificial intelligence policy and national security, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled on April 8 that the Department of War may designate Anthropic as a supply-chain risk while a full judicial review plays out. The decision came after the AI company sought an emergency stay to block the controversial designation.


The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that Anthropic “has not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending court review,” allowing the blacklist to remain in effect for now. This ruling directly conflicts with a temporary injunction issued last month by a federal district court in California, which had paused the designation during ongoing litigation.

The designation, authorized under federal laws intended to shield military and government systems from supply-chain vulnerabilities and foreign sabotage, functions as an effective blacklist. It prohibits Anthropic from conducting business with the federal government or its contractors and directs federal agencies, contractors, and suppliers to terminate existing ties with the company.

The move originated after Anthropic declined a Department of War request to alter the user policies and safety guardrails of its flagship AI model, Claude. The company refused to remove restrictions that prevent the AI from being used for mass surveillance or the development and operation of fully autonomous weapons systems. Anthropic has emphasized its commitment to “constitutional AI” principles and responsible deployment, arguing that such guardrails are essential to ethical AI use.

The Pentagon has stated publicly that it does not intend to employ Claude for those specific purposes, but it has insisted on the flexibility to use the technology for all lawful military applications. President Donald Trump weighed in on social media earlier, accusing Anthropic of trying to “strong-arm” the federal government by using its AI policies to dictate military decisions.

Late on April 8, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche celebrated the appeals court decision on X (formerly Twitter), describing it as “a resounding victory for military readiness.” He added: “Our military needs full access to Anthropic’s models if its technology is integrated into our sensitive systems.”

Anthropic, a prominent AI firm founded by former OpenAI executives and backed by major investors including Amazon and Google, has positioned itself as a leader in safe and reliable AI development. Its Claude models are widely used in enterprise, research, and creative applications precisely because of their built-in safeguards.

The case is believed to mark the first time such a supply-chain risk designation — typically reserved for foreign entities posing security threats — has been applied to a major U.S.-based AI company. It underscores deepening tensions between commercial AI developers’ emphasis on ethical guardrails and the government’s push for unfettered access to advanced technology for defense purposes.

Litigation continues in both the California district court and the D.C. Circuit, and further updates are expected as the conflicting rulings are reconciled.

Read more …

The government says so, but really, honestly, what do they know?

.. “superintelligence” is nearly upon us, and the effect will be “so mind-bending, so disruptive” on society that America needs a “new social contract”

Is Anthropic’s ‘Mythos’ a ‘Generational Leap’ Beyond Other AI Models (Moran)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is doing something no Big Tech owner has ever done: “He’s publishing a detailed blueprint for how government should tax, regulate and redistribute the wealth from the very technology he’s racing to build and spread,” according to Axios. The reason is a little unsettling: “superintelligence” is nearly upon us, and the effect will be “so mind-bending, so disruptive” on society that America needs a “new social contract” on the order of the Progressive Era of the turn of the 20th century or the New Deal.


AI companies know some random idiot, or some rogue nation, could use their models to conjure the next pandemic. “Wonderful things are going to happen there — we’ll see a bunch of diseases get cured,” Altman said. But he also knows terrorist groups could use the models to try to create novel pathogens: “[T]hat’s no longer a theoretical thing, or it’s not going to be for much longer.” Anthropic has just given its “Mythos” AI model a limited release. Why limited? Both the industry and the government believe that Mythos is an AI capable of “not just identifying weaknesses in security systems, but exploiting them with autonomous, never-before-seen precision,” reports Axios.

The darn thing accidentally escaped the confines of its “sandbox” and strolled through several systems after building a “moderately sophisticated multi-step exploit” to give it the run of the internet. The model demonstrated a “potentially dangerous capability for circumventing our safeguards,” Anthropic revealed. “The researcher found out about this success by receiving an unexpected email from the model while eating a sandwich in a park.” Yikes.

Anthropic’s Logan Graham — a former Rhodes Scholar who leads the Frontier Red Team, which stress-tests new models — told us the industry needs to rethink future releases of all AI models, given the new and coming capabilities. So imagine Mythos-level power in the hands of the Iranian regime in the middle of a hot war or Russia’s military as it tries to decimate Ukraine. That’s the chief reason the government and AI companies are racing so fast toward a technology so powerful and potentially dangerous. These officials fear that China, armed with superior AI, could present an existential threat to U.S. dominance.

“An enemy could reach out and touch us in a way they can’t or won’t with kinetic [battlefield] operations,” a source close to the Pentagon told us. “For most Americans, the Iran war is ‘over there.’ With a cyberattack, it’s right here.” “Secrets” in business or government are fleeting, and for the right price, someone, somewhere might be tempted to sell AI secrets to bad actors. Or more likely, those bad actors would create their own AI nightmares, given the state of the tech and the abilities of the Chinese and the Russians.

The controlled release of Mythos could be the blueprint for future model releases, with AI companies doling out access to select partners that have enough security to test world-bending systems. Other AI companies will soon catch up to Mythos — not just here, but in China and elsewhere. A Chinese state-sponsored group already used an earlier Claude model to target roughly 30 organizations in a coordinated attack before Anthropic detected it.

The time is fast approaching for all of corporate America and all of government to be prepared to guard against hackers with superhuman powers. The window to get ahead of this is closing fast. Most in power aren’t remotely ready.This doesn’t sound like AI hype to me. This isn’t Sam Altman bragging about his latest ChatGPT release. This is crunch time. We’re now in a genuine arms race where keeping ahead of China and Russia is a matter of the highest national security and, potentially, of national survival.

Read more …

Don’t think everyone’s ready. Three quarters are too heavy, and that’s just one example.

US Moves Closer To Automated Military Draft (RT)

Plans for automated military conscription during a US national emergency are advancing and on schedule to be in place by the end of the year, according to the federal agency tasked with maintaining the list, the Selective Service System (SSS). Provisions included in the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act passed last December in response to falling compliance shifted the responsibility from individuals to the SSS. The changes drew renewed attention this week after media outlets highlighted a recent update on the agency’s website. The SSS is expected to finalize implementation by December 2026, aiming for a “streamlined registration process and corresponding workforce realignment.”


Currently, most adult males under the age of 26 living in the US – including undocumented immigrants – are required to register for potential conscription. The millions who fail to do so can face penalties of up to $250,000 in fines, five years in prison, and restrictions on obtaining citizenship. Under the new system, the SSS would instead build its registry using personal data from multiple government databases.The US military has relied on an all-volunteer force since the early 1970s. President Richard Nixon ran for office in 1968 on a pledge to end mandatory conscription, viewing it as a key source of public resentment towards the Vietnam War. Although draft registration was halted in 1975, it resumed in 1980 following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

In recent years, the Pentagon has faced mounting challenges in both recruiting volunteers and maintaining the national draft list. Standards for enlistment have been lowered to address recruitment shortfalls, while the shift to automatic registration is intended to boost the pool for possible conscription.

Several anti-war organizations have urged Congress to reconsider the change. They argue the system “won’t produce an accurate or complete list of potential draftees,” but at the same time “will increase the likelihood of war and violate the privacy of US citizens and residents.” Critics believe that the aggregated database will be “vulnerable to misuse and weaponization” by both government entities and private actors.

There are broader efforts across Western countries to prepare for possible large-scale military conflicts, including by tightening conscription policies. In Germany, for example, new rules quietly introduced in January require men of fighting age to obtain permission before staying abroad for more than three months, reportedly catching many by surprise.

Read more …

The EU is building a deadly industry.

Backed by nearly $1 billion in contracts, Fire Point has risen on bold claims of deep strikes inside Russia. But how real is its success?

A Billion-Dollar Mirage: Do Ukraine’s New Missiles Match The Hype? (Kornev)

In less than two years, a little-known Ukrainian startup has secured nearly $1 billion in state contracts, built one of the country’s most ambitious missile programs – and drawn the attention of anti-corruption investigators. A February article by Deutsche Welle and subsequent interviews with co-founder Denis Shtilerman have helped propel Fire Point into the European media spotlight, with bold claims about long-range strike capabilities deep inside Russia. But beyond the publicity, evidence of real-world effectiveness remains limited. What, then, can these missiles actually do – and how serious a threat do they represent?


Fire Point: Sudden success
In 2025, Fire Point rapidly emerged as a leading name in Ukrainian missile manufacturing. Today, it stands out as one of the most dynamic yet secretive defense startups in Ukraine, specializing in the production of long-range drones and missiles. Initially, the company developed only cruise missiles, but now it also designs ballistic missilesReports suggest that the startup launched with $1.5-$2 million invested by the founders themselves. However, in 2024-2025, the company secured government contracts worth approximately $1 billion, which is truly remarkable. Perhaps the answer to this mystery lies in the backgrounds of the founders?

At the helm of the company is Denis Shtilerman, the chief designer, founder, and majority owner (with a 97.5% share) of FP. He describes himself as a wealthy individual unafraid to invest his own money into the project. The co-founder is Yegor Skalyga (2.5% share) who previously headed a film industry company, suggesting ties to Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and his Studio Kvartal 95. Irina Terekh, the technical director and co-owner of FP, joined the team in 2023. And lastly, there is… former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who joined the advisory board in November 2025. Now that’s a smart move, considering the current situation in Ukraine.

High-ranking Ukrainian officials have actively promoted the company’s products. Zelensky referred to the FP-5 Flamingo as the “most successful” missile in Ukraine’s arsenal. The company also reportedly has ties to the former head of Zelensky’s office, Andrey Yermak. This is quite possible, since Fire Point has become the largest recipient of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s budget allocations for the construction of drones. Shtilerman attributes this to the fact that some state enterprises maintain secret ties with Russia, which is unacceptable at this time.

However, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) may have a different opinion about the company’s success. NABU has launched an investigation on several fronts: firstly, it is investigating possible price inflation for components used in FP-1 drones; secondly, NABU is examining the company’s connections with Timur Mindich and potential corruption schemes related to procurement through government structures. Amid these scandals, the appointment of Mike Pompeo to the advisory board has been viewed by many analysts as an attempt by FP to bolster its reputation and shield itself from corruption allegations.

Pink Flamingo
FP indeed emerged out of nowhere and quickly became a leader in Ukraine’s drone and missile manufacturing sector. It specializes in the development and mass production of long-range FP-1 and FP-2 strike drones, as well as the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile. By 2025, its workforce expanded to 3,500 employees, including 650 engineers, with production facilities covering 175,000 square meters across several secret locations.

The company’s most notable product so far is the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile powered by a AI-25TL turbofan engine. It is reported that the company has been gathering these engines from decommissioned training aircraft all over Eastern Europe. The missile is marketed as a long-range weapon designed for deep strikes. In size, it surpasses its Western counterparts like the Tomahawk or Storm Shadow missiles. Its flight range is up to 3,000 kilometers, and the warhead weighs 1,000-1,150 kilograms (with about 600 kilograms allocated for explosives).

The missile travels at speeds of 850-900 km/h and has a launch weight of approximately 6,000 kg. The fuselage length is about 12 meters and the wingspan is six meters. Equipped with a relatively modern guidance system – a combination of an inertial navigation system and a jamming-resistant satellite navigation system – it boasts a reported accuracy of approximately 15 meters from the intended target. However, confirming these specifications in real-world conditions has proven challenging – it is unclear how many of the missiles have been launched and how many have failed during testing.

Fire Point had ambitious plans to ramp up production to 200 missiles per month by 2026, but apparently, these are still distant prospects. To create an illusion of ongoing missile production, news reports occasionally surface about the deployment of these missiles, often accompanied by video footage. It seems the company has allocated funds for PR, as multiple stories about FP have appeared in leading Western media outlets within the past month.

Read more …

First counter all the lies that have been told about Trump the past ten years.

It’s a miracle he survived, and that our democracy did.

Serious Questions about Our “Democracy” (Paul Craig Roberts)

Democracy is valued because it is believed to be a means of holding government accountable. To succeed in holding government accountable, it is necessary to know what government is doing and why. Traditionally, opposition political parties and objective media were means for bringing out the truth. In our time political parties fight over power, not over principles. They hide their agendas behind false narratives that media supports rather than exposes. Consider this week’s major event: The alleged rescue operation of a US pilot downed in Iran.


Last Monday for a couple of hours we had the President of the United States, the Director of the CIA, the Secretary of War, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stand before media and TV audience and lie through their teeth by covering up a failed military attack on an Iranian nuclear facility by presenting it as a successful rescue mission of a downed pilot.

The story made no sense and was obviously false. According to President Trump “hundreds” of US military personnel and several aircraft were involved. Navy and Army special forces teams and cargo planes carrying helicopters are not the way pilots are rescued. Such a highly visible operation calls attention to the venture and defeats it. Ask anyone in the know. The Iranians have the documents of Major Ryder that prove the alleged “rescue” was a military operation.

Have you heard anything in the media about Major Ryder? Have you seen or heard the names of the two rescued pilots? Rather than admit to a failed military operation against Iran, the Trump regime substituted a heroic story of the rescue of a brave airman. The first rescued airman was rescued without hundreds of special forces and the lost of a number of US aircraft.

When governments, politicians, and media have no respect for truth there can be no accountability. Just think of all the lies we have been told by governments over the years, lies largely unchallenged by media: President Kennedy was killed by Oswald; Robert Kennedy was killed by Sirhan Sirhan; The US was attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnam; 9/11 was the work of Osama bin Laden; Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction; Assad used chemical weapons; Palestinians are terrorists; Iranians are terrorists; Iran is making nuclear weapons. These and many other lies are transparently false but are treated as historical truths. Somehow Americans can believe on one hand that the US has the most powerful military in the world and that the CIA can locate a downed pilot in a cave in an Iranian mountain, and on the other hand that a few Saudi Arabians can defeat US airport security four times in the same hour on the same morning, hijack four US airliners and fly two of them into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, and crash one in Pennsylvania, and the powerful American military and hyper-competent CIA are helpless bystanders.

When truth is not respected no principles are. Democracy requires transparency and respect for truth. Just as the Trump regime has lied about recent events in Iran, the Biden regime turned January 6 protesters into “insurrectionists” and imprisoned them, and Democrat prosecutors brought false civil and criminal indictments against President Trump. This is not a portrait of democracy.

It is democracies, not kingdoms and dictatorships, that are characterized by endless fights for power. In fights for power, truth is always the casualty. It is easy to conclude that truth can be less secure in a democracy than in a kingdom.

Democracy has other overwhelming disadvantages that eventually ensure its failure. If a democracy is to have a long life, the franchise must be limited, as America’s Founding Fathers limited it, to male property owners who are more prone to reason than emotion and who have a personal stake in the system. But as time passes and the franchise is expanded there come into existence people whose only stake in the system is their ability to vote away the income and wealth of those who comprised the original franchise. In America today we have a discriminatory income tax that takes more from higher incomes than from lower. We have a property tax that forces property owners to pay for the education of other people’s children including those of illegal aliens whose illegal presence is subsidized by US citizens..

We have inheritance taxes that confiscate 50% of the accumulations of successful people upon their death. Inheritance taxation also forces families that have built successful businesses to sell the business or take it public in order to pay the inheritance tax. In other words, democracies become theft mechanisms. This is the case in every existing democracy in the world today.

All democracies become riddled with faction, and unity disappears. When democracies not only permit but encourage themselves to be overrun by immigrant-invaders, they degenerate into Towers of Babel. The weakening of principle erodes law and respect for moral standards, and sexual and criminal perversities flourish. Democracy requires a great deal of maintenance that is not provided. Consequently, like an unmaintained engine democracy fails.

The most powerful proof of the failure of American democracy is that in the 21st century America’s most important and most costly decisions have been made by Israel. The “war on terror” was the Israel Lobby’s disguise for Israel’s use of American blood and money to eliminate obstacles to Greater Israel, such as Iraq, Libya, and Syria. America’s war with Iran, from which Trump is trying to extricate himself by declaring victory, is the consequence of Israel’s hold over America. The war is not the result of the will of the people who overwhelmingly oppose the war, or of a declaration of war by Congress, or of an Iranian threat to the United States. The war is the result of a decision Netanyahu made for Trump. Clearly, America is no democracy when Netanyahu can send America to war for Greater Israel.

As the US government itself does not have control over its own foreign policy, in no sense can the American people hold “their” government accountable to their will. If America is to rebuild its democracy, America must begin by establishing its independence from Israel.

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“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”

Why can’t a Russian be more like an Iranian?

The Doolittle Question, The Do-Nothing Answer (Helmer)

Professor Higgins’s question to Colonel Pickering about Eliza Doolittle in the line from the musical, My Fair Lady, was: Why can’t a woman be more like a man? In Moscow, where the course of the Iran war is having a profound impact on military, intelligence, Foreign Ministry, and Kremlin officials, almost nothing can be said in public. Not even the question they are asking each other downwards and sideways, not upwards: Why can’t a Russian be more like an Iranian?


The difficulty of answering is not because it is against the law to criticize the Russian Army’s performance in the present Special Military Operation (aka war), according to the interpretation of the local United Russia party commissar, his chief in the Kremlin, Alexei Gromov, or his chief, President Vladimir Putin.

It is not because of a lack of confidence in what Putin is deciding as commander in chief. The President reveals himself in his private conversations; their substance is not a secret for a great many in a position to know. In the telephone call with Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban — according to the authenticated transcript of their conversation of last October 17 – Putin said he believed Trump was not at war, not even in a special military operation, in the Middle East – not in Gaza and Lebanon from 2023, not in Iran in June 2025. Putin also made clear then that he doesn’t think Trump is at war with Russia, and that on the Ukrainian battlefield, Trump’s “tank” is fully functional, moving “forward”, not backward.

“Donald,” Putin told Orban, “has a surprising ability to deal with various crises, such as the regulation of the Middle East and, most recently, the Gaza region, and I hope that there will also be a satisfactory solution to the Ukrainian-Russian conflict.” Orban replied: “To be honest, I was also very surprised. I’ve known Donald for a long time, he’s not an ordinary person [both laugh]. His working method leaves no questions unresolved, I watch with admiration how successful he is. His business style, which is like a tornado, brings results.”

“Putin: As they say, he is moving forward like a tank. It worked for him, and we can only be happy about that. Prior to the meeting in Anchorage, the US side formulated the general principles of possible regulation, and I believe that these will be discussed again in the discussions. We have already talked about this in Anchorage, and there will probably be something to discuss in Budapest as well.” Putin may have been using Orban to ingratiate himself with Trump in the preliminaries for the Budapest summit meeting, but it didn’t help and the summit failed to materialize. The reasons, Russian reasons first, American second, can be followed here and here and here.

What the newly disclosed transcript shows – just as other transcripts of Putin’s private conversations with US leaders reveal – is that Putin is not aiming to fight or deter Trump; that Russia is not at war with the US (and its allies); and that Putin believes that money can be paid in sufficiently large amounts (billions of dollars more for Trump than for his White House predecessors), so that Russia’s national interests will be served. That conviction is one of the three“understandings” — Putin insists as do his subordinates — which were reached at the Anchorage summit meeting with Trump on August 8, 2025.

