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Debt Rattle February 15 2026

Feb 152026
 
 February 15, 2026  Posted by at 10:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  10 Responses »


Ito Shinsui Snowy night 1923


• Newsom Tells EU “Trump Is Temporary,” Doubles Down On Failing Green Agenda (ZH)
• Rubio on Fire! (Sarah Anderson)
• Vast Majority Of Americans Want Voter ID And Democrats Don’t Care (ZH)
• The Least Laid Generation in History: Gen Z Is Ghosting Sex (Pinsker)
• OH BABY! Couples Could Make Big Money on Trump Accounts (DS)
• Americans Could Be Silenced by EU Online Speech Laws (ET)
• More Nations Are Mulling Social Media Bans For Teens (ZH)
• The Unsettling Truths the Epstein Files Reveal About Power and Privilege (ET)
• California Democrats Trigger a Reverse Gold Rush with a Wealth Tax (Turley)
• FBI Opened 1,200 ‘Assessments’ Of Sensitive Figures (JTN)
• US Smuggled Starlinks Into Iran Amid Riots – WSJ (RT)
• Trump Makes A HUGE Promise About Voter ID
• American Workers Have Less Than A $1000 in Retirement Savings (Turley)
• Stolen Land At The Grammys: How Hollywood Groupthink Threatens Democracy (ET)
• “Billion Dollar Movie In One Prompt” (ZH)

 


 

Make sure you take your time today for the Debt Rattle. I know it can seem overwhelming. Watch some videos. Use the time well. Everything goes faster than you think.

Then again, Elon Musk says we are In The Singularity. That means ALL predictions are off. Including Elon’s.

 


 

Miles Deutscher@milesdeutscher

Ok fine – maybe you don’t want to listen to me. I’m just a 25-year-old on the internet.

But maybe you’ll listen to them.

I documented every major warning from the people actually building AI.

Every CEO. Every founder. They’re all saying the same thing.

Read this slowly:

• Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI: “Being a lawyer, an accountant, a project manager, a marketing person – most of those tasks will be fully automated by AI within 12 to 18 months.”

• Elon Musk: “AI and robots will replace all jobs. Working will be optional.” Called AI his “biggest fear.”

• Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic: AI will eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs. Unemployment could hit 20%. Called it “unusually painful.” Then said: “Most lawmakers are unaware this is about to happen.”

• Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI: “Some areas, I think just like totally, totally gone.” Said changes that normally take 75 years will be compressed into a short period. Admitted he loses sleep over it.

• Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia: “Every job will be affected, and immediately. It is unquestionable.”

• Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase: “It will eliminate jobs. People should stop sticking their head in the sand.” Warned mass AI layoffs without safeguards could trigger “civil unrest.” Said he’d welcome a government ban on mass-firing for AI.

• Stuart Russell (author of the most-used AI textbook in history): Political leaders are “staring 80% unemployment in the face”.

• Kai-Fu Lee, VC & former head of Google China: Called predictions of 50% job displacement by 2027 “uncannily accurate.”

These aren’t journalists. These aren’t influencers. These aren’t politicians trying to get elected.

These are the people building it. Funding it. Deploying it.
And not one of them is saying your job is safe.

 


 

Elon Musk just gave retirement planning the most radical advice possible:

“Don’t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years — it won’t matter.

You won’t need to save for retirement.” His reasoning (from the same conversation):

We’re already in the singularity — “the event horizon” where prediction breaks down.

The accelerating timeline makes long-term saving irrelevant.

Services, homes, healthcare, entertainment — abundance will be so extreme that the old rules vanish.

Peter Diamandis: “The way this unfolds is fundamentally impossible to predict because of self-improvement of the AI and the accelerating timeline.”

Elon: “We’re in this beautiful sweet spot… like being at the top of the roller coaster about to drop. I don’t just have courtside seats — I’m on the court.”

If saving for retirement becomes pointless in the next 10–20 years because we’re already past the event horizon…

what’s the first thing you’d change about how you live right now?

 


 

Software that rewrites itself. Huang GenZ 4 Hours? 18 hrs

 


 


Two -very- different futures for America, courtesy of Rubio and Newsom.

• Newsom Tells EU “Trump Is Temporary,” Doubles Down On Failing Green Agenda (ZH)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke at the Munich Security Conference earlier on Friday, telling European elites that President Trump is “temporary” and will be gone within three years. Newsom, noticeably angered by Trump’s push for deregulation and the rollback of climate policy, lashed out at the president, calling him “more destructive” than the current occupant of the White House. The issue for Newsom is that he still operates within the climate crisis framework promoted by globalists, even as the West is moving on from two decades of nation-killing green policy regime that hollowed out parts of the industrial base and fueled inflation.


On Thursday, President Trump rescinded the 2009 Obama-era “Endangerment Finding,” a determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, which he said has been used by the radical left to justify $1.3 trillion in regulatory costs that have hurt American households and sent consumer prices soaring, especially for automobiles. “The single largest deregulatory action in American history. That’s a big statement in American history, and I think we can add the words by far,” Trump told reporters. Also this week, there was considerable discussion among industry leaders in Europe about Brussels watering down carbon-pricing markets, which have made electricity outrageously expensive and crushed the industrial base (Goldman explained more here).

And it is not just Trump and European industry leaders pushing to unwind green policies that have financially crushed working-class families and hollowed out the industrial base; major companies are also dialing back EV production plans and softening green targets as the net-zero dream collides with reality. Here’s what Newsom said earlier at the MSC (courtesy of Real Clear Politics):

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM: “Donald Trump is doubling down on stupid. California has been a leader in climate policy going back to Ronald Reagan. In 1967, Governor Ronald Reagan established the first tailpipe emissions standards in the United States of America and created the California Air Resources Board. Three years later, a president by the name of Richard Nixon — another Republican — codified California’s leadership under the Clean Air Act.

Never in the history of the United States of America has there been a more destructive president than the current occupant in the White House in Washington, D.C. He’s trying to recreate the 19th century. He’s a wholly owned subsidiary of big oil, gas, and coal. He’s quite literally reopening coal plants in the United States of America. He’s received close to half a billion dollars in campaign contributions. He asked for $1 billion — look it up — in return for basically eliminating all regulations in the United States of America. De facto, he just did that yesterday with federal regulations and the endangerment finding.

It is code red in terms of American leadership in this space — low-carbon, green growth — and I know a thing or two about this. I represent the fourth-largest economy, from a GDP perspective, in the world, and we ran the fourth-largest economy last year nine out of ten days on 100% clean energy — two-thirds renewable energy. We’ve seen our GDP grow by 81% since 2000, and we’ve reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 21%. Seven times more clean energy jobs than fossil fuel jobs.

We’re proving at scale that we can implement, we can compete, and we can dominate. But Donald Trump is trying to turn back the clock. And so we’re showing up, but we’re also showing what can be accomplished — the power of emulation. We are in the great implementation in my state. Final word. I hope, if there’s nothing else I can communicate today: Donald Trump is temporary. He’ll be gone in three years. California is a stable and reliable partner in this space, and it’s important for folks to understand the temporary nature of this current administration in relationship to the issue of climate change and climate policy.

MODERATOR]: Governor, many have called Joe Biden the climate president, but that didn’t help with his re-election. So how important do you think climate issues will be for the 2028 presidential election?

GAVIN NEWSOM: Well, you may not believe in science, but you’ve got to believe your own eyes. I mean, people are burning up, choking up, heating up. We have simultaneous droughts and floods. Historic wildfires. You may know little about California, but you’ve seen those images of these wildfires. Talk about being as dumb as we want to be — places, lifestyles, traditions being wiped off the map. Greenville. Paradise, California. And so this issue has been brought home in a very personal way, not a political way. Senator Whitehouse is here — he’s also someone who deeply understands that climate risk is financial risk. It’s becoming uninsurable.

This is an economic issue, not just a moral issue. It’s not just a competitiveness issue. And so it’s incredibly important that we talk in those terms to address some of the political dynamics. But it’s again something we’re on the other side of in California. It’s a big blue state, but it also has more Republicans than most Republican states. And we have long moved beyond the partisanship on this issue, because there is no Republican thermometer, there’s no Democratic thermometer — there’s just reality.And people in my state have been mugged by reality. Those that have been in denial understand that we’re on the other side of the debate.

Read more …

“And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.”

We Won’t Be ‘Polite and Orderly Caretakers of the West’s Managed Decline’

• Rubio on Fire! (Sarah Anderson)

“The world is changing very fast right in front of us. The old world is gone… We live in a new era in geopolitics, and it’s going to require all of us to reexamine what that looks like and what our role is going to be.” That’s what Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the press before he boarded a plane to Munich, Germany on Thursday evening. Little did we know that this quote was setting the stage for what turned out to be a momentous speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday morning, a speech that framed the end of one major geopolitical era and the beginning of another. We may well look back on this speech in Munich as another defining moment in the secretary’s career.


Rubio told European leaders that the post–Cold War era is over, that the “euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion: that we had entered, quote, ‘the end of history;’ that every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood; that the rules-based global order – an overused term – would now replace the national interest; and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world.” He said that this idea was foolish and “ignored both human nature and it ignored the lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history.”

While championing the Donald Trump administration’s America-First foreign policy, he also reaffirmed the bond between our nations, saying that the Western Hemisphere may be our home, but we’re a child of Europe, and we share history, culture, and heritage. “We belong together,” he said. But he also made it clear that the world has reached a turning point and course correction is required. Europe must save itself because, “we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.” Rubio called on our European allies to revitalize their nations and reject policies leading to their decline.

That includes the embracing of “a dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade” and shuttering our plants, which resulted “in large parts of our societies being deindustrialized, shipping millions of working and middle-class jobs overseas, and handing control of our critical supply chains to both adversaries and rivals.” He continued: “We increasingly outsourced our sovereignty to international institutions while many nations invested in massive welfare states at the cost of maintaining the ability to defend themselves. This, even as other countries have invested in the most rapid military buildup in all of human history and have not hesitated to use hard power to pursue their own interests.

To appease a climate cult, we have imposed energy policies on ourselves that are impoverishing our people, even as our competitors exploit oil and coal and natural gas and anything else – not just to power their economies, but to use as leverage against our own.”n nAnd in a pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people. We made these mistakes together, and now, together, we owe it to our people to face those facts and to move forward, to rebuild.

Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past. And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe. But it wasn’t just a critique or warning about globalization. Rubio explained that it’s the fundamental part of national security. “The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life,” he said.

“And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.” Rubio also spoke of how “we can no longer place the so-called global order above the vital interests of our people and our nations,” and how we must reform global institutions. He used the United Nations as an example, explaining that it has potential to be a “tool for good” but right now, it’s basically useless. “But we cannot ignore that today, on the most pressing matters before us, it has no answers and has played virtually no role.”

It could not solve the war in Gaza. Instead, it was American leadership that freed captives from barbarians and brought about a fragile truce. It had not solved the war in Ukraine. It took American leadership and partnership with many of the countries here today just to bring the two sides to the table in search of a still-elusive peace. It was powerless to constrain the nuclear program of radical Shia clerics in Tehran. That required 14 bombs dropped with precision from American B-2 bombers. And it was unable to address the threat to our security from a narco-terrorist dictator in Venezuela. Instead, it took American Special Forces to bring this fugitive to justice.

He concluded: “…America is charting the path for a new century of prosperity, and that once again we want to do it together with you, our cherished allies and our oldest friends. We want to do it together with you, with a Europe that is proud of its heritage and of its history; with a Europe that has the spirit of creation of liberty that sent ships out into uncharted seas and birthed our civilization; with a Europe that has the means to defend itself and the will to survive.”

