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Debt Rattle April 14 2026

Apr 142026
 
 April 14, 2026  Posted by at 9:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  26 Responses »


Thomas Cole The Course of Empire – The Consummation of Empire 1836


• How Iran’s Mosaic Doctrine Is Fracturing (Zineb Riboua)
• The IRGC’s Seven Fatal Strategic Mistakes (Zineb Riboua)
• To Blockade or Not Blockade, That Is the Question. (Scott Pinsker)
• US Allies Loudly Reject Trump’s Scheme To Blockade Hormuz (ZH)
• Fill’er Up: Trump’s Middle East Master Plan (Stephen Green)
• US Military to Enforce Embargo of What No One Is Supposed to Be Buying (CTH)
• As the Worms Turn (James Howard Kunstler)
• Magyar Beats Orban In Battle For Hungary: What Happens Now? (RT)
• Atkinson Transcripts and Background ICIG Investigative Documents Released (CTH)
• Bank of Russia Disputes Freeze of Assets by EU (TASS)
• Trump Reportedly Planning Mass Pardons Of Administration Officials (ZH)
• White House: ‘Era of Amnesty Is Over’ (Catherine Salgado)

 


 

https://twitter.com/QuantumGuard17/status/2043330005174788222?s=20

 


 

 


 


It can be hard to get reliable information about a far-away war. This looks promising.

Zineb Riboua is a Moroccan Berber who works at the Hudson Institute.

“Iran’s military defeat is in plain sight”


“Zineb Riboua is a research fellow with Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East. She specializes in Chinese and Russian involvement.”

• How Iran’s Mosaic Doctrine Is Fracturing (Zineb Riboua)

Following President Trump’s announcement of a cease-fire, US Central Command (CENTCOM) commander Admiral Brad Cooper stated: “Iran has suffered a generational military defeat.” Tehran’s response has been a single counterargument: the Islamic Republic still stands. That argument mistakes the question. The survival of the Islamic Republic is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether the surviving entity retains the capacity to direct the forces operating in its name.


Iran developed its mosaic military doctrine by drawing direct lessons from Saddam Hussein’s collapse in just twenty-six days. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Iranian Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Jafari reorganized the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in 2008 into thirty-one provincial commands, each with its own weapons stockpiles, logistics chains and pre-delegated authority. Asymmetric warfare is the recourse of states that cannot prevail conventionally. Dispersion and concealment are the tools of a military that has already conceded the conventional battlefield.

Israel, operating alongside the United States in Operation Epic Fury, mastered asymmetric tactics and turned Iran’s own doctrine against it, employing intelligence penetration, targeted eliminations and network disruption with superior precision. The clearest demonstration came before the operation began. In July 2024, Israel assassinated Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh inside a Revolutionary Guard guesthouse in Tehran. Iran’s security services must now operate under the assumption that they do not know the extent of the compromise and that uncertainty is the most debilitating condition an intelligence service can face. Operation Epic Fury then pushed that penetration to its extreme.

The killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the elimination of hundreds of senior IRGC commanders and the degradation of the Quds Force’s extraterritorial capacity together constituted a decapitation campaign of unprecedented precision. More importantly, fractures between Iran’s political leadership and its military have already surfaced publicly. On March 7, 2026, President Masoud Pezeshkian issued a televised apology to Arab Gulf states for missile and drone strikes conducted during the conflict, pledging that further attacks would cease. That a sitting president apologized for his own military’s actions within minutes of their execution illustrates precisely what pre-delegated authority has produced: a military that the political leadership must answer for rather than control.

Three vulnerabilities now compound one another. The first is the mosaic doctrine’s foundational limitation under sustained pressure. The doctrine solved the problem that Saddam could not, preventing decapitation from producing immediate collapse. It never solved attrition. The mosaic delays the timeline of dissolution but leaves the dissolution itself intact. The cease-fire arrived at a moment of Iranian weakness, and the pressure that produced that weakness remains available to Washington. The Islamic Republic knows that each day the cease-fire holds, it does so on terms that Washington can revise. The second vulnerability is structural.

The mosaic doctrine distributed resilience horizontally across provincial land commands, but the IRGC’s functional branches — its navy, air force, missile corps and cyber and intelligence directorates — each represent a distinct accumulation of “tiles” with separate supply chains and command structures.The United States has dismantled these branches sequentially rather than simultaneously, degrading each functional pillar while removing leadership at the center. The result is a system weakening from two directions at once: horizontal provincial networks loses coherence as the vertical command spine collapses, and neither compensates for the deterioration of the other.

The third vulnerability is financial, and the most immediately exposing. The IRGC’s ability to sustain operations and evade sanctions has depended on Hezbollah and the broader proxy network to move money and provide the transactional infrastructure linking the center to the periphery. That system has been degraded. Iran’s shadow fleet — the network of vessels moving sanctioned oil through falsified documentation and ship-to-ship transfers — has faced intensified US interdiction. China-linked front companies that provided financial cover to the IRGC have been sanctioned in successive rounds by the US Treasury.

On March 31, dozens of money changers linked to the IRGC were arrested across the United Arab Emirates following the escalation of Gulf tensions after Iranian strikes, severing one of the regime’s most critical cash arteries. A network that cannot pay its operators does not remain in a network for long. Washington enters the cease-fire holding all the cards: military dominance, financial strangulation and a regional architecture that has isolated Tehran from the Arab world it once sought to mobilize.

Iran’s response has been to threaten the Strait of Hormuz, the final lever a regime reaches for when it has exhausted all others. That threat is a measure of desperation, not strength. The operation has not concluded, but the conditions for Iranian defeat are in place. The entity that emerges from what comes next will bear little resemblance to the Islamic Republic that launched its doctrine of resistance four decades ago. What remains depends entirely on whether Tehran meets Trump’s terms.

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Zineb Riboua from last week. “Seven critical miscalculations have left the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reeling, while U.S. and regional forces tighten their grip.”

• The IRGC’s Seven Fatal Strategic Mistakes (Zineb Riboua)

The first strategic mistake was the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s logic was that sustained pressure on global energy flows would ignite the markets and force Trump to recalculate, withdraw, or watch the Gulf states turn against American operations out of economic self-preservation. But Trump has publicly declared that opening the strait is “not for us,” instead calling on European allies who rely on the strait to “go get your own oil.” His threat on Sunday to bomb Iranian power plants made it even more clear that the strait’s closure will not cause an American retreat.


These declarations carried a meaning beyond the immediate military context. Trump is running two operations simultaneously: one against the IRGC, and one against the assumption that the United States will indefinitely underwrite regional security at its own expense. His threats to leave NATO, vow to send the IRGC back to the stone age, and triumphalist mid-operation address thanking Gulf partners for their support are not the improvisations of an undisciplined communicator. They are the deliberate signaling of a strategic repositioning, designed to press allies into assuming greater responsibility abroad. The operation itself is a demonstration of what American military power can accomplish when it decides to act without hesitation.

Trump is also using the Strait of Hormuz crisis to accelerate something the administration has sought from the beginning: a Middle East in which American allies assume primary responsibility for their own neighborhood, freeing Washington to concentrate its strategic attention on the Western Hemisphere. Burden sharing was long treated as a European conversation about defense spending. The Strait of Hormuz has just expanded the terms of that project to the entire Eastern hemisphere by including Gulf countries as well.

The Hormuz gambit has also alienated Beijing, which is losing patience with Iran’s active disruptions to Chinese energy supply lines. The purpose of any military operation is to improve your own posture or degrade the enemy’s calculus in your favor. The IRGC achieved neither, and in the attempt, accelerated its own isolation on every front simultaneously.

The second strategic mistake was time. The IRGC likely assumed that Trump’s stated desire for speed signaled an appetite for a fast exit, and that the organization could survive by dragging out negotiations, delaying any serious accommodation, and outlasting American political resolve through attrition. But time cannot be purchased in a war where American strikes are hitting command and control infrastructure at its foundations and frontline units are receiving no meaningful replenishment. The IRGC has made a career of mistaking American restraint for American weakness, and the cost of that error is now being denominated in destroyed batteries, dead commanders, and a command architecture that grows less coherent with each successive wave of strikes.

The third strategic mistake was tempo. In nearly every crisis in the past two decades, the IRGC’s strategy has been to control the pace of escalation with its adversaries, calibrate pressure, and determine when and how confrontations would intensify or recede. But that model depends on a predictable opponent. Trump has demolished that predictability, and the range of American military options—from additional carrier groups and Marine landing forces to airborne troops and an ever-expanding list of targets—have multiplied more quickly than the IRGC can adapt. As Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said last week, “Our adversary right now thinks there are 15 different ways we could come at them with boots on the ground. And guess what? There are.” The IRGC now finds itself reactive, off-balance, and unable to dictate the terms of the next exchange.

The fourth strategic mistake was overestimating its capacity to reinvigorate the Arab world against a joint American and Israeli operation. The IRGC’s regional theory of legitimacy rested on the proposition that Arab populations in the Middle East could be mobilized against American and Israeli military action in ways that would constrain Gulf rulers and force them to distance themselves from Washington. But the Abraham Accords architecture has proven more durable than Tehran anticipated, and the Arab street has failed to materialize as a meaningful strategic variable in any theater that mattered.

The fifth strategic mistake was information warfare. We’ve seen this play out before. After October 7, Hamas and Hezbollah seeded social media with fabricated footage, manufacturing narratives of resistance among Western audiences. But the illusion of battlefield success became an internal liability, feeding a leadership culture in which accurate damage assessments were suppressed in favor of narratives that preserved morale at the expense of strategic clarity. The IRGC is repeating the pattern, trying to win the battle of public opinion even as it loses the one on the ground.