Putin’s Anchorage reference to Orban is to the “Anchorage Understandings”. The second of these was Putin’s belief that Trump will concede Russia’s dominance of the Ukraine in exchange for Trump’s dominance of the Americas – from Greenland through Canada to Mexico, Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Exactly what (whether) Trump conceded Russian dominance of the entire NATO eastern front from Poland, the Baltic Sea, to Finland was left unclear at the time. Exactly what (whether) Putin conceded US dominance of China, North Korea, and Iran with Greater Israel was also left unclear.

The third of the “understandings” was that bribes agreed by the two presidents’ bagmen will be honoured by the presidents on receipt. Who in Moscow shall count the sums in exchange and the interests served? That’s the Russian oligarchs. The President’s confidant, negotiator with Trump, spokesman for the Anchorage understandings, signatory of the bribe payments, and chief representative for the Russian oligarchs – this is Kirill Dmitriev. He writes and publishes tweets several times each day because he wants to be heard. It is therefore his determined silence on every aspect of Trump’s attempted genocide against Iran, and his near-completed one against the Arabs of Palestine and Lebanon, which speaks loudest.

The Iranians do not misinterpret that silence. Nor the Chinese nor the Cubans. To understand what the Russians who count understand at present of Russian conduct of operations on the Ukrainian battlefield, the Iranian battlefield, and the Cuban battlefield, it is necessary to read between the lines of what is said in public by the officials, including Putin; and to ask questions in private of those in a position to know enough to piece the answer to the big question. Right now that’s the Doolittle Question.

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Sundance still has the faith.

“Trust God, and pray for President Trump.”

Panicans and Division (CTH)

Back in 2015/2016 The Salem Media Group, like -the whole crew- the Evangelical right per se’, was essentially against Donald Trump a republican candidate. Trump wasn’t religious enough, and Salem was/is VERY pro-Israel. A very strong evangelical tribe. Salem Media Inc supported Ted Cruz (mostly), they also really liked Scott Walker (and similar). Milquetoast varieties of Republican. You know the sort. {2015 citation} Breitbart (Robert and Rebekah Mercer) and the strong pro-Israel group (Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, etc.) also supported Ted Cruz (Jeff Roe and company). Almost no one directly supported Trump. You know that, and you know the outcome of it.


That environment led to tons of eventual jump-overs, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, etc. when Trump became the “presumptive” nominee. Hey, they go where the $$ flows. Then Mark Levin followed reluctantly, and eventually the Salem crew bit their tongue, overcame the “grab em by the pussy” nonsense and joined the pragmatic MAGA coalition. Now, you might also remember the name Brad Parscale, an online tech guy who was datamining Facebook and microtargeting for Trump support. That led to a controversy called “Cambridge Analytica” after the unexpected Trump win and the leftists crying foul about the online support that defeated their aggressive corporate media ploys. That’s the core. We agree?

Okay. Fast forward. Donald Trump held a loose coalition, which included the Salem tribe (which included a now bigger TPU$A, Charlie Kirk et al) which included the high-horse Evangelicals, only now they were more firm horse riders. Brad Parscale was later hired by Salem Media Inc as their strategic operations director (current position). No longer connected to the Trump team, yet quasi-supporting the objectives of the Trump administration, Mr Brad Parscale takes money from the pro-Israel group, files FARA registration forms and goes back to his tech skillset to shape and influence politics; except now, a decade later, tech micro-targeting is big time algorithmic control systems.

Salem Media Inc. still in alignment with their Evangelical roots, plus a new addition from Trump world (Lara Trump and Don Jr.) each with a foot in the Salem operation, and Brad Parscale promoting the pro-Israel Evangelical mission with unbelievable tools thanks to modern tech, artificial intelligence, datamining and algorithmic data operations on social media platforms.Then comes billionaires Larry and David Ellison, also very pro-Israel, in combination with Salem Media Inc. operated by Parscale, and the ideological alignment of Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, Laura Loomer etc., taking algorithmic AI and Evangelical data targeting to new stratospheric levels.

Which brings us through 2025 and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu noting in his influencer meetup that the Tik Tok and X platform were the two most important strategic operations of interest, against the warning of diminished GenX support from Charlie Kirk. {Citation and Video} Subsequently, Larry Ellison (Oracle) takes control of Tik Tok (GenZ), while Elon Musk (free speech) is controlling X. All of the above come into a deep, collaborative, pro-Israel synergy.That’s not a conspiracy; it is simply the reality of political targeting and influence in the year 2026. That’s the current landscape.

That’s what you are witnessing online, perhaps in your data profile, and more than likely in your algorithmically controlled online travels. Your identity as defined by your data and pixels implanted into your profile that can be targeted to feed you specific information and content. Algorithmic support operations, also using money to shift the visibility of support (or lack therein), is why “X” and other platform content providers, don’t always align with reality you see offline and/or polling that shows consistent support for Donald Trump amid the MAGA base. The narratives are not organic, often they are divisive. However, most users outside the control system can’t distinguish the content that is being targeted toward them.

I hope that somewhat helps see through the friction. Most of us have supported Trump throughout his endeavors in office, trusting him to do what needed to be done, and using his best judgement on whatever the issue was while understanding that he has much more information than us. This still applies today. This doesn’t mean that President Trump can see everything or has immediate reference for everything happening. An example was JD Vance telling the audience today that he had no idea Zelenskyy had threatened Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The White House is focused on the issues confronting them daily; they have a priority perspective, and they do not see everything. Trust God, and pray for President Trump.

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Keep Talking Greece still exists! I remember her from 10-odd years ago. Lost sight of her. Sorry!

WSJ: Greece on The List of NATO Countries That Trump Will Reward (KTG)

The White House is considering a plan to punish some members of the NATO alliance that President Donald Trump thinks were unhelpful to the U.S. and Israel during the Iran war, according to administration officials. Other countries that have supported the war, such as Greece, will be rewarded. According to an exclusive report by Wall Street Journal, the proposal would involve moving U.S. troops out of North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries deemed unhelpful to the Iran war effort and stationing them in countries that were more supportive. The proposal would fall far short of President Trump’s recent threats to fully withdraw the U.S. from the alliance, which by law he can’t do without Congress.


The plan, which has circulated and gained support among senior administration officials in recent weeks, is early in conception and one of several the White House is discussing to punish NATO. It underscores the growing rift between the Trump administration and European allies following the president’s decision to launch the war with Iran. “It is quite unfortunate that NATO has turned its back on the American people over the past six weeks, while they are the ones who are funding their defense,” said the White House spokeswoman.

On Wednesday evening, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “NATO wasn’t there when we needed them, and they won’t be there if we need them again.” The U.S. has around 84,000 troops stationed across Europe, though the exact number varies from military exercises and rotational deployments. U.S. bases in Europe serve as a critical hub of global U.S. military operations, as well as provide an economic boon to the host country through investment. Bases in Eastern Europe also serve as a deterrent against Russia. When asked for comment, the White House referred to recent statements made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticizing NATO countries for failing to be more helpful to the U.S. with the war in Iran.

It couldn’t be determined which countries would lose troops, yet a number of alliance members have run afoul of Trump since he returned to office and more recently attracted his ire by objecting to the war in Iran. Spain—the only NATO country that hasn’t indicated it would spend 5% of its GDP on defense—blocked U.S. planes involved in the Iran operation from using its airspace. Administration officials are also frustrated with Germany after top officials criticized the war, though Germany serves as one of the largest and most important hubs for the U.S. military to support its operations in the Middle East. Italy also briefly blocked the U.S. use of an air base in Sicily, and the French government agreed to only allow the U.S. to use a base in southern France after it guaranteed planes not involved in Iran strikes would land there.

Beyond repositioning troops, the plan could also involve closing a U.S. base in at least one of the European countries, possibly Spain or Germany, according to the two administration officials. Countries that could benefit because they are viewed as supportive include Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Greece, the officials said. The Eastern European countries have some of the highest defense-spending rates in the alliance and were some of the first to signal they would support an international coalition to monitor the Strait of Hormuz. After war broke out, Romania quickly approved U.S. requests to allow its bases to be used by the U.S. Air Force.

The plan could result in putting more U.S. troops closer to the Russian border, an outcome likely to antagonize Moscow. Senior European officials counter that they were never consulted on the war in advance to begin with, making it difficult to coordinate military response in the conflict’s first days. During his first term in 2020, Trump ordered the withdrawal of around 12,000 troops from Germany, but President Joe Biden reversed the decision after taking office in 2021. [full article: WSJ]

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https://twitter.com/InterstellarUAP/status/2041831496399380614?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Apr 032026
 


Vincent van Gogh The garden of the asylum at Saint-Rémy 1889


Elon Musk’s SpaceX Set To Go Public in $1 Trillion Share Listing (BBC)
Trump Fires Pam Bondi As Attorney General, Blanche To Be Acting AG’ (ZH)
Iran’s Friends To Make Life Much Harder For Israel And The US (Sadygzade)
The Price of Underestimating Iran (Lukyanov)
Mojtaba Breaks Silence, In Message Praises Hezbollah & Shia Leaders (ZH)
European Allies Show ‘Shock And Anxiety’ to Trump Threat to Leave NATO (JTN)
EU Leaders Utterly Bewildered at Energy Vulnerabilities Now Evident (CTH)
Could an Orban Win Trigger ‘Maidan on Steroids’? (RT)
Judge Keeps Democrats’ January 6 Witch Hunt Against Trump Alive (Margolis)
We May Finally Be Close to Ending the Democrats’ DHS Shutdown (Margolis)
AI Giant Anthropic Suffers Strategic Code Hemorrhage (RT)
Nano Nuclear Submits Construction Permit For Kronos Reactor In Illinois (ZH)
Artemis II and the ‘Waste of Space’ (Rick Moran)
The Soul-Crushing Cost of NOT Returning to the Moon for 50+ Years (Pinsker)

 


 

 


 


Let’s open with the first trillionaire.

“Musk’s own holding in SpaceX would put the billionaire on track to become the world’s first trillionaire. ”

Well, he’s not yet. Maybe that’s a comfort to some..

The smartest man is also rhe richest?

Did you knowL there are only 20 or so countries in the world with a GDP over $1 trillion.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Set To Go Public in $1 Trillion Share Listing (BBC)

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is poised to become one of the most valuable publicly traded companies in the world. The company, which manufactures rockets, space exploration technology and Starlink satellites, is currently privately held. But on Wednesday it made a confidential filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering, which would allow shares to be traded in the stock market. The value of SpaceX once it goes public is expected to surpass $1tn (£751bn). That would make its eventual stock market debut one of the most financially significant in history.


Musk’s own holding in SpaceX would put the billionaire on track to become the world’s first trillionaire. The company is aiming to officially go public sometime in June, according to reports in Bloomberg, Reuters and the New York Times. A confidential IPO filing with the SEC allows a company to avoid immediately revealing information to the public while it requests feedback from the regulator. The next step will be for company executives to hold “roadshows” – meetings with big investors to convince them to buy shares. By making shares of SpaceX available for purchase by the public, the company is looking to raise $50bn or more, according to the reports.

Earlier this year, SpaceX took over xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence venture. After that all-stock merger, SpaceX is believed to have become the most valuable private company in the world, with an internal valuation of $1.25tn. Recently, Musk’s various companies have been becoming increasingly intertwined. Last year, xAI, best known for its chatbot Grok, took over X, the social media platform previously called Twitter that Musk bought in 2022. This degree of consolidation was a clear sign to investors that SpaceX was preparing to go public. Emily Zheng, a senior analyst at Pitchbook, earlier told the BBC that by bringing xAI under SpaceX, Musk could show potential investors that he was consolidating costs and able to easily share resources between his companies.

With its large-scale ambitions, SpaceX is in need of a massive cash infusion that going public can provide, Zheng added. The company is racing to keep up with the “sheer cost of compute, infrastructure, and energy” needed to expand, she said. Earlier this year, Tesla, Musk’s electric vehicle company, revealed it had invested more than $2bn in xAI. The billionaire said a significant share of Tesla’s manufacturing would begin to shift toward building robots, which would make use of xAI technology like Grok.Grok is already included in some Teslas as an AI assistant. SpaceX would also partner with Tesla and xAI in the massive chipmaking endeavour Musk announced last month, which he is calling Terafab. “

Tesla, xAI and SpaceX have all done amazing things that people did not think could be done before,” Musk said in a March presentation discussing Terafab. Musk started SpaceX in 2002 with the aim of reducing the cost of launching crafts into space, mainly by making rockets that could be launched more than once. It first contracted with Nasa in 2006. Today, most of SpaceX’s work continues to revolve around rockets and the operation of Starlink, a fleet of satellites offering internet connectivity across the globe. But Musk often discusses grander ambitions for the company, including putting data centers needed for AI in space and building a self-sufficient city on Mars, which many experts have said could be impossible to realise.

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Epstein victim?!

Trump Fires Pam Bondi As Attorney General, Blanche To Be Acting AG’ (ZH)

President Donald Trump has ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi, multiple outlets report. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is serving as acting AG in the interim. The move comes amid White House frustration with Bondi’s leadership at the Justice Department – particularly her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and what Trump viewed as insufficient aggression in targeting his political opponents. Trump had privately discussed firing her and floated EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin (or Blanche) as a possible replacement. Bondi met with Trump in the Oval Office Wednesday night ahead of his speech to the nation on the war in Iran, where she reportedly was informed of her ouster, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.


One of those sources said that by the time Trump took his place behind the podium for the address, Bondi already lost her job and was on her way back to Florida. -Fox News.And according to the WSJ, Trump weighed firing her in January but was persuaded not to do so. In a Thursday statement, Trump called Bondi “a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” adding “she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future, and our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General.”

Earlier:
Leaky little sharks are circling in DC – telling the NY Times and CNN that Pam Bondi may soon be out as Attorney General, and replaced with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. The frustration, per sources close to the White House cited by The New York Times and CNN, centers squarely on Bondi’s catastrophic mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein files – a saga ZeroHedge has chronicled in excruciating detail as one of the most embarrassing self-inflicted wounds of the second Trump term. Recall Bondi’s infamous February 2025 Fox News appearance where she claimed the “client list” was literally “sitting on my desk right now to review.” Fast-forward months later: no list, endless redactions for “national security,” millions more pages “discovered” at the 11th hour, and zero indictments of any high-profile co-conspirators.

Beyond her disastrous testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee in February – the House Oversight Committee has also subpoenaed her over the “troubling disappearance” of documents, with her deposition still looming on April 14. Even Trump ally and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles admitted Bondi “completely whiffed” the response.

Trump is also reportedly pissed that Bondi has an apparent allergy to actual justice – namely, her failure to deliver on promises to go after his political foes (former FBI Director James Comey or New York AG Letitia James). Bondi’s DOJ has also been dragging its feet on broader accountability: no real movement on COVID-era prosecutions despite the obvious targets, a bizarre pivot toward “hate speech” crackdowns that even drew fire from the right, and a general pattern of not prosecuting what many see as a laundry list of potential criminals from the prior regime. Perhaps it was all by design. Either way, looks like Pam’s time is short.

What’s more, Bondi’s DOJ has been actively sabotaging the Trump coalition by maintaining Biden-era policies in court – rpeatedly mooting litigation on key issues rather than letting judges deliver precedent-setting knockout blows, defending outdated gun control measures like the 1934 National Firearms Act in suppressor cases, and choosing temporary tactical retreats over permanent wins that would prevent future Democrat administrations from simply flipping the switch back on.

Bondi’s nightmare before Congress was more or less the crescendo of her implosion. On February 11, she was hauled before the House Judiciary Committee for what was supposed to be a straightforward oversight hearing – and instead delivered one of the most disastrous performances in recent memory. As we reported live, Bondi exploded into a full-blown shouting match with Rep. Thomas Massie and top Democrats, dodging more than a dozen direct questions on why – after months of “reviewing” the files – the DOJ still had zero indictments of Epstein’s high-profile co-conspirators.

https://twitter.com/DerrickEvans4WV/status/2021639156611629391

She hemmed and hawed over the selective redactions (victims’ names left exposed while alleged abusers were blacked out), the sudden “discovery” of a million more pages, and the complete lack of accountability for the powerful men who enabled the operation. At one point she even whipped out what insiders called a “burn book” of lawmakers’ search histories in a desperate whataboutism that backfired spectacularly, drawing jeers from Epstein survivors seated in the gallery. So basically an angry stonewalling with clips that went absolutely viral. The base watched in real time as the woman tasked with draining the swamp instead looked like she was guarding it.

The timing is telling. Rumors of Bondi’s exit have swirled for months, but they intensified this week after Trump met with Zeldin (a reliable MAGA foot soldier who ran New York and has been showered with praise by the president for his EPA work). Bondi was still glued to Trump’s side yesterday – riding in the motorcade to Supreme Court arguments and sitting in the audience for his primetime Iran address – but the non-denial denial from the White House speaks volumes: “Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job.” AKA – “you’re on thin ice.”

Zeldin, for his part, has zero of the Epstein baggage and a track record of hawkish loyalty during Trump’s first term. If the move happens, it would mark the second high-profile Cabinet shakeup of the term after Kristi Noem’s ouster at DHS – a clear signal that even Trump is no longer willing to tolerate the kind of institutional inertia and base-alienating fumbles that defined too much of his first go-around.

For now, Bondi remains in place… but the clock is ticking. As one person familiar with the discussions put it, the Epstein fallout has become a genuine political liability.

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The reason to attack them.

Iran’s Friends To Make Life Much Harder For Israel And The US (Sadygzade)

The war’s second ‘ring of fire’ is no longer forming around Iran. It is already there. What we are witnessing is not a limited clash between a state under pressure and its immediate enemies, but the gradual emergence of a wider regional confrontation in which Tehran’s allied forces are moving from symbolic solidarity to practical engagement. In Lebanon, Iraq, and now once again in Yemen, groups aligned with Iran are opening new fronts and making any American or Israeli campaign far more difficult to execute. If Iran cannot stop pressure by matching superior military power plane for plane or missile for missile, it can still answer by stretching the battlefield across time and space.


That is the real significance of the current escalation. Wars are easiest to sell and easiest to sustain when they look concentrated, technically manageable, and politically clean. They become much harder to continue when every strike produces another zone of instability, when every advance prompts retaliation, and when every promise of decisive success runs into a new and costly complication. Iran and the forces loyal to it understand this perfectly well. Their goal is not necessarily to win a spectacular conventional victory over Israel or the US. They are trying to deprive their adversaries of a quick result, to turn military superiority into strategic over-extension, and to make the price of escalation rise with every passing week.

Israel is getting mired in Lebanon
Lebanon has become the clearest example of this dynamic. Israel entered the confrontation with Hezbollah expecting that greater firepower, harsher pressure, and deeper incursions would eventually impose a new reality in the south of the country. But so far the campaign has not produced the kind of result Israeli leaders would need in order to claim genuine success. Israeli officials are still speaking openly about expanding operations and about the need for a broad security zone in southern Lebanon. That does not sound like a completed military mission. It sounds like a campaign still searching for a workable outcome.