The speech, which ended with a long standing ovation, was similar to that of Vice President JD Vance’s Munich moment from last year but a bit softer, a bit more diplomatic. Rubio assured the Europeans that the United States is not abandoning them, but the old playbook is shelved. If the alliance is to continue, Europe must adapt and defend the true interests of its people and Western civilization unlike ever before. You could almost hear a sigh of a relief in the room, but how these European leaders will actually respons remains to be seen. I, for one, am not particularly hopeful.

Read more …

Democrats Don’t Care.

• Vast Majority Of Americans Want Voter ID And Democrats Don’t Care (ZH)

Are voter ID requirements considered a controversial idea in the eyes of US citizens? If you watch the establishment media or follow leaders in the Democratic Party then you might think bills like the SAVE Act are the end of freedom as we know it However, outside the echo chambers of DNC propaganda, the vast majority of Americans have no problem whatsoever with people proving their US citizenship before they vote in local and federal elections. The widespread support for voter ID is undeniable. Surveys from the past year including those from Pew and Gallup show that, regardless of party or ethnicity, Americans citizens want elections to be protected from manipulation through mass illegal immigration.


A Pew Research Center survey from August 2025 found that 83% of Americans favor requiring all voters to show government-issued photo ID to vote. This includes:
95% of Republicans
71% of Democrats
Only 16% of people oppose it.

A Gallup poll from 2024 shows 84% support for requiring photo ID to vote, with 98% of Republicans, 84% of independents and 67% of Democrats in approval.A recent CNN segment featuring number cruncher Harry Enten confirms that the backing for the SAVE Act is also dominant regardless of ethnicity: 85% of white voter, 82% of Latino voters and 76% of black voters all want voter ID. It’s difficult to find many issues which the American public universally supports at this level.

Democrat leaders, however, don’t care that the majority of their own base wants voter ID laws. Party officials and the left-wing media have engaged in a shameless propaganda campaign designed to frighten the public into opposing the SAVE Act, despite their previous platforms defending majority rule. They consistently compare the new laws to “Jim Crow” era restrictions, claiming that minorities (and rural Americans) are too dumb to figure out how to get access to state IDs and birth certificates.

In truth, every state that already has some form of election ID laws has seen a spike in voter participation, not a decline. Only 8 states have laws demanding proof of citizenship before voting (half of the states are in legal battles to implement them); the other 42 only require that you check a box that says you are a citizen. When Democrats are asked why they are ignoring their majority of their constituents when it comes to the SAVE Act, they launch into tirades about racism and fascism, but never seem to be able to answer the question.

It’s difficult to reconcile the rhetoric of Democrats from 2024 when they wailed and screamed about conservatives being a “threat to democracy” compared to their rhetoric today. At bottom, the political left only supports majority public decisions when those decisions work in the favor of leftist elites. The majority of Americans continue to support the Trump Administration’s deportations of all illegal migrants (not just migrants with violent criminal records), but Dem leaders and their NGO partners continue trying to thwart the will of the people. By extension, voter ID makes it far more difficult for non-citizens to vote and makes it easier for voting records to be checked for discrepancies.

It’s clear that ID requirements and tighter controls on mail-in ballots will work heavily against Democrats and, if passed, they are likely to see a sharp decline in votes across the board. They are fighting against the SAVE Act because they want oligarchy, not “democracy.” They want minority elitist control over government policy. Voter ID is perhaps the most important legal question of our era; it will determine the course of elections for many years to come. Most western countries have laws in place to prevent illegal migrant voting and foreign manipulation of elections. The US is the only country in which this type of law is treated as “racist”.

Read more …

Ask the one-child Chinese how fast this can get out off hand.

• The Least Laid Generation in History: Gen Z Is Ghosting Sex (Pinsker)

So, barmaid, bring a pitcher, another round of brew
Honey, why don’t we get drunk and screw?
—Jimmy Buffett, Why Don’t We Get Drunk (and Screw)


It’s not just sex: Alcohol consumption has dropped by 54%, with youth (18 to 34) drinking falling ANOTHER 9% just between 2023 and 2025. From TIME magazine’s article, “Why Gen Z is Drinking Less”: “[R]esearch from the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that lifetime drinking, past month drinking, and past year drinking among young people began to decline around the year 2000. That means that such declines have especially impacted Generation Z, defined as anyone born from 1997 to 2012, and some Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996. […]

“It is becoming clear that, for whatever reasons, today’s younger generations are just less interested in alcohol and are more likely than older generations to see it as risky for their health and to participate in periods of abstinence like Dry January,” said National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism George F. Koob in a statement. Maybe that’s not coincidental. Perhaps there’s a causal link (as famed philosopher Jimmy Buffett suggested). Maybe, just like peanut butter and jelly are complementary products, sex and alcohol are, too. Koob seemed to agree with Buffett:

“Another contributing factor has to do with the changing socialization patterns of younger generations. “Alcohol tends to be a social drug, even for young people, so part of the decline in underage drinking could be related to less in-person socializing,” said Koob. On average, the amount of time people spent with friends in-person decreased from 30 hours a month in 2003 to 10 hours a month in 2020, according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on the epidemic of loneliness. That decline was especially marked for people aged 15 to 24.

Back in 1991, more than half — 54.1% of all high school students — were sexually active. (The other 45.9% lied about it.) By 2007, the number fell to 47.8%. Four years later, it dropped again to 43%. By 2017, it was just 39.5%. As of 2023, it’s 31.6%. What’s going on with kids today, with their wild, out-of-control abstinence and crazy teetotalling?! It’s one of the strangest, most inexplicable cultural shifts in recent memory. I was certainly blindsided: I figured our sex drive was so biologically ingrained, it would never go away! But it has. And with it, so has the U.S. birthrate: It’s now at a 40-year low.

We need a birthrate of 2.1 babies per woman to maintain our population. We’re currently at 1.6.mnFor decades, our shrinking birthrate was masked by immigration growth. In 1991, the U.S. population was 253 million. By 2025, it grew to 343.6 million. = Since 2020, immigration has been the #1 driver of American population growth. With the new crackdown on illegal immigration, we’re flirting with our first-ever population decline. And it’s not just an American phenomenon — all over the world, birthrates have collapsed. At least one geopolitical strategist and demographic expert predicts it’ll lead to the end of China within the next 10 years:

“And three months ago, the Chinese government updated the data. They’re now reporting a 70% drop in the birthrate since 2017. That’s a faster decline than what was suffered by the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. And the Shanghai Academy of Sciences, which is kind of the Wiseman organization of statisticians in China that interprets all the data, says that this is still wrong. They estimate that the Chinese system has overestimated its population by over 100 million people. With all of the missing millions being people who would’ve been born during the one-child era, which is a rather sterile way of saying that all the missing millions are under age 40 suggesting that these yellow bars don’t even exist. China has, at most, 10 years before it faces national dissolution. They will not be a unified industrialized nation state 10 years from now. ”

—Peter Zeihan

Read more …

Prediction: “The Least Laid Generation in History” will start boinking for cash. Then again, Elon says they won’t need the cash.

• OH BABY! Couples Could Make Big Money on Trump Accounts (DS)

The Trump administration has created an incentive for Americans to have more children within the next three years. Any baby born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028, is eligible for $1,000 of seed money in a tax-advantaged investment account known as a “Trump Account,” though any parent with a child under 18 can open an account for their son or daughter. The account operates similarly to an IRA, and parents, relatives, and friends can contribute up to $5,000 annually, though they do not have to make regular contributions.


“Your child’s funds will automatically be invested in American companies,” according to the Trump Accounts website.mWhen the child turns 18, they can either allow the account to continue to grow, or they can withdraw the funds for education costs or to purchase a home. If the maximum amount is contributed to the account annually from the time the child is born, the account will have grown to over $270,000 by the child’s 18th birthday.

Between the rapid increase in the cost of living over the past 20 years and many young people in debt with student loans, true financial freedom is a distant dream for many in their 20s and 30s, but Trump Accounts could change that for the next generation. If Americans take advantage of the program to its full extent, Generation Alpha, born between 2010 and 2024, and Beta, born between 2025 and 2039, can hope to avoid the financial situation many Millennials and members of Gen Z find themselves in today.

Read more …

Trump will not accept this.

• Americans Could Be Silenced by EU Online Speech Laws (ET)

Europeans who face criminal charges for what they said or wrote warned that Europe’s speech laws can silence Americans as well, regardless of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections. While testifying before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Paivi Rasanen, a member of parliament in Finland, recounted how she has been prosecuted since 2021 for quoting Bible verses to church members and on social media that questioned her church’s participation in a Gay Pride march. Although she was acquitted, first by a local district court and then by an appellate court, prosecutors appealed the decision to Finland’s supreme court, where the case currently sits.


“My prosecution shows how quickly democratic societies can abandon free expression when the state decides which beliefs are acceptable,” Rasanen told The Epoch Times. “I never imagined that quoting the Bible in a Twitter post would lead to years of criminal charges, yet this is now the reality in Europe,” she said. “Americans should be concerned because once censorship is normalized, it never stays confined to one country.”

The trend among Western countries to restrict religious speech has spread beyond Europe, with the Canadian government currently advancing a bill that would remove a religious exemption from “hate speech” laws in the country’s Criminal Code. Similarly, newly proposed legislation in Queensland, Australia, would criminalize certain symbols and phrases, with penalties of up to two years in prison. While speaking before Congress, Rasanen was joined by Graham Linehan, an Irish writer and comedian who was arrested upon traveling through Heathrow Airport in 2025 for statements he had made in America on transgender issues. “For a decade, the British police have harassed me for expressing views that the majority of the public share,” Linehan stated. “We have simply been punished for objecting to fashionable yet incoherent orthodoxies.”

‘Foreign Censorship Threat’
Their testimony was underscored by the release of a Feb. 3 House report titled “The Foreign Censorship Threat,” which charged that “The European Commission, in a comprehensive decade-long effort, has successfully pressured social media platforms to change their global content moderation rules, thereby directly infringing on Americans’ online speech in the United States.” More specifically, the report states that “though ostensibly meant to combat ‘misinformation’ and ‘hate speech,’ nonpublic documents produced to the Committee show that for the last 10 years, the European Commission has directly pressured platforms to censor lawful, political speech in the European Union and abroad.”

This included regular meetings between U.S. tech companies and European Union regulators to put “content moderation” policies and algorithms in place to conform to European laws regarding “hate speech” and “misinformation,” the report states. The EU claims these initiatives were voluntary, but subpoenaed emails from tech executives stated that “we don’t really have a choice.” Judicial Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told hearing attendees that, based on subpoenas issued to U.S. tech companies regarding their correspondence with EU officials, a pattern of compelled censorship emerged that included U.S. citizens.

“The European Commission successfully pressured social media companies to change their global content moderation rules, directly harming the speech of Americans in the United States,” Jordan stated. He also referenced an incident in which European commissioner Thierry Breton warned X owner Elon Musk that his company may face penalties for posting an interview with Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. “The European Commission is trying to censor speech and meddle in elections worldwide,” Jordan said. “When the European Commission makes censorship demands, platforms have to listen.”

According to the European Commission’s website, the Digital Services Act (DSA) “empowers citizens by strengthening the protection of their fundamental rights online and giving them greater control and more choices when they navigate online platforms and search engines.” The DSA also requires platforms to “minimise the risks of exposing citizens, including children and young people, to illegal and harmful content.” nCritics of EU speech laws say they have become a tool to punish U.S. tech companies for allowing any content that a European country has deemed to be illegal. In countries such as Germany, that could include insulting government officials.