The stakes are considerably higher this time, because the propaganda apparatus is operating against a backdrop of acute domestic crisis: runaway inflation, capital flight, water scarcity, and an economy in structural collapse. An organization that cannot accurately assess its own battlefield losses is even less equipped to reckon with the degree to which the Iranian population it claims to protect has already stopped believing in the institution meant to govern them.

The sixth strategic mistake was the assumption that China would serve as a meaningful backstop when the pressure became acute. Intelligence reporting indicates that Beijing has continued to provide data support to the IRGC, and Chinese technology remains embedded in what survives of Iran’s surveillance architecture. But this cannot compensate for the IRGC’s structural deterioration, and China appears unwilling to escalate its material support to a level that invites direct American economic retaliation. Thus, the IRGC is accumulating losses faster than any external partner is willing or able to replace them.

The seventh strategic mistake, and the one most structurally irreversible, was Iran’s decadeslong strategy to build its offensive and defensive architecture almost entirely around a proxy network that the U.S.-Israeli campaign has systematically dismantled. Hezbollah entered the current war already severely diminished from its 2024 confrontation with Israel, its leadership decimated and its southern Lebanon infrastructure severely damaged. The Syrian buffer that Iran spent years and billions of dollars constructing has collapsed entirely, and American and Israeli forces have degraded the Houthi operation in Yemen past the point of meaningful military utility.

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Q: Is blockade (also) a verb?

• To Blockade or Not Blockade, That Is the Question. (Scott Pinsker)

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
—William Shakespeare’s Hamlet


Nothin’ like a good existential crisis, eh? Because if you remember your high school English teacher (or used Cliff’s Notes; I’m not here to judge), Hamlet was asking whether it’s better to live or die. “To be, or not to be.” Which is the exact same question President Donald Trump wants Iran to consider: Make a deal and surrender your nuclear ambitions, “you crazy bastards,” or I’ll shoot you in the frickin’ head. The trouble is that Iran isn’t taking Trump seriously. For many reasons — most notably, self-preservation — the mullahs are incentivized to stall, drag their feet, and negotiate in bad faith because it accomplishes three things:

1) Communicates to the Iranian people that the regime is still strong and powerful. (Capitulating too quickly would communicate the opposite, risking rebellion.)
2) Increases the economic pain points in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. (The longer the conflict, the greater the financial chaos — and thus the political cost to Trump.)
3) With global sentiment/polls strongly opposing Israel and America, Iran’s negotiating position will grow stronger over time. (So the longer they wait, the more they’ll gain.)

This led to Iran seizing the Strait of Hormuz and blockading access. Which then led to Trump blockading their blockade with a blockade of his own. It’s a blockade of a blockade! We’ve gone from 4D chess to 4D blockades. Will it work? The New York Post says yes: “Trump Brilliantly Calls Iran’s Bluff — With His Own Strait of Hormuz Blockade” Whoever’s calling the shots in Iran wasted yet another chance for peace over the weekend, and now President Donald Trump will again call Tehran’s bluff.Iran’s negotiators refused to satisfy America’s demands Saturday in talks in Pakistan, as regime leaders bet that playing the Strait of Hormuz card would get Trump to blink. Instead, he played it right back at them — announcing his own blockade, so that Iran’s oil exports (which had continued despite the war) will also be blocked.

[…] They assumed America would be help captive by conventional wisdom; our president proved them wrong. Trump once again tried to reach a peaceful settlement; the Iranians again refused: Now they’ll pay yet a higher price for thinking they could get him to chicken out. Bloomberg says no: “The Hormuz Blockade Is a Throwdown the U.S. Can’t Win” For a man who understands the power of leverage, Donald Trump is being remarkably slow to recognize the influence Iran has gained in the Strait of Hormuz. The US president’s threat to complete its closure by blocking Iranian exports through it, too, is far more likely to drag him deeper into a politically damaging war than to force Tehran’s capitulation.

[…] [T]he president will at some point have to recognize some hard truths: He has not won yet, he does not have a clear military path to doing so and neither he, nor the global economy, can afford to keep Hormuz closed.

[…] For now the unfortunate reality is that the regime has “the whip hand,” as the former head of Britain’s MI6 Alex Younger put it last month. That isn’t because it is stronger than its enemies, but because it knows it can block Hormuz and is more willing to inflict the resulting economic pain on its own people than is Trump or other nations around the globe.The US administration needs to recognize it cannot hope to get a quick win in these circumstances, even if it blockades all trade with Iran through Hormuz.

Question for the readers: Which outlet is right and which one is wrong? Answer from the writer: Yes. The New York Post is correct: Trump’s blockade of a blockade deprives Iran of profiting from ransom payments and/or selling any oil, thus increasing its economic suffering. It weakens one of the mullah’s biggest bargaining chips. If you assume that Iran is negotiating in good faith, weakening the mullahs’ bargaining position makes tactical sense. But Bloomberg is also correct: It’s extraordinarily unlikely that Trump can blockade his way to victory, especially in the short term. More likely than not, the blockade would have to last months — if not years — to bear fruit, and for a candidate who ran on the platform of “no more forever wars,” that’s not an attractive option.

Besides, the economic pain will be shouldered unevenly, with the nations that actually care about the welfare of their people screaming far louder than the mullahs. Iran doesn’t mind suffering — as long as everyone else suffers, too. If you assume that Iran is negotiating in bad faith, a blockade of a blockade is an incremental tit-for-tat escalation that increases everyone’s pain points without bringing us any closer to a real solution. In other words, it’s a waste of time.

Perhaps a smarter strategy is to hit the mullahs with a threat they dread far more than a blockade. I’m talking about the two words that have horrified Americans since the Iraq War of the early 2000s: regime change. But not Iraqi-style regime change, where we plant U.S. soldiers overseas and try to build a new government from the ground up in a foreign land. That’s regime building, not regime change. I simply mean smashing the current regime.

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They’re proud of not securing their own energy. That won’t last.

• US Allies Loudly Reject Trump’s Scheme To Blockade Hormuz (ZH)

The United Kingdom and several other countries rejected Washington’s plan to impose a blockade on Iranian ports and target ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, which has gone into effect Monday. Prime Minister Keir Starmer made clear his stance that “we are not supporting the blockade” in a fresh interview with BBC Radio. He emphasized that the UK is not “getting dragged in” to the US-Israeli war against Iran, but still stated that it’s “vital that we get the strait open and fully open.”


As fully expected Spain’s government also condemned the US move, with the country’s Defense Minister Margarita Robles having said, “It’s just another episode in this downward spiral we’ve slipped into,” adding that Trump and Netanyahu “want to impose rules on the international community, which is illogical.”Earlier we reported that France is working with the UK on a conference to organize a “strictly defensive” and “peaceful” mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

President Emmanuel Macron said, “As regards the Strait of Hormuz, in the coming days, together with the UK, we will organize a conference with those countries prepared to contribute alongside us to a peaceful multinational mission aimed at restoring freedom of navigation in the strait.” He added, “This strictly defensive mission, separate from the warring parties to the conflict, is intended to be deployed as soon as circumstances permit.” Still, Paris has rejected a US request to join a military coalition to forcibly reopen the strait, essentially paralleling Britain’s position.

At the same time Germany has not weighed in strongly one way or the other. A German government statement has said that “The US military’s announcement did not mention a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, but rather a blockade of Iranian ports – that is a different approach.” Meanwhile, Turkey has strongly opposed the blockade and called for renewed diplomacy, while China too is warning against escalation and urged stability.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced it would begin a blockade “of all maritime traffic entering and exiting” Iranian ports starting at 10:00am Eastern Time on Monday. It added, “The blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. CENTCOM forces will not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports.”

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“.. we just sort of… you know… made another Persian Gulf?”

• Fill’er Up: Trump’s Middle East Master Plan (Stephen Green)

“The spice must flow.” Fans of Frank Herbert’s Dune know that melange makes interstellar travel and trade possible. Its only source is the desert world of Arrakis, which makes it the most valuable real estate in the known universe. The spice is addictive. Arrakis is home to crusading religious fanatics whose supreme leader holds the spice hostage.If you’re thinking, “That sounds an awful lot like Persian Gulf oil,” Herbert is way out ahead of you.mPresident Donald Trump gets it. But what if, instead of spending another 40 or 50 years letting religious fanatics keep a stranglehold on the world’s supply of melange — er, oil — we just sort of… you know… made another Persian Gulf?


And called it the Gulf of America? Well, here it is: “Hundreds of supertankers, the kind that carry two million barrels each, are currently racing toward the US Gulf Coast from every direction, Atlantic, Indian Ocean, around Africa, the scenic route, the ‘we were heading to Saudi Arabia but never mind’ route,” Jesús Enrique Rosas noted this weekend. While most people — including Yours Truly — were focused primarily on last week’s ceasefire and whether the Islamic Republic would actually increase its stranglehold on the flow of Gulf oil, actual oil buyers adjusted accordingly.

“The more Iran leans on Hormuz, the faster global energy flows reroute around it. Over time, that erodes Tehran’s leverage and cuts into its long-term power,” Osint613 posted Sunday. That “Master Plan” bit from the headline is mostly hyperbole. Supporters and critics alike — the honest critics, that is, who deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act — understand that Trump acts as a chaos agent. He knows the end result he wants, even if sometimes only broadly defined as “Make America Great Again.” The established rules and methods don’t allow for that, so Trump is happy to blow things up (sometimes literally), and see what can be rebuilt from the pieces.