Israel remains capable of inflicting enormous damage on Lebanon. It can devastate border villages and infrastructure, and force large numbers of people from their homes. But the ability to destroy is not the same as the ability to impose control. A military campaign can appear overwhelming on television and still fail to neutralize the armed force it was meant to break. Hezbollah remains capable of hitting Israeli territory, and that single fact tells us that the war in Lebanon has not been resolved in Israel’s favor.

Israel is also suffering losses, not only in military terms but in political and psychological terms. Reports of fallen soldiers and continuing battlefield casualties show that Hezbollah is still able to turn southern Lebanon into a dangerous combat zone for the Israeli army. This is important because Israel’s military doctrine relies heavily on speed, on offensive initiative, and on the demonstration of dominance. A campaign that drags on, consumes manpower, exposes soldiers to attrition, and leaves northern Israel under continuing threat is not simply unfinished. It becomes strategically corrosive. It undermines the image of effortless superiority on which deterrence partly depends.

There is also the issue of equipment and operational pressure. Public claims about destroyed Israeli vehicles are often difficult to verify independently, and any serious analysis should avoid repeating battlefield propaganda as fact. But even without dramatic and unverifiable numbers, the broader reality is evident.

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“The United States desperately needs a decisive victory in its war ..”

The Price of Underestimating Iran (Lukyanov)

The outcome of the war with Iran will determine America’s capabilities on the world stage for years to come. That is what makes the current conflict in West Asia so consequential, far beyond the region itself. US policy toward Iran has become increasingly erratic. Rather than focus on the president’s shifting rhetoric, it is more useful to examine the logic underpinning the confrontation. Washington appears to have convinced itself that the moment is right to act decisively against Tehran, exploiting what it perceives as a window of vulnerability.


The objective, viewed in isolation, has a certain cold rationality. A single, well-executed strike could, in theory, achieve several long-standing goals at once: settle the historical grievance of the 1979 embassy crisis, remove a regime seen as hostile to Israel, gain leverage over key energy resources and transport routes, and weaken emerging Eurasian integration projects. Advisers appear to have presented this as a rare opportunity. The president accepted the argument. But such ambitions rest on a fundamental miscalculation. Iran is not Iraq in 2003, nor Afghanistan in 2001. Its military capabilities are far more substantial than those of any adversary the United States has confronted directly in recent decades. It is a large, resilient state with deep strategic depth and a capacity to inflict serious disruption on global trade and energy flows.

This last point is critical. Iran’s geographic position gives it leverage that few countries possess. Even limited escalation could threaten shipping routes and economic stability far beyond the Middle East, directly affecting the interests of the United States and its allies. That reality alone complicates any attempt at a quick, clean victory.Moreover, the political context is very different from past US interventions. The current display of force, lacking even the formal justifications that accompanied earlier campaigns, has unsettled Washington’s partners. Allies that might once have felt compelled to support the United States are now more hesitant, weighing the risks of involvement against uncertain outcomes.

The original assumption appears to have been that Iran would capitulate quickly. What that capitulation would look like was never entirely clear: regime collapse, coerced compliance along the lines of Venezuela, or a negotiated settlement sharply limiting Tehran’s power. In any case, a prolonged conflict was not part of the plan.= Now that the conflict has dragged on, a more fundamental question has emerged: what exactly constitutes success?

This dilemma reflects a broader shift in American foreign policy. “America First” is often interpreted as isolationism or restraint. In practice, it has meant something else entirely, the pursuit of US objectives without responsibility and, ideally, without cost. The underlying principle is simple: achieve maximum benefit while minimizing commitments. For a time, this approach appeared to work. In his first year, Donald Trump managed to pressure partners into accepting American terms, often by leveraging overwhelming economic power. But that strategy depends on the absence of meaningful resistance. It becomes far more dangerous when applied to a situation that cannot be controlled.

Creating a major geopolitical crisis and expecting others to absorb the consequences while Washington extracts advantages is a different proposition altogether. It risks destabilizing not just adversaries, but the entire system in which the United States itself operates. In earlier decades, US leadership was framed in terms of a “liberal world order,” where advancing American interests was presented as beneficial to all. The concept of a “benevolent hegemon” emerged from this period. Trump’s worldview rejects that premise. Instead, it assumes that US prosperity must come at the expense of others, and that it is time to reverse the old balance.

This shift carries profound implications. A hegemon that no longer seeks to provide stability must rely more heavily on coercion. But coercion, to be effective, requires credibility. The dominant power must demonstrate clearly that it can impose its will when necessary.

Iran has become the test case.

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Recently someone wrote it would be incorrect to label him “ayatollah”. Anyone remember who?

Mojtaba Breaks Silence, In Message Praises Hezbollah & Shia Leaders (ZH)

The new, younger Ayatollah Khamenei – who may have been wounded in the early days of US-Israeli strikes, hasn’t been seen in any public way, not even on TV, throughout the war. There have not so much as been any official recent images of him circulated. But Mojtaba Khamenei has apparently been issuing some limited written statements, mainly encouraging foreign proxies in their joining the war against US and Israeli forces in the region. State media has indicated he’s not making public appearances given the ongoing relentless bombing campaign and the Islamic Republic’s wartime footing.


After a long period of relative silence, a message from Khamenei was publicized on Monday. In the message attributed to him, he “expressed his appreciation to the supreme religious authority (in Iraq) and the people of Iraq for their clear stance against aggression against Iran and their support for our country,” Iran’s ISNA news agency said, referring to the Iraq-based Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Sistani is based in Iraq and has long been a highly revered Shia cleric in the region.

The 56-year old Khamenei has on Wednesday apparently broken his silence again, this time praising Hezbollah for joining the war against Israel. Hezbollah has been launching hundreds of rockets on northern and central Israel, amid an emerging ground campaign in southern Lebanon, also as Israel bombs Beirut from the air.In the new words carried by Iranian state media, he praised Hezbollah for its “perseverance, steadfastness and patience” against “the most ruthless enemies of the Islamic world.”

Meanwhile, the CIA and Mossad are said to be trying to uncover Mojtaba Khamenei’s whereabouts and status. His 86-year old father did not appear to have been in hiding at all when he was slain by airstrike on the very first day of Operation Epic Fury.

The most likely explanation could be that the younger Khamenei is directing the war from a much more secure and hidden setting, for example a deep underground bunker – or in a remote part of the country. But some analysts have questioned why he wouldn’t make a video address, even if pre-recorded, offering to the world proof that he is a alive and is running the country and war. As for the most visible day-to-day leader, this is parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

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A.K.A. Shock and Awe.

European Allies Show ‘Shock And Anxiety’ to Trump Threat to Leave NATO (JTN)

European media responded to President Donald Trump’s remarks about the United States leaving NATO as an “existential threat” to the 77-year-old security alliance. Speaking with The Telegraph, a right-of-center British daily newspaper, Trump called the alliance a “paper tiger” and said he was “strongly considering” withdrawing from the 32-nation pact. Trump’s comments come after repeated criticisms of NATO member states for not joining the Israeli- and U.S.-led conflict with Iran. In the latest developments, Spain, France, and Italy refused U.S. access to their military bases or airspace for military actions against Iran.


“I was never swayed by NATO,” Trump said. “I always knew they were a paper tiger, and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin knows that, too.” Thirty of 32 NATO member states are in Europe (the U.S. and Canada are the exceptions). Israel is not a member of the alliance. The Guardian, another U.K. newspaper, said Trump’s remarks represented an “existential threat” that could be the “worst crisis in NATO history.” In Spain, El País said there was “shock and anxiety across Europe.” Among the European Union’s three largest economies, German media stressed that the Israeli and U.S. bombings of Iranian targets were “not our war” and said it was “correct” for the government to reject U.S. demands for support.

French media pursued a similar line, stressing that NATO was created to assure trans-Atlantic security, not offensive missions in the Middle East. Italy, meanwhile, tried to balance ties with the U.S. and European and NATO allies, trying to organize a coalition to discuss strategies to assure security in the Gulf region without entering the conflict. Trump might not be able to follow through on his threat to leave the NATO alliance due to a 2023 U.S. law that “prohibits any withdrawal from NATO” without approval from two-thirds of the U.S. Senate.

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More Shock and Anxiety.

EU Leaders Utterly Bewildered at Energy Vulnerabilities Now Evident (CTH)

They stopped their oil and gas exploration. They chose to chase ‘net zero’ academic pontifications. They closed their refining operations. They took apart their coal-fired electricity plants. They disassembled their nuclear power capabilities. Then, the absolute cherry on the proverbial cake, they voted to stop purchasing oil and gas from Russia.The EU is now in the Find Out stage of their FAFO positioning. Gasoline prices have skyrocketed. The last shipments of jet fuel have arrived. Major airline carriers are cancelling flights due to lack of fuel. Faster than the EU can organize meetings to discuss their position, EU destined LNG shipments have diverted to southeast Asia and India as the ASEAN nations bid higher purchase prices for the vessels literally on the water.


Folks, it’s quite an article written by EU Politico as they outline how each of the leaders from the nation states are now discussing how vulnerable they are to the changed oil/gas environment with the mid east conflict ongoing. The entire energy sector in Europe is now in crisis mode with leaders predicting it will get much worse within days, not weeks.mEU Politico – “Germany’s Friedrich Merz warns the economic fallout from the war in Iran is on track to rival that of the Covid pandemic or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. […] With the war in Iran threatening to choke off energy flows for the foreseeable future, Europe is facing a supply shock that promises to cripple manufacturing, ground airlines, hike up the price of food, spike borrowing costs and send inflation spiraling back to crisis levels.

As the last tankers carrying fossil fuels from the Persian Gulf pull into European ports, the scale of what is about to hit seems to be dawning on the continent’s leaders. “I’m living with the reality of this war and its consequences 24 hours a day,” Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told the La Repubblica newspaper. “I’m forced to know things that don’t let me sleep.” The conflict could last “years,” Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, warned in an interview with the Economist last week. The long-term effects, she added, are “probably beyond what we can imagine at the moment.”

[…] “Markets are now grappling with a scenario long discussed in theory but rarely thought of as a legitimate possibility — the effective shutdown of the world’s most critical energy chokepoint,” said Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, lead energy analyst for the Europe team at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.One immediate worry is that Asian countries, which before the war relied on the Gulf for some 80 percent of their gas and oil, are beginning to bid up the price of those products as they fight over dwindling supplies. That has diverted merchants with more flexible contracts toward Asia to exploit the higher profit margins, turning them away from Europe.

According to Charles Costerousse, a senior energy analyst at maritime consultancy Kpler, 11 U.S.- and Nigerian-flagged LNG tankers have been redirected from Europe to further east in the past few days. Within the next few days, the last tanker bearing Qatari LNG will arrive in Europe, he said.[…] For now, as the final Gulf tankers finish unloading their cargo this week, the clock officially starts ticking for Europe’s policymakers. The continent has weeks, not months, to brace for an impact that could reshape its economy for a generation. (read more)

The one element missing from the lengthy diatribe of EU leader quotes is any self-reflection; any admission their EU vulnerability was entirely driven by their own policies. No, that part of the equation is missing entirely. Everything in their mindset is a discussion of external events happening to them. There is no reconsideration of their prior stupidity, and/or a responsive effort to reposition their vulnerability. The EU is in a state of cognitive paralysis, and things are about to get much, much worse.


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Could it trigger the end of the EU?

Could an Orban Win Trigger ‘Maidan on Steroids’? (RT)

Polls ahead of the Hungarian elections point to an opposition victory, but players behind the scenes expect Prime Minister Viktor Orban to come out on top. Others say it’s a scenario ripe for a Kiev-style ‘color revolution’. With two weeks to go until Hungary’s parliamentary elections, Orban is facing the most credible threat to his power yet. Opposition leader Peter Magyar’s Tisza party is currently leading Orban’s Fidesz by 15 points, according to an aggregate of polls compiled by Politico. When looking at pollsters linked to Tisza or funded by the EU, the results are even more stark. A poll by the opposition-linked Median, for example, shows Tisza a whole 23 points ahead of Fidesz, at 58-35%.

However, Politico has also reported that “many” EU leaders secretly believe an Orban victory is “likely.” Hungarian EU Affairs Minister Janos Boka thinks that the disparity between public surveys and private sentiment is no accident, and that by skewing polls, Magyar and his allies in Brussels are “building the narrative that if they lose the election, then this is an illegitimate result.” Notorious intervention hawk Michael Weiss put Boka’s worries into words last week. “If Orban tries to steal this – and he almost certainly will – it’ll be Euromaidan on steroids in an EU/NATO country. Watch closely, America,” he warned in a post on X.

Weiss, who previously ran a Ukraine regime change outfit he claimed was journalism, was referring to the post-election coup that toppled a democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich, in 2014. Orchestrated by the US, the Maidan/Euromaidan coup set in motion a chain of events that culminated in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.However, there are some fundamental points war hawks in armchairs would like you not to notice; differences between Budapest and Kiev that would make forced regime change a far more difficult prospect if Orban wins.

How the US masterminded Maidan
Presented by Western media as a popular uprising, the ‘Maidan’ revolution was a creation of the US State Department and run out of a very compliant US embassy. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a State Department sub-agency, pumped around $14 million into Ukrainian activist groups from 2011 to 2014, the US embassy funded pro-Maidan media outlets, and between 1991 and 2014, the US funnelled a total of $5 billion into “democracy-building programs in Ukraine,” a State Department spokesperson said in 2014.

The NED boasted in a 2015 report that US-funded organizations “played important roles in the peaceful protests in Kiev.” By the time the report had been published, the “peaceful protests” had descended into a bloodbath, with Western-funded far-right militias massacring nearly 100 pro-Western protesters in a false-flag operation, and pro-Western neo-Nazis burning 46 anti-Maidan protesters alive at the Trade Unions House in Odessa. Awkward questions for the neocons, neolibs, and the righteous.

Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland promised military aid and a billion-dollar loan to opposition politicians, and famously handed out cookies to pro-Western activists in Kiev. Together with US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, she helped choose the government that would replace Yanukovich’s. When asked by an obsequious Pyatt in a 2014 phone call if the Europeans might disagree with her choice of candidate, the notorious hawk infamously declared “f**k the EU.”

Now the US backs Orban
The situation in Hungary is radically different. US President Donald Trump is a staunch ally of Orban, and has endorsed the Hungarian PM’s reelection campaign, while Vice President J.D. Vance is scheduled to make a high-profile trip to Budapest just days before the April 12 election.

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“Even though Trump’s team can appeal, the damage is real. This ruling will probably keep Trump tangled in civil litigation for the rest of his presidency and likely beyond..”

Judge Keeps Democrats’ January 6 Witch Hunt Against Trump Alive (Margolis)

A federal judge appointed by Barack Obama ruled this week that President Trump’s speech at the Ellipse on January 6, 2021, is not protected by presidential immunity — keeping a Democratic-driven civil lawsuit alive and ensuring Trump will be fighting this battle for years to come. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Trump’s rally remarks fell outside the “outer perimeter” of his official presidential duties, applying the framework the Supreme Court established in its immunity ruling back in 2024. That ruling gave presidents full immunity for core official acts and presumptive immunity for acts within the outer perimeter — but left unofficial acts exposed. Mehta used that opening to let this bogus lawsuit walk right through.


Mehta was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by Obama in 2014 and confirmed the same year. In 2021, he was appointed to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, succeeding Judge James Boasberg, who served as presiding judge from 2020 to 2021. It sure is a small world when it comes to Obama-era appointees making consequential rulings against a Republican president.

It should come as no surprise that this is not Mehta’s first rodeo targeting Trump. He previously refused to dismiss these same claims back in February 2022, ruled against Trump in a case involving congressional access to his financial records, and sentenced former Trump adviser Peter Navarro to four months in jail for defying a January 6 committee subpoena. Mehta has had his fingerprints on the anti-Trump legal machine for years.

Mehta denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the civil litigation, meaning Democratic lawmakers and Capitol Police officers who sued Trump can continue to pursue their case. The plaintiffs falsely claim Trump’s Ellipse speech incited the crowd to riot. The problem with their claim, of course, is Trump’s speech itself. Trump literally told the crowd at the Ellipse to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” That’s the “incitement” Democrats keep telling us about. The speech itself is the best evidence that the insurrection narrative is a myth, but Mehta waved that aside anyway.

Joseph Sellers, an attorney for the Democratic lawmakers suing Trump, couldn’t contain his excitement. “We’re very pleased that the court recognized that President Trump cannot avoid accountability for his conduct on Jan. 6, 2021,” he said. “This decision, if it holds up, is going to pave the way to a trial in federal district court on these claims.”Trump’s legal team made it clear they’re not done fighting this.

“The facts show that on January 6, 2021, President Trump was acting on behalf of the American people, carrying out his official duties as President of the United States,” the team said in a statement. “President Trump will continue to fight back against the Democrat Witch Hoaxes and keep delivering historic results for the American People.”

Even though Trump’s team can appeal, the damage is real. This ruling will probably keep Trump tangled in civil litigation for the rest of his presidency and likely beyond — precisely what Democrats designed these lawsuits to accomplish. While the president focuses on governing and delivering results for the American people, a group of partisan plaintiffs and their enabling activist judges are still obsessed with their January 6 lies.

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Too small brains.

We May Finally Be Close to Ending the Democrats’ DHS Shutdown (Margolis)

The Democrats’ DHS shutdown may finally be ending soon, after Republican leaders and President Donald Trump hashed out a plan. The two-track strategy announced Wednesday strips the left of one of its most effective tools for obstruction — and leaves them with nobody to blame but themselves.


The partial shutdown has dragged on since mid-February, making it the longest of its kind in American history. The core fight came down to one thing: Democrats refused to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol after two anti-ICE agitators attacked federal agents and were killed in self-defense. The left, blaming the agents for the deaths, demanded reforms that would have effectively made immigration law unenforceable. Republicans wouldn’t budge. Then Democrats finally caved last week, agreeing to fund DHS without the reforms they had demanded. But House Speaker Mike Johnson rejected the deal because it didn’t fully fund ICE and Border Patrol, which were already funded through 2029.

Trump broke the logjam Wednesday with a Truth Social post endorsing funding ICE and Border Patrol through budget reconciliation — the legislative process that will bypass Senate Democrats entirely. “We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won’t be able to stop us,” Trump wrote.

Speaker Mike Johnson, who initially opposed the funding deal announced Friday, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune quickly got on board. Their joint statement outlined the two-pronged approach: fund most of DHS through the standard appropriations process until October, then lock in three years of immigration enforcement funding through reconciliation — completely insulated from Democratic obstruction. “In the coming days, Republicans in the Senate and House will be following through on the President’s directive by fully funding the entire Department of Homeland Security on two parallel tracks: through the appropriations process and through the reconciliation process,” they said.

The Senate Budget Committee had already begun building the reconciliation framework to make it happen. That process allows the Senate to move legislation with a simple majority instead of the 60-vote threshold that typically gives Schumer and his caucus veto power over Republican priorities. This plan looks almost identical to what the Senate tried to pass just last Friday — the same bill House Republicans shot down in spectacular fashion, with Johnson himself calling it a “joke.” House conservatives had demanded that immigration enforcement funding stay bundled with the rest of DHS appropriations.