French member of the European Parliament Virginie Joron called the DSA a “Trojan horse for surveillance and control.” Joron accused government officials of having “seized upon the DSA as a political tool to control speech, particularly targeting platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram.” And legal analysts say that the reach of the DSA extends beyond Europe. The DSA “creates a pathway for foreign governments to influence public debate inside the United States without ever passing a single American law,” Lorcan Price, an Irish barrister who defended Rasanen and testified at the House hearing, told The Epoch Times.

“The EU’s Digital Services Act gives European regulators unprecedented leverage over American tech companies, which means European speech rules can end up shaping what Americans are allowed to say online,” Price said. “Once U.S. platforms are forced to comply with European censorship demands to avoid massive fines, those restrictions don’t stop at Europe’s borders.”

Read more …

Maybe they should see if they can agree on something. 15, 16, 18, not at all?

• More Nations Are Mulling Social Media Bans For Teens (ZH)

After Australia’s first-of-its-kind social media ban for adolescents under the age of 16 came into effect in December, more countries in Europe and elsewhere are taking steps to implement their own restrictions. As Katharina Buchholz reports, according to Statista research, France and the United Kingdom have gotten furthest, with laws passing in one chamber each of the countries’ bicameral legislatures as of early February. While the latter country is also aiming to ban social media for kids under the age of 16, France’s proposed law targets only those under the age of 15.


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Six more nations have seen country leaders announce initiatives aiming to ban social media access for adolescents. While Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand and Spain all have more restrictive regulations in mind, excluding those under the age of 16, Greece is aiming to exclude those under the age of 15 and Austria those under the age of 14 from social media.Social media, including personalized algorithms and the possibility to scroll endlessly, is receiving scrutiny for its effect on mental health, especially in younger people.

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Social media addiction can affect any age group, but it is seen as especially harmful in adolescents which are still developing social behaviors, body image and time management skills. Two more planned bans announced in Europe, by Portuguese and Danish leadership, are reportedly willing to leave a back door open for parental consent, putting them in a different category that already exists in several nations like France, Italy and, since recently, Brazil, where children of the applicable ages can access social media sites if their parents are in agreement.

While outright bans like the Australian one often plan implementation via a strict official age-verification mechanism, parental consent regulation can work by linking parents accounts, for example. Instagram has meanwhile already rolled out this feature in Europe, the U.S., Australia and Canada, with teenagers between the ages of 13 to 15 only in the position to disable a special restricted account mode with the consent of their parent’s account. Like other platforms, Instagram accepts users from the age of 13, but this restriction is so far not tied to verification. In the EU, social media sites are since 2018 under further restrictions concerning the use of personalized ads for minors.

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“He functioned as a social broker among financiers, politicians, academics, royalty, and celebrities…”

• The Unsettling Truths the Epstein Files Reveal About Power and Privilege (ET)

The public fixation on the Epstein files has settled, predictably, on the most lurid elements of the story. This is understandable. Sexual exploitation, particularly of the young, is among the most corrosive of crimes, and the scale of Epstein’s abuse, as well as the apparent indifference of powerful institutions to it, demands moral outrage. But to focus exclusively on the sexual scandal is to miss the deeper and more unsettling lesson the affair reveals. What the Epstein files expose, above all, is the social and moral estrangement of American elites from the people they claim to govern.


Epstein was not merely a predator who gained access to power. He was a node within a closed world of wealth, influence, and immunity. The scandal is not that powerful people behaved badly in private—history shows many such examples—but that they did so with a confidence rooted in the belief they were insulated from the consequences of their behavior. They moved through a transnational elite culture that had largely severed itself from ordinary moral constraints, legal accountability, and civic obligation. That culture did not merely tolerate Epstein but normalized him.

This echoes the point Christopher Lasch made decades ago, long before private islands and hedge-fund philanthropy became familiar symbols of elite excess. In his 1994 book “The Revolt of the Elites,” Lasch argued that the modern American ruling classes had stopped seeing themselves as stewards of a shared national project. Instead, they increasingly saw themselves as a mobile, globalized caste, educated in the same institutions, moving through the same cities, governed by the same tastes, and primarily accountable only to each other. Citizenship was seen as a minor inconvenience. Nationhood and patriotism were just sentimental relics from less enlightened times.

The Epstein affair reads like a case study in Lasch’s thesis. Here was an individual whose wealth was opaque, whose sources of income were rarely scrutinized, and whose social standing seemed immune to ordinary reputational risk. He functioned as a social broker among financiers, politicians, academics, royalty, and celebrities, many of whom publicly advocated policies of moral uplift, social justice, and global responsibility. Yet in private, they inhabited a world defined by indulgence, entitlement, and a contempt for limits.

Elite detachment today is not only economic but also existential, and it is hardly confined to Americans. The governing classes of advanced democracies increasingly inhabit a world defined by mobility, abstraction, and insulation from consequence. Their loyalties are professional rather than civic, global rather than national, and managerial rather than moral. They experience society less as a shared inheritance than as a set of problems to be administered at a distance. In such a world, attachment to place, memory, and common fate appears parochial, even suspect, while belonging itself is quietly redefined as an obstacle to progress.

Those who create policies affecting immigration, policing, education, public health, and national security rarely face the consequences themselves. They do not send their children to failing schools, live in high-crime neighborhoods, compete for scarce housing, or navigate broken public institutions. Their lives are shielded by wealth, location, private services, and increasingly by law itself.

The Epstein files sharpen this reality because they reveal not just hypocrisy, but impunity. Despite extensive documentation, repeated warnings, and credible testimony, accountability arrived slowly and incompletely. This is not because the crimes were ambiguous, but because the accused moved within a protected sphere where consequences were negotiable and enforcement discretionary. Justice, like morality, was something applied elsewhere for other people.

What enrages the public is not prurience, but recognition. The scandal resonates because it confirms a growing suspicion among ordinary people that there is one moral universe for the governing class and another for everyone else. Elites preach restraint, sustainability, and responsibility while living lives of extraordinary consumption and indulgence. They urge social sacrifice while exempting themselves from its costs. They speak the language of progress while practicing a refined form of decadence.

Lasch warned that such a ruling class would eventually forfeit legitimacy, not because of ideology, but because of character. A society cannot be governed indefinitely by people who do not believe they belong to it. When elites become tourists in their own countries, financially global, culturally unrooted, and morally untethered, their authority rests on little more than coercion and spectacle. The Epstein files should therefore be read less as an aberration than as a symptom. They reveal a governing class that has lost the habits of self-restraint that once justified its power, and the sense of common fate that once bound leaders to citizens. For many, the salient point of the Epstein files is the scandal. I think it is more accurately seen as a disclosure.

The danger is not merely that such elites are corrupt, but that they are bored. Bored with limits, bored with norms, bored with accountability, and ultimately bored with democracy itself. That boredom, Lasch understood, is the precondition of revolt, not by the masses, but by those who no longer feel answerable to them. If the Epstein affair provokes lasting anger, it is because it crystallizes a truth many citizens already sense, that the people shaping the future live in a world apart, governed by different rules, and increasingly incapable of moral seriousness. No society can long endure that division without consequence. The question is not whether further revelations will emerge. It is whether the public will finally insist that elites once again live under the same moral and civic conditions as those they presume to lead.

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“.. you made…all your money in California, you ungrateful piece of s***, you could figure out a way to pay more taxes, and we deserve the taxes from you, given you made your wealth here . . . so why don’t we just do shock and awe at this point, because you don’t seem to be availing yourself to thinking that you owe your state something more.”

• California Democrats Trigger a Reverse Gold Rush with a Wealth Tax (Turley)

This month, the anniversary of the California Gold Rush came and passed with little mention … for good reason. When James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill, millions traveled great distances to seek their fortune in the “Golden State.” Now, 178 years later, California has engineered an inverse Gold Rush, virtually chasing wealth from the state. Rather than covered wagons going West, there is a line of U-Hauls going anywhere other than California.


From boondoggle projects to reparations, California politicians continue to rack up new spending projects despite a soaring deficit and shrinking tax base. Rather than exercise a modicum of fiscal restraint, Democrats are pushing through a tax that takes five percent of the wealth of any billionaires left in the state. I have long criticized the tax as perfectly moronic for a state with the highest tax burden and one of the highest flight rates of top taxpayers. In my new book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I discuss the reversal of fortunes in California and other blue states as politicians unleash new “eat the rich” campaigns before the midterm elections.

The problem, of course, is that billionaires are mobile, as is their wealth. Liberals expect billionaires to stay put in a type of voluntary canned hunt. They are not. Billionaires are joining the growing exodus from the state, taking their companies, investments, and jobs with them. The latest billionaire to be chased off may be Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is reportedly heading for Florida. The growing departures have triggered outrage among many on the left, who are in disbelief that billionaires will just not stand still to be fleeced.

Former New York Magazine editor Kara Swisher captured that rage in a recent posting, declaring “you made…all your money in California, you ungrateful piece of s***, you could figure out a way to pay more taxes, and we deserve the taxes from you, given you made your wealth here . . . so why don’t we just do shock and awe at this point, because you don’t seem to be availing yourself to thinking that you owe your state something more.” By some estimates, California has already cost over a trillion dollars in lost investments and business. That is no small achievement. Here’s a mind teaser: How can you burn a trillion dollars (which would create a stack some 67,866 miles high) without taking years and destroying the environment? California politicians have a solution: Have people take it out of the state in a reverse gold rush.

In addition to saying that they want to grab 5 percent of the wealth of these billionaires, California Democrats are planning to base wealth calculations on the voting shares of corporate executives. Often, particularly with start-ups, entrepreneurs have greater voting shares than actual ownership. However, they will be taxed as if voting shares amounted to actual wealth. In other words, California is moving to nuke the entrepreneurs who created the Silicon Valley boom. Emmanuel Saez, the U.C. Berkeley economist who helped design the tax, insists that they may not want to stay, but they will still be tapped. They are planning to trap the wealthy fleeing the state retroactively: “The tax is based on residence as of Jan. 1, 2026, sharply limiting their ability to flee the state to avoid paying. Despite billionaires’ threats to leave, I think extremely few will have been able to change residence by Jan. 1, given the complexity of doing so.”

The effort to retroactively impose such a tax is legally controversial and will face years of challenges. In my view, this is unconstitutional, but admittedly it is a murky area. Regardless of the outcome, a wealth tax will affect a wide range of other wealthy taxpayers. If Democrats can get a retroactive wealth tax to be upheld, it is doubtful that they will stop with billionaires. Why should other top taxpayers stick around to find out where the next cull will fall in the tax brackets? Recently, Gavin Newsom boasted, “California isn’t just keeping pace with the world — we’re setting the pace.” That is undeniably true if the measure is the record number of U-Hauls fleeing the state — more than any other state. Indeed, the only thing harder to find than a wealthy taxpayer in California appears to be a U-Haul.

According to U-Haul’s data, the state is again leading blue states in the exodus. The Washington Post noted recently that “California came in last. Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey rounded out the bottom five. Of the bottom 10, seven voted blue in the last election.” Conversely, “nine of the top 10 growth states voted red in the last presidential election,” with Texas again leading the growth states. The Post put it succinctly, “People want to live in pro-growth, low-tax states, while the biggest losers tend to be places with big governments and high taxes.” The problem is that, while the economics are horrific, the politics remain irresistible.

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents part of Silicon Valley, recently mocked billionaires rushing to escape the state. Laughing at his own constituents, Khanna quipped, “I will miss them very much.” You will not be alone as California becomes known as the La Brea Tar Pit of taxation. They are on the verge of converting the state motto from “Eureka” to “Welcome to Hotel California, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

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I have questions.