The thing about that Persian Gulf stranglehold is that, like the Sword of Damocles, it’s most effective before it’s used. Now that Tehran has tried (and only partly and temporarily succeeded) in closing the Strait of Hormuz, “About the only escalation option the IRGC has is to renew its missile and drone attacks on neighboring Gulf states,” as my Hot Air colleague Ed Morrissey put it on Monday. But “Trump has an escalation for that as well: Bridge and Power Plant Day. Let’s see how long it takes for Iran to provoke it.”

Looking at the bigger picture, Rosas also wrote: “Iran played its biggest card and the main result is that the United States became the world’s emergency gas station and China’s cheap energy subsidy evaporated. The spice — er, oil — must flow. But Trump rewrote the rulebook about where it flows from. This is where “Drill, baby, drill” meets MAGA foreign policy, so to those America Only people still fuming that Trump isn’t (and never was) an isolationist, now do you get it?

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Blockade started yesterday.

• US Military to Enforce Embargo of What No One Is Supposed to Be Buying (CTH)

Oil and gas sales from Iran are under international sanction and not supposed to be taking place. However, oil and gas sales from Iran -violating the sanctions- have been taking place. CENTCOM is announcing that the U.S. military will now ensure the oil and gas from Iran doesn’t move. The U.S. will physically enforce the pre-existing global sanctions. A blockade begins tomorrow morning.


TAMPA, Fla. — U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces will begin implementing a blockade of all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports on April 13 at 10 a.m. ET, in accordance with the President’s proclamation. The blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. CENTCOM forces will not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports. Additional information will be provided to commercial mariners through a formal notice prior to the start of the blockade.

All mariners are advised to monitor Notice to Mariners broadcasts and contact U.S. naval forces on bridge-to-bridge channel 16 when operating in the Gulf of Oman and Strait of Hormuz approaches. (SOURCE) Oil and gas from Kuwait will be allowed transit and passage. Oil and gas from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar will also transit without issue. However, oil or gas from Iran will be blocked. China takes the biggest hit, again. The target now is to cut off the Iranian money supply. This blockade is happening against the little discussed backdrop of Dubai (UAE) targeting Iranian money changers.

DUBAI – The arrest of dozens of IRGC-linked money changers in the United Arab Emirates is one of the most serious blows yet to Tehran’s sanctions-evasion network, laying bare how heavily the Islamic Republic has depended on Dubai as an economic lifeline. Sources familiar with the matter told Iran International that UAE authorities detained dozens of money changers tied to financial entities linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, shut down associated companies and closed their offices.

The crackdown follows days of mounting regional tensions and comes after other measures targeting Iranian nationals, including visa revocations and tighter travel restrictions through Dubai. For years, Dubai has served as Iran’s main offshore financial artery, where oil proceeds, petrochemical revenues and rial conversions were turned into dollars, dirhams and euros beyond the reach of the country’s battered domestic banking system.“This is going to be a real problem for Tehran because Dubai was an economic lung for the Iranian regime,” Jason Brodsky of United Against Nuclear Iran told Iran International. “That is economic pressure and diplomatic isolation in a way that the UAE is able to employ against the Iranian regime, and it will have a very considerable impact.”

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“They’re holed up in a bank demanding three large pizzas, a helicopter, and a personal phone call from Sydney Sweeney. . . .”— Greg Gutfeld on Iran’s negotiating position

• As the Worms Turn (James Howard Kunstler)

The Russians have a phrase for it: negotiation-incapable (ne peregovorosposobny). That is what the Iran delegation demonstrated during a long day of talks with the US team over the weekend in Islamabad. What part of “no nukes” didn’t they understand? All of it, apparently. The corollary question on the table — arguably more pressing for Iran — was: how much more punishment are you willing to suffer to sustain your dream of atomic bombs? You have no defenses left, no control of your air-space. Do you just want to sit in the dark for the next hundred years?


Such is the obduracy of the Shia death cult. They have no friends left in the world. Russia, you think? Not really. That relationship was pegged to geopolitical dynamics that are dead and gone. Russia is much better off normalizing relations with the USA so we can both be safe and secure in our spheres of influence. Europe is busy committing suicide. In this situation, China is little more than Iran’s very unhappy customer. Maybe Uncle Xi Pooh Bear can try talking some sense to whoever is left in-charge at the IRGC. . . give up your lunatic bomb dreams and just re-open the dingdang gas station! Pretty Please!

Anyway, why interfere with US operations in Hormuz? The USA is wresting control of the Persian Gulf from these maniacs who can’t be trusted to just stay open for business. Japan, the two Koreas, Indochina, India, also have to stand by with mounting frustration as these jihad-happy idiots starve Asia’s economies. A change in Iran’s attitude can’t happen soon enough and Mr. Trump is on the case. The blockade starts at 10a.m. today, Monday. Whatever’s left of Iran’s revenue stream goes out the window. Maybe they lob some rockets and drones at our ships. Maybe they hit something, maybe not. We’ll see where they launch from and that will be the end of X-number of remaining launch sites. Then there are the bridges, the power plants. FAFO mofos.

About those 1000 pounds of 60-percent enriched uranium (their precious bomb fixings). . . . You must imagine that it is either buried deeply under the rubble of Fordoz and Isfahan, or maybe distributed in many secret hidey-holes all over the place. . . or perhaps sitting booby-trapped somewhere. In short, there are many reasons to think that no special forces operation will be able to get at it. So, the only other conclusion is that Iran must be driven to a place where they will surrender the stuff willingly themselves. That could be a harsh place.

[..] Rumored to be released this week by the House Intelligence Committee: the transcript of former Intel Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson’s testimony about events that led to Impeachment #1 of Donald Trump in 2019. The transcript has been locked away in a vault since October, 2019. Tulsi Gabbard rooted it out. The shadowy Atkinson played a crucial role in positioning “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella to spark off charges of the “Ukraine quid pro quo” phone call against the president. Ciaramella was then a CIA agent planted in the National Security Council. He may have been involved earlier in co-authoring the fake Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that kicked off the RussiaGate hoax in 2017. For Impeachment #1 Atkinson reportedly changed the whistleblower rules to allow Ciaramella to convey second-hand hearsay from sketchy NSC member Col. Alexander Vindman to Rep. Adam Schiff, then chairman of the House Intel Committee. The chain of actions suggests the impeachment was a CIA setup. The CIA director at the time was Avril Haines. Ms. Haines ran the London CIA field office during the period when former MI6 agent Christopher Steele was concocting the notorious Steele Dossier at the center of RussiaGate. It has long been suspected that RussiaGate was a joint CIA / MI6 operation. Isn’t it about time that Avril Haines sat for a deposition in these various matters? It might be nice to know if our main Intel Agency was involved in serial schemes to overthrow the US government.

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This changes the meaning of “election” in any European country. The EU killed it all. Hard to get back. They’ll come in wherever they want.

• Magyar Beats Orban In Battle For Hungary: What Happens Now? (RT)

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar has pulled off a stunning victory in the country’s parliamentary election, with his Tisza party beating Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz by more than 16 points. The result is set to dramatically change Hungary’s relations with the EU, Russia, and Ukraine. Just over an hour after polls closed on Sunday, Orban called Magyar to congratulate him on his win. With 92% of the ballots counted on Sunday night, Tisza was leading with 53.72% of the vote, ahead of Fidesz with 37.67% – a result in line with opposition-friendly pre-election polls.


Magyar campaigned on ending corruption, funding public services, and restoring ties with the EU. Orban promised to continue his program of tax breaks for citizens and levies on corporations, all while pledging to keep Hungary out of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. His campaign cast Magyar as a tool of the EU, who would cut off Hungary’s access to cheap Russian energy and back Brussels’ escalatory policies toward Moscow. A record 77.8% of eligible Hungarians voted, the highest turnout in any election in Hungarian history. Thanks to this unprecedented level of participation, “the democratic mandate of the next National Assembly will be stronger than ever before,” Gergely Gulyas, the Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office, told reporters.

“What the result means for the fate of our country and the nation, and what its deeper or higher meaning is, we do not know now, time will decide,” Orban told supporters in Budapest. “No matter how it turns out, we, as opposition, will serve our country and the Hungarian nation.”

Will Hungary maintain close relations with Russia?
This is highly unlikely. Magyar’s allies in the opposition media collaborated with EU spies to run stories of supposed Russian interference in the election, and Magyar led crowds in chants of “Russians, go home!” But he also said he will have to interact with Moscow, because “the geographical position of neither Russia nor Hungary will change.” Rhetoric aside, Magyar is unlikely to embrace a policy of open hostility toward Moscow, but his desire to mend ties with the EU will in all likelihood result in Budapest dropping its opposition to the bloc’s €90 billion ($105 billion) loan package for Ukraine – a decision that will be poorly received in Russia.

Will Hungary get the cold shoulder from the US?
Viktor Orban is a close ideological ally of US President Donald Trump, who dispatched Vice President J.D. Vance to Budapest to campaign for his reelection, and promised to use the “full economic might of the United States to strengthen Hungary’s economy” if Orban won. With Magyar in charge, Hungary will no longer be the darling of the MAGA movement, but relations between the two countries will likely remain cordial.

Will Magyar open Hungary to more immigrants?
Highly unlikely. Orban’s hardline immigration policies are exceedingly popular in Hungary, and Magyar has attacked the prime minister on immigration from the right, criticizing his decision to allow 35,000 guest workers into Hungary from outside the EU. It remains to be seen whether Brussels will pressure Magyar into accepting asylum seekers, and whether the liberal Western media criticizes him as intensely on the issue as it did to Orban.