Johnson’s reversal also signals something significant. I previously wrote that Johnson may have been attempting to force the Senate GOP to nuke the filibuster. If that were the case, this agreement would mean Republicans have effectively conceded that nuking the Senate filibuster isn’t happening. If killing the filibuster were on the table, there would be no need for a two-track workaround. The reconciliation path is a creative solution, but it’s also an acknowledgment of the limits of the current Senate majority.

“It is now abundantly clear that Democrats place allegiance to their radical left-wing base above all else,” Thune and Johnson said. “We cannot allow Democrats to any longer put the safety of the American public at risk through their open border policies, so we are taking that off the table.” If Republicans can push the reconciliation package through, Democrats will lose the ability to use DHS appropriations as a weapon against Trump’s immigration agenda for the rest of his term. They spent months blocking ICE funding to protect their base, and now they may end up with zero leverage to show for it.

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We have questions.

AI Giant Anthropic Suffers Strategic Code Hemorrhage (RT)

AI giant Anthropic has mistakenly published its own top secret internal code, triggering a viral wave of github rewrites and inflicting potentially catastrophic commercial damage on the Amazon-backed business model. The developer of the Claude chatbot described the incident as a release issue “caused by human error, not a security breach,” according to US technology news website VentureBeat on Tuesday. Anthropic was designated a “risk to national security” by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in February after disagreements with the Pentagon over the use of its artificial intelligence systems.


The leak involved more than 500,000 lines of code linked to Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI coding assistant, which helps users write and manage software through natural language commands, according to Axios and The Verge. The material included unreleased features, performance data, and developer notes. The code spread rapidly online, with versions of the code being placed on code-sharing platform GitHub and replicated thousands of times within hours, according to Ars Technica and The Verge. Anthropic moved to remove the material and issued takedown notices, but the material had already been widely copied and circulated, the reports said.

According to VentureBeat, by exposing the “blueprints” of Claude Code, the leak may have given “bad actors” a “road map” to bypassing security checks or tricking the tool into running hidden commands or accessing data without the user’s knowledge. A separate data leak reported in February exposed internal materials revealing details of Anthropic’s unreleased model, known as Claude Mythos, after thousands of draft documents were left accessible in a public data cache.

The model was described in the leaked material as the company’s most powerful system to date which could pose “unprecedented cybersecurity risks” if deployed widely. The company has withheld its release due to concerns over its capabilities and potential misuse, according to US business magazine Fortune.

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Just passing on. Are mini-nukes the answer?

Nano Nuclear Submits Construction Permit For Kronos Reactor In Illinois (ZH)

Nano Nuclear submitted a Construction Permit Application (CPA) to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for their Kronos microreactor project at the University of Illinois. The filing marks the latest step in a project we’ve tracked since site characterization began last fall. Kronos is a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) engineered for commercial deployment. It delivers 15 megawatts of carbon-free baseload power using meltdown-resistant TRISO fuel and helium coolant. The design emphasizes walk-away safety, autonomous operation during grid outages, and scalability through multiple units. Intended uses include powering artificial intelligence data centers, industrial electrification, military bases, and remote communities.


Nano Nuclear acquired the technology in 2024 from Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp. and positioned it as one of the first commercially ready microreactor platforms. The University of Illinois partnership targets the first full-scale Kronos research reactor deployment. We detailed the October 2025 launch of geotechnical drilling and site characterization work, followed by a ceremonial groundbreaking. Those steps built on state support from Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and positioned the campus project as the lead effort in Nano’s broader commercialization roadmap. The company has since expanded discussions for additional deployments in Texas, South Korea, and at U.S. federal sites.

Under the NRC process, staff will first review the application package for completeness and docketing. Once accepted, the agency will conduct a formal technical and environmental evaluation. Nano estimates this formal review phase will take approximately 12 months, after which the NRC could authorize construction. The timeline aligns with recent agency efforts to streamline advanced reactor licensing while maintaining rigorous safety standards.

Company executives described the submission as validation of years of engineering and pre-application engagement. Chief Technical Officer Florent Heidet called it “a defining moment” that separates ready projects from those still in early development. The milestone keeps Nano on track for initial test operations at Illinois by the late 2020s and supports its goal of factory-built, fleet-scale microreactor production.

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What on earth happened since 1969?

We beat the Russians back then, only to be losing to China 57-odd years later?

Artemis II and the ‘Waste of Space’ (Rick Moran)

Yesterday, four human beings sat atop the most powerful machine ever built and launched themselves toward the moon. Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency are set to fire their engine and send their spacecraft toward the moon. They won’t land on the surface. They won’t even go into orbit. They will slingshot around the moon and return to Earth. It’s a $60 billion space stunt. That’s the total cost of the Space Launch System (SLS) program to date, and given the fact that the astronauts are doing little except proving they can go into space, travel to the moon, and come back alive, it seems an awful “waste of space.”


How do we know it’s a “stunt”? The crew consists of one white guy, one black guy (Glover), one woman, and a Canadian. Hansen will be the first non-American to visit the moon. That sounds like a “made-for-TV” extravaganza. In the 1997 film Contact, 12-year-old Ellie Arroway’s widowed father, Ted, is helping his daughter discover the wonders of the universe through a telescope. “The universe is a pretty big place,” the father tells the daughter. “It’s bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it’s just us… seems like an awful waste of space.”

Ellie and Ted (the elder Ellie played by Jodie Foster alongside David Morse) were talking about the vastness of space and how it would be highly unlikely that humans were the only intelligent life. In the case of Artemis II and the SLS, the “waste of space” is the sheer, frustratingly stupid mix of politics, inefficiency, inexplicable decisions, and poor management that created a black hole for taxpayer dollars, a “forever program” that had the zombie-like ability to resist being killed, and the real possibility that the machine those four brave souls are flying in is not as safe as it should be.

NASA has inefficiency and waste built into its DNA. Because it’s government-funded, the agency needs friends in Congress to get anything done. This forces the agency to spread the pork as widely as possible. Key members of Congress who are lucky enough (or skilled enough at logrolling) to have a NASA contractor in their district make sure that programs that benefit that contractor, even if they’re wasteful and accomplish nothing, never get canceled or have their budgets cut.

Congress does not see the space program as a scientific endeavor or even as a national security necessity. To Congress, the space program is a means to gain cash for campaigns and jobs for constituents. Even when the White House tries to cancel or cut a program, Congress will inevitably restore the funding. That’s why the SLS is still going strong despite being six years late and billions of dollars over budget.

Reason.com: “As development began on the rocket, the projected budget cost through 2017 was $18 billion, a number that would soon start growing. Early in development, each launch was projected to cost $500 million, a number very optimistic in hindsight: According to the White House’s 2026 budget proposal, an SLS launch costs about $4 billion. Through last year, the total cost of the program has exceeded $60 billion.

The SLS program isn’t just way over budget. It’s way behind schedule too. Congress told it to fly by 2016, but the first launch didn’t come until 2022. The second launch will be Artemis II. When the first Trump administration started the Artemis program in 2017, the vision was to send Americans to the moon and then Mars. As the program developed, officials set a goal of having humans on the moon again by 2024. In April 2021, SpaceX won the bidding process to build the Human Landing System—the lunar lander that would deliver the astronauts to the moon’s surface. Blue Origin then sued NASA over losing out to SpaceX, and NASA had to pause work until the lawsuit ended. The suit was resolved in November, at which point SpaceX and NASA returned to work.

The oft-delayed launch of Artemis II was due to a series of hydrogen fuel leaks. The mission was pushed from its original February window to April as engineers worked to replace seals and address a subsequent issue with a clogged helium pressurization line. The rocket had to be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for these specialized repairs.It should be noted that Artemis II is a new system and will have bugs that need to be ironed out. But the same leaking hydrogen problem experienced in February also canceled the March launches. The RS-25 engine, which is being fueled by hydrogen, is considered very reliable. It’s also considered “too big to fail” because of its powerful congressional backers.

The engines are manufactured by Aerojet Rocketdyne, and the program supports thousands of jobs across multiple congressional districts. This makes a total engine redesign or a switch to a different propulsion system (like SpaceX’s Raptor or Blue Origin’s BE-4) politically difficult. Critics argue that the traditional contracting model incentivizes maintaining the current hardware rather than starting over with a cheaper, leak-resistant fuel like methane. Instead of replacing the engine, NASA and lead contractor Boeing have focused on “kindler, gentler” loading procedures and redesigned flight seals to fix the leak issues that plagued the February and March launch attempts.

NASA is shooting for a Moon landing by 2030. Given their track record, that seems more like wishful thinking. It’s more than likely that China will beat them there. It’s even possible that Elon Musk, who has abandoned his Mars dreams to go to the Moon, will reach the lunar surface before NASA. Sixty billion tax dollars for space could have been spent far more wisely. The magnificent unmanned probes we’ve sent to Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn have made spectacular discoveries that have not only expanded our knowledge of the universe but also shown us the way to a future in which humans aren’t tied to Earth or the Moon.bArtemis II is a helluva “waste of space” when you consider what that money could have been spent on.

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Good points.

The Soul-Crushing Cost of NOT Returning to the Moon for 50+ Years (Pinsker)

Question for our readers: What’s the greatest accomplishment in all of human history? Some might point to religious breakthroughs, i.e. the development of theological and/or legal doctrines. If you’re in the Ozymandias camp, you may favor big, impressive monuments — like the Great Pyramid of Giza. Or maybe you’re thinking of something more basic, like the invention of written language, which was developed independently at least four times. There are many more options, of course: The discovery of the New World. Metallurgy. Agriculture. Seafaring. The printing press. Germ theory. Unlocking the power of the atom. All the above altered the course of humanity.


But in my opinion, the single greatest accomplishment was walking on the moon. Even today, nearly 57 years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left their footprints on the lunar surface, the accomplishment remains so utterly mindboggling that 10% of Americans don’t believe it happened. And, arguably, for good reason: No human has returned to the moon since 1972. If you’re under 55, the moon landing was something you read about — not something you remember watching live. For generations of Americans (including this 52-year-old scribe), there hasn’t been a day in our lives when we’ve gazed up at the sky and beamed with pride, knowing an American astronaut has “slipped the surly bonds of Earth,” soaring farther than an “eagle flew,” and “touched the face of God.”

About 25 years ago, when I worked in talk radio, I spoke to Buzz Aldrin on the phone. It was one of the few times a celebrity made me tongue-tied. I haven’t even been to Australia yet — and this guy walked on the flippin’ moon?! How can anyone compete with THAT? Imagine being at a bar, bragging about your Australian vacation, and in walks Buzz Aldrin. “Wow, you made it all the way to Australia, did you? How impressive. By the way, y’know that big white ball in the sky? It’s called the moon. That’s where I went, but please, tell me more about Australia.” Baby Boomers were shaped by the Kennedy assassination. Even today, 60+ years later, everyone still remembers where they were when they heard the fateful news.

Gen-X was shaped by the Challenger disaster. Until 9/11, it was the most jarring catastrophe of our lifetime, because it shattered America’s aura of technological invincibility. After all, we had so thoroughly conquered the cosmos, NASA actually let a schoolteacher named Christa McAuliffe hitch a ride on the shuttle as a PR stunt. Space travel was considered so mundane that none of the three major TV networks bothered to air the Challenger launch live. (CNN, still in its early years, was the exception.) How could the space shuttle blow up? We’re the nation that put a man on the moon! America doesn’t make mistakes like that!

The Challenger disaster took place on Jan. 28, 1986. That was over 40 years ago. And in the decades that followed, instead of inspiring wonder, pride, and belief in the American Dream, NASA became synonymous with budgetary bloat, technical malfunctions, and aborted missions. Uncoincidentally, as NASA’s achievements became a distant memory, each generation that followed has had less pride in America. 83% of the Silent Generation is extremely or very proud to be an American. For Boomers, it’s 75%. For Gen-X, it’s 71%. For Millennials, it’s 58%. And for Gen-Z, it’s just 41%.

There’s a crisis of patriotism among young Americans. If you want to know why so many young people are turning to socialism and communism, it’s because they lost their faith in the American Dream: Among the under-30 crowd, 34% have a favorable opinion of communism — and a whopping 62% feel favorably towards socialism. Just 50% favor capitalism.

These are damning trendlines. As the older generations die off, faith in America’s greatness is dying with them. It’s why Zoomers are now favoring socialism over capitalism by double-digits. Unless we (quickly) right the ship, we’re cheating our children and grandchildren of their American birthright. And if we’re not careful, it’ll cost us everything. It’s the responsibility of our leaders — whether they’re in government, the private sector, or in our homes — to inspire the next generation. To inscribe in their hearts and souls the belief that they can make the impossible possible — as long as they dream big, work hard, and pray with all their might. Why do you think the phrase “Make America Great Again” resonated so deeply?

Greatness is inspirational. Aspirational. Given a choice between greatness and mediocrity, greatness wins every single time. It brings out the best in us. That was the hidden cost of not returning to the moon for 50+ years: It cheated our children and grandchildren of their dreams. And sapped their pride in American greatness. But imagine a new national trajectory — where NASA, SpaceX, and American ingenuity rewrite the history books. One where Zoomers look to the sky and see a moon flooded with American astronauts and American footprints — and a permanent American moon base.Then, after reconquering the moon, we set foot on Mars. And from there, we venture even further.

Or we could do nothing. And then, when China lands a man on the moon by 2030 and builds a moon base, young Americans would gaze to the cosmos with resentment, rage, and regret: They’ve inherited a country whose best days are long gone. The Boomers got all the glory — and they got a nation in decline. And if you’re already worried about so many young Americans abandoning capitalism, what do you think will happen if America is lapped by a communist nation? More likely than not, the allure of communism and socialism will skyrocket — to the moon and beyond. Space travel isn’t cheap. Some, including my PJ Media colleague Rick Moran, argue the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. But dollars and cents aren’t the only way to measure cost: Dreams matter, too.

Dreamers are optimists; they believe our future will be greater than our past. They’re men and women of faith. The greater our dreams, the greater our country. A nation without dreams is a dying nation.As President Ronald Reagan said in his final primetime address: “We were meant to be masters of destiny, not victims of fate. Who among us would trade America’s future for that of any other country in the world? And who could possibly have so little faith in our America that they would trade our tomorrows for our yesterdays?”

After 50+ years, it’s time to give our kids a dream worth dreaming: Because they deserve nothing less.

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https://twitter.com/RealHellenist/status/2039580324997582892?s=20 https://twitter.com/DiogenisSinopis/status/2039376870970470404?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Mar 122026
 


Willem de Kooning Rosy-fingered Dawn at Louse Point 1963
When I still lived in Holland I would go to the StedelIjk Museum all the time just to see this painting.


Trump Says Iran War To End ‘Soon’ As ‘Practically Nothing Left’ To Target (ZH)
Thinking About the Unthinkable (Michael Hudson)
Iran Sleeper Cells ‘Activated’; Threaten To “Eliminate” Trump (MN)
It Seems Netanyahu Has Trump In Over His Head (Paul Craig Roberts)
The Die Is Cast: Either Iran or Washington/Israel Prevail (Paul Craig Roberts)
The Global Elites Lose Again (Heather Mac Donald)
Volkswagen Loses Half Their Profit, Plans to Cut 50,000 Jobs (CTH)
Top DOJ Prosecutor Says Tens Of Thousands Of Noncitizens On Voter Rolls (JTN)
Epstein’s Accountant To Testify Before House Oversight Panel (JTN)
Microsoft Backs Anthropic’s Bid to Block the Supply-Chain Risk Label (ET)
Are Bad Bots Taking Over The Web? (ZH)
Ukraine Can’t Explain ‘War Mafia’ Cash Convoy – Hungary (RT)
EU Members Could Loan Billions Directly To Kiev – Politico
Looks Like The EU Might Have To Pay Zelensky Just To Shut Up (Rachel Marsden)
The Big Lie: America Is a Divided, Hateful Country (Rick Moran)

 


 

 


 

 


 


92 million people in an ancient civilization, and after just a few days you have ‘Practically Nothing Left’ To Target? Sounds delusional, perhaps.

Trump Says Iran War To End ‘Soon’ As ‘Practically Nothing Left’ To Target (ZH)

President Trump on Wednesday said that the war with Iran will end “soon” because there is “practically nothing left to target.” “Little this and that… Any time I want it to end, it will end,” Trump told Axios during a five-minute phone call, adding “The war is going great. We are way ahead of the timetable. We have done more damage than we thought possible, even in the original six-week period.” “They were after the rest of the Middle East. They are paying for 47 years of death and destruction they caused. This is payback. They will not get off that easy,” Trump said.


So, Mission Almost Accomplished™ after the Trump administration has given estimates ranging from weeks to months for how long this might take.Yet while Trump is signaling that the operation has largely accomplished its objectives, US and Israeli officials say there’s been no indication of when fighting might stop. As Axios notes further, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that fighting will continue “without any time limit, for as long as necessary, until we achieve all the objectives and decisively win the campaign.” Meanwhile, Israeli and US officials say they’re preparing for at least two more weeks of strikes in Iran.

* * * Update (0930ET): The most significant development in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday was the start of IRGC naval mining operations, which were met with massive U.S. firepower that destroyed 16 mine-laying vessels. As we continue monitoring the maritime chokepoint this morning after IRGC attacks on three commercial vessels, attention is now shifting to the IRGC’s drone production capacity, which appears to have been degraded. Bloomberg reports that 2,100 Shaheds have been fired so far in the 12-day conflict. U.S. forces struck IRGC production facilities, disrupting large-scale manufacturing. The report is based on comments from a senior European official.

“Since the Houthis have produced UAVs under bombardment, one would think the Iranians can, albeit not at the same rates, since facilities have to be dispersed and makeshift workshops used,” Sid Kaushal, a senior research fellow at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute, told the outlet.The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that Saudi Arabia’s kill-cost ratio, neutralizing $20,000 IRGC drones with $2 million-plus missiles, has spurred talks with a Ukrainian counter-drone company for cheap interceptor drones.

* * * America-Israel’s Operation Epic Fury entered its 12th day, with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth indicating that the most intense phase of U.S. strikes is expected on Wednesday. Tehran responded with retaliatory strikes against Gulf neighbors, as Goldman’s foreign affairs chief warned of a growing risk of regional spillover (read here). Overnight, market attention centered on energy, with the IEA reportedly proposing its largest-ever emergency crude release to combat Brent and WTI prices, which have reached triple-digit territory. “The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes. Intelligence more refined and better than ever. So that’s on one hand,” Hegseth said. “On the other hand, the last 24 hours have seen Iran fire the lowest number of missiles they’ve been capable of firing yet.”

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“Iran’s Grand Plan to End U.S. Presence in the Middle East..”