• FBI Opened 1,200 ‘Assessments’ Of Sensitive Figures (JTN)

The FBI opened 1,200 probes related to politicians, journalists, religious leaders, academics and others tied to “sensitive investigative matters,” using a special investigative tool that requires no factual predicate to launch, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The GAO report, which was obtained by Just the News, was published last month but not made public, and it was titled FBI Investigative Activities: Oversight Efforts of Opening and Conducting Assessments Should be Strengthened.


The report, which assists in congressional oversight of the executive branch, provided details on the roughly 127,000 FBI “assessments” in all opened from 2018 to 2024, the vast majority of which were eventually closed without accusations of wrongdoing or criminal charges against those targets being scrutinized. The 57-page report did not include any names of those targeted for assessment. Among the total assessments, 1,200 were related to “sensitive investigative matters” that target public officials, news organizations, houses of worship or members of academia, which the bureau views as more sensitive in nature.

So-called “assessments” were established by Justice Department guidelines in 2008, providing the FBI with an investigative tool short of opening a full-fledged investigation requiring a factual predicate. The probes are used by the bureau to “address a potential threat to national security or potential violation of federal criminal law,” the congressional watchdog said. They allow FBI agents to open probes on authorized matters but without a factual basis and allow them to employ investigative such techniques as physical surveillance on subjects.

If sufficient basis is found, assessments can turn into preliminary investigations, full investigations or enterprise investigations. But most assessments are closed without meeting the standards for a full inquiry by the bureau, the GAO said. nn The revelations were detailed in the GAO’s January 2026 report, which was designated “For Official Use Only” because of the sensitive information it contains. GAO noted that the report should be “safeguarded when not being used and destroyed when no longer needed.”

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I don’t think Trump wants to attack Iran. But does he have a choice anymore?

• US Smuggled Starlinks Into Iran Amid Riots – WSJ (RT)

The Trump administration covertly smuggled approximately 6,000 Starlink satellite internet terminals into Iran amid a nationwide unrest earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal has reported, substantiating Tehran’s claims of foreign interference behind the deadly riots. The operation, which senior US officials said involved State Department funding, came after Iranian authorities imposed a sweeping internet blackout in January. President Donald Trump was aware of the deliveries, officials told the WSJ on Thursday, though it remains unclear whether he personally approved the plan.


Iranian officials have repeatedly blamed Washington and Tel Aviv for fueling the unrest, which began in December as peaceful demonstrations over economic hardship but escalated into widespread violence. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated last month that more than 3,000 people had been killed, including nearly 700 individuals he described as “terrorists,” alongside civilians and security personnel. President Masoud Pezeshkian has accused the US and Israel of embedding “foreign terrorists” within protest crowds, alleging they have employed what an Iranian diplomatic source described to RT as “ISIS-like” tactics – including beheadings of law enforcement officers and civilians being burned alive.

At the height of the unrest, Trump openly encouraged “peaceful” Iranian protesters, posting on Truth Social: “All Iranian patriots, keep protesting. Take over your institutions if possible.” He also promised that “help is on its way,” and deployed a “beautiful armada” to the region, raising speculation of an imminent military intervention. The State Department supports a range of so-called “internet freedom” tools, including virtual private network (VPN) service providers to Iran. To purchase Starlinks, the department reportedly redirected funds from US-supported VPNs, which had allowed an estimated 20-30 million Iranians to stay online during the previous 2022 riots and the Israeli-US bombing last year.

Washington seeks to pressure Iran into accepting a new nuclear deal, after Trump unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 agreement (JCPOA) during his first term, reimposing sanctions against Tehran under a “maximum pressure” campaign. Decades of US economic pressure were the primary driver of the country’s economic deterioration, according to officials in Iran – the world’s second most sanctioned country after Russia. Despite the US administration’s public denials of involvement in fomenting anti-government riots, the reported Starlink operation reveals expanded covert support for what Moscow called an attempt to “destroy the Iranian state” through a “color revolution” playbook.

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“I will be presenting them shortly, in the form of an Executive Order.” An executive order would not be ideal, but I’m hoping it won’t be necessary.”

• Trump Makes A HUGE Promise About Voter ID

They finally have the votes. Now the real fight begins. The SAVE Act already cleared the House in a tight 218–213 vote, with just one Democrat, Henry Cuellar, willing to break with his party and support basic election safeguards. That tells you everything you need to know about where Democrats really stand on election integrity. Senate Republicans also just locked down the 50 votes they need to move ahead on the SAVE Act, thanks to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) finally jumping off the fence and signing on as a cosponsor. With Vice President JD Vance ready to break a 50–50 tie, Republicans now have the votes to pass the bill if it ever reaches a final vote. That’s the good news.


The bad news is that Democrats still have one powerful weapon left: the filibuster. In the Senate, the math is brutally simple. Republicans have the votes to pass the bill, but they do not have the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster. Not even Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) will support the SAVE Act — and he claims to support voter ID. So what’s the next move? Well, that’s up to the Senate GOP leadership. If they are serious about this bill, they have to force a real, old-school, stand-on-the-floor-and-talk-until-you-drop filibuster. Not the fake Cory Booker kind, either, but a real filibuster. It’s time for the Democrats’ abuse of the filibuster, effectively turning it into a de facto veto of the minority party, to be over.

Sen. Mike Lee laid out the path in a video message on X. “If senators want to debate this, if they want to filibuster it, make them work for it,” he said. “Make them stand up, make them speak. If we do it this way, we can continue this progress, and I think we can get this thing done.” The only problem is that even then, nothing is guaranteed. A talking filibuster is a tool, not a magic wand. It forces a showdown. It does not promise victory. “Look, there are no guarantees here,” Lee conceded. “But the only shot we’ve got at this is through the talking filibuster. Thanks for fighting. Keep going. We’ll get it done.”

There is, of course, a backup plan. On Friday, President Donald Trump announced that if the SAVE Act can’t pass the Senate, he plans to bypass Congress altogether and use executive action to require voter ID for the November midterms. “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” he wrote on Truth Social. “This is an issue that must be fought, and must be fought, NOW!” he wrote in a follow-up post. “If we can’t get it through Congress, there are Legal reasons why this SCAM is not permitted. I will be presenting them shortly, in the form of an Executive Order.” An executive order would not be ideal, but I’m hoping it won’t be necessary.

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But Elon says in 10 years it won’t matter anymore.

• American Workers Have Less Than A $1000 in Retirement Savings (Turley)

There is a new, troubling study on the financial status of most American workers. The National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) found that the median American worker has just $955 saved for retirement through defined-contribution plans such as 401(k) accounts. Given the expected job losses from robotics and AI, the study only deepens concerns about the economic and political pressures facing this country in the years to come.


In my new book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I discuss those impacts from robotics and AI on our democracy. Using the most conservative estimates of job losses, the book explores how a large population of unemployed citizens will affect their relationship with the state. We cannot maintain a “kept citizenship” while preserving the essential elements of the American republic. A large population of static, unemployed citizens poses challenges for what I call a “liberty-enhancing economy,” an economy that affords citizens independence from the state.

This study magnifies those concerns. If accurate, it suggests that even a short displacement in employment will return state support. Many jurisdictions are already launching Universal Basic Income (UBI) pilot programs. If this republic is to survive in the 21st Century, it will require developing new areas of “homocentric” jobs while avoiding predictable measures to subsidize positions that will inevitably be lost to robotics. Notably, the study found that among those with positive retirement plans, median savings were much higher at $40,000. Those with a defined contribution (DC) plan are far better off with an average savings of $179,082.

The takeaway from the report, for me, is the need to instill greater private savings. Some workers are barely paid above subsistence. However, we also need to educate citizens about the importance of setting aside retirement funds to the extent possible. As I previously wrote, I am a great fan of the Trump Accounts. The $6.25 billion gift of Michael and Susan Dell (now augmented by dozens of corporations) could offer the single best hope for the survival of our system. Millions of young people will be able to experience the benefits of investments, savings and, most importantly, economic independence.

The study also shows the growing dangers of the collapse of the social security accounts. Despite assurances made when Congress established the system, Congress has continued to draw on Social Security funds to avoid reducing spending levels. The system could fail for these workers, who will not be able to draw upon money taken from their paychecks for the purpose of retirement. It is one of the most outrageous betrayals in United States history.

To this day, Democrats are opposing efforts to make major changes to guarantee the viability of the system for future generations, including the use of private investment accounts that could no longer be raided by Congress for easy money. All politicians express alarm at the potential failure, but they attack any efforts to address the underlying problems as an attack on social security. As a result, we just drift toward this cliff knowing that most citizens have practically no other source of retirement support.

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AI trumps groupthink too.

• Stolen Land At The Grammys: How Hollywood Groupthink Threatens Democracy (ET)

Among the consolations of youth is the certainty with which one holds beliefs about the world. There is comfort in the conviction that one’s moral bearings are firmly set, that one’s understanding of complex questions is not only sincere but also correct. The world appears legible; right and wrong seem sharply drawn; doubt and nuance are dismissed as weakness or evasion. There is rarely a single moment when these certainties collapse. They loosen instead through the slow accumulation of experience. Over time, one discovers that life resists easy judgments. Circumstances complicate principles. Good intentions collide with unintended consequences. Our friends betray us. The world proves denser, more conflicted, and less amenable to neat and tidy conclusions than youthful confidence would suggest.


This recognition of complexity, fallibility, and the limits of one’s own certainty is among the quiet achievements of maturity. It marks the point at which conviction learns restraint and moral seriousness acquires humility. Yet much of our public culture now moves in precisely the opposite direction. It rewards juvenile certainty while punishing hesitation, qualification, or good-faith disagreements. Confidence is applauded regardless of depth; slogans substitute for argument; restraint is recast as moral failure. That inversion was on clear display at the recent Grammy Awards, when Billie Eilish declared to enthusiastic applause that “no one is illegal on stolen land.”

It was left unspecified just whose land was being referenced, by whom it was stolen, and according to what historical or legal criteria that claim could be made. The audience, however, needed no clarification. Eilish’s statement was rewarded exactly because it avoided complexity and invited no questions. What was on display was not moral seriousness but a high school performance, an adolescent sense of righteousness delivered with absolute certainty and accepted as self-evident truth. One might charitably attribute such unthinking, categorical statements to Eilish’s youth. Alas, hers is a posture that we have come to expect from many of Hollywood’s men and women: confident, declarative, and curiously uninterested in the burdens of thought that genuine moral judgment requires.

This brings us to the core issue. The greatest threat to free expression today isn’t obvious censorship or government orders. Instead, it’s a more subtle and widespread force: cultural groupthink. This informal but influential system of rewards and punishments quietly limits the range of acceptable opinions, shaping what people feel allowed to say, what they hesitate to voice, and which questions are no longer askedn Nowhere is this trend more evident than in modern celebrity culture. Hollywood and the broader entertainment sector have become models of ideological conformity, especially on divisive social and political topics.

From climate change and gender issues to racial justice and international conflicts, Hollywood repeats the same messages, all delivered with youthful confidence. The same moral language, slogans, and conclusions are echoed with ritualistic consistency. The Eilish episode was not an aberration but a symptom. It illustrated a broader pattern in which public speech functions less as a means of inquiry than as a test of ideological conformity. The cost of dissent is not a thoughtful and considered rebuttal. Rather, it takes the form of reputational damage through social media pile-ons, calls for boycotts, professional exclusion, or quiet blacklisting.