How quickly can the EU release billions of euros it withheld from Hungary?
The EU is currently withholding around €20 billion in funding from Hungary, citing concerns over judicial independence, corruption, and Orban’s ban on LGBTQ propaganda. Magyar is on track to win the two-thirds majority necessary to modify Hungary’s constitution and implement the judicial reforms demanded by Brussels, but the EU will ultimately decide if and when to release the money. Additionally, Magyar has stayed quiet on LGBTQ issues, and any attempts to liberalize Hungary to meet the EU’s demands may prove unpopular with Hungarians. For Magyar, accessing this money is crucial. His program of spending on healthcare, education, and other public services depends entirely on the release of the funds.

Will Hungary be able to cancel its contracts for Russian oil?
Russia supplies almost 90% of Hungary’s oil and slightly more of its gas, and provides nuclear fuel for the Paks Nuclear Power Plant. The EU has mandated that its member states completely cut themselves off from Russian energy by the end of next year, but Hungary’s contracts with Russia extend to 2035. Magyar has promised to end Hungary’s reliance on Russian energy, but only when the contracts expire. However, he may be unwilling to continue Orban’s policy of obstructing EU sanctions packages to secure exemptions for Hungary, which will essentially force a cutoff before 2035.

Will the EU now be able to steal Russia’s frozen assets?
No. Despite Orban being portrayed in the media as the sole obstacle between the EU and its plans for Ukraine, the decision on whether to steal the roughly €210 billion in Russian assets frozen in the EU is an unpopular one. Leaders including Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Slovakia’s Robert Fico, and the Czech Republic’s Andrej Babis all oppose the measure, as does Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, whose country the assets are impounded in.

As such, the EU is banking on its €90 billion debt-financed loan to keep Ukraine afloat. With Orban out of the picture, Brussels will likely be able to secure unanimous support for the loan, unless Fico or Babis object.

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7 years old. “Without DNI Gabbard, these documents would never have seen sunlight.” What do you mean, justice? Get ’em all, Tulsi!

• Atkinson Transcripts and Background ICIG Investigative Documents Released (CTH)

Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has retrieved, reviewed, declassified and forced the release of internal background documents related to the Intelligence Community’s collaborative effort to impeach President Donald J Trump in 2019. The HPSCI wants to take political credit for the release; however, the HPSCI was forced into this position by the diligent work of Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Without DNI Gabbard, these documents would never have seen sunlight. This type of public information release is exactly why DNI Tulsi Gabbard has been targeted by friend and foe alike.


WASHINGTON, D.C.— Today, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released two declassified transcripts from 2019 hearings with the former Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson, following a security review from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The Committee received the declassified transcripts from the ODNI the evening of Friday, April 10, 2026. These transcripts are from two hearings held to examine Atkinson’s role in an alleged whistleblower complaint, which ultimately led to Democrats’ first impeachment efforts against President Trump in December 2019. (link)

Looking closely at the information in these three documents makes it clear why the HPSCI never wanted them released. Both current and former members, including Republicans, are tied to a pattern of willful blindness, knowing the details yet choosing to stay silent for months and even years afterward. Former HPSCI Chairman, then HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes was a participant in the testimony. Former HPSCI member, now CIA Director John Ratcliffe was a participant in the testimony. Former HPSCI staff, now FBI Director Kash Patel was a participant in the testimony. [Think about it]

Principle Players – The National Security Council leaker was Alexander Vindman. The CIA “Whistleblower” was Eric Ciaramella. The Intelligence Community Inspector General was Michael Atkinson. There is a lot of information to review as the documents include:
(1) The CIA complaint from Ciaramella and subsequent ICIG investigation. (pdf)
(2) The first interview of the ICIG Atkinson by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), dated September 19, 2019. (pdf)
(3) The second interview of ICIG Atkinson dated October 4, 2019. (pdf)

In total there are about 450 pages of documents and transcripts to read and review. The story they tell is remarkable as it outlines how internal people within the various intelligence agencies of the United States government, collaborated and used their positions of responsibility to target a sitting president for impeachment and removal. nIn short, in addition to all the “Spygate” surveillance and “Russiagate” wrongdoing, these documents highlight the real and actionable activity by the U.S. Intelligence Community to work collaborative with congress during their targeting of President Trump.

Do not lose sight of the forest while surrounded by the details of the trees. I will share much more detail about what evidence the documents show and put that detail into the context of what it means. Unfortunately, there are some alarming realizations about how our government operates and the false entities within it who claim a position to fight against the corruption, while keeping their mouths shut about specific evidence of corruption. Much more will follow, but right now I need to pray a little bit and maybe go for a walk.

Please begin to read the releases and share your thoughts in the comments below. There are more documents that need to surface, more stuff that I will never relent from locating and finding methods to bring it out. In the interim, thank you to Tulsi Gabbard for the painful truth we all need to absorb.

Read more …

it has to be declared grossly illegal at some point.

• Bank of Russia Disputes Freeze of Assets by EU (TASS)

The Central Bank of Russia disputed the freeze of Russian assets and charged the EU Council with the infringement on division of powers, violations of EU laws and procedure, and decision-making in absence of required competencies. Such wordings are contained in the statement of claim registered by the EU Court of Justice on February 27.


“The applicant argues that the regulation was adopted on an incorrect basis, in so far as Article 122 TFEU [Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union] cannot constitute a valid basis for the measures adopted since, substantively, they fall within the scope of restrictive measures against an entity of a third State and should have been based on Article 215 TFEU, which requires unanimity of the members of the Council. The use of Article 122 TFEU therefore constitutes a flagrant circumvention of the specific institutional framework provided for by the Treaties for the purpose of adopting such measures, in infringement of the division of powers and the institutional balance,” the statement of claim indicates.

The Bank of Russia demands cancellation of the decision to freeze sovereign assets and payment of legal costs by the EU Council.

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You can bet Trump is planning everything very meticulously. He did no mass pardons the first time around.

• Trump Reportedly Planning Mass Pardons Of Administration Officials (ZH)

Donald Trump has reportedly promised to pardon virtually his entire White House staff before leaving office, and the radius keeps growing. What started as a quip about anyone within 10 feet of the Oval Office has ballooned into something considerably more sweeping. “I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval,” Trump allegedly said to a room of aides in a recent meeting, drawing laughs, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The report claims that staffers who raise the possibility of congressional investigations or prosecutions into policy decisions tend to hear about whether preemptive pardons are on the table.


The unconditional power to pardon is one of the most sweeping powers offered to the presidency. This term, Trump has wielded clemency far differently than any other president, dispensing some 1,600 grants to date. Many have gone to allies and donors, or those who had hired them, coming after a social pull-aside or a round of golf. Some have received bipartisan criticism, including one to a crypto billionaire whose company boosted Trump’s own digital-currency company, and another to a former Honduran president convicted of conspiring with cartels to ship cocaine to the U.S. In Trump’s first term, he signed fewer than 250 pardons and commutations.

The president has repeatedly raised the specter of pardons with White House aides and other administration officials, particularly when staff have suggested they could face prosecution or congressional investigations over decisions, people familiar with the comments said. Trump is known to joke about matters that he later seriously pursues, and the frequent references have led some aides to believe he is serious about the pardons, too.

They certainly have reason to be worried that Democrats will attempt to weaponize their powers to launch endless investigations. They’ve repeatedly promised to do so. In response to Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries not only promised to prosecute ICE agents and Trump administration officials.

None of this happened in a vacuum. Trump reportedly weighed pardoning White House officials in the chaotic days after January 6, 2021, but decided against it. He later told advisers he regretted that decision. Democrats viciously went after Trump allies, rioters, and even Trump himself.

Critics will certainly want to treat this as a constitutional crisis in progress. But before the outrage fully crystallizes, it’s worth noting who opened the door. Joe Biden issued sweeping preemptive pardons for top officials and family members at the end of his term – including his family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the entire January 6 Select Committee – citing the possibility of DOJ scrutiny under Trump. Michael LaRosa, a former communications aide to Biden, had the intellectual honesty to say the quiet part out loud, saying, “By testing the boundaries of the pardon power, Biden cracked the door open and we can’t now complain about Donald Trump walking through it, even if he blows it wide open.”

The White House, however, is dismissing the Wall Street Journal’s report. “The Wall Street Journal should learn to take a joke,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “However, the President’s pardon power is absolute,” she added.

While the White House clearly doesn’t want to confirm the story, there’s reason to believe that even if Trump was joking, there’s a serious point behind it—and Joe Biden effectively gave him cover to act on it. The informal norms governing the pardon power took a significant hit during Biden’s final weeks in office. Trump declined to go that far when he left office in 2021, but with Democrats openly signaling plans to target his officials if they regain power, he may now feel compelled to act to protect them from what he sees as a weaponized justice system.

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From “Mass Pardons” to no amnesty. We have it all.

• White House: ‘Era of Amnesty Is Over’ (Catherine Salgado)

“No more activist judges shielding criminal illegals. No more endless delays. Only results.” The Trump White House is celebrating multiple massive immigration enforcement wins that signal the era of mass migration and mass amnesty is over. Since Donald Trump came back into office, federal authorities have removed three million illegal aliens from the United States through ICE deportations or voluntary deportations, which is the biggest reduction in illegal migration in modern history, according to a White House press release on April 9. This is exactly what the American people voted for. This is the sort of reform we hoped to see when immigration became one of the top issues in the 2024 election.


Besides the three million deportees, border officers have not released a single illegal alien into the United States at our borders for 11 straight months. The “era of amnesty is over,” indeed. The overwhelming majority of asylum claims have long been fraudulent, and that is one major area where the Trump administration implemented reform. The U.S. immigration authority now grants asylum in only 7% of cases, slashing the number of criminals and illegal aliens who tried to use asylum claims as a free ticket into our country. In contrast, under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the government approved over 50% of asylum claims, according to the release.