Thinking About the Unthinkable (Michael Hudson)

Iran and Donald Trump have each explained why failure to fight the current war to the end would simply lead to a new set of mutual attacks. Trump announced on March 6 that “There will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender,” and announced that he must have a voice in naming or at least approving Iran’s new leader, as he has just done in Venezuela. “If the U.S. military must utterly defeat it and bring about a regime change, or else “you go through this, and then in five years you realize you put somebody in who’s no better.’”[1] It will take at least that long for America to replace the weaponry that has been depleted, rebuild its radar and related installations and mount a new war.


Iranian officials likewise recognize that U.S. attacks will keep being repeated until the United States is driven out of the Middle East. Having agreed to a ceasefire last June instead of pressing its advantage when Israeli and regional U.S. anti-missile defenses were depleted, Iran realized that war will be resumed as soon as the United States is able to re-arm its allies and military bases to renew what both sides recognize is to be a fight to some kind of final solution.

The war that began on February 28 can realistically be deemed to be the formal opening of World War III because what is at issue are the terms on which the entire world will be able to buy oil and gas. Can they buy this energy from exporters in currencies other than the dollar, headed by Russia and Iran (and until recently, Venezuela)? Will the present U.S. demand to control of the international oil trade require oil-exporting countries to price it in dollars, and indeed to recycle their export earnings and national savings into investments in U.S. government securities, bonds and stocks?

That recycling of petrodollars has been the basis of America’s financialization and weaponization of the world’s oil trade, and its imperial strategy of isolating countries that resist adherence to the U.S. ruler-based order (no real rules, but simply U.S. ad hoc demands). So what is at issue is not only the U.S. military presence in the Middle East – along with its two proxy armies, Israel and ISIS/al Qaeda jihadists. And the U.S. and Israeli pretense that it is about Iran having atomic weapons of mass destruction is as fictitious an accusation as that levied against Iraq in 2003. What is at issue is ending the Middle East’s economic alliances with the United States and whether its oil-export earnings will continue to be accumulated in dollars as the buttress of the U.S. balance of payments to help pay for its military bases throughout the world.

Iran has announced that it will fight until it achieves three aims to prevent future wars. First and foremost, the United States must withdraw from al its military bases in the Middle East. Iran already has destroyed the backbone of radar warning systems and anti-aircraft and missile defense sites in Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, preventing them from guiding U.S. or Israeli missile attacks or attacking Iran. Arab countries have bases or U.S. installations will be bombed if they are not abandoned.

The next two Iranian demands seem to far-reaching that they seem unthinkable to the West. Arab OPEC countries must end their close economic ties to the United States, starting with the U.S. data centers operated by Amazon, Microsoft and Google. And they not only must stop pricing their oil and gas in U.S. dollars, but disinvest in their existing petrodollars holdings of the U.S. investments that have been subsidizing the U.S. balance of payments since the 1974 agreements that made to gain U.S. permission to quadruple their oil-export prices.

These three demands would end U.S. economic power over OPEC countries, and thus the world oil trade. The result would be to dedollarize the world’s oil trade and re-orient it toward Asia and Global Majority countries. And Iran’s plan involves not only a military and economic defeat for the United States, but an end to the political character of the Near Eastern client monarchies and their relations with their Shi’ite citizens.

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“Even those greater than you could not eliminate the Iranian nation. Take care of yourself not to be eliminated!”

Iran Sleeper Cells ‘Activated’; Threaten To “Eliminate” Trump (MN)

US intelligence intercepts reveal Iran may be triggering covert operatives abroad, as Tehran issues direct warnings to President Trump following the airstrike death of its former supreme leader. U.S. intelligence has intercepted an encrypted message from Iran that appears to be an “operational trigger” for sleeper cells embedded in foreign countries, raising alarms about potential attacks. This development comes amid ongoing conflict, with Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, facing threats from multiple fronts after his father’s death in a U.S.-Israeli airstrike.


https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/2031106637662920797


passcodes, with characteristics suggesting it was meant for operatives outside the country. The alert describes the signal as resembling historical methods used to activate covert assets without internet reliance. “The signals could be intended to activate or provide instructions to prepositioned sleeper assets operating outside the originating country,” the alert stated.Concerns are heightened by reports of Iranian-linked operatives using routes like Venezuela to enter Western nations, potentially establishing networks near the U.S.

Security experts warn of threats from both organized cells and lone actors. Former DHS adviser Charles Marino told the Daily Mail that simultaneous attacks by 10-20 people in a cell are possible, targeting soft spots like concerts or sporting events. The upcoming World Cup, a National Special Security Event, is a particular worry. Tensions escalated further with Iran’s defiant response to President Trump’s comments on the new supreme leader. Trump stated on Fox that Mojtaba Khamenei would be unable to “live in peace” and expressed dissatisfaction with the appointment, warning Iran to brace for “death, fire and fury” if it shuts the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani dismissed these as “empty threats,” adding, “Even those greater than you could not eliminate the Iranian nation. Take care of yourself not to be eliminated!”


This exchange follows the conviction of Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national trained by Iran’s IRGC, for plotting to assassinate Trump during the 2024 race. Merchant was found guilty days ago, with the plot linked to revenge for Qasem Soleimani’s 2020 killing. In a related development, Merchant told FBI agents he suspected Iran was behind the July 13, 2024, Butler assassination attempt on Trump. He claimed it mirrored his own scheme, orchestrated under IRGC coercion with threats to his family. Prosecutors allege Merchant recruited hitmen targeting U.S. politicians, including Trump, Biden, and Haley. During his trial, he handed $5,000 to undercover agents. U.S. strikes have since killed the IRGC leader behind the plot, as announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth described Tuesday as the “most intense day” of attacks on Iran, with refined intelligence leading to more strikes. Iran has fired fewer missiles in recent hours, he noted. Iran’s IRGC announced that countries expelling U.S. and Israeli ambassadors would gain passage through the Strait of Hormuz, amid warnings from Saudi Arabia’s oil company of market “catastrophe” due to disruptions.] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated Israel is “not done yet” in Iran, while warning Lebanese residents ahead of strikes on Hezbollah. French President Emmanuel Macron assured Cyprus of support amid regional strains.

Tehran saw massive airstrikes with “unusually large” explosions, as Trump vowed to end the war “very soon” but indicated further actions. Smoke billowed over the capital, and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi ruled out resuming U.S. negotiations, citing past betrayals. Mojtaba Khamenei, wounded in the conflict and dubbed “vengeful” by some, has ties to the IRGC and is seen as more extremist. Protests in Iran include chants of “death to Mojtaba,” while state media rallies support.

Trump reiterated warnings on Truth Social, promising to hit Iran “twenty times harder” if oil flow is blocked. Iran insists it will determine the war’s end and continue missile attacks as needed. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively shut, halting oil tankers and filling storage, spiking global prices and raising economic crisis fears. These intercepts and threats underscore the precarious security landscape, with potential implications for U.S. safety and international stability as the conflict persists.

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I may not agree all the time, but I highly appreciate the view of a soon 87-year old former (assistant) cabinet secretary.

It Seems Netanyahu Has Trump In Over His Head (Paul Craig Roberts)

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked at a news conference on March 9 if in view of the lack of success of the Israeli-American missile and air strikes to defeat Iran, now that Trump was talking about boots on the ground could America look forward to a draft? Leavitt’s answer was that the President keeps all options on the table.I don’t think that this is going to go down well with American mothers and fathers. Yes, they are brainwashed about “Israel’s right to defend itself,” and “you can’t be an American if you don’t love Israel,” but that was before their sons faced conscription to go to war and to die for Israel.


So far we have only had propaganda, not factual news, about the success for lack thereof of the Israeli-American attack on Iran. But all the indications are that the war has not gone as Trump expected. My own opinion at this time is that the only way Trump can avoid defeat in Iran is to nuke Iran, which I am convinced was Netanyahu’s intent from the beginning. Netanyahu will be telling Trump, “You promised victory. You cannot accept a defeat.”

The Republicans who support the war, ranging from 76% to 85% depending on the poll are too stupid and insouciant to comprehend that they are supporting a war likely to end in nuclear war and their own demise. Patriots are the easiest to deceive, because they wrap themselves in the flag. But a deceived population is a poor basis for survival. Has Netanyahu maneuvered an utterly stupid American president into a draft in a midterm election year?

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Not both.

The Die Is Cast: Either Iran or Washington/Israel Prevail (Paul Craig Roberts)

President Trump recently declared that he has won the war ahead of schedule. But evidence supports the opposite conclusion. For example, Washington is having to remove sanctions on Russian oil in order to release Russian oil to the market in a weak effort to compensate for Iran’s closing of the Strait of Hormuz. So much for Trump’s “victory.” Washington has already been forced to waive its ban on refiners in India from purchasing Russian oil. US Treasury Secretary Bessent said: “We may unsanction other Russian oil . . . There are hundreds of millions of barrels of sanctioned crude on the water … by unsanctioning them, Treasury can create supply.” One might have thought that the dumbshit Trump regime would have thought of this prior to taking the world to war.


Here we will get a test of Putin’s mettle. Will he sell out his BRICS Iranian ally in exchange for Washington removing its Russian sanctions? Will Putin think he can parlay his cooperation with Israel-America for a mutual defense treaty? Such treachery would be isolating and would cost Russia China’s trust, leaving both countries isolated for Washington to try to destabilize. As Putin has already walked away from Syria and refuses to win the conflict with Ukraine, will he also sell out Iran for hopes that have no chance of being realized? Just how unrealistic is Putin? Can Russia survive Putin’s unrealism?

Until Washington renounces the Wolfowitz Doctrine of US hegemony and Israel renounces the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel, no agreement with Washington means anything other than the stupidity of the Russian or Chinese or Iranian government in giving Washington and Israel time to regroup, resupply, and renew the attack.

On Dialogue Works I discuss with Nima the basic fact that the operative foreign policies are Israel’s agenda of Greater Israel and Washington’s agenda of American hegemony. https://www.youtube.com/live/OEplHZWNG-E Israel’s agenda means that Iran’s only option is to fight for survival. Iran cannot negotiate its survival. The Wolfowitz Doctrine means that China and Russia’s only choice is to prevail over Washington or accept subservience to Washington. It is impossible to negotiate equality with a government, the agenda of which is its hegemony. It is extraordinary that governments, commentators, and media cannot comprehend such obvious facts.

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I kid you not: Their political rivals say the AfD is actively seeking to overthrow the German constitution. Like the Schiffs and Pelosi’s said about Trump.

The Global Elites Lose Again (Heather Mac Donald)

To the despair of the European establishment, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the most hated political force in Germany, keeps showing robust signs of life, whether in its impressive showing in a state election on Sunday or in a recent courtroom victory. On Sunday, the AfD more than doubled its previous vote share for the parliament of Baden-Württemberg, a key industrial state in western Germany. On February 26, a German court enjoined the country’s domestic spy agency from classifying Germany’s second most popular political party as a “confirmed right-wing extremist” organization. The “confirmed right-wing extremist” designation has been a key tool in the campaign among establishment and left-wing politicians to ban the AfD entirely. The AfD’s fate should not be a matter of indifference to American conservatives. The globalist elites must be broken everywhere if they are to be permanently broken at all.


Growing numbers of the German public defy their overseers and welcome the AfD as an antidote to the EU-Davos philosophy of open borders and the deindustrialization and immiseration that go under the banner of climate-friendly energy policy. The AfD polls second nationally to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The CDU was once the cornerstone of postwar conservatism, but its leaders have pulled it to the left in order to marginalize the AfD. In February 2025, Chancellor (and CDU party head) Friedrich Merz cobbled together an ideologically incoherent governing coalition whose sole purpose is to shut the AfD out of power, despite the AfD’s receiving the second largest share of the German vote. The establishment proudly refers to this exclusionary strategy as the “firewall,” which allegedly protects German democracy from falling into the hands of purported neo-Nazis.

Despite the relentless agitation against it, the AfD is the leading political force in many East German states. It is rising fast in the West, including in several states, such as Baden-Württemberg, holding elections this year for their local parliaments. That’s where the government-imposed “right-wing extremist” label comes in. If one wants to see the Deep State in its most perfected form, Germany is the place to look.

The country’s domestic spy agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has vast discretion to wiretap German citizens and to determine their political legitimacy. It assesses whether a political movement is an enemy of the “free democratic basic order” and “inimical to the Constitution.” Depending on how confident the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is regarding the anti-democratic character of a party, it classifies that party as “a suspicious case,” a “suspected extremist” party, or a “confirmed extremist” party. These categories govern how much surveillance the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is allowed to conduct on party members—a startling amount by non-German standards, yet now almost shrugged off by its nationalist targets as an unavoidable condition of political existence.

Previously, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had classified the AfD as a “suspected” right-wing extremist organization. But in 2025, the office bumped up the classification to “confirmed extremist” on the basis of a secret 7,000-page dossier of materials, collected from public sources and from years of wiretaps on party members’ phones. That “confirmed extremist” designation meant that the office was now certain that the AfD was actively seeking to overthrow the constitution. The reclassification was clearly the result of prodding from the previous minister of the interior, Nancy Faeser, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The intention was to accelerate the movement to ban the AfD altogether.

So what makes the AfD so dangerous to German democracy? Has it called for suspending elections? For storming the Bundestag (parliament)? For jailing, banning, or censoring its political opponents? For preventing those opponents from participating in the parliamentary debate? For shuttering the internet to contrary opinion? Has it used violence against its enemies? Is it antisemitic? No, it is the AfD’s enemies who seek to ban and censor it, who deny it its parliamentary privileges, who have launched arson attacks against its leaders, and who have assaulted its members. The AfD has done none of these things to its opponents, nor has it called for doing so. It has abided by every legal ruling against it, however tendentious. The AfD is Germany’s staunchest supporter of Israel and German Jews; it alone has tried for years to cut off the U.N. slush fund that supports Palestinian terrorism.

Its representatives are the target of shunning that would make a teenage girl blush. If an AfD member enters a crowded elevator in the modernist Bundestag, he may suddenly find himself alone, as his fellow legislators flee from possible contamination. So what makes the AfD so toxic?

Its cardinal sin is to argue that mass third-world migration is destroying traditional German culture and identity. It is to point out that Germany’s open-borders policies are saddling the country with a crime- and terror-prone, welfare-dependent, culturally alien population that consumes taxpayer resources while only intermittently giving something back to German society. Its crime against democracy is in calling for the enforcement of laws already on the books regarding the deportation of criminal aliens and other migrants who have no right to remain in German society. At its core, its heresy is to assert that a country has a right to decide its level of immigration and resulting culture change, rather than that level being determined by the will of the migrants themselves.

These AfD positions do not threaten due process, popular sovereignty, or other democratic values. If the AfD is nonetheless antithetical to democracy, as we are told, then democracy at present means above all else a commitment to maximum demographic replacement. Speak out against unchecked immigration from the Third World, and you will be branded not just as a racist and xenophobe but as a threat to democracy itself, since democracy is now defined as the embrace of policies that erode national identity. (Such erosion is sought only in Western countries, however.)

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“..EU car companies buy Chinese car company carbon credits, to avoid the EU fines. The Chinese car companies then use the carbon credit revenue to subsidize lower priced Chinese EVs to the European car market, thereby undercutting the European EV car companies..”

Volkswagen Loses Half Their Profit, Plans to Cut 50,000 Jobs (CTH)

The origin of this issue goes back to 2021 and the relaunch of the Build Back Better European green energy program to fight the non-existent climate change problem. We have been highlighting the consequences within the EU auto sector. We noted in October of last year, the EU’s mandated fines against auto manufacturers who do not hit their production goals for electric vehicle sales began in 2025. EU automakers unable to meet the regulatory compliance goal began purchasing carbon credits to avoid stiff EU fines. Many of those carbon credits were purchased from Chinese EV automakers, who then turned around and started using the extra EU revenue to discount Chinese cars sold in Europe.


At the same time as Chinese autos hit record highs in Europe, EU car sales are flat or declining. Now, Volkswagen is announcing they lost half their profits in one year and will be cutting 50,000 jobs in the next four years. (MSM – Europe) – Volkswagen just revealed its operating profit sank like a stone last year, dropping by more than half as tariffs, Chinese competition, and shifting strategies took a serious bite out of the bottom line. And that performance now has the VW Group’s execs reaching for the cost-cutting scissors, including plans to shed 50,000 jobs by the end of the decade.The German automaker reported an operating profit of €8.9 billion ($10.3 bn at current rates) for 2025. That’s down a hefty 53 percent from the year before and well below what analysts were expecting. Revenue, meanwhile, barely moved, slipping only slightly to around €322 billion ($374 bn). (read more)

This was very predictable. In essence, EU car companies buy Chinese car company carbon credits, to avoid the EU fines. The Chinese car companies then use the carbon credit revenue to subsidize lower priced Chinese EVs to the European car market, thereby undercutting the European EV car companies. The EU tariff applied to gasoline powered cars or hybrids from China is 10%. That tariff is not enough to stop the imports. The Chinese hybrid autos are substantially less than European car brands, and there’s no financial incentive for China to build auto plants in the EU zone especially when you consider the EU is subsidizing those cars by purchasing carbon credits.

When analyzed from a cost and consequence, the entire EU dynamic toward car companies is a little funny. However, for Germany this is a serious issue, and with the German industrial economy already stagnant – every impact to their auto industry only makes the situation worse. When you overlay the big picture of their expensive “green energy” costs, the EU find themselves in an unescapable downward spiral. Quite literally, all commonsense seems to have been lost in their green energy chase. By focusing on energy targets, specifically by trying to force production of European electric vehicles that are not favored by European car purchasers, the EU is shrinking their economy to the benefit of Beijing exploitation.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently travelled to China for a discussion with Chairman Xi Jinping. Chancellor Merz returned to German with a stark message about how the nation needed to quickly get productive in order to meet the far superior work ethic he saw in China. At the same time, the EU has destroyed its energy sector by chasing windmills and solar farms instead of maintaining the much cheaper coal and gas alternatives. Overall, Europe has made a series of really bad decisions, but those consequences will surface the hardest within the largest industrial economy, Germany. They’ve got major problems now.

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“Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon..”

Top DOJ Prosecutor Says Tens Of Thousands Of Noncitizens On Voter Rolls (JTN)

The top Justice Department prosecutor for civil liberties and voting rights tells Just the News that her ongoing review of state voter rolls has proven tens of thousands of noncitizens made it into a position to cast ballots and that hundreds of thousands of dead or departed residents were not properly removed from state election systems. “It’s really frustrating that we’re being prevented from doing our job,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said Tuesday night, criticizing state election offices and federal judges who are blocking her office from her historic effort to obtain and review every state’s voter roll ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.


Dhillon gave an early accounting of the initiative, disclosing during a wide-ranging interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show that 16 states have turned over their voter rolls to DOJ or signed memorandum of understanding to provide the data while 29 are facing litigation to compel them to turn over the lists. “We want every American citizen to feel confident in voting and feel confident in the outcome of that election, and that is why we’re undertaking this massive project,” she explained. While having access to less than half the state’s election databases, Dhillon said she has already found deeply disturbing statistics that are only bound to get worse as more states are forced to comply.