Under such conditions, silence is often the rational choice. Most people have families to support and livelihoods to protect.The greater danger lies in the lesson this celebrity culture teaches: that there is only one permissible way to think and speak about certain issues, and that deviation signals not error but moral failure. Political and social questions are reduced to dogma rather than debated. Once moralized in this way, disagreement becomes illegitimate by definition. This logic now extends well beyond Hollywood. Similar patterns can be found in journalism, medicine, academia, corporate governance, and even the legal profession.

Approved vocabularies narrow discussion; certain premises must be affirmed before conversation can begin; others may not be questioned at all. Arguments are no longer answered on their merits but dismissed as evidence of bad character or suspect motives.The consequences for democratic culture are profound. Democracies do not depend on unanimity but on citizens who can weigh competing claims, tolerate uncertainty, and revise their views in light of evidence and argument. Groupthink undermines these capacities by rewarding conformity and punishing independent judgment. Over time, public discourse loses its corrective function. Errors persist not because they are persuasive, but because questioning them carries too high a cost.

[..] Free speech, properly understood, is not a threat to democracy. It is its foundation.

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“AI Disruption Crosshairs Hone In On Hollywood Studios ..”

Why pay Brad Pitt 100 million when a computer can “build” his scenes?

• “Billion Dollar Movie In One Prompt” (ZH)

:AI-driven equity disruption was everywhere this past week, spreading like wildfire beyond software into insurance, commercial real estate, financials, shipping, wealth management, and likely many more industries in the coming trading sessions.One industry in the crosshairs of AI disruption is Hollywood. Some of the publicly traded studios include The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global, Sony Group Corporation, Netflix, Lionsgate, and others.nOn Friday, Axios reported that the Walt Disney Company sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging that the Chinese tech firm has been infringing on its films to develop Seedance 2.0 without compensation.

Disney’s outside attorney, David Singer, wrote a letter to ByteDance global general counsel John Rogovin, accusing the AI company of “pre-packaging its Seedance service with a pirated library of Disney’s copyrighted characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and other Disney franchises, as if Disney’s coveted intellectual property were free public domain clip art.” “Over Disney’s well-publicized objections, ByteDance is hijacking Disney’s characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters. ByteDance’s virtual smash-and-grab of Disney’s IP is willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable,” Singer said.

He added, “We believe this is just the tip of the iceberg, which is shocking considering Seedance has only been available for a few days.” It’s not just ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 that has spooked Hollywood studios. A growing wave of video-generation models suggests that Hollywood’s moat is crumbling, and its control of the media game is nearing its end.

“Authorities should use every legal tool at their disposal to stop this wholesale theft,” the Human Artistry Campaign – a coalition that includes dozens of creative groups such as SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America – said in a statement on Friday. Seedance 2.0 model …

Hollywood is living on borrowed time. The next big AI disruption trade could be studios.

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Optimus COVID RFK jr Joe Rogan and Dr. Robert Malone Pepe Casey

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 4 2025

Sep 042025
 
 September 4, 2025  Posted by at 9:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  42 Responses »


Cy Twombly Shield of Achilles 1978

 

• Trump and Putin Are Closing The Era That Reagan and Gorbachev Began (Lukyanov)
• Mr. President, Tear Down These Walls (CTH)
• The West Has A Big Problem: It Can’t Stop Lying. Even To Itself (Amar)
• The Russiagate Problem (CTH)
• Lavrov Demands International Recognition Of Russia’s New Regions (RT)
• Russia and Ukraine ‘In Direct Contact’ – Lavrov (RT)
• Trump Announces Call With Zelensky (RT)
• Germany’s Merz Demands ‘Economic Exhaustion’ of Russia (RT)
• German Elections Thrown Into ‘Immense Chaos’ After AfD Deaths Rise To 7 (ZH)
• EU Accelerating Toward Collapse (Kolbe)
• Trump Escalates Tariff Fight To Supreme Court, Seeks Expedited Review (ZH)
• White House Has Backup Strategy If Trump’s Tariffs Are Overturned: Bessent (ET)
• Farage Vows Mass Deportations in UK (Salgado)
• Epstein Files Drop: The Left’s Trump Smear Campaign Just Collapsed (Margolis)
• Epstein Victims Hold a Strange Press Conference in Washington, DC (CTH)
• Gabbard Unloads With Both Barrels on Brennan and Clapper (Adams)

 

 

https://twitter.com/Jingjing_Li/status/1963155920076316690

List
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1963251546386259984

pop

 

 

 

 

100
https://twitter.com/mcafeenew/status/1963030553206096288

 

 

 

 

“Reagan and Gorbachev were unwitting midwives of the liberal order. Trump and Putin are its gravediggers. Where the earlier summits opened the Cold War’s endgame, today’s dialogue marks the close of the post-Cold War era.”

• Trump and Putin Are Closing The Era That Reagan and Gorbachev Began (Lukyanov)

“There won’t be a war, but the struggle for peace will be so intense that not a stone will be left standing.” This old Soviet joke, born in the 1980s, captured the absurdity of that final Cold War decade: endless ideological cannon fire, nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alert, and proxy wars fought on the margins. Between détente in the early 1970s and perestroika in the late 1980s, the world lived in a state of permanent tension – half-theater, half-tragedy. The Soviet leadership was old and exhausted, barely able to maintain the status quo. Across the ocean, the White House was run by a former actor, blunt and self-confident, with a taste for gallows humor. When Ronald Reagan quipped during a sound check in 1984 that he had “signed legislation outlawing Russia forever” and that “bombing begins in five minutes,” the off-air joke was truer to the spirit of the times than any prepared speech.

The official Soviet slogan was “the struggle for peace.” In Russian, it carried a deliberate ambiguity – both a promise to preserve peace and an assertion of global control. By the 1980s it had lost all meaning, becoming a cliché mouthed without conviction. Yet history has a way of circling back. Today, the “struggle for peace” has returned – and this time the stakes are even greater. By the late 1980s, both superpowers were tired. The USSR was struggling to carry the burden; the US, shaken by the crises of the 1970s, was looking for renewal. Leadership changes in Moscow – above all, Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise – triggered the most dramatic shift in world affairs since 1945. Between Geneva in 1985 and Malta in 1989, Reagan and Gorbachev held summit after summit. Their aim was to end confrontation and build a “new world order.”

In reality, Washington and Moscow understood that phrase very differently. The Soviet Union’s growing internal weakness tilted the balance of power, leaving the United States and its allies to design the order in their own image. The result was the liberal international system that has dominated ever since. That struggle for peace was, in Western terms, a success: the military threat receded, the Cold War ended, and the United States emerged as global hegemon. Four decades later, the cycle has turned. The Alaska meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in August 2025 carried faint echoes of Reagan and Gorbachev’s first encounters. Then, as now, two leaders with little mutual understanding recognized the need to keep talking. Then, as now, the personal factor mattered – the chemistry between two men who respected each other’s strength.

But the differences outweigh the parallels. Reagan and Gorbachev were unwitting midwives of the liberal order. Trump and Putin are its gravediggers. Where the earlier summits opened the Cold War’s endgame, today’s dialogue marks the close of the post-Cold War era. The resemblance lies only in timing: both moments represent turns of the historical spiral. The 1980s saw exhaustion on both sides. Now it is the United States, not Russia, that shows fatigue with a world order it once dominated. The demand for change comes above all from within America itself, just as it came from Soviet society in the 1980s. Trump consciously borrows Reagan’s slogan of “peace through strength.” In English it is straightforward; in Russian the phrase can also mean “peace maintained reluctantly, against one’s will.” Both shades of meaning suit Trump.

He makes no secret of his obsession with winning the Nobel Peace Prize, a vanity project that nevertheless reflects a real instinct: his method of diplomacy is raw pressure, even threats, until a deal is struck. Reagan’s legacy was to put America on the neoliberal path and to preside over the Cold War’s end, unintentionally becoming the father of globalization. Trump’s ambition is to roll globalization back and replace it with what he sees as a stronger America – not isolationist, but a magnet pulling in advantage from all directions. To achieve that, he too needs a world order – different from Reagan’s, but just as central to his sense of national interest. Putin’s outlook is the mirror opposite. Where Trump sees America first, Putin sees the necessity of reshaping the global order itself – of ending the period of US dominance and forcing a multipolar settlement. To him, the issue of world order is not cosmetic but existential.

Read more …

No, not Reagan and Gorbachev cont’d. Sundance is talking here about the walls that separate different parts (silo’s) of the intel communnity. There are many.

• Mr. President, Tear Down These Walls (CTH)

How is it that an insignificant corner of the internet could predict the removal of the U.S. National Security Advisor, specifically as the first administration official to be removed, more than two months before Donald Trump was sworn in as President on January 20, 2025? To understand the complexity of the intelligence information flow, consider: The silo system is made up, in part, of:

The National Security Council (10+ desks, 15 staff/analysts per), the National Security Advisor to the Office of the President, the Dept of Justice National Security Division [DOJ-NSD (foreign review section, counterintelligence export control section, cyber section, counterterrorism section)], Central Intelligence Agency [(CIA), National Intelligence Council, Directorate of Analysis], Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI (Counterintelligence, Counterterrorism, WMD Directorate, Directorate of Intelligence, Cyber)], the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [ODNI (Requirements, Analysis, Collection, National Counterterrorism Center, Mission Managers)], the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Dept of Defense [DoD, (Nuclear, Chemical, Biological, Industrial, International)], the National Security Agency [NSA (Operations, Technology, Cyber], and many more.

Each agency/office is a silo, with distinct sub-silos, each with equity stakes in the information they gather, review and analyze; ultimately attributing classification level and intersecting analysis with each other agency as mission aligned. Sound ridiculous? It probably is, yet we’ve merely scratched the surface of the networks and information flows that swirl around the Office of the President. How does President Trump frame his world view? Who organizes the information that is prioritized to reach his desk? It is very easy to say, “President Trump has to know about (fill_in_blank),” without contemplating the process by which President Trump would know about (fill_in_blank). The recent remarks by President Trump, surrounding COVID-19 vaccine efficacy, should put a spotlight on this consequential dynamic.

We were all very pleased to see President Trump announce the newly formed President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB), because for more than a decade we have watched how intelligence products were manipulated, shaped and constructed to create the illusion of something that was entirely false. However, we should note the same process of selecting the PIAB membership led to the previous issue of selecting former Congressman Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor. In that example, CTH predicted what would happen several months before it actually happened. There are issues of great DC interest that overlay all names and positions within the Trump administration. The subsequent behavior of NSA appointee Mike Waltz was a great reminder that sometimes those interests or judgements are not in alignment with the common MAGA priority.

Big international policy issues, like support for Israel, Ukraine support, NATO support and opinions on the threat Russia or China represents, are all part of the prism through which White House personnel references are traditionally made. When intended policy runs counter to personal ideology, conflicts arise. The policies of Wall St -vs- Main St, banking regulations, reciprocal tariffs, trade fairness, cryptocurrency and foundational economic nationalism can be challenging to align with the perspectives of the professional political class, in DC. The aspect of there being “trillions at stake” applies here, and being an outsider in DC generally comes down to financial interests and financial relationships. Then you run into the issues of the surveillance state, FISA (702) support, data collection and artificial intelligence.

In short, the interests of maintaining the status quo inside Washington DC, which may be interests carried by those in the orbit of President Trump, can stop information from reaching President Trump. As a consequence, cutting through the enmeshed interests with obvious, albeit painful truth, means delivering critical information in such a manner that, well, it cannot be refuted. We hope this is also the goal of those who have recently been outlining the background of Russiagate. However, given a history of inaction, and the stakes at hand, nothing should be taken for granted. What’s needed is a full spectrum outing of everything that took place throughout the targeting of President Trump.