I will give just two illustrations of why this is a big deal. First, just this week, the U.S. State Department revoked the lawful permanent resident status it had granted to Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, the niece of mass-murdering Iranian jihad leader Qasem Soleimani. Afshar had obtained residency and a life of luxury in the United States by claiming asylum here. Yet she repeatedly returned to Iran and regularly spouted pro-regime propaganda, illustrating how bogus her asylum claim was. And second, back in 2024, an Ecuadoran “asylum seeker” raped a 13-year-old at knifepoint in New York. These are only two examples of how broken our asylum system was before the Trump administration took over.

The White House release also highlighted the following wins:
• Deportations and removal orders are surging: In fiscal year 2025, immigration courts issued nearly 500,000 removal orders — a 57% increase over the prior year — as criminal illegals are removed faster and in far greater numbers than ever before.
• The massive court backlog is being slashed: Hundreds of thousands of cases have already been cleared since Inauguration Day, with reductions accelerating every month — ending the years-long delays that let illegals remain indefinitely.

And, as noted above, the Trump administration has successfully closed our borders. The White House press release enthusiastically concluded, “President Trump promised to end the open borders nightmare — and he is delivering on that promise with unrelenting force. The era of catch-and-release, mass releases, and activist judicial amnesty is over.” As we celebrate the 250th year of America’s existence, there is no better time to reflect on what national sovereignty and security mean.

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Debt Rattle April 12 2026

Apr 122026
 
 April 12, 2026  Posted by at 9:21 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Thomas Cole The Course of Empire – The Savage State 1834


• Vance Says Iranian Regime Won’t Make a Deal (Salgado)
• VP Vance Departs Pakistan After Failing To Read Deal With Iran (ZH)
• Trump ‘Preparing’ US Military If Talks Fail (ZH)
• Several US Warships Reportedly Transit Strait of Hormuz (ZH)
• For Entertainment Only – The Firehose of Crazy (CTH)
• Since the Iran War Began, Trump’s Popularity With Boomers Has Climbed (Pinsker)
• Who’s Afraid of Emmanuel Macron? (J.B. Shurk)
• The US Separation From Europe And NATO Is Long Overdue (Alt-M)
• “Create a Crisis”: Sponsor an Anti-ICE Campaign (Turley)
• How the Russiagate Blueprint Has Been Unleashed Against Orban (RT)
• Women Step Forward to Outline Swalwell’s Sexual Assault History (CTH)
• Women Step Forward to Outline Swalwell’s Sexual Assault History (CTH)
• Eric Swalwell’s Political Future is Collapsing Fast (Matt Margolis)
• Tesla Gets FSD Supervised Approved in the Netherlands (Electrek)

 


 

https://twitter.com/BalazsOrban_HU/status/2042715739669348539?s=20

 


 


We didn’t expect a deal in 24 hours. It must look difficult. The US needs to hand Iran the words that say whoever’s in charge there didn’t really lose. They must save face.

• Vance Says Iranian Regime Won’t Make a Deal (Salgado)

In the least surprising international news this week, Vice President JD Vance provided an update Saturday night on his negotiations with the Iranian regime that included confirmation of that regime‘s refusal to make any reasonable deal. “The bad news is we have not reached an agreement,” he told the press.


“We just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms. I think that we were quite flexible. We were quite accommodating,” the vice president stated. But unfortunately, when you deal with genocidal terrorists, flexibility is not likely to end with peace. There is only one language jihadis understand. And now the whole world can see how absolutely determined the Iranian regime is to have war and how totally opposed they are to peace. Vance said that the failure to strike a deal will be much worse for the Iranian regime than for us.

Within two hours of the ceasefire announcement, the Iranian regime was already bombing multiple countries in the Middle East, especially Israel. It also refused to track down and disable the mines it scattered in the Strait of Hormuz, while simultaneously demanding massive tolls from countries that send ships through the strait. Throughout every step of the process this week, the Iranian regime has been arrogant, demanding, defiant, and irrational.

Vance, who went to Pakistan with Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to talk with the representatives of the murderous mullahs, said April 11 U.S. time, “We leave here with a very simple proposal, a method of understanding that is our final and best offer. I won’t go into all the details, because I don’t want to negotiate in public after we negotiated for 21 hours in private, but the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon.”

He emphasized, “That is the core goal of the President of the United States, and that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations.” The Iranian regime has spent almost half a century not only enforcing domestic tyranny but building up a global terrorist network. They are fanatical fundamentalist Muslims, who believe Allah has given them a mission to destroy Judeo-Christian civilization. As tragic as it is, the Iranian regime will never want peace with America and Israel. Of course that is what we want, but we have been waiting for 47 years for the Iranian regime to aim for it as well, and they never have.

The vice president confirmed that he will be returning to the United States after the failed negotiations. “We’ve made very clear what our red lines are, what things we’re willing to accommodate them on and what things we’re not willing to accommodate them on. And we’ve made clear as we possibly could. And they have chosen not to accept our terms,” he stated. President Trump told the press previously, “Let’s see what happens — maybe they make a deal, maybe they don’t. It doesn’t matter. From the standpoint of America, we win.” It is not clear what the Trump administration plans to do next, however.

Read more …

“.. they are LOSING, and LOSING BIG! Their Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, their Anti Aircraft apparatus is nonexistent, Radar is dead, their Missile and Drone Factories have been largely obliterated along with the Missiles and Drones themselves and, most importantly, their longtime “Leaders” are no longer with us..”

• VP Vance Departs Pakistan After Failing To Read Deal With Iran (ZH)

Iranian media are striking a cautiously optimistic tone on the progress of the talks. They say there was progress on implementation of the ceasefire in Lebanon, technical negotiations that went beyond generalities and now an exchange of texts that would put any progress in writing. To be sure, the US side has been much quieter, and sticking points may come into focus once they’re in black and white. Teams of experts joined the main negotiators after about an hour, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. Those technical discussions in Islamabad focused on the Strait of Hormuz, a potential ceasefire extension and phased sanctions relief. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency says, citing its reporter at the venue.


“The issue of the Strait of Hormuz is one of the points facing serious disagreement”, adding that the US delegation “hindered progress” during the text-exchange stage with “its usual excessive demands” Talks have reportedly mostly avoided the core issues that the Trump administration said drove it to war, according to a US official and a Pakistani official familiar with the matter. Those issues include Iran’s support for armed proxies, and the nuclear and missile programs that were at the heart of Trump’s stated reasons for attacking Iran beginning Feb. 28. “We have goodwill, but we do not have trust,” Ghalibaf told reporters after arriving in Islamabad, according to Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency.

“In the upcoming negotiations, if the American side is prepared for a genuine agreement and to grant the rights of the Iranian nation, they will see readiness for an agreement from us as well.” Tasnim said that Tehran’s 71-member delegation also included the Islamic Republic’s central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati. Also on the agenda will be the fate of Iran’s uranium stockpile and missile production, as well as US sanctions against the Islamic Republic and broader military presence in the Middle East. Many of those issues were the same ones the two sides failed to resolve in February negotiations before the war began.

Iran’s deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi says Tehran has entered negotiations from a position of strength, arguing that the war on Iran had failed to deliver decisive strategic gains for the US. Trump – as we detailed below – made it clear he sees Iran ‘holding no cards’.

US Starts Clearing Mines In Strait of Hormuz
Seemingly confirming President Trump’s earlier comments on “clearing out the Strait”, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed that two U.S. missile destroyers started clearing mines in the Strait of Hormuz on April 11 as peace talks kicked off between Washington and the Iranian regime “Today, we began the process of establishing a new passage and we will share this safe pathway with the maritime industry soon to encourage the free flow of commerce,” CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper said in a statement Saturday. The American ships included the USS Frank E. Peterson (DDG 121) and USS Michael Murphy (DDG 112).

CENTCOM revealed that the mission on Saturday is part of a broader goal to make the crucial waterway, located on the southwest coast of Iran, clear of sea mines laid by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Saturday’s confirmation about the mine clearing came hours after a United States government vessel was spotted entering the Strait of Hormuz, according to the ship-tracking intelligence platform Marinetraffic.com. It’s not clear if this was related to CENTCOM’s mine-clearing mission.

Trump Announces Start Of “Clearing Out” The Strait As A “Favor” To RoW
Earlier reports appears to have been confirmed as three US officials have stated to The Wall Street Journal that two U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, marking the first transit of American warships through the waterway since the war began six weeks ago. President Trump took to social media to explain what was going on. But first, he clarified a few things to the ‘fake news media’…

“The Fake News Media has lost total credibility, not that they had any to begin with. Because of their massive Trump Derangement Syndrome (Sometimes referred to as TDS!), they love saying that Iran is “winning” when, in fact, everyone knows that they are LOSING, and LOSING BIG! Their Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, their Anti Aircraft apparatus is nonexistent, Radar is dead, their Missile and Drone Factories have been largely obliterated along with the Missiles and Drones themselves and, most importantly, their longtime “Leaders” are no longer with us, praise be to Allah!

The only thing they have going is the threat that a ship may “bunk” into one of their sea mines which, by the way, all 28 of their mine dropper boats are also lying at the bottom of the sea. Having got all that off his chest, he then confirmed the operation to open the Strait:We’re now starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz as a favor to Countries all over the World, including China, Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, and many others. Incredibly, they don’t have the Courage or Will to do this work themselves. Very interestingly, however, empty Oil carrying ships from many Nations are all heading to the United States of America to LOAD UP with Oil. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

But he wasn’t done with that. A few minutes later he followed with a shorter pithier version of the same narrative: The Fake News Media is CRAZY, or just plain CORRUPT! The United States has completely destroyed Iran’s Military, including their entire Navy and Air Force, and everything else. Their Leadership is DEAD. The Strait of Hormuz will soon be open, and the empty ships are rushing to the United States to “load up.” But, if you listen to the Fake News, we’re losing! Iran explicitly informed the Pakistani mediator during talks that if the vessel continued its movement it would be targeted within 30 minutes and the Iran-US negotiations would be damaged.