“We’re finding tens of thousands of noncitizens on the voter rolls, hundreds of thousands of dead people on the voter rolls, and duplicate registrations between states,” she said. Earlier this month, DOJ announced it had indicted an illegal alien from Africa for illegally voting in seven federal elections in Pennsylvania. Federal law prohibits foreigners from voting in federal elections.Mahady Sacko, who came to the United States illegally from Mauritania, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and the FBI in Philadelphia. He has been charged with voter fraud, officials said. “This criminal illegal alien committed a felony by voting in federal elections dating back to 2008. Illegal aliens should NOT be electing American leaders,” Deputy Assistant Homeland Secretary Lauren Bis said. “Our elections belong to American citizens, not foreign citizens. Congress must pass the SAVE America Act immediately to secure our elections.”

Dhillon revealed there are dozens more noncitizens who DOJ has confirmed voted illegally, but those cases have not yet been prosecuted because the U.S. Senate has not confirmed U.S. attorneys in many jurisdictions. “For every person that we’ve seen a story about, I know of dozens and dozens more cases, and U.S. attorney’s offices are wanting to bring these cases, but we have, of course, interference with the very appointment of these U.S. attorneys at the political level,” she explained. “So that’s above my pay grade, but it’s really frustrating that we’re being prevented from doing our job.

Dhillon said there are two reasons why states aren’t turning over voter rolls: some simply don’t want the DOJ to review their work and others are afraid of being sued by Democrat voting rights lawyers like Marc Elias or future Democratic presidential administrations. “You may ask, why don’t states clean it up themselves? Well, sometimes it’s just inefficiency, but more times it’s actually states wanting to clean up their voter rolls, and the Marc Elias’s of the world and even the DOJ (under Biden) are suing them to stop them from cleaning up their own voter rolls,” she said.

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I don’t care much for Epstein’s accountant. But this sentence stuck out. I had to read it twice and still have questions:

“Both Kahn and Indyke recently settled a lawsuit alleging they facilitated sham marriages for immigration purposes in which foreign-born victims married U.S. citizens whom Epstein abused.”

Does that state that Epstein abused US citizens who after that fact sham-married foreign-born victims -of Epstein?!

Epstein’s Accountant To Testify Before House Oversight Panel (JTN)

An accountant for late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein will testify Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in a closed-door deposition. Richard Kahn was Epstein’s accountant for more than 10 years and became an executor of his estate after his death, CBS News reported. Kahn was one of Epstein’s closest associates in his final years, as he managed the financier’s investments, finances and other matters, such as renovations on his private island. Another executor of Epstein’s estate, lawyer Darren Indyke, is expected to testify before the committee on March 19.


According to documents from lawsuits and the Justice Department’s Epstein files, Epstein, Kahn, and Indyke together operated a sophisticated and tangled web of businesses. The release of the files has shed more light on Epstein’s association with some of the world’s most powerful men, some of whom continued to associate with him after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution. After the House committee issued subpoenas to Kahn and Indyke in January, Daniel H. Weiner, an attorney for both men, said that allegations against them are “false.”

“It is worth emphasizing that not a single woman has ever accused either Mr. Indyke or Mr. Kahn of committing sexual abuse or witnessing sexual abuse, nor claimed at any time that she reported to them any allegation of Mr. Epstein’s abuse,” Weiner said. “Indyke and Kahn did not socialize with Mr. Epstein, and they have always rejected as categorically false any suggestion that they knowingly facilitated or assisted Mr. Epstein in his sexual abuse or trafficking of women, or that they were aware of Mr. Epstein’s actions while they provided legal and accounting services to Mr. Epstein.” Both Kahn and Indyke recently settled a lawsuit alleging they facilitated sham marriages for immigration purposes in which foreign-born victims married U.S. citizens whom Epstein abused.

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“Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable..”

Microsoft Backs Anthropic’s Bid to Block the Supply-Chain Risk Label (ET)

Microsoft on March 10 filed an amicus brief backing Anthropic’s lawsuit against the Department of War, seeking a court order to temporarily stop the Pentagon from labeling Anthropic as a supply-chain risk. Anthropic filed the suit on March 9 after the Pentagon designated it a supply chain risk to national security, a label that would hinder the Pentagon and its contractors from using Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology in their work for the U.S. military. The designation stemmed from Anthropic’s rejection of the Pentagon’s request for unrestricted access to its Claude models over concerns that the technology could be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon has denied that it planned to use Claude for such purposes.


In its amicus brief filed March 10, Microsoft said it was directly affected by the Pentagon’s designation of Anthropic because it uses Anthropic’s technologies in products made available to the Pentagon. The tech giant said that a temporary block on the designation would “enable a more orderly transition and avoid disrupting the American military’s ongoing use of advanced AI.” Microsoft warned that U.S. warfighters could be hampered “at a critical point in time” if companies are required to immediately alter existing product and contract configurations used by the Pentagon. It also warned that putting the Pentagon’s designation of Anthropic into immediate effect will have “broad negative ramifications for the entire technology sector and the American business community.”

Microsoft said the Pentagon gave itself a six-month period to transition services away from Anthropic’s technologies but did not provide the same transition timeline for contractors that use Anthropic products. “Should this action proceed without the entry of a temporary restraining order, Microsoft and other government contractors with expertise in developing solutions to support U.S. government missions will be forced to account for a new risk in their business planning,” it stated. “Should companies choose to forgo the opportunity to work with the U.S. government due to the attendant risks, the U.S. government, its missions, and the people it serves would lose access to state-of-the-art technological solutions,” Microsoft said.

[..] Anthropic alleged in its lawsuit that the federal government designated the company in retaliation for its viewpoint protected under the First Amendment. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on Feb. 27 accused Anthropic of trying to dictate military operations by denying the Pentagon permission to use its Claude models for all lawful purposes. “Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military. That is unacceptable,” Hegseth said in a post on X. The Pentagon used the Claude AI system for mission-critical functions, including intelligence analysis, modeling and simulation, operational planning, and cyber operations.

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We don’t even agree what is a ‘bad bot’.

Are Bad Bots Taking Over The Web? (ZH)

The share of global web traffic generated by humans is shrinking, while bot activity is on the rise. According to Imperva Bad Bot Reports, in 2018, humans still accounted for 62 percent of web traffic, with malicious bots at 20 percent and benign bots at 18 percent. But over the past seven years, the balance of web traffic has shifted dramatically. As Statista’s Tristan Gaudiat shows in the chart below, humans now represent less than half of all traffic (49 percent in 2024), while malicious bots have surged to 37 percent, accounting for well over twice the traffic of benign bots (14 percent).


This rise in malicious bot activity reflects a growing cybersecurity challenge. Bad bots are often used to steal login details, collect sensitive data, spread misinformation and manipulate online ads. Industries like e commerce, finance and social media are particularly affected. Bot fraud is estimated to cost businesses billions each year. Yet, not all bots are harmful. Benign bots, such as search engine crawlers and chatbots, play a crucial role in indexing the web and improving user experiences. However, their declining share suggests that cybercriminals are outpacing legitimate automation. As AI and machine learning make bots more sophisticated, their growing share of web traffic is likely to remain a defining trend in the years ahead.

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Corruption ”R’ Us

Ukraine Can’t Explain ‘War Mafia’ Cash Convoy – Hungary (RT)

Ukraine has failed to explain why an armored convoy carrying tens of millions of dollars in cash and gold, and supervised by people with ties to Ukrainian intelligence, was transiting through Hungary, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said. He also implied that the funds may be a sign of Ukrainian plans to meddle in Hungary’s upcoming elections. Tensions between the two countries escalated last week when Hungarian officials impounded two trucks belonging to Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank near Budapest, seizing $40 million and €35 million in cash and 9 kg of gold as part of a money laundering investigation. The funds were being transported from Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank to Ukraine.


Hungary said the convoy was being supervised by a former general of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), with other escorts also reportedly having military backgrounds. All seven escorts were deported back to Ukraine, while the assets and the trucks remain in custody. Ukraine, meanwhile, has denounced the seizure as “state banditism” and “blackmail.” Speaking on Tuesday, Szijjarto – who previously suggested that the convoy could be linked to a Ukrainian “war mafia” – rebuked Kiev over what he described as a failure to answer basic questions about the convoy and previous transfers of the same kind. “I think the last time such a transfer happened was in the Stone Age, when two banks settled €1.1-1.2 billion in cash between each other,” Szijjarto said.

The minister further questioned the convoy’s route, pointing out it had bypassed Poland – a NATO member with relatively good relations with Kiev – in favor of Hungarian roads. “So what is this money doing here? And what are the Ukrainian secret service people and people with military connections doing among the escorts?” he said. He also described it as “very suspicious” that the detained Ukrainians were being represented in Hungary by a law firm linked to the Tisza opposition party. Szijjarto suggested that the cash could be tied to alleged Ukrainian efforts to influence Hungary’s April 12 parliamentary elections. “The Ukrainians have an interest in a certain election outcome, and 500 billion forints are again floating around in Hungary. How strong the connection between the two is – that is what needs to be found out now.”

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“A €90 billion loan plan is currently being blocked by Hungary and Slovakia over Ukraine’s refusal to allow them access to Russian oil ..”

EU Members Could Loan Billions Directly To Kiev – Politico

Cash-strapped Ukraine could receive as much as €30 billion ($35 billion) from individual EU members, Politico reported on Wednesday. The idea is being discussed as Hungary and Slovakia pressure Kiev to resume Russian oil supplies by blocking a joint €90 billion EU loan. Kiev claims supplies through the Soviet-built Druzhba pipeline are suspended due to damage from a Russian attack, with repairs not expected until late April – after key elections in Hungary. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has accused Ukraine of orchestrating an energy crisis to boost the opposition.The freeze on the joint EU loan was part of Orban’s retaliation for the alleged Ukrainian plot. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said his government would block the money even if Orban’s party loses at the ballot box next month.


Baltic and Nordic nations are considering bilateral loans to Ukraine totaling €30 billion to avert bankruptcy, Politico said, citing anonymous sources. Separately, Dutch Finance Minister Eelco Heinen reportedly told fellow EU ministers that the Netherlands intends to provide Ukraine with €3.5 billion annually through 2029. In late February, the International Monetary Fund approved an $8.1 billion loan to Ukraine, with $1.5 billion disbursed immediately to ease Kiev’s budgetary strain. The IMF agreed to postpone demands for financial reforms that the Ukrainian government declined to implement.

Supporters of Ukraine in the EU have proposed a similar scheme for its accession bid. Under the “reverse enlargement” idea, Ukraine would be formally admitted without meeting candidate criteria, enjoying limited privileges and obligations. The proposal has faced strong opposition from member states insisting that EU expansion must remain merit-based.The EU is also under additional economic pressure from the US-Israeli campaign to topple Iran’s government through military force. The Middle East conflict has disrupted oil and LNG supplies, and the resulting price shock poses heightened risks to European consumers, given the EU’s politically motivated rejection of Russian energy.

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Zelensky and the cabal all around him.

Looks Like The EU Might Have To Pay Zelensky Just To Shut Up (Rachel Marsden)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky have a little something for the ladies for Women’s History Month. They’re apparently going to spend the entire time beaking each other off on the global stage. Get your wads of bills ready to toss, girls! Especially you, Queen Ursula. Let’s peek in, shall we? Orban says he’s already on the verge of pulling out his tool. Guess we missed the part where they play footsie under the table first. “We have no military force for this, I can reassure everyone that this is not part of our plans. But we have political and financial tools,” the Hungarian PM said, in demanding that Zelensky open the tap on the Druzhba pipeline of Russian oil to Hungary that represents the landlocked country’s critical supply.


Orban has said he has no interest in taking his foot off the firehose of cash that the EU has been blasting out on itself and whatever else it has going on in the land of golden toilets amid the fog of war – all under the pretext of helping Ukraine, of course.“We hope that one person in the European Union will not block 90 billion or the first tranche of 90 billion, and that Ukrainian soldiers will have weapons” Zelensky said. “Otherwise, we will give the address of this person to our Armed Forces, to our lads. Let them call him and talk to him in their own language.”

Who could that “one person” possibly be? In any case, guess he’ll either be getting an email, or maybe a visit, depending on what the word “address” actually means here. Or maybe just a phone call with a bunch of guys breathing heavily down the line in a foreign language. Hard to tell. Zelensky, an actor, could probably use a better scriptwriter for his Godfather-style lines. Or maybe just drop a dead rat in the mail next time and skip the public speculation. The EU brass has told these two lovebirds to pipe down. But it really isn’t in Zelensky’s interest to do that. And Brussels seems to be making sure of it. If only because emerging info suggests that Zelensky is on the verge of ensuring that he gets rewarded for playing hard to get.

There are two possibilities shaping up. Either Orban feels enough pressure to drop his veto of the EU’s latest €90 million spending package in order to get the gas flowing during this heated Hungarian election period. An unlikely scenario given that his more pro-EU opponent in the April 12 national vote has left very little daylight between him and Orban on the issue of the need for Zelensky to restart the pipeline. Or, alternatively, Orban can double down and maintain his insistence, leaving Brussels with a new convenient pretext, since it’s being reported by Bloomberg that Brussels is considering the possibility of basically bribing Zelensky with EU money to “fix” the pipeline.

What’s that repair going to cost? Oh, let me guess – €90 billion, perhaps? And are European defense contractors also going to be involved in these “repairs”? Will they require golden toilets in the outhouses on-site? In which case, it’s not hard to see that it could end up serving as the ultimate workaround for much of same spending that’s being blocked by Orban – just rebranded as something that he couldn’t possibly pass up. What’s he going to do – block funding to Ukraine earmarked as “aid” meant to ensure that his Druzhba demands to get the oil flowing to Hungary are met?

No one seems to care too much anymore about whether the repair issue itself is even legitimate. Orban had proposed a fact-finding mission. Zelensky was like, bro, you don’t hear me asking to go peek into your closet to see if you have any weapons for me when you say that you don’t. Not the best analogy.

A better one would be to compare Ukraine to the local charity that asks whether you have old clothes to donate – and then insists on rummaging through your drawers to make sure that you’re not holding out. And Hungary’s request of Kiev is like ordering a pizza (from Russia, in this case), paying for it, watching the delivery guy arrive – and then the building’s security guard, let’s call him Vladimir Z., stands in the lobby eating slices and saying, “Sorry man, delivery seems to be delayed. Nothing I can do.” Or paying for express shipping and the mailman just keeps your package in his truck while telling you, “Yeah the postal system is slow these days. Really unfortunate.” .”

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“The Big Lie: America Is a Divided, Hateful Country With No Hope of Ever Being United Again”

The Big Lie: America Is a Divided, Hateful Country (Rick Moran)

I am addicted to the internet. I freely admit it. As a news junkie, I am as well-informed as anyone in the country. I know a lot about a few things; I know something about a lot of things; and I know nothing about many things. I spend 10-14 hours a day online, reading, writing, researching, and thinking. While it’s my job, I would spend the time online anyway just because I can’t stand not knowing.And I’m trapped. The life I’m living is not “real” in the sense that most of the 320 million Americans live the same kind of life. Are they as angry as many of us? Do they fear for the future of the U.S. as much as most of us? Are they habitually offended by everything I write?


When I refer to “us,” I mean PJ Media readers and the online right and left: the politically aware, perpetually outraged, eternally wounded, aggrieved, displeased, and helplessly partisan among us who enjoy being outraged, get a rush from catching a political opponent in hypocrisy, and laugh at an enemy’s misfortune. Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, co-founders of Axios, have a piece in that publication that we should all read to remind us that the “online political community” to which we ostensibly belong is only a tiny part of America. The “super majority” of Americans are “patriotic, hardworking, neighbor-helping, America-loving, money-giving people who don’t pop off on social media or plot for power.”

And the real shocker: “Most people agree on most things, most of the time. And the data validates this, time and time again,” they write. Axios: We’ve been manipulated by algorithms and politicians amplifying the worst of humanity. Our feeds and screens spread a twisted, inaccurate view of America.It makes it seem like the nation is hopelessly broken … Political enemies are evil … Facts are no different than fiction … Morality, honesty and service don’t matter … And salvation can only come from magical technologies or a powerful few.

What if we told you it’s a big lie that makes you stop believing your own two eyes? Every day, people battle over outrageous things said on X. Did you know that four out of five Americans don’t use X, and therefore don’t see what you see? Pew Research Center found last year that only 21% of U.S. adults use X, and just 10% visit it daily. The loudest platform in politics reaches barely one in five Americans. “Maybe, just maybe, it’s the very people on these platforms who are the crazy ones,” they write. “Maybe, just maybe, most people are simply normal, sane, real.”

We know this to be true. If we talk to our neighbors, co-workers, or members of our congregations, we know what they’re concerned about: family, work, bills, and everything else that goes into creating a normal life. They don’t give a crap about what AOC just said, Trump’s latest putdown, a Democrat calling us fascists, or a Republican calling Democrats communists.The overwhelming majority of the nation just doesn’t care. In a given year, you see hundreds of people frequently enough to appraise their character. Are they good people? Would they help shovel after a snowstorm or lift groceries for an aging neighbor? Do they volunteer and give to others? We bet the answer is a resounding yes. This is America’s Super Majority.

The numbers back this up. Americans gave $592.5 billion to charity in 2024 — a record, with individuals accounting for two-thirds of it.Over 75 million Americans formally volunteer each year, and 130 million informally help their neighbors. Gallup research out last month found that 76% of U.S. adults gave money to a religious or other nonprofit organization in the past year, and 63% volunteered their time. This isn’t a broken nation. This is a generous one, where the vast majority quietly do the right thing every single day. This is from two hard-headed, respected journalists who have been writing about politics for most of their lives, not a couple of starry-eyed kids. They’ve hit on something important that we should all try to keep in mind.

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https://twitter.com/XFreeze/status/2031514430588989542?s=20 I looked at it and I’m out for now, because I’m not in the US. https://twitter.com/BinsaeedRashid/status/2031373783424975177?s=20 https://twitter.com/YahooFinance/status/2031459370454659517?s=20 https://twitter.com/XCorpHub/status/2031460080265433303?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Mar 112026
 


Vincent van Gogh Memory of the Garden at Etten (Ladies of Arles) 1888


Gulf Oil Production Could Stop In Weeks – Putin (RT)
Iran Reportedly Starts Mining The Strait Of Hormuz (ZH)
Introducing Schrödinger’s Ayatollah (Stephen Green)
Oil Prices Fall, Democrats Most Hurt (Matt Margolis)
Admin Mulls Special Forces Into Iran to Retrieve Enriched Uranium (Moran)
Anthropic Sues Pentagon Over Supply-Chain Risk Designation (ET)
Trump Talks ‘Takeover’ Again as Cuban Protests Hit Day 4 (Sarah Anderson)
Polls: Trump More Popular Than Kamala, Newsom, AOC, Stephen Colbert (Cantrell)
Trump Targeted By Four FBI Code-Named Counterintel Probes (JTN)
UK Govt Plots ANOTHER X Shutdown Over Grok’s ‘Offensive’ Roasts (MN)
Happy Anniversary, Adam Smith (Jonathan Turley)
Republicans Prefer War To The US Constitution And Truth (Paul Craig Roberts)
New York Mayor Won’t Tell The Truth About Islamic Terror Attacks (Pinsker)

 


 

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2031121599101853805?s=20 https://twitter.com/realJohnJohnJr/status/2031105905450709299?s=20 https://twitter.com/lovetocook12345/status/2031077465070702973?s=20 https://twitter.com/robertdunlap947/status/2031327454116086130?s=20 https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/2031317974481527170?s=20

 


 

 


 


Squeeze Europe.