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“The desperate search for a “Russian footprint” in the murder of Ukrainian politician Andrey Parubiy is a symptom of terminal self-delusion.”

• The West Has A Big Problem: It Can’t Stop Lying. Even To Itself (Amar)

Power and truth are not natural allies. Indeed, every person and institution – be it a government, a company, a university, or a “think tank” – tends to lie more as they become more powerful. And those who stay weak – have no illusions – must lie, too. Otherwise they’d get trampled even worse by the powerful. The truth may well set us free, as Christ told us. But then, hardly anyone is free in this world. Yet there are real differences. Differences that matter. For instance, with regard to the question of who you can trust a little more or should trust even less. Not to speak of another, often crucial issue: Who can one support or be in solidarity with, even if usually only conditionally? One thing should be clear to anyone not perma-brainwashed out of their mind:

The worst – by far – spreader of propaganda, disinformation, fake news, call it what you wish, is the West. Easily, hands down, no contest. Examples to illustrate this simple fact so little acknowledged – in the West, that is – could be adduced ad infinitum and over centuries. From, say, selling the bloody sacking of a fellow Christian capital in 1204 as a “fourth crusade,” to spreading “free trade” and “civilization” by waging a campaign of war and opiate mass poisoning on the oldest empire and civilization around in the mid-nineteenth century, to “liberating” Libya from a functioning state, decent standards of living, and, really, a future in 2011. It makes sense that George Orwell was English and had served the British Empire as a lowly enforcer among its victims in what we now call the Global South: No one competes with the sheer, habitual, deeply ingrained “Orwellianism” of the West.

Its most recent – but certainly not the last – horrific peak performance is, of course, co-perpetrating the Gaza genocide with Israel and calling it yet another fight against “terror” or “self-defense,” while smearing those who resist as “antisemites” and “terrorists.” There is an aspect of this intense and unremitting Western addiction to lying that should not be overlooked because it plays a key role in making Western disinformation so persistently toxic: The West never acknowledges, corrects, or regrets its fake news, at least not while doing so would still make a difference. Bewailing, for instance, the “mistake” – really, enormous crime – of the Vietnam War? Maybe, a little, if there’s a self-pitying (Rambo I, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket) or squarely delusional (Rambo II) movie in it that sells.

Admitting, on the other hand, that the “Maidan Sniper Massacre” of 2014 was a mass-murderous false-flag operation conducted by ruthless Ukrainian nationalists and fascists, such as, prominently, the recently assassinated Andrey Parubiy? Definitely not. Never mind the painstakingly detailed, conclusive studies of Ukrainian-Canadian scholar Ivan Katchanovski, which are easily available as an open-access book from one of the world’s most reputable academic publishers. Because if the West were to recognize this fact, a keystone of the edifice of lies erected to justify its cynical and devastating use of Ukraine in a failed proxy war against Russia would crumble: the silly conceit that the regime change operation of 2014 was “democratic,” “from below,” and soaked in national “dignity.”

Instead we’d have to face the reality of subversion, manipulation, and the betrayal of a nation to the West’s geopolitics, which is mercilessly cruel as well as bunglingly incompetent. And then, what next: Admitting that Russia was indeed provoked, for over three decades? That the Ukrainian far right is powerful and dangerous: a hotchpotch of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and assorted other fascists which the West has “normalized” and armed beyond their wildest dreams? That Ukraine’s leader Vladimir Zelensky is a corrupt authoritarian with a dependency problem?

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“A thunder shock is needed to break down the wall of lies that surrounds the framework of plausible deniability.”

• The Russiagate Problem (CTH)

According to John Solomon speaking with Devin Nunes recently, there is likely nothing much left from the files of Kash Patel at the FBI to disclose to the public, perhaps moving to the Mueller information will be the next steps.nFor most of us, bringing this storyline to the point of accountability is fraught with frustration. Here are some of the issues as they present.

The Big Problem Within Russiagate – Special Counsel John Durham previously indicted Hillary Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann. Durham said Sussmann misled FBI investigators. The case against Sussmann resulted in an acquittal. During the trial of the Perkins Coie lawyer, depositions and testimony were given by the Clinton campaign. Campaign Manager Robby Mook admitted the Trump-Russia storyline was a false political hit constructed by the Clinton campaign and launched with the full knowledge of Hillary Clinton. Durham’s case against Sussmann was predicated on a baseline that the Clinton campaign duped the FBI into opening an investigation. This was the core of the Sussmann trial; that Michael Sussmann lied to and misled the FBI. Anyone who researched the issues already knew the FBI was not “duped” or “misled” by the information; instead, the FBI were active participants.

However, to make a case against Perkins Coie, Sussmann and Clinton, the Durham prosecution needed to pretend they didn’t know. The jury saw through the pretense and Sussmann was acquitted. At the time of the trial a few of us noted the motive presented by Durham (ie. FBI duped) had ramifications. This predicate claim essentially quashed any later criminal conspiracy as the court records highlighting how the FBI were duped would preclude any reversal of motive toward any other participant. If the FBI were duped, how could the FBI participants be criminally negligent? The Clinton team were direct. Yes, they manufactured a political smear about Trump/Russia, and yes it was all political. The people who manufactured the false claim admitted Trump-Russia was optics and false narratives. So, what? That’s politics.

The fact that the MSM did not emphasize the Clinton campaign admissions does not negate the Clinton campaign admissions, and the Durham framing of motive toward duping the FBI gave the FBI people the ‘out’. The recently released Durham annex showed the Russians were aware of the Clinton operation. The Clinton team admitted the operation, and the jury acquittal of Sussmann highlighted their opinion the FBI were not duped. That was/is the status.Against the backdrop of Clinton team essentially saying, ‘yeah, we did it’ – where is the conspiracy? From the govt perspective, the FBI investigated the political matter, then handed it to Robert Mueller who affirmed there was no Trump-Russia collusion – again, where’s the conspiracy? Boil it down. This is the factual reality facing any current effort by Main Justice to bring the narrative engineers to a position of legal accountability.

Was there criminal activity? I would argue, yes. In both the leaking of classified information to media (McCabe, Comey, Wolfe, McCord) and in the lying to the FISA court (Carter Page warrant). However, the FISA court doesn’t seem to care about the lying (for a host of reasons), including the wrist-slap to Kevin Clinesmith, and every time the leaking to the media was made an issue the DOJ declined to prosecute.The Mueller probe was used to give a patina of credibility to the false premise of Russiagate while they pursued an unspoken obstruction effort against President Trump. Weissmann wanted President Trump to obstruct a criminal investigation of Trump that was not going to find criminal activity done by Trump.

Like Clinton’s Russiagate, the Mueller investigation was built upon fraud. When asked by congress why Mueller never identified Clinton as the origin of the Russiagate matter, Robert Mueller said “it was not in my purview” to investigate Clinton’s activity. We all watched it unfold live. Everything about the Russiagate narrative and subsequent Mueller probe was built on a foundation of lies and DC corruption, and worse yet – a significant portion of the American people bought into the fraud which is still maintained because a duplicitous corporate media apparatus refuses to admit it. In many ways the Donald Trump political targeting had a similar outcome to the targeting of George Zimmerman. Both were/are transparently innocent of the accusations against them. Both were framed by false narratives sold for political benefit. However, approximately half of the American people still believe the lies despite the clear and convincing evidence to the contrary.

I strongly doubt anything can change the minds of those who believe Trayvon Martin was a teenage victim walking in the rain for Skittles and tea. Leaders in government participated in selling that lie, just like the govt participated in selling the lie of Trump-Russia collusion. Additional messaging, information releases, granular rehashing of details etc. is not going to change the dynamic. A thunder shock is needed to break down the wall of lies that surrounds the framework of plausible deniability. The cornerstone upon which Russiagate was built, was a system of surveillance and spying exploited by a corrupt President Obama administration. If we truly want to confront “Russiagate”, we need to strike directly at the heart of why Obama supported it. More very soon…

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“These conditions were spelled out in Ukraine’s 1990 Declaration of Independence, and Russia and the international community used them to recognize Ukrainian statehood..”

• Lavrov Demands International Recognition Of Russia’s New Regions (RT)

Ukraine must recognize its territorial losses, guarantee the rights of the Russian-speaking population, and agree to a security arrangement that poses no threat to Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. In an interview with the Indonesian newspaper Kompas released on Wednesday, Lavrov signaled that Russia is open to talks with Ukraine, but noted that a “durable peace” is only possible if Moscow’s territorial gains — including Crimea, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, Kherson Region and Zaporozhye Region — are “recognized and formalized in an international legal manner.” The regions overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in public referendums in 2014 and 2022. Lavrov further asserted that peace hinges on “eradicating the underlying cause” of the conflict, which stems from NATO’s expansion and “attempts to drag Ukraine into this aggressive military bloc.”

“Ukraine’s neutral, non-aligned, and nuclear-free status must be ensured. These conditions were spelled out in Ukraine’s 1990 Declaration of Independence, and Russia and the international community used them to recognize Ukrainian statehood,” the foreign minister said. Another cornerstone of a potential settlement is Kiev’s promise to ensure human rights. At present, Kiev “is exterminating everything connected with Russia, Russians, and Russian-speaking people, including the Russian language, culture, traditions, canonical Orthodoxy, and Russian-language media,” he said. He added that Ukraine “is the only country where the use of the language spoken by a significant portion of the population has been outlawed.”

Since the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, Ukraine has taken steps to sever centuries-old cultural ties with its larger neighbor through legislation outlawing statues and symbolism associated with the country’s past and by phasing out the Russian language in all spheres of life. Kiev is also cracking down on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), the largest Christian denomination in the country, which it accuses of maintaining links to Moscow, despite the church declaring a break with Russia in 2022. Ukraine has also rejected any territorial concessions to Russia and continues to pursue its aspiration of joining NATO.

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“Each side presented its perspective on the prerequisites for ending the conflict. The heads of the delegations remain in direct contact. We expect the negotiations to continue..”

For now, this is only about “prisoner exchanges and the repatriation of the bodies of dead soldiers.”.

• Russia and Ukraine ‘In Direct Contact’ – Lavrov (RT)

Moscow and Kiev maintain “direct contact,” and the Kremlin is open to continued negotiations to resolve the conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. In an interview with the Indonesian newspaper Kompas released on Wednesday, Lavrov confirmed that Moscow’s top priority remains settling the crisis via peaceful means, adding that it is taking concrete steps to achieve that goal. Lavrov recalled that Moscow initiated the resumption of direct Russia-Ukraine talks this spring, resulting in three rounds of direct negotiations in Istanbul, Türkiye. He noted that the sides reached “certain progress,” including prisoner exchanges and the repatriation of the bodies of dead soldiers.

“Each side presented its perspective on the prerequisites for ending the conflict. The heads of the delegations remain in direct contact. We expect the negotiations to continue,” Lavrov added, without providing details regarding when the next round of talks could be expected, or what issues would be on the agenda. The foreign minister also noted that Russia and Ukraine had held talks early on in the conflict, which led to preliminary agreements on ending the hostilities, “but then the Kiev regime, following the advice of its Western handlers, walked away from a peace treaty, choosing instead to continue the war.” Moscow earlier accused then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson of derailing the peace process by advising Kiev to keep fighting. Johnson has denied the claim.