Read more …

Trump “Proclaims Iran Has ‘No Cards’ As Delegates Arrive In Islamabad”

• Trump ‘Preparing’ US Military If Talks Fail (ZH)

A delegation of top Iranian officials has arrived in Islamabad ahead of ceasefire talks with the United States in the Pakistani capital, Iranian state television reported on Friday. The delegation was led by Iran parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, along with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and other security and economic officials, state broadcaster IRIB said on its website. It reiterated Iran’s position, however, that talks would only begin if Washington accepts Iran’s preconditions.


Vice President Vance left Friday for Pakistan and the biggest challenge of his career: negotiating a deal with Iran to solve the nuclear dispute and end the war.”This is a big deal for JD. He is going to the Super Bowl,” one U.S. official told Axios. Mr Vance will lead the American delegation in Pakistan on Saturday, alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law.They will attempt to solidify a temporary ceasefire agreed this week. Before boarding Air Force Two to fly to Islamabad, Mr Vance said Mr Trump would not be at the talks but had set “pretty clear guidelines” for his team. He said: “As the president of the United States said, if the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we’re certainly willing to extend an open hand. If they’re going to try to play us, then they’re going to find that the negotiating team is not that receptive.”

Trump Claims Iran has ‘No Cards’ …but does the White House actually believe this? He suggested that if the Iranians hadn’t agreed to negotiate, they would be dead (cue wiping out entire “civilization” threat from earlier).

Trump Warns Attack on Iran Will Continue if Tehran Doesn’t Comply
President Trump has confirmed to the NY Post that he’s preparing the US military for what would likely be a bigger Iran operation should Tehran not comply, and should Pakistan talks fail. “We’re going to find out in about 24 hours. We’re going to know soon,” Trump told the Post when asked if he thinks the talks will be successful. Already there’s a lot of back and forth over the 10-point plan on the eve of the summit, and with both sides now in Islamabad. A main point of contention remains whether Lebanon is part of the two-week ceasefire agreement. There’s also been much speculation that all of this is just ‘cover’ for a bigger build-up of Pentagon forces in the region. Also, Iranian forces are no doubt using the opportunity to regroup.

Ghalibaf Demands Attacks on Lebanon Cease Or Else…
Iran Parliament spokesman Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, considered the official who is likely running the country day-to-day, says there will be no negotiations before the following:
1) ceasefire in Lebanon
2) release of Iran’s blocked assets: “release of Iran’s blocked assets prior to the commencement of negotiations.”
Oil jumped on the news. This as some sporadic Israeli bombings of Lebanese territory have persisted into Friday, despite talk of an Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, with talks expected in Washington next week. It’s unclear whether Tehran and its negotiating team which just touched down in Pakistan will hold to this or not.

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De-mining has started.

• Several US Warships Reportedly Transit Strait of Hormuz (ZH)

Just as indirect talks kick off in Islamabad, a shocking and surprise development is being reported by Axios’ Barak Ravid, though this is not confirmed:


If accurate, are we witnessing Trump suddenly pile on more leverage before negotiations even get off the ground? It seems like the Iranians would have noticed several US Navy warships passing. Either they held off attack for the sake of pursuing peace, or this was truly done ‘stealthily’ and Iranian capabilities are degraded to the point they may have ‘missed’ it. Or is this an attempt to muddy the negotiations? Sabotage? Ravid after all has long stood accused of pushing an Israeli agenda in his reporting.

Talks Begin with Indirect Format Mediated by Pakistanis
By Saturday afternoon (local), the highest-level US-Iran-related talks since the 1979 Islamic Revolution have kicked off in Islamabad. Vice President JD Vance met Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif just ahead of the negotiations, and also senior Iranian officials were greeted by Sharif and other Pakistani leaders. Iran’s delegation is led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The engagement by each side has begun indirectly.

Pakistan has made clear it is working to facilitate direct negotiations between the US and Iran to fully bring to an end the six-week war in the Middle East. Sharif hailed both sides’ commitment to engaging constructively, and “expressed the hope that these talks would serve as a stepping stone toward durable peace in the region,” his office stated in a news release.

“Vance was joined for the bilateral meeting by special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner,” CNN reviews. “Sharif was joined by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sen. Mohammad Ishaq Dar, along with Interior Minister Sen. Syed Mohsin Raza Naqvi, according to a news release from the Pakistani prime minister’s office. There was no press coverage of the meeting.”

Read more …

“If people are not careful, their stability will be personally defined by Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Alex Jones and a lot more. We become what we consume, both physically and mentally.”

• For Entertainment Only – The Firehose of Crazy (CTH)

Several months ago, I was asked to assist with what was called a “firehose of crazy.” I don’t ordinarily pay attention to the goofy stuff, and I didn’t look at most of the citations being referenced. That said and with recent events in view, I have a new appreciation for what that meant.


When President Trump responded to the goofball diatribe of Alex Jones, what he apparently was referencing was a segment Jones put out on his podcast when he first requested the administration to intervene and use the 25th amendment to remove Trump. Mr. Jones followed that call for the 25th amendment, by saying he wanted administration officials to conduct a soft-coup against the President of the United States, because Trump wasn’t following his advice.

President Trump rightly responded to the quackery of the podcast world, and collectively they have lost their mind over it. In response, Jones is now saying Melania Trump is planning to divorce Donald Trump {CITATION}, and then, if President Trump says one more bad thing, Jones’ is going to unleash his podcast audience to destroy the President of the United States. Folks, these characters are not psychologically stable people. This is a level of weird only evident now because Trump decided to address it. I mean think about it. Stop for a moment, pull back from social media, and think about the stability of mindset here:

Tucker Carlson decides it’s a value to his position to attack Reverend Franklin Graham?Megyn Kelly decides it’s a value to her position to support attacks on Charlie Kirk’s wife? Alex Jones decides it’s a reasonable discussion to talk about organizing JD Vance to take control of the government using the military. Laura Loomer decides it’s a value to her position to attack anyone who she defines as not supporting the government of Israel. One of her targets is Tulsi Gabbard. Mark Levin decides it’s a value to his position to convince the President of the United States to undermine and remove the sitting Director of National Intelligence because his priority aligns with Loomer. All because they disagree with decisions President Donald Trump has made about dealing with foreign policy issues.

I don’t usually watch any of these podcast groups or their internecine battles du jour. But c’mon, these are not stable people. It might be entertainment for many people, but algorithms pushed “for you” are not real life. This stuff, all of it, is just plain goofy.

If this is representative of the minds that have been trying to push “information” into the Trump administration, well, yeah, that would be a ‘firehose of crazy‘. These are not serious people. They are not alone, not by a long shot; there’s a whole infrastructure of crazy voices chasing money that’s provided by a big tech algorithm intentionally designed to promote it. The professional UniParty in DC is watching this unfold with a very big smile on their face. It is very clear where this algorithmic identity tracking and micro-targeting is going. If people are not careful, their stability will be personally defined by Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Alex Jones and a lot more. We become what we consume, both physically and mentally.

Read more …

Do boomers remember Khomeini as well as Khameini? Trump does. Trump doesn’t want to leave the world with -the legacy of – Khomeini.

• Since the Iran War Began, Trump’s Popularity With Boomers Has Climbed (Pinsker)

It’s eye-opening, because 50 was the magic number in a Pew Research poll on Israel from earlier in the week: Overall, 58% of Republicans have a positive view of Israel — but for Republicans aged 18 to 49, 57% have an unfavorable view. So something age-related is going on, splitting popular opinion. From Newsweek: Donald Trump Scores Approval Rating Boost With Boomers President Donald Trump is narrowing his approval gap with older voters, as new polling shows a steady improvement among Americans age 65 and over. […]


Older voters are among the most reliable participants in U.S. elections, and even small shifts can carry outsized political weight. Changes in this group come as foreign policy dominates headlines and economic pressures hit generations unevenly. Trump’s approval rating among Americans age 65 and over has risen steadily over the past three months, according to a series of Economist/YouGov polls. My theory? Boomers and Gen Xers rely on social media as a primary news source significantly less than Millennials and Zoomers. We’re the last two generations that watched cable TV, read newspapers, and listened to talk radio. We’re political omnivores. All that content we absorbed shaped our worldview. How could it not?

For Millennials and Zoomers, if their favorite YouTuber didn’t talk about it — and it never appeared in their TikTok/Reddit feed — then it didn’t really happen. As such, it makes them uniquely susceptible to digital psyops campaigns. And that’s something Iran does extremely well. It’s led to a profound cultural shift: Thirty years ago, all the good-hearted liberals were protesting for Tibet. Nobody was cooler than the Dalai Lama! At every award show, Hollywood’s biggest celebrities virtue-signaled by shouting, “Free Tibet!” Today, nobody cares.

Between Tibet-related content being shadow-banned (or outright banned) from social media and/or entertainment companies submitting to Chinese censorship, Tibet is an afterthought. All those good-hearted liberals went from “Free Tibet!” to “Free Palestine!” So perhaps Newsweek’s reporting indicates that Americans who are actually knowledgeable about Iran’s anti-American history are most appreciative of Trump’s efforts. Remember, Operation Epic Fury didn’t begin until Feb. 28:

In the earliest of the three surveys, conducted February 6 to 9, Trump posted a net approval rating (those who approve of his job performance minus those who disapprove) of minus 12 among adults 65 and older. In that poll, which surveyed 1,730 U.S. adult citizens and carried a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 43 percent of respondents in the age group approved of his job performance, while 55 percent disapproved. Which means, pre-war, Boomers were 43% positive, 55% negative.