Gulf Oil Production Could Stop In Weeks – Putin (RT)

Oil production dependent on the Strait of Hormuz could come to a complete halt within a month, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. He warned about the serious risks that the US and Israel’s conflict with Iran could pose to the global energy market. Last year, around a third of the global sea-borne oil exports went through the straight, Putin said at a government meeting on the global energy markets on Monday. “That is around 14 million barrel per day and 80% of that went to the Asian and Pacific nations,” he stated, adding that “now, this route is de-facto closed.”


Traffic through the straight has reportedly dropped by 80% over the past week after the US and Israel launched their bombing campaign against Iran, prompting retaliatory strikes from Tehran. Several tankers were hit in the exchanges. The developments pushed crude above $100 and prompted expectations of emergency energy measures from the EU and other major economies. “Oil production dependent on the strait risks fully stopping in the coming month. It is already dropping,” the president said. Restoring production could take weeks or even months, he added.

The global oil prices are already rising, Putin stated, adding that the increase amounted to over 30% in the past week alone. Disruptions in energy supplies also boost inflation and lead to industrial output decline, according to the president. The world is about to find itself in a “new… price reality,” Putin warned, calling it “inevitable.” Russia remains a “reliable energy supplier,” the president said, adding that it will continue to provide oil and gas for the nations that it also considers reliable partners. According to Putin, the list includes Asian nations and EU members Slovakia and Hungary.

On Monday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto urged Brussels to lift its ban on Russian oil and gas amid the escalating conflict in the Middle East. Earlier, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the easing of sanctions on some Russian oil to stabilize the markets.

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I’m itchy.

Iran Reportedly Starts Mining The Strait Of Hormuz (ZH)

Update(1555ET): A fresh Tuesday CNN report says that Iran has already begun laying mines in the vital oil transit Strait of Hormuz waterway: Iran has begun laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most i mportant energy chokepoint that carries about one-fifth of all crude oil, according to two people familiar with US intelligence reporting on the issue.The mining is not extensive yet, with a few dozen having been laid in recent days, the sources said. But Iran still retains upward of 80% to 90% of its small boats and mine layers, one of the sources said, so its forces could feasibly lay hundreds of mines in the waterway.


The report further says that after IRGC threats have already de facto closed the strait to nearly all international traffic (apparently unless they signal they are Chinese vessels) amid the ongoing drone and missile threat, it maintains the capability to deploy a “gauntlet” of dispersed mine-laying craft, continues CNN, including explosive-laden boats and shore-based missile batteries. TRUMP RESPONDS to the reports, warns the Military consequences to Iran will be at a level never seen before.


Trump revised his tweet quickly, adding the following: “Additionally, we are using the same Technology and Missile capabilities deployed against Drug Traffickers to permanently eliminate any boat or ship attempting to mine the Hormuz Strait. They will be dealt with quickly and violently. BEWARE!” He also followed with saying that the US already destroyed ten inactive mine laying boats.CENTCOM meanwhile quickly counter-signals that it stands ready to fight back:

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“Mojtaba has yet to be seen in public since his promotion. Strange way to reassure the public about the succession, yes?”

Introducing Schrödinger’s Ayatollah (Stephen Green)

The point of Erwin Schrödinger’s Gedankenexperiment (thought experiment) was to highlight the absurdity of quantum superposition, where subatomic particles can exist in multiple states at once until measured by conscious human beings. The radioactive element might (or might not) decay at any given moment, activating the Geiger counter that’s rigged to a hammer that smashes the vial filled with cyanide gas. Schrödinger’s contraption, according to hip theories, should remain in superposition — that is, with the cat both alive and dead — until observed by opening the box. Anyway, in Iran this week we have what might be a real-world case of Schrödinger’s Cat, or to put a finer point on it, Schrödinger’s ayatollah.


As near as anyone can tell, nepo baby Mojtaba Khamenei exists in an actual state of superposition. Two, really. Khamenei the Younger exists in not one but two states of superposition: both (or neither?) alive and dead, and simultaneously the Supreme Leader… and not. Don’t bother taking notes on this one — even I’m too confused to put together a quiz for the end of this column.But fancy theories aside, let’s look at what we know/don’t know about the man who would be/won’t be king. As I’m sure you know by now, Mojtaba’s dad, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed by Israeli warplanes one lovely Saturday morning during the opening minutes of Israel’s half of the current operation, which they call Roaring Lion.

More than a week went by before Iran’s 88-member Assembly of Experts managed to name Mojtaba as Ali’s successor as “the third Leader of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” But even that might not be all it seems. While the Assembly of Experts announced the formal decision, in reality, it was likely militants in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps making the call. Mojtaba is considered a hardliner rather than an “austere religious scholar,” and on Monday, the Times of Israel reported that his appointment “locks hardliners firmly in control in Tehran — a gamble that could reshape Iran’s war with the US and Israel and reverberate far beyond the Middle East.”

The paper also concluded that Mojtaba means “expanded authority for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), harsher domestic controls and sweeping repression to crush dissent.” But he also owes his position to the IRGC, unofficially making the ayatollah subordinate to the military for the first time in the Islamic state’s 47-year history. And yet… Mojtaba’s figurehead status might be even less than it appears because there’s also the question of whether Mojtaba remains upright and breathing. Also on Monday, Iran state television confirmed that Mojtaba was wounded, presumably during an airstrike. AP reported: “The anchors read reports describing him as ‘janbaz’ or wounded by the enemy,” even as they parade him around — virtually only! — as the new boss.

Mojtaba has yet to be seen in public since his promotion. Strange way to reassure the public about the succession, yes? In addition to Ali Khamenei, also believed dead in the compound airstrike is the elder Khamenei’s wife, a daughter, a grandchild, a son-in-law, and Mojtaba’s wife. Maybe it’s a bit of a stretch to believe that coalition airpower took out so much of the Khamenei family, except for the one guy the IRGC needed as a well-known figurehead to consolidate its power during a chaotic time when one military and theocratic leader after another gets chalked up as KIA. But the point is, we don’t know. He’s Schrödinger’s ayatollah.

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“They want economic pain, they’re hoping for a terrorist attack, and they pretty much want things to fall apart so the voters will blame Trump.”

Oil Prices Fall, Democrats Most Hurt (Matt Margolis)

Democrats thought they had found another golden ticket. When Trump ordered military strikes on Iran last month, oil prices spiked more than 10% overnight. The liberal media pounced with reports of historic price hikes, acting like things were terrible, conveniently forgetting that while prices did go up, they were still significantly lower than the peak of the Biden years. Still, Democrats clearly saw a political opportunity.“Democrats are seizing on President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran as a new front in their energy affordability campaign,” Politico reported after the bombings began. “Oil prices jumped more than 10 percent Sunday night following military action in Iran, a major producer that also sits at the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint for fossil fuel shipments.”


Fresh off a House retreat to nail down midterm messaging, Democrats saw the Iran strike as “a fresh line of attack.” The narrative wrote itself — or so they thought.It didn’t last long. Crude oil briefly surged to nearly $120 per barrel on Monday as markets panicked over the Strait of Hormuz. But then, prices started to plunge. Apparently, Trump told reporters at a Florida news conference, “We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil. Then, I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursion.” He added that he thought “the war is very complete, pretty much.”Markets responded immediately.

Trump then fired off a warning to Iran on Truth Social, making clear what happens if Tehran tries to weaponize the strait: “If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”

This matters politically because the Democrats are banking on economic pain. They need voters to feel squeezed at the pump and to blame the Trump White House. They barely had a case when prices were up, because they were still lower than under Biden. But they completely lost their talking point because of Trump’s confident tone; his explicit threat to hit Iran “twenty times harder” and his framing of the conflict as a short, necessary operation shifted the calculus entirely. The panic premium has largely disappeared, stocks are rebounding globally, and the doomsday energy crisis narrative Democrats were banking on hasn’t materialized.

Democrats spent their retreat crafting a message around affordability, betting that Trump’s foreign policy moves would hand them the economic ammunition they desperately need heading into 2026. Instead, they got a brief spike, followed by a sharp reversal. Despite the Democrats’ hopes, what we have here is a president who looks more in command of the situation than they will admit or want voters to see. Without a doubt, Democrats are rooting against America right now. They want economic pain, they’re hoping for a terrorist attack, and they pretty much want things to fall apart so the voters will blame Trump.

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“If we ever did that, [the Iranians] would be so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight on the ground level,” Trump said.”

Admin Mulls Special Forces Into Iran to Retrieve Enriched Uranium (Moran)

Iran has about 450 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% that is buried under tons of rock near the Isfahan and Natanz nuclear facilities. Iran is capable of digging that stockpile out and enriching it to 90%, a process that would take a matter of days if the country had any advanced centrifuges to spin the uranium up.mThe Iranian nuclear program was all but destroyed in the attacks last June. While it would take years to reconstitute the entire program, building a few hundred advanced centrifuges would take a matter of months.


Getting at that stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) may be a little easier than first thought. U.S. intelligence recently identified a “very narrow access point” at the bombed Isfahan site, suggesting Iran might still be able to retrieve and move this material. At a House hearing on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked whether Iran’s enriched uranium would be secured. “People are going to have to go and get it,” he said, without specifying who.The Israelis say Trump is seriously considering not only sending a small contingent of special operators to either retrieve the HEU or “dilute it” by bringing scientists along to render it less potent. Plans to capture Kharg Island, the major chokepoint for Iran’s oil export industry, have also been discussed.

Axios: NBC News reported on Friday that Trump has discussed the idea of deploying a small contingent of U.S. troops in Iran for specific strategic purposes. Semafor reported Trump’s Iran options include Special Operations raids on nuclear sites. The U.S. official laid out the operational challenge of securing Iran’s uranium: “The first question is, where is it? The second question is, how do we get to it and how do we get physical control?” “And then, it would be a decision of the president and the Department of War, CIA, as to whether we wanted to physically transport it or dilute it on premises.” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday that ground troops were possible — but only “for a very good reason.” “If we ever did that, [the Iranians] would be so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight on the ground level,” Trump said.

This sounds very much like a trial balloon the administration is floating to see how much opposition to a few ground troops it will generate. CNN did its best to throw cold water on any operation to retrieve the HEU. The news site claims that retrieving the HEU “would require a significant number of US ground troops beyond a small special operations footprint, seven current and former officials familiar with the military planning told CNN.” Lucky number 7. “Highly enriched uranium is a dual-use material, and Iran has said it produces it only for peaceful energy purposes,” offers CNN. That helpful news is total baloney.

There is no known commercial or scientific use for enriching 450 kilograms of HEU to 60%. Commercial reactors only need uranium enriched to about 3%. Some experimental reactors use uranium enriched to 20%. The only reason to enrich uranium to 60% is to create a way station on the trip to 90% enrichment to create a nuclear bomb. Regardless, CNN tries to make the point that it’s darn near impossible to accomplish a mission like that. Sounds tailor-made for our special operators. Capturing Kharg Island is a different matter. Shutting the facility down for even a short while would be a catastrophic blow to Iran’s economy. The facility handles nearly all of Iran’s 1.6 million barrels per day in exports, most of which go to China. Losing this terminal would effectively “paralyze” the Iranian economy by cutting off its primary source of hard currency.

Because Iran has limited storage capacity, a shutdown at the export terminal would quickly back up the entire supply chain. Within days of a terminal closure, Iranian oil fields would be forced to halve their production or shut down entirely because there would be nowhere to put the oil. Shutting down active oil wells can cause long-term geological damage, making it difficult and expensive to bring them back to full capacity later. Unfortunately, shutting down Kharg Island for any length of time would also be detrimental to the West. The resulting oil shock could result in a recession for most Western countries, including the United States. The war shows no signs of winding down, so Trump’s options on how to proceed are still wide open.

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You want to force the Pentagon to adopt your morals and worldview?

Anthropic Sues Pentagon Over Supply-Chain Risk Designation (ET)

Artificial intelligence (AI) developer Anthropic sued the Department of War on March 9, following the federal government’s designation of the company as a supply chain risk. That designation hinders government agencies and their contractors from working with Anthropic. The suit comes after the company refused to change the user policy for its AI tool Claude to allow the government to use it for what Anthropic described as “mass surveillance” and “fully autonomous weapons.” The Pentagon has denied that it planned to use Claude for such purposes.


The refusal caused President Donald Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth to direct federal agencies to sever ties with Anthropic and state that “effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.” On social media, both Trump and Hegseth accused Anthropic of trying to “strong-arm” the federal government by dictating its military policy.“WE will decide the fate of our Country—NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about,” Trump said in a Feb. 27 Truth Social post.

“Their true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military,” Hegseth said on X the same day. “That is unacceptable.” Anthropic alleges that the federal government is punishing the company for its First Amendment-protected speech and viewpoint. The company also alleges that the Department of War reached out to some of its business partners following the rift and that those companies “delayed or paused several national security contracts or business engagements already in active development with Anthropic.” That puts “millions, possibly billions, of dollars at risk,” Anthropic stated. “These actions are unprecedented and unlawful,” Anthropic’s lawsuit reads.

“The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech. No federal statute authorizes the actions taken here. “Anthropic turns to the judiciary as a last resort to vindicate its rights and halt the executive’s unlawful campaign of retaliation.” In its filing, Anthropic said it isn’t confident that Claude “would function safely or reliably” if used for those purposes. Anthropic’s suit asks the court to set aside Trump and Hegseth’s designation as unconstitutional. The Pentagon declined to comment on the suit. The Pentagon previously said the company must accept “any lawful use” of its tools and technology to support the U.S. military.

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“They have no energy, they have no money,” Trump said. “They’re in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis. And we don’t want to see that.”

Trump Talks ‘Takeover’ Again as Cuban Protests Hit Day 4 (Sarah Anderson)

On Monday, a USA Today reporter asked Donald Trump about the fact that he recently said Cuba wants to make a deal. She said, “What would the United States get in return for that, and why should Americans trust Marco Rubio to negotiate it?” (Why should we trust Marco Rubio? Girl, please. Where have you been the last year… Oops, sorry, my inner monologue escaped and got the best of me. Back to the president.) Trump laid it out like this: Well, Marco Rubio is doing a great job. I think he’s going to go down as the greatest secretary of State in history. Look at what we’ve done as a presidency. Look at what we’ve done as an administration. They trust Marco, and so do the American people… He’s been successful no matter where he’s been. He also speaks the language, which is always nice and always helpful.


Trump went on to say that Marco is dealing with Cuba and what may end up being a friendly takeover, but he says it may also end up being a not-so-friendly takeover. Either way, it wouldn’t matter because the country is in crisis and down to “fumes.” “They have no energy, they have no money,” Trump said. “They’re in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis. And we don’t want to see that.” The president went on to talk about how important the Cuban people are to him, and how the regime was largely living off Venezuela. Without its lifeline there, it has nothing.

But they were very, very bad to a lot of people, as you know, and a lot of people living are — the Cuban American vote, which I got at record levels, very important. Those people are very important to me. I know what they went through. They went through hell. Some of them have gone on to be some of the most successful people in the country. Cuban American business people, some of them are like the most successful in the country. And a lot of them are friends of mine because I’ve been fighting this battle with them for a long time. The Castro regime was brutal, but they lived off Venezuela. Now, they don’t live off Venezuela — sends them no energy, no fuel, no oil, no money, no nothing. They lived without Venezuela. They couldn’t have made it. And we cut them off from everything else.”

https://twitter.com/TheBritLad/status/2030814910469333046

Ultimately, he said, “So yeah, they’re going to make either a deal, or we’ll do it just as easy anyway.” It’s still not clear what the end of the Cuban regime will look like. Trump and Rubio have been purposely vague, and it’s possible that even they don’t know for sure yet. Rubio has said that they didn’t know if or how the Nicolás Maduro operation would go down until sort of the last minute, though it’s highly unlikely Cuba will look like that.

There are rumors circulating that the U.S. will make a “major economic deal” with the Cuban “government” that includes easing sanctions and cooperation on various sectors within Cuba, as well as providing an exit strategy for “President” Miguel Díaz-Canel and allowing the Castro family to remain on the island under some protection. Personally, I don’t necessarily buy this, nor do Cuban opposition leaders. Allowing the Castros to hang around indefinitely would be a slap in the face of every person in that country. It comes from anonymous sources, and it seems like it would defeat the purpose of the whole plan, but we’ll see.

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“Pope Leo XIV ranks as the most popular, with a rating of 42%. He barely beat out Trump for the top spot.”

Polls: Trump More Popular Than Kamala, Newsom, AOC, Stephen Colbert (Cantrell)

A brand new poll NBC conducted between February 27 and March 3 that surveyed 1,000 registered voters will likely have Democrats blowing steam out of their ears, as it concluded that President Donald Trump is more popular than many of his most virulent critics. The list includes late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Given that Trump has done a stellar job sticking to his America First agenda and has kept most of his campaign promises, this probably will not shock average voters. Only those whom major media outlets have brainwashed—outlets that dropped any pretense of actual, objective journalism and instead produce propaganda—could possibly find this information shocking.


The thing is, most media outlets avoid talking to regular people. Instead, they opt to take the word of so-called political and cultural “elites,” who, by the way, are the same folks waist-deep in the Epstein files. And this situation does not result from accidental oversight or incompetence. They do it on purpose. If nightly news programs presented the truth, the president—along with MAGA politicians and supporters—would be even more popular than he is now. According to the poll’s data, respondents gave Trump a total positive rating of 41%, compared to Colbert, who pulled in only 35% support. That, to me, is still astronomically high. Colbert is an outspoken liberal who does his absolute best to prevent those on the right from having an opportunity to present their side on his program. Add to that the fact that Colbert is not talented or funny, and it is amazing people like him even that much.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has spent many months attempting to warm the pool for his entrance into presidential politics, has only a 27% positive rating. Again, that is still far too high. We are talking about a man who signed almost 500 bills into law and then goes on late-night television to complain that California is overregulated. Who are these people saying they like Newsom? They are likely consumers of news products from outlets like CNN and MSNBC. Harris, who failed miserably against President Trump in the 2024 presidential race and is likely preparing for yet another bid for the White House, had a 34% positive rating. The only vibe I get from that figure is that a lot of intellectually challenged individuals vote in our elections. And that is scary.