Lavrov stressed, however, that a durable peace between Moscow and Kiev “is impossible without eradicating the underlying causes of the conflict,” most notably the threats posed to Russia’s security by “NATO’s expansion and attempts to drag Ukraine into this aggressive military bloc.” “These threats must be eliminated, and a new system of security guarantees for Russia and Ukraine must be formed,” the minister said. Moscow earlier did not rule out Western security guarantees for Kiev, but on condition that they should not be “one-sided” and aimed at containing Russia. Russia has, in particular, opposed the deployment of Western troops to Ukraine under any pretext, arguing that this would be tantamount to moving NATO’s bases towards its borders.

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“I have no message to President Putin. He knows where I stand, and he’ll make his decision one way or the other…”

• Trump Announces Call With Zelensky (RT)

Editor’s note: a previous report stated that President Trump would hold a call with President Putin. US President Donald Trump will hold a phone call with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, the White House has said, clarifying earlier remarks that suggested Trump was referring to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.Asked by reporters on Wednesday about the two-week deadline Trump gave Putin to meet with Zelensky, the US leader said he would hold talks “with him” in the coming days to discuss steps toward resolving the Ukraine conflict.“I’m having a conversation with him very shortly and I’ll know pretty much what we’re going to be doing,” Trump stated. A White House official later told AFP that Trump was referring to Zelensky. “They will be speaking tomorrow,” the official said.

Zelensky and European leaders said earlier in the day that they expected a call from Trump on Thursday. “We’ve already taken strong action, as you know, and in other ways as well. I’ll be talking to him in the coming days, and we’ll see what comes out of it,” Trump added. Trump has sought to end the Ukraine conflict since returning to the White House earlier this year. He held a summit with Putin in Alaska last month. The three-hour talks marked a diplomatic breakthrough, though they produced neither a ceasefire nor a formal peace deal. Trump later met with Zelensky and several European leaders, urging direct talks between Putin and Zelensky. He warned he could impose sanctions and tariffs on both Moscow and Kiev if no progress is made in resolving hostilities.

Asked on Wednesday if he had a message for Putin, Trump replied: “I have no message to President Putin. He knows where I stand, and he’ll make his decision one way or the other…” Trump said he has good relations with the Russian president, and that they would find out how strong their relationship is “over the next week or two.” Putin said on Wednesday he sees “a light at the end of the tunnel” in efforts to resolve the conflict. “We’ll see how the situation develops,” he told reporters in Beijing. The Russian leader added he is ready to host Zelensky in Moscow, but noted that the latter’s presidential term had long expired and said the Ukrainian constitution provides no mechanism for extending his powers.

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“Moscow has expressed skepticism that the West is capable of causing any such outcome.”

“One would think they would not do this or that thing to avoid self-harm. But those dimwits do, pardon my words. Leading world economies are going into a recession just to spite us.”

• Germany’s Merz Demands ‘Economic Exhaustion’ of Russia (RT)

Ukraine’s Western backers should accept that military efforts against Russia are failing and should instead focus on undermining its economy, including by sanctioning its trade partners, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday. Germany remains one of Ukraine’s largest arms suppliers and has pledged long-term backing for Kiev. Despite that support, Russian forces continue to make frontline advances, Merz told the ProSiebenSat.1 media outlet. He argued that the priority should now shift toward intensifying sanctions. “We must ensure that this country, Russia, is no longer able to maintain its war economy,” he said. “In this context, I’m talking about economic exhaustion, which we must help bring about. For example, through tariffs on those who still trade diligently with Russia.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed the comments on Wednesday, writing on Telegram: “Your exhausting rod is not long enough, Herr Merz.” Moscow has touted its resilience to Western sanctions as a hallmark of Russian economic sovereignty and has questioned the logic of politicians who pursue such policies. “Many of the things they do harm themselves,” President Vladimir Putin remarked at a business forum in May. “One would think they would not do this or that thing to avoid self-harm. But those dimwits do, pardon my words. Leading world economies are going into a recession just to spite us.”

Merz’s government plans to cut welfare spending and rely on credit in order to sustain Ukraine aid and increase German military expenditure. The European Union’s biggest economy has shown little growth for years, with no major improvements expected anytime soon. The rejection of Russian pipeline natural gas in an attempt to punish Moscow over the Ukraine conflict has been cited as a major factor in the decline of the competitiveness of German businesses.

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7 deaths in 2 weeks, and no statement from the AfD?!

• German Elections Thrown Into ‘Immense Chaos’ After AfD Deaths Rise To 7 (ZH)

German elections in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia have been thrown into chaos ahead of a Sept. 14 election – after a spate of candidates for Germany’s right-wing AfD have died in recent weeks – with the total now at seven. And while local authorities say there is no evidence of foul play, officials are now scrambling to shred and reprint ballots as campaigns for the deceased have been suspended. According to Welt, Hans-Joachim Kind, 80, a direct candidate in the Kremenholl district, died of natural causes. There has been no cause of death disclosed for four other candidates in the region that has a population of 18 million – as police told Germany’s DPA news agency that the initial four were either from natural causes, or were not being divulged for over privacy concerns.

Two reserve candidates died following the initial four, followed by the death of Kind. The reserve candidates were René Herford, who had a pre-existing liver condition and died of kidney failure, and Patrick Tietze, who committed suicide. Now, ballots must be reprinted and successors appointed, causing what WELT described as “immense chaos.” AfD co-leader Alice Weidel reposted a claim by retired economist Stefan Homburg that the number of candidates’ deaths was “statistically almost impossible.” AfD deputy state chairman in North Rhine-Westphalia, Kay Gottschalk, told WELT, that “We will, of course, investigate these cases with the necessary sensitivity and care,” however there is “no indication” that this is “murder or anything similar,” as some of the deceased had “pre-existing medical conditions.”

The party – which Germany’s domestic spy agency classified as a ‘right-wing extremist organization’ in May, grew to Germany’s second-largest in February’s federal elections, before pausing that description due to an appeal pending in court. In 2022, AfD polled at just 5.4% in a region that’s home to Germany’s industrial base in the Ruhr valley – and which has suffered steep job losses. Now, the party polled at 16.8% in state federal elections last February, while more recent polls suggest the party could nearly match that today. “Either Germany votes AfD, or it is the end of Germany,” said tech billionaire Elon Musk, who threw his support behind AfD in recent days.

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“.. the private economy is contracting at 4–5%. Calling this a recession would be euphemistic — we are in a depression.”

• EU Accelerating Toward Collapse (Kolbe)

The Chancellor seems to have collided with reality during the summer break. Merz sees the German social system in deep crisis. Meanwhile, his political allies in Brussels are calling for an increase in the very dose of poison that is making Europe sick. Let’s be blunt: Large parts of the political elite have a fractured relationship with reality. This applies equally to the economic decay of Germany and the EU, as well as to the public communication of strategic political goals, which are systematically obscured. Open criticism of the course could cause the political fairy tale to collapse faster than reality seeps into public opinion.All the more remarkable are the warning words of Chancellor Friedrich Merz during his Saturday appearance at the CDU state party conference in Lower Saxony. “I am not satisfied with what we have achieved so far – it must be more, it must be better.”

Hear that! A faint tremor of self-criticism from the Chancellor. Rare, indeed. Yet the statement raises the question: what exactly does Merz mean by “achievements”? Is he referring to the so-called investment booster, supposedly providing marginal relief to the German economy while it teeters on collapse? Or does he mean the massive debt packages and widening financing gaps, most likely to be closed with tax hikes? In his speech in Osnabrück, Merz later spoke unusually clearly about the state of the welfare system: “The welfare state, as we have it today, is no longer financially sustainable given what we can deliver economically.” A blunt diagnosis, leaving little to be desired in clarity. There was, however, no mention of a market-oriented turn, trust in individual solutions, personal responsibility, or rapid bureaucratic reduction. The message seems to be: stay the course.

Merz also spoke unequivocally about citizen welfare payments: it cannot continue like this. 5.6 million people receive the payments. Many could work but do not, he said. A reality that politics usually avoids. A tentative attempt to openly name the precarious state of German social insurance. In times when political sugar-coating is routine, it’s almost a stroke of luck when a leading politician at least partially acknowledges economic realities. Have the latest economic data perhaps shaken Merz and his colleagues in Berlin? GDP shrank again in the second quarter, and the outlook remains bleak. With the state intervening via massive credit programs and new debt hitting about 3.5% this year, the private economy is contracting at 4–5%. Calling this a recession would be euphemistic — we are in a depression.

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Hard to see the Supreme Court take sides against Trump, but this looks vague enough: “..a 1977 law that authorizes the president to impose necessary economic sanctions during an emergency to combat an “unusual and extraordinary threat..”

• Trump Escalates Tariff Fight To Supreme Court, Seeks Expedited Review (ZH)

President Trump has asked the Supreme Court to maintain his tariffs after a lower court invalidated them. “The Federal Circuit’s decision casts doubt upon the President’s most significant economic and foreign-affairs policy—a policy that implicates sensitive, ongoing foreign negotiations and urgent national-security concerns,” wrote Solicitor General D. John Sauer in the DOJ’s Supreme Court petition, which has yet to be publicly docketed but was obtained by The Hill. Last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit struck down most of Trump’s tariffs in a 7-4 decision – finding that the president can’t use emergency powers to enact levies on various trading partners.

The admin has asked the SCOTUS to expedite their review – and has asked for an announcement by next Wednesday as to whether the highest court in the land will take up the dispute and schedule oral arguments for the first week in November. Several small businesses and Democratic-led states who filed the lawsuit in question say they have no problem with the Supremes taking up the case or the expedited schedule. The tariffs will remain in place until the Supreme Court decides. Trump slapped various significant tariffs on countries around the world – largely doing so by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that authorizes the president to impose necessary economic sanctions during an emergency to combat an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” The Hill notes.

Citing an emergency over fentanyl, Trump has imposed a series of tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico dating back to February. He later invoked the law for his “Liberation Day” tariffs, citing an emergency over trade deficits to issue levies on goods from dozens of countries. Trump’s tariffs face roughly a dozen lawsuits across the country. The battle at the Supreme Court comes in response to two underlying cases filed by a group of small businesses and Democratic state attorneys general. “Both federal courts that considered the issue agreed that IEEPA does not give the President unchecked tariff authority,” said Liberty Justice Center senior counsel, Jeffrey Schwab, an attorney on the case. “We are confident that our legal arguments against the so- called “Liberation Day” tariffs will ultimately prevail.”

“These unlawful tariffs are inflicting serious harm on small businesses and jeopardizing their survival. We hope for a prompt resolution of this case for our clients.” The Trump administration, meanwhile, has warned the courts not to second-guess his decision as it will undermine his ability to use tariffs as leverage in negotiating trade deals.

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“..we’ll be interested in seeing whether the Treasury market comes under any further pressure if the US has to hand back already received tariff revenues..”

• White House Has Backup Strategy If Trump’s Tariffs Are Overturned: Bessent (ET)

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the White House has plenty of tools at its disposal to implement President Donald Trump’s global tariffs if the Supreme Court does not uphold his use of a 1977 emergency powers law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled 7–4 on Aug. 29 against the current administration’s decision to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as justification for levies on foreign goods unveiled in April. The court’s decision does not take effect until Oct. 14, allowing the White House ample time to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. The IEEPA grants the president broad authority to regulate international economic transactions—regulating imports and exports, freezing foreign assets, or halting financial transactions—after declaring a national emergency.

In a Labor Day interview with Reuters, Bessent stated that while he is confident the high court will uphold the president’s reciprocal tariff agenda, the administration has various options available. “I’m confident the Supreme Court … will uphold the president’s authority to use IEEPA. And there are lots of other authorities that can be used—not as efficient, not as powerful,” Bessent said. He referred to Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, also known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. It contains a trade provision that authorizes the president to impose new tariffs or additional duties of up to 50 percent on foreign products entering the United States for a period of five months if they are determined to threaten domestic commerce.