A month later, the March 6 to 9 Economist/YouGov poll showed improvement. Among voters age 65 and over, 45 percent said they approved of Trump’s performance and 53 percent disapproved, narrowing his net rating to minus eight. That survey included 1,563 U.S. adult citizens and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.After the first few days of the war, Trump’s popularity ticked up by two points. Instead of deeming it “disgusting and evil,” Boomers nodded in cautious approval.

The trend continued into early April, with the most recent poll, conducted April 3 to 6, showing Trump’s approval rating among those 65 and older on the rise again, reaching 47 percent approval and 52 percent disapproval. The net rating of minus five marks his strongest showing with the age group this year. That survey was based on a sample of 1,750 U.S. adult citizens and carried a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points. [emphasis added] And by April 6 — a full month into the war — Trump’s popularity ticked up yet again. The longer the war goes on, the more Boomers seem to support it.

It’s eye-opening because D.C.’s conventional wisdom was always the opposite: Time isn’t on the president’s side. A long war will be a political nightmare. If Trump doesn’t find an offramp post-haste, the GOP will get slaughtered in the midterms. The public is paranoid that Iran will be another “Forever War.”For Boomers, at least, that’s simply not true. They want a solution to the Iran problem — because they recognize that it’s a real problem. You can’t let Islamic nutjobs divide the atom.If those maniacs ever gain a nuclear weapon, the world is in deep trouble.

It also suggests the next PR move for the Trump administration: It needs to invest in an information campaign that’s tailored to the sensibilities of Millennials and Zoomers. That means penetrating the YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit echo-chambers. MAGA messaging must meet voters where they are — and Zoomers are spending 6.6 hours a day consuming digital content. A Truth Social post, a Fox News TV interview, and a primetime speech aren’t enough to win their hearts and minds. Because the more the audiences know about Iran, the more they’ll support the president.

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Europe’s weak leaders made Europe weak.

• Who’s Afraid of Emmanuel Macron? (J.B. Shurk)

French President Emmanuel Macron is doing that peculiar French thing again…acting tough while looking weak. He gave a speech last Friday at Yonsei University in Seoul during which he demanded that nations not become “vassals” of China or the United States. Macron wants South Korea to join Canada, Australia, and the European Union in forming what he calls a “coalition of independence” (because “coalition of the willing” was taken) united by shared love for “international order,” “democracy,” and wasting money on “climate change.”


What a tool. I understand that “the powers that be” have so successfully co-opted the West’s political systems that they regularly install absolute nincompoops as nominal leaders (Biden, Starmer, Carney, Merz, and European Queen Ursula, just to name a few) and call it “democracy,” but Macron is such a doofus that his “leadership” is laughable.

Remember when the little Rothschild banker came to power a few months after President Trump had taken office and he couldn’t stop talking about standing up to “bullies”? After putting on some high-heeled loafers and taking some lessons on masculinity from his former-schoolteacher-turned-much-older-wife, Macron insisted on turning a handshake with Trump into a death grip meant to showcase French power. In that effete style of speech that Gaulish-Roman aristocrats enjoy — in which words sound as if they’re dropping from lips suckling grapes and licking honey — le petit fromage told the world that his fierce handshake and determined stare were the perfect weapons for countering President Trump. Trump just laughed and patted the little French boy on the shoulder as one does to help the weak feel strong.

Fast-forward a decade, and Macron hasn’t learned a thing about being tough. He still prances around the world like a eunuch looking for long-lost cojones. He says he wants countries to resist the “hegemonic powers” of China and the United States by clinging to the rules-based “international order.” Okay. Good luck, tiny dancer.

What’s left of the international order without the two most powerful nations on the planet? The United States has assumed the responsibilities of the globe’s police chief since WWII. Through its naval fleet, it ensures the security of maritime trade. Through its economic clout, it ensures the stability of the international financial system. Through its military might, it decides which dictators get black-bagged in the middle of the night. As China continues its geopolitical ascent, its tentacles have stretched further into international organizations such as the United Nations’ World Health Organization and across continents with its Belt and Road Initiative. Mark Carney has spent his time as Canada’s prime minister practically groveling at the feet of China’s Xi Jinping and begging the communist dictator to save his wintry vassal state from the bad orange man down south.

France, on the other hand, continues to be ejected from former African colonies whose peoples have grown tired of French meddling. The French military excels only at surrendering. And France remains distinct from Germany only because of the United States. When little Macron insists on restoring a French-led “international order,” he sounds a lot like little Napoleon, who insisted on being called “emperor” while imprisoned on Saint Helena.

As for urging all who hear his grating voice to unite in defense of “democracy,” that’s a lark! Europe is where “democracy” goes to die. Every time non-Establishment political parties win the most votes in former nations (now just multicultural zones of Islamic conquest within the federation of European nothingness) such as France, Germany, and the Netherlands, “the powers that be” proudly block the winners from exercising any power.

Europe’s political class shamelessly calls this the “firewall” against “far-right” political parties. Of course, if you believe that nations should have borders and that government powers should be limited, you are designated “far-right.” Just as Democrats bastardize language in the United States by calling everyone who cares about the Bill of Rights a “fascist,” the European Establishment labels anyone who believes in self-determination and personal liberty a “Nazi sympathizer.” Then they prosecute the members of those fake “far-right” parties for expressing opinions out loud.

That’s right! Europe’s little gang of dimwitted yet dangerous dictators — Macron, Starmer, Merz, and the ruling queen — insist on locking up the “fascists” for their speech in the name of “democracy”! When the “firewall” fails — as it did in Romania a little over a year ago — the European oligarchy simply cancels the election and insists on a rigged do-over (or outright overthrows the government as it did, with the help of the U.S. State Department and CIA, in Ukraine in 2014).

When little European tyrants such as Macron stand on footstools, puff out their chests, and shriek about “democracy,” they have no intention of supporting the decisions of the people. What they mean is, let’s form a European Commission of aristocrats, have them choose a ruling monarch, and call that a “democratic” election. That’s how the nations of Europe lost their sovereignty and why the people of Europe must now bow down to unelected Queen Ursula von der Leyen.

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They expect America to lead NATO into WWIII.

• The US Separation From Europe And NATO Is Long Overdue (Alt-M)

As much as many centrists and libertarians are opposed to Donald Trump’s ongoing strikes against Iran, I have to say, the downstream result might end up becoming one of the most libertarian results I have ever seen. For decades, small government activists like those in the Ron Paul movement have been calling for a comprehensive US divorce from NATO and the shutdown of America’s military bases overseas. Trump has, either deliberately or inadvertently, set this very process in motion.


The refusal of most of Europe (and Australia) to provide support in the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz might seem like geopolitical orbiting – In other words, getting involved could hurt them more than it would help them. Of course, these nations are far more exposed to the Hormuz closure and the slowdown in energy exports than the US. You would think their interests would demand a securing of the strait. Europe is already struggling for energy resources due to the Ukraine war (a war they are deeply involved in), and this is where we stumble upon the ideological disconnect.

Europe’s Goal Is WWIII And They Expect America To Maintain The Status Quo
Europeans are perfectly willing to engage in war tensions with Russia while risking energy inflation and WWIII, all over a country that had minimal strategic or economic importance to them before the conflict. They have consistently called on the US to provide weapons and funding and intel to the Ukrainians, which we have obliged. And, they have called for American troops to stand at the forefront should a wider war erupt. NATO and European governments love America…but only as a shield that benefits them. To be clear, it’s true that years ago NATO allies invested troops and equipment into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but one could also argue that, at that time, the establishment was in sync on both sides of the Atlantic.

There was no large scale movement to cut foreign aid scams (like Trump shutting down USAID). There was no movement to secure borders and prevent mass immigration. There was no movement against globalism beyond a handful of us in the alternative media working diligently to expose the truth. In the era of the early 2000s, the status quo was in full effect and Europe was happy to help in the Middle East. Today? Not so much. The status quo has been disrupted.

Once The Cash Stopped Flowing Our “Friends” Became Scarce
It’s not surprising that once the cash stopped flowing so easily from American pockets, suddenly all of our “allies” went sour. Cuts to USAID and various foreign subsidy programs have created a shockwave in the global order. Even I have been stunned by the level of dependency of foreign nations on US monetary injections. Once these programs started shutting down, the panic was palpable. And, once Trump demanded NATO countries start paying their fair share (5% of GDP), the breakdown in relations began. Many European social welfare programs exist exactly because they don’t have to pay for their own military defense.

The tariffs are another point of hypocrisy. Nearly ALL major European countries and economies have enforced tariffs and duties on US products for the past 60 years. When those same countries face tariffs imposed by the US, suddenly tariffs are an “act of aggression” and a line in the sand. Trump is called an economic “bull in a china shop”, but he’s only doing to them what they’ve been doing to us for generations. Once again, the moment the status quo changes even a little and other nations are held to a similar standard, our friends no longer want to be our friends.

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ICE=government.

• “Create a Crisis”: Sponsor an Anti-ICE Campaign (Turley)

“Create a crisis.” That call is made in a new campaign sponsored by the American Association of University Professors to force “colleges to drop their contracts with ICE’s key corporate enablers.” Despite years of criticism over the purging of faculty ranks of conservatives and libertarians, university professors continue to double down on far-left ideology that is now an orthodoxy in higher education. I previously wrote about the AAUP’s ideological shift in my book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. After that book, the AAUP then selected Todd Wolfson, a far-left activist, as its new president.