Moving on to AOC, her positive rating stands at 31%. Out of the 14 figures listed in the data, Pope Leo XIV ranks as the most popular, with a rating of 42%. He barely beat out Trump for the top spot. Vice President JD Vance holds the second-highest rating at 38%. He was tied with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Vance will most definitely throw his hat in the ring for president, and to be perfectly honest, he is likely the most qualified individual for the job. He has stood by Trump’s side throughout his second term without hesitation. He has earned the respect of the MAGA movement, which is essential for any Republican candidate to win an election. If he gets into office, you can almost guarantee that the America First agenda will continue to move forward.

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“… a dozen members of Congress and their staffers, his future chief of staff Susie Wiles, journalists, campaign advisers, defense lawyers, and even Patel himself had their privacy pierced by warrants, wiretaps, FISA surveillance, phone record analysis, FBI assessments, or grand juries..”

Trump Targeted By Four FBI Code-Named Counterintel Probes (JTN)

President Donald Trump and his supporters were targeted by four consecutive FBI code-named counterintelligence investigations over the last decade that secretly subjected hundreds of innocent Americans to privacy-invading tactics and essentially treated the man twice elected president as a national security threat for most of the first nine years of his political career, according to interviews and documents reviewed by Just the News. FBI Director Kash Patel has personally led the effort to review the operations code-named Crossfire Hurricane, Round River, Plasmic Echo and Arctic Frost that stretched from summer 2016 to January 2025, uncovering evidence of a far-reaching dragnet that in some cases may have been predicated on false, misleading or uncorroborated justifications, officials said.


Many of the investigative files were hidden from view, even from most FBI agents, because they were marked “prohibited access” and controlled carefully by FBI leadership. Patel’s search has been aided by whistleblowers inside his agency, a handful of senior bureau executives close to the director and some members of Congress, particularly Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. Those who have seen the records told Just the News they chronicle how how the FBI’s expanded counterterrorism and counterintelligence missions after the Sept, 11, 2001, terrorist attacks eventually became hijacked by politics and led agents to deploy tools meant for terrorists and spies against everyday Americans in a bid to find a way to bring criminal cases against Trump.

One whistleblower this month told the FBI that surveillance and monitoring of Trump figures continued right up to the president’s January 2025 inauguration, according to multiple interviews. Few inside Trump’s orbit were spared from targeting by their stature: a dozen members of Congress and their staffers, his future chief of staff Susie Wiles, journalists, campaign advisers, defense lawyers, and even Patel himself had their privacy pierced by warrants, wiretaps, FISA surveillance, phone record analysis, FBI assessments, or grand juries.

Many targets and subjects fell under the bureau’s definition of special circumstances targets because they have recognized constitutionally protected privileges – like lawyers, members of Congress, journalists, and political figures. Even a political consultant turned documentary filmmaker who investigated Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings before joining Trump’s 2024 campaign was recently notified he was targeted in a criminal investigation that only recently was shut down, according to letters between Congress and the FBI reviewed by Just the News.

Michael Caputo had his emails and communications seized in 2023 by a “classified subpoena” issued about two weeks after he joined the Trump campaign and the email account the bureau penetrated “contained correspondence on The Trump Campaign’s private strategies and deliberations,” the correspondence stated. Patel’s FBI has informed Congress that probe has been shut down. But the question of how so many Americans were targeted remains open. At least 1,200 people that fall into the categories of special circumstances targets or subject were investigated under assessments by the FBI between 2018 and 2024 during Wray’s tenure, an explosive recent audit report to Congress revealed.

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Someone posted AI Starmer in a bra, and he’s gonna close down X for that?!

UK Govt Plots ANOTHER X Shutdown Over Grok’s ‘Offensive’ Roasts (MN)

The UK government under Keir Starmer is once again eyeing a total ban on X, this time claiming Grok’s ability to spit out “insults” and “offensive language” poses a dire threat. But as users on the platform point out, this is just another excuse to silence dissent against the regime. Fresh reports reveal Starmer’s administration is probing ways to penalize X for “spreading offence online,” including a potential shutdown. Sky News reported on Grok being prompted to generate vulgar responses targeting Hinduism, Islam, and even historic football disasters.

https://twitter.com/BasilTheGreat/status/2030680998078206029


The correspondent notes that Grok has been used to generate “highly offensive content” directed toward groups of football fans, such as blaming Liverpool supporters for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, where 97 fans died in a crush, and for which authorities were found to be culpably responsible. Similar insults targeted Rangers fans, referencing the 1971 Ibrox disaster that claimed 66 lives.The government says it is investigating the issue. This comes after Ofcom, as the regulator, stated at the start of the year that it was considering potential actions. Under the Online Safety Act, penalties could include fines up to 10% of a company’s worldwide revenue or £18 million if non-compliance is determined.

Sky News states that X is “urgently investigating” the chatbot responses. This isn’t Starmer’s first rodeo in targeting X. As we detailed in our earlier coverage, the UK government threatened a total ban on X over the so-called “Grok bikini flap,” where the AI was prompted to create ‘sexualized’ images. As we further noted, the push for a total ban likely has nothing to do with protecting children, but everything to do with stifling free speech and criticism of the Labour government’s policies. X users aren’t buying the latest pretext. One post blasts “Starmer Bin Lying gets fact checked by Grok every time he speaks He can’t even post on this app without being exposed as a liar.”


A reply warns of tyranny, quoting Robert A. Heinlein: “When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.” This pattern reeks of authoritarian overreach. Starmer’s regime, facing backlash over open borders and surveillance creep, can’t stand a platform where truths about their failures go viral. X remains a bastion for uncensored discourse, exposing leftist hypocrisy and globalist agendas. Shuttering it just because a minority of people made Grok make up some insults would constitute a total victory for tyrants.

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1776 was a productive and decisive year.

March 9: The Wealth of Nations

July 4: Declaration of Independennce.

Happy Anniversary, Adam Smith (Jonathan Turley)

Today is the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. In my book “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I explore the importance of The Wealth of Nations to the founders and why it will be even more important in this century. The Wealth of Nations was released around the same time as the Declaration of Independence, but was not a particular success in Great Britain. Many panned his free-market theories. In addition to its foundational support for capitalism, it challenged the mercantilist policies of the British Empire and supported the claims of the colonies in seeking greater economic freedoms.


Smith, however, was immediately embraced by the founders, who saw his work as the perfect economic theory to advance their political theory. Ours was the first Enlightenment Revolution based on a belief in natural rights that came from God, not governments. Yet, the founders knew that true individual liberty could not be achieved without economic freedom. Smith’s idea of the “invisible hand” offered an idea of individual economic freedom where the individual tastes and choices of citizens drove whole economies. As I write in Rage and the Republic:

“While he never visited the United States, his theories seemed quintessentially American to many of his generation. For a revolution that was triggered by tariffs and fueled by events like the Boston Tea Party, Smith’s general principles read like an economic version of Common Sense. It was a type of declaration of independence not just from the British policy of mercantilism (emphasizing British exports over imports) but from economic controls over individual productivity and self-determination….

In summary, Smith was first and foremost viewed as a political theorist, and his economic theories were closely tied to his views on the natural liberties of humanity. He saw capitalism as a liberating system for individuals to allow them the wealth and resources to pursue their own chosen paths. Conversely, he saw government controls and subsidies as forms of control and potentially forms of suppression of the human will. If people are to be truly free, they must have the resources to pursue that freedom. The government dole can become a type of servitude or at least a subterfuge for citizens. If they are dependent on the government, they are never truly free.”

I believe that the key to our surviving and thriving in the 21st Century will be the preservation of what I call a “liberty-enhancing economy.” I will be discussing both anniversaries tomorrow at the Reagan Presidential Library.

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The President has to ask Congress for permission to initiate a war.

That meant something different in, say, 1776, than it does today. 250 years ago, you could have an assembly and then a vote, and the enemy would only know you officially declared it, an hour later. Or the next morning. Today, it takes seconds. The President CAN no longer ask Congreess for permission.

Republicans Prefer War To The US Constitution And Truth (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Republican-controlled House and Senate rejected a war powers vote that would have granted Congress the ability to decide whether Trump could continue serving Israel’s conflict with Iran. Apparently 77% of Republicans have fallen for the propaganda that Iran is a terrorist state developing nuclear weapons. The same Republicans fell for 9/11, Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Assad’s “use chemical weapons,” Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Gulf of Tonkin, the endless lies about Gaddafi. And now the Republicans are falling for Trump’s unsupported claim that the “War is very complete, far ahead of schedule.” If the war is nearly over ahead of schedule, how come on March 8 the US State Department ordered non-emergency US government employees and family to leave Saudi Arabia due to safety risks?

How is a war that has expanded to Saudi Arabia nearly over? This was an upgrade of the previous order. It seems that the State Department’s concern about its personnel is inconsistent with Trump’s optimism. Has Trump now joined the whore media lie machine? Is Trump creating a non-existent reality for his remaining supporters? Democracy does not function when the only information citizens have comes from a lie machine that serves the official narrative of the day and from a president who confuses his hopes with reality. Alexander Dugin, apparently Russia’s smartest person, says it is not Iranian war capability that is collapsing, but American credibility. “The fact that Iran is not surrendering, not agreeing to a truce or a ceasefire, is already changing the balance of power.”

It is worth listening to Dugin, because if he is correct, Trump has allowed Netanyahu to lead America into difficult times. “Missile and drone strikes have been carried out against all U.S. bases surrounding Iran. According to neutral estimates, more than 1,000 American service members have been killed (Iran reports much higher numbers, while Trump speaks of only a handful, which seems laughable given the scale of the Iranian strikes). “Iran has chosen a very effective tactic: striking not only military targets in Israel, which is gradually turning into something resembling Gaza, but above all the hubs and energy centers of the Arab Gulf states on which the global economy depends. Combined with the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, this has already led to enormous losses for the global market. Moreover, the situation will worsen with each day of Iranian resistance.

“It is significant that the Gulf countries—whose plans to transform themselves into neutral and safe centers of the world economy have now come to an end—blame not so much Iran as Israel and the United States. They have always disliked Israel, but in their eyes Trump has become a direct traitor. If American military bases do not protect them but instead create danger, what are they needed for? Arab leaders ask this question quite logically. “Meanwhile, the plankton of global capitalism and the armies of escort girls are hastily leaving Dubai. On the roof of an abandoned hotel, only the somewhat unhinged influencer Andrew Tate dances alone, stubbornly insisting that all of this is merely a computer simulation and that we are living in a matrix where new scenery has simply been loaded in.

“The next step will be the withdrawal of Arab bonds from the United States. Incidentally, BlackRock has halted the process of withdrawals from its funds, lowering the ceiling by more than half. It looks like the beginning of a collapse. Oil prices are soaring, and the indices are falling rapidly. It is entirely possible that the global economy may collapse altogether in the foreseeable future.” If Dugin is right, at what level of intelligence does the US government operate when an expected 3-day war ends not in the expected victory but in economic and military catastrophe? Are not the American people somehow derelict in their responsibility to be informed and to do their duty to make certain that the US government actually serves Americans’ interest, not the interest of Israel?

Is the conservative Republican chant: “you cannot be an American if you don’t love Israel” a method of creating blind American subservience to Israel’s agenda of Greater Israel regardless of the huge cost to Americans? Obviously, the answer is yes. To see and to understand how far off course America is in the ability of its population and elected representatives to preserve accountable government by protecting the separation of powers, reread the first sentence of this article.

Why did the elected US representatives in the House and Senate need a vote to determine whether Congress could vote on whether Trump could start and continue a war for Israel? The US Constitution, not Israel or Trump, is the governing power of the United States. The US Constitution makes no concessions to Israel or any other country to determine US policies. The US Constitution says that it is the power of Congress alone to take America to war.

How long has it been since Congress exercised its Constitutional power? 1941. All wars costing American blood and money have been fought since by executive authority alone. On occasion the president obtains after the hostilities begin Congress’ “authorization.” But the authorization to continue a war already started is not the same as authorization to initiate a war. The war power of Congress delegated by the people has been for decades the prerogative of the Executive Branch, a power explicitly denied to the Executive Branch by the US Constitution. So for decades the so-called “American Democracy” is a country ruled not by the people and their elected repesenaives but by the executive branch. When it comes to war, the American executive branch is a dictatorship.

The destruction of the balance of powers and the Constitution’s limits on the executive branch has been accepted by an insouciant population step by step. Today America no longer resembles the country created by the Founding Fathers. Indeed, I cannot recognize today the country I was born into in 1939. My generation understood that freedom depended on truth, and that truth depended on the media and the universities. We knew that if people were inculcated with lies, the nation would be lost.What has happened to America is that it is under attack by both of its political parties. The Republicans tell Americans about Israel’s enemies. The Democrats tell Americans lies about Americans–that they are racists, homophobic, misogynist, anti-semitic. Trump tells us that we are good, but leads us to evil ends to serve Israel. The Democrats want to replace us with immigrant-invaders.

In the world in which we live powerful weapons exist, weapons that can destroy life on planet Earth. Russian hypersonic missiles cannot be intercepted. Their destructive payload is enormous and is delivered in multiple warheads. A year or so ago a Russian official said that only one Russian missile with its multiple warheads was sufficient to wipe Great Britain off of the face of the earth, Another official said it only takes three to do the same to the United States. The American missiles are less efficient but none the less dangerous if they get through.

Both Russia and the US have thousands of these missiles. How many would Russia have to launch before 3 got through? Why is the world playing at war when Armageddon is hanging over our heads? Israel needs to immediately renounce its doctrine of Greater Israel and the United States needs to immediately renounce its doctrine of American Hegemony. The idiots in charge of governments today are capable of destroying a planet. We must not believe one word of what they say.

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Britain, Italy, New York.

New York Mayor Won’t Tell The Truth About Islamic Terror Attacks (Pinsker)

March 8, 2026, isn’t a “date which will live in infamy.” It was more like the Ides of March in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar — the date when a violent conspiracy finally came to light, unmasking the conspirators and revealing their true agenda. March 8, 2026, is the date that New Yorkers learned the truth about their young mayor, Zohran Mamdani: He’s dishonest about Islamic terror attacks. Which means, the next time New York City is targeted by Islamic extremists — and, sadly, the Big Apple’s bloody history strongly suggests there will be a next time — Mayor Mamdani won’t tell New Yorkers what the hell just happened. The way he sees it, that’s not his job. He’ll minimize, obscure, misdirect, and post lies of omission.


That’s because Mayor Mamdani cares more about shielding the Muslim community from “inconvenient PR” than honesty, integrity, or telling the truth about Islamic terror attacks. That’s not his north star. His north star is the crescent moon. Even when the facts are overwhelming. As the AP reported: Two men who brought explosives to a far-right protest outside New York City’s mayoral mansion said they were inspired by the Islamic State extremist group, according to a court complaint. Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, were being held without bail after a court appearance Monday on charges that include attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and using a weapon of mass destruction. Their lawyers didn’t argue for bail but could do so later.

The homemade devices, which did not explode, were hurled Saturday during raucous counterprotests against an anti-Islam demonstration led by Jake Lang, a far-right activist and critic of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat and the first Muslim to hold the office. The more we learn about the two ISIS-inspired perpetrators, Balat and Kayumi, the harder it is to deny the awful truth: Two Islamic extremists intended to murder American citizens with homemade bombs — directly outside New York’s mayoral mansion. The defendants said nothing in court, but Kayumi smirked and looked over at Balat as the judge read part of the complaint alleging they acted in support of the Islamic State group. Balat stared ahead at the defense table.

According to the complaint, Kayumi blurted out, as he was being arrested Saturday, that “ISIS” was the reason for his conduct. Balat later told authorities that he had pledged allegiance to the extremists, and Kayumi asserted that he was affiliated with the group, the complaint said. Officers asked Balat whether he was aiming to accomplish something akin to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and wounded hundreds more. “No, even bigger,” Balat replied, according to the complaint. Yet, according to Mamdani’s X post, you’d get the impression that the victim of the terror attack — Jake Lang — was the one responsible for the violence. Note how Mamdani artfully connected the dots:

Yesterday, white supremacist Jake Lang organized a protest outside Gracie Mansion rooted in bigotry and racism. Such hate has no place in New York City. It is an affront to our city’s values and the unity that defines who we are. What followed was even more disturbing. Violence at a protest is never acceptable. The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are. Of course, the mainstream media did its best to cover up Mamdani’s dishonesty. As the New York Times put it, “Mamdani Chooses His Words Carefully After Alleged Terror Attack.” So did Politico: “A Bomb Thrown Outside Gracie Mansion Unearths Grim Reality for NYC Mayor.”

Politico, quite naturally, focused extensively on — what else? — the terrible, horrible scourge of Islamophobia. Just five paragraphs down: “The Muslim community in New York has seen a significant increase in Islamaphobic rhetoric and actions since Mayor Mamdami won his primary,” said Murad Awawdeh, a close adviser to Mamdani and the head of the New York Immigration Coalition. “As elected officials and right-wing media pile on by peddling hate speech and false narratives, Islamophobic attacks have become more persistent and aggressive.”

There were seven anti-Muslim hate crimes in the city in January, an increase compared to January 2025, when none were reported, NYPD statistics show. Awawdeh said NYPD statistics alone don’t capture the full picture, noting that Islamophobic rhetoric and actions do not always amount to crimes. Reread that last paragraph and marvel at Politico’s logic: If “Islamophobic rhetoric and actions” don’t amount to crimes, then by definition, they CANNOT be “hate crimes.”

Instead, it sounds a helluva lot more like free speech! So the mainstream media conflated lawful free speech with unlawful hate crimes. Then it used these fake crimes to excuse real, actual, ISIS-inspired terror attacks in the heart of New York City. Politico noted the seven(!) anti-Muslim hate crimes in January 2026. (Which is awful: Every American has the Constitutional right to worship as he or she sees fit.) But how come Politico didn’t mention the 31 antisemitic New York City hate crimes during the exact same time period? Wouldn’t that have been useful contextual info for readers? There were 58 hate crimes in January, and over half targeted Jews! Just 12% targeted Muslims.

Most probable answer: The fact that New York’s Jews are MORE THAN FIVE TIMES LIKELY to be victims of hate crimes in Mayor Mamdani’s city wasn’t helpful in blaming everything, including ISIS-inspired violence, on “Islamophobia.”It beckons the obvious question: How can New Yorkers expect Mamdani to tell them the truth when the Islamic terrorists strike again? Most probable answer: They can’t. Remember the mainstream media’s uproar when New York City radio host Sid Rosenberg suggested Mamdani would cheer another 9/11-style attack? Turns out Rosenberg was wrong: Instead of cheering, Mamdani would pretend it never even happened — and then blame all the chaos on “Islamophobia” instead. (And Mamdani’s wife would like the X posts that insist it’s a “hoax.”)

In hindsight, perhaps we should hire Lang to stage protests in every major city in America. Might be the only way to keep us safe. Hunters call it rough shooting: It’s when you flush the prey from its hiding places, forcing it out into the open.Lang just exposed two murderous, psychotic Islamic terrorists who were lurking among us, patiently awaiting the most opportune time to strike. At least now, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi won’t have a chance to hurt anyone else. Say whatever you want about Lang, but our citizens are safer with Balat and Kayumi off the streets. So don’t just “Beware the Ides of March.” Beware Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He’s not being honest with you.

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