Bessent said he is planning a legal brief for the U.S. Solicitor General to highlight the urgency of stopping the flow of fentanyl into the country. Pointing to the approximately 70,000 fentanyl-linked deaths per year in the United States, he questioned what would be considered an emergency. “If this is not a national emergency, what is?“ he said. ”When can you use IEEPA if not for fentanyl?”

The senior administration official also intends to argue that persistent trade imbalances will ultimately reach a critical threshold, triggering more immense consequences for the U.S. economy.“We’ve had these trade deficits for years, but they keep getting bigger and bigger,” he said. “We are approaching a tipping point … so preventing a calamity is an emergency.” The last time the United States registered a trade surplus was in 1975. In July, the U.S. goods trade deficit widened by $18.7 billion to $103.6 billion, the largest gap in four months. Imports rose by more than 7 percent to $281.5 billion while exports dipped 0.1 percent to $178 billion.

Long-term U.S. Treasury yields popped on Sept. 2, driven by concerns that the federal government will be forced to repay tariff income and forego potentially trillions of dollars in tariff revenues. Yields on the 20- and 30-year government bonds surged about 5 basis points to around 4.92 percent and 4.98 percent, respectively. “Global trading partners will no doubt find it premature to be celebrating just yet, but we’ll be interested in seeing whether the Treasury market comes under any further pressure if the US has to hand back already received tariff revenues,” ING economists said in a Sept. 1 note. In this fiscal year, the federal government has collected $183.1 billion in tariff revenues, including $31 billion in August.

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He sees a way to win.

• Farage Vows Mass Deportations in UK (Salgado)

Nigel Farage, who aims to be the prime minister of Great Britain, has promised to deport all of the illegal aliens in the UK if he comes to power. “I will deport every single one of them, and that’ll win me the election,” the British politician, head of Reform UK, declared on American television. Unfortunately, because Britain has a parliamentary system, it is even more difficult to vote bad people out of office and good people into power there than it is in America. Farage cannot simply win an election to become prime minister the same way Americans elect their president. However, if Farage does somehow succeed in taking power, he has some ambitious plans for reclaiming his country from the waves of mass migration that threaten to overwhelm it.

Farage went on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News to discuss his goals and strategies for winning elections. And he is certain that mass deportations are a winning message for British voters tired of taking a backseat to violent foreigners. Hannity asked Farage, “One of the biggest issues you are debating is one that Donald Trump ran on here, and he has followed through on. He has secured our southern border. He is deporting criminal aliens. Over a million and a half illegal immigrants have left the country since he’s become president. Tell me what your platform would be on immigration, and do you believe that is the winning formula for you to be the next prime minister and live at 10 Downing Street?”

Farage immediately answered, “Young men come into our country on small dinghies across the English Channel. They throw their passports and iPhones into the sea when they reach the 12 mile line, they come in. They get put in four star hotels. They get three meals a day. And you know what? We don’t know who they are. They pose a threat to our national security. I will deport every single one of them, and that’ll win me the election, oh yes.” Unfortunately, the current UK government just won its court appeal to allow a horde of asylum seekers — that is, unvetted illegal aliens — to remain in an infamous Epping hotel at taxpayer expense. The hotel became a focal point of protests after one of the supposed “asylum seekers” faced accusations of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. Slogans at the protest, which drew thousands of people, included “save our kids” and “send them home.”

Labour Member of Parliament Bridget Phillipson responded to a question as to whether she thought the supposed rights of the illegal aliens were more important than the rights of the local citizens in Epping, and said, “Yes, of course we do.” I suppose she gets points for honesty, but not for anything else. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the UK government seems to agree with her. Hopefully, Farage can indeed successfully inspire such a popular movement in Britain that he and his party will ride to victory in the next election.

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“..as the Speaker said, there are 34,000 pages — we’re doing everything we can to get those uploaded. We want those to be public as soon as possible.”

• Epstein Files Drop: The Left’s Trump Smear Campaign Just Collapsed (Margolis)

Democrats and Republicans have spent weeks demanding the release of the Epstein files. Well, now they’ve got them. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer confirmed that the long-awaited document dump is officially underway, pledging unprecedented transparency and accountability. “Just to give a quick update: I think everyone knows who we’ve subpoenaed thus far in the initial batch,” Comer said. “We subpoenaed six former Attorneys General as well as Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.” Comer confirmed that the scope has since expanded to include former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who oversaw a controversial plea deal for Epstein years ago. “Acosta is coming in, I believe, September the 16th or 19th,” Comer said. “We’ve got that date down. I know that we’ll have a lot of questions for him with respect to an earlier Epstein prosecution that he was involved in when he was U.S. Attorney.”

The chairman also revealed that tens of thousands of pages of records are now in the committee’s possession. “We have the documents — the initial batch that had been sent by the White House. As you know, we also subpoenaed Pam Bondi for those documents. The White House is working with us — I want to publicly thank the White House for turning over so many documents thus far,” he explained. “We’re in the process of uploading those documents for full transparency, so everyone in America can see them,” Comer said. “As quick as we can get them uploaded — as the Speaker said, there are 34,000 pages — we’re doing everything we can to get those uploaded. We want those to be public as soon as possible.” Those pages have since been released.

Comer stressed that the investigation is far from over. “We’re gonna continue to bring in more people. We learned of some additional names today. We’re gonna do everything we can to give the American public the transparency they seek, as well as provide accountability in memory of the victims who have already passed away, as well as those that were in the room, and many others who haven’t come forward.”Comer noted that the committee’s most recent session was remarkably unified. “This was a two-and-half hour discussion. It was as bipartisan as anything I’ve seen in the nine years I’ve been here,” he said. “I appreciate the Speaker for giving us the authority to seek out everything that I think you all want, and the people that I talk to, as I travel America, want. We’re going to do everything we can to get the answers and to do it as soon as possible.”

For years, Democrats quietly hoped they could weaponize the Epstein saga into a Trump scandal, and have failed repeatedly. But with Comer’s committee now unloading tens of thousands of pages for the world to see, that narrative is dead on arrival. Democrats never released the files when they controlled Congress or the White House. Why not? Let’s face it, for the left, this document dump is a gut punch. The smears collapse in the daylight, and the only people with reason to sweat now are the Democrats’ longtime allies connected to Epstein.

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A press conference to -not- talk about what they’ve been barred from talking about.

• Epstein Victims Hold a Strange Press Conference in Washington, DC (CTH)

Twice the Trump DOJ has asked the courts to permit the release of names associated with the case against Jeffrey Epstein and the victims of sex trafficking therein. Twice the courts have denied the Trump administration the ability to release the sealed Grand Jury records. [August 20th] and [July 23rd] Most of the various victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation have previously been paid victim compensation amid various lawsuits including a substantial $290 million financial settlement from JPMorgan Bank in 2023, one of the financial institutions used by Epstein. These lawsuits resulted in what has been reported as ‘various non-disclosure agreements’ (NDAs), which the victims signed.

After the DOJ and congress has released all of the available files, and with various courts refusing to break the seals on names and files within grand jury records, and against the background of multiple victims receiving considerable previous compensation, a group of Epstein victims held a press conference in Washington, DC today demanding the sealed names and NDA covered names be released. The victims would not, most likely because they legally cannot, discuss the names; but they did say they would compile another private list of names of the people to whom they were trafficked. What the purpose of that private list would be is unknown. The entire thing now seems really weird. WATCH:

Some have claimed a comprehensive list of the names in grand jury files or prior lawsuits would include Donald Trump. However, it seems ridiculous to make that assertion given the profile of President Trump in 2016 and 2024. If there was any risk to President Trump, the Clinton campaign would have exploited that vulnerability during the height of the MeToo movement in 2016. Assuredly, even without Clinton, the Kamala Harris campaign would have used that narrative in 2024. Neither political opposition effort ever engaged in such a claim. The Occam’s Razor review of the current state of Epstein victims’ status, is one that points toward extortion. The victims having previously signed agreements, would be at legal risk to violate their various NDAs. However, for the purposes of structuring a political narrative, there are likely revenue sources willing to fund an ongoing victim narrative.

I suspect the lawyers representing the victims in the video (press conference) are likely compensated by the same entities who fund large domestic political operations. The “Republicans” who align with the intention of the efforts, seem to hold a commonality with the same financial interests behind former Republican candidate Ron DeSantis. The victims now seem more akin to political operatives looking for some kind of secondary payday by maintaining a story they are not legally permitted to advance in specific ways. The victim group continually says they will not name the people to whom they were trafficked, which is strange considering the high visibility of their performance and their obvious demand to release grand jury names that could be settled by their own statements releasing names.

Additionally, their claims of imminent fear do not resonate truthfully against the backdrop of their quite happy presentation. The DC event seems like a leverage game of sorts, with some financial benefit as the goal for the victims. For the DC politicians, perhaps a construct to position themselves for some electoral benefit. All of it rather unseemly. There also appears to be a media management operation happening with the group. MSNBC appearance below:

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Tulsi risks her public record becoming a broken record. At some point, people want more than “Clapper and Brennan are baddies” every day. They want them indicted.

• Gabbard Unloads With Both Barrels on Brennan and Clapper (Adams)

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Wednesday again decried those working within the government “who believe that they have the right to undermine the duly elected president of the United States because they disagree with his positions or his policies, and that they know better.” In a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, Gabbard argued that government officials’ “sole focus must be on serving the American people and upholding the Constitution.” In her remarks, Gabbard criticized by name one of her predecessors as director of national intelligence, James Clapper, and former CIA Director John Brennan.

“For me to be here as the eighth director of national intelligence and uncover how James Clapper and others like John Brennan manufactured intelligence to try to undermine President [Donald] Trump’s administration and presidency, and the voices of the American people, and then go back to the founding of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that came about as a result of the terrorist attack on 9/11 and the manufacturing of intelligence to support the regime-change war in Iraq that George Bush led is an interesting bookend,” the former congresswoman from Hawaii said. Gabbard also decried parts of the surveillance state perpetrated on the American people, contending it was abused by some federal officials. “We’ve seen other examples—those that we know of, there are many others that I believe we don’t yet know of—how leaders in the intelligence community and the FBI knowingly use false information to gain FISA warrants to illegally spy on American citizens,” the ODNI chief said.

“These are just a few of, unfortunately, what is a long list of known examples of politicization and weaponization that all point to the truth that many of us here in this room know, which is that the rot runs deep, and it’s not just in the intelligence community,” she said. “I’ve seen examples of this across almost every federal agency, and so it requires us all to confront the uncomfortable truth that we have these conspiracy conspirators, these traitors to the Constitution, who are working within our government, who dangerously believe that they are not only above the law, but that they are above the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” Gabbard continued. Gabbard, 44, a former Democrat-turned-Republican, argued that these rogue government employees are hurting the American form of government.

“It undermines our Constitution, our democratic republic, if we have people within our government who are not the president of the United States, who are not elected by the American people, taking it upon themselves to undermine, ultimately, the American people and the Constitution,” she said. The intelligence chief urged a reorientation of American life and governance to pursuing truth. “I’m grateful to serve in this position, grateful to President Trump for entrusting me with this mission to truly seek the truth, find the truth and tell the truth to the American people, so that true accountability and true change, lasting change can come about,” she explained. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free,” Gabbard concluded, quoting John 8:32 from the Bible.

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Box
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1963165423739732163

Spoonbill

Donkey

Pigs
https://twitter.com/Natie2Natie/status/1963041473945076194

 

 

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