Wolfson ran on the pledge to make AAUP a “fighting organization” for social change. After his selection, Wolfson has called Trump supporters “fascists” and demanded boycotts of Israel. Given that history, it was little surprise to see the AAUP’s sponsorship of this campaign, as reported by the College Fix. The campaign is also funded by Coefficient Giving, associated with liberal billionaire Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna. They have been criticized for reportedly funding groups pushing defund police and other radical agendas.

AAUP joined this campaign with Young Democratic Socialists of America, Sunrise Movement, and the Workplace Justice Lab at Rutgers University. It includes a toolkit instructing students to “create a crisis for university admin through an escalating campaign.” The campaign seeks to organize to combat the “Trump regime” and its “terrorism”: “When students and workers join together in action, we can force our schools to stop funding and normalizing ICE collaborators and take down the whole regime.” They are targeting companies such as Enterprise, Flock, ICE Air Carriers, Hilton, and Target.

The campaign states further that “ICE, and the Trump regime generally, cannot function without the consent and collaboration of the business world. Breaking companies from ICE is the central axis for generating enough leverage to stop the regime’s terrorization campaign.”= So university professors are funding a campaign that actively seeks to create a crisis on campuses. It takes a position as an organization that immigration enforcement is a form of terrorism. The silence among faculty is deafening. Rather than objecting that the AAUP should focus on issues related to academic freedom and protections for its members, there have been virtually no objections to the organization’s ideological agenda.

It is evidence of the new orthodoxy in higher education and the refusal of administrators and faculty to make any meaningful change in their intolerance for opposing views. Many departments no longer have a single Republican faculty member in this academic echo chamber. A Georgetown study found that only 9% of law school professors at the top 50 law schools identify as conservative — almost identical to the percentage of Trump voters in the new poll. There is little evidence that faculty members are interested in changing this culture or creating greater diversity at schools. In places like North Carolina State University, a study found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans 20 to 1.

Yale University has finally achieved the academic version of Nirvana, a state of perfect peace and enlightenment. A recent study found that the faculty had finally purged every Republican donor from its ranks.According to a recent report from the Buckley Institute, there is now not a single Republican found across 27 of 43 departments at Yale University. In a nation roughly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats (with a slight advantage to the GOP), only 3 percent are Republicans across all Yale departments.

The hostility to opposing views is impacting our students. A new study offers additional data on this problem, showing that almost 90% of students misrepresent their views in class and on assignments to satisfy faculty by adopting more liberal views. In the meantime, the small number of dissenting faculty have no real voice, particularly among legal academics. I have previously written about the similar liberal agenda of the American Bar Association despite plunging membership among lawyers. The ABA now represents just 17 percent of the bar.

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Elections today, April 12.

• How the Russiagate Blueprint Has Been Unleashed Against Orban (RT)

The shadow campaign to swing the Hungarian election against Viktor Orban escalated with the scandal over the wiretapping of Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto. The case offers a rare look into how bureaucrats, journalists, and spies run a regime-change operation in real time. Three weeks out from the April 12 elections, the political opposition to Orban scored what seemed to be a win, when Politico and the Washington Post ran articles alleging that Szijjarto had phoned Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with “live reports on what had been discussed” at multiple EU meetings. The reports cited anonymous “European security officials.”


Neither Orban nor Szijjarto make any secret of their desire to maintain cordial relations with Moscow, particularly on matters of energy security and the peace process in Ukraine. However, when bundled with more outlandish claims – that Russian “election fixers” are already embedded in Budapest, for example – the reports paint a picture of a government compromised by the Kremlin.Orban’s leading opponent, Peter Magyar, has repeated these claims in his speeches. After the Szijjarto story broke, he accused the foreign minister of “betraying Hungarian and European interests,” and threatened him with “life imprisonment” for treason, should his Tisza party win the election. All it took was one leaked audio file for the scheme to unravel.

The Szijjarto wiretapping plot
In an audio file released by Hungarian conservative outlet Mandiner, opposition journalist Szabolcs Panyi can be heard telling a source how he passed Szijjarto’s phone number to “a state organ of an EU country.” Once they had this number, he explained, agents of this country were able to extract “information about who that number spoke to, and they see who is calling that number or who that number is calling.” In a Facebook post, Panyi confirmed that he was the person on the recording. He said that he was asking his source whether she knew of any alternate numbers used by Szijjarto or Lavrov, “so that I could compare them with information received from the national security service of a European country.”

Panyi’s confession explained how the “European security officials” were able to track Szijjarto’s phone conversations before feeding the information to Politico and the Washington Post. Orban immediately announced an investigation into the wiretapping. We are dealing with two serious issues, the PM stated the same day as Panyi’s post. There is evidence that Hungary’s foreign minister was wiretapped, and we alsohave indications of who may be behind it. Szijjarto explained that as the EU’s longest-serving foreign minister, he regularly speaks to Lavrov with messages from his colleagues in the EU. The real scandal, he said is that a Hungarian journalist is colluding with foreign secret services in order to wiretap a member of the Hungarian government.

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No leaders, no democracy. And soon no fuel.

• What Is Fueling Unrest Across The EU? (RT)

The EU is sliding into a fuel crisis driven by a global supply shock caused by the US-Israeli attack on Iran. It has already triggered protests, early signs of shortages, and warnings of the wider economic impact. This has resulted from the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical route for global energy shipments. Oil prices surged above $120 per barrel during the escalation, and while crude fell below the $100 mark after a two-week US-Iran ceasefire was announced on April 7, it remains well above the $70 level before the war. Prices have remained volatile amid uncertainty over the truce and continued disruption to shipping through the strait.


Diesel and kerosene have emerged as the central pressure points in the crisis. Europe’s benchmark diesel and jet fuel prices have risen above $200 per barrel equivalent from below $100 in January, according to Bloomberg. Jet fuel prices have also surged since the start of the conflict in late February, according to industry data cited by multiple outlets. Why has diesel become more expensive than gasoline? The European market has shifted toward higher diesel consumption following decades of tax policies that lowered diesel taxes compared to gasoline.

The EU’s refining system produces a different mix of fuels than the market consumes. A barrel of crude oil typically yields about 40-50% gasoline, but only around 30–40% diesel and jet fuel combined, with the rest made up of heavier products. This mismatch has left the bloc structurally short of diesel. The region is a major net exporter of gasoline but relies on imports for a significant share of its diesel and jet fuel. Diesel has traded above gasoline prices at the pump in several EU countries.

Rising wholesale costs have fed through to consumers. Diesel prices at the pump have exceeded €2 per liter in multiple countries, according to national data and media reports — equivalent to roughly $8.80–$10.50 per US gallon, compared with about $5.60 per gallon in the US. Governments in Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Hungary, Spain, Poland, and Ireland have introduced tax cuts and other measures to limit the impact of rising fuel costs.

Why are farmers and truckers protesting?
Rising diesel prices are hitting sectors most dependent on the fuel, particularly agriculture and road freight. The EU’s transport sector is facing a “fast-moving diesel shock,” according to logistics platform Logifie. Ireland has become the most visible flashpoint of the crisis. Fuel protests have spread nationwide since this past Tuesday, led by farmers, truckers and transport workers, disrupting supply chains and transport networks, according to local media.

Blockades have strained fuel distribution, with queues forming at petrol stations with some running dry amid panic buying. On Thursday, the government called in the army to clear the blockades. During a protest march in Dublin on Friday, demonstrators carried a coffin with “RIP Ireland” written on it. Airports across Europe could face “systemic” jet fuel shortages within three weeks if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, according to a letter sent by an airport industry group to the European Commission, as cited by the Independent.

According to Corriere della Sera, “some airports on the continent have been experiencing shortages in jet fuel quantities for days without officially reporting it.” The outlet cited its sources on Friday as saying that “it’s such a sensitive issue that official talk remains tight-lipped,” adding that Brussels is hoping the truce between the US and Iran will hold. Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, has started reducing flights to popular destinations, with chief executive, Michael O’Leary warning that the airline will not be able to run its full summer schedule if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.

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Bye!

• Women Step Forward to Outline Swalwell’s Sexual Assault History (CTH)

It was building in the background for several weeks; the stories of multiple women who had been raped and sexually assaulted by congressman Eric Swalwell. Today, the San Francisco Chronicle began outlining their stories [SEE HERE], and now an exit of people from his campaign begins.


WASHINGTON DC – Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign for governor was reeling Friday after an ex-staffer accused him of sexual assault, with multiple staffers resigning and both a prominent ally and rival candidates calling on the California Democrat to exit the race.

The exodus, which began just before the San Francisco Chronicle published a report detailing a former staffer’s claims, jolted California’s marquee race just weeks before ballots start landing in voters’ mailboxes. The former staffer told the newspaper that Swalwell had sexual encounters with her while working for him, and that he sexually assaulted her twice when she was too drunk to consent.

In September 2019, the woman said, Swalwell invited her out for drinks and she became so severely intoxicated that she does not remember the rest of the night. She said she woke up naked in Swalwell’s hotel bed and could feel the effect of vaginal intercourse. {source}

Top staffers departed the campaign shortly before the story published. Soon after, Rep. Jimmy Gomez said in a statement that he was stepping down from the campaign and urged Swalwell to leave the race — a stunning rebuke from a key surrogate who had helped introduce Swalwell to power players in Sacramento, where Gomez served in the state Assembly.

“Today I learned shocking information about Eric Swalwell containing the ugliest and most serious accusations imaginable,” Gomez said in a statement. “My involvement in any campaign begins and ends with trust. I cannot in good conscience remain in any role with this campaign, and I am stepping down from it effective immediately.”

The fallout extended to prominent interest groups that had backed Swalwell. The California Medical Association, which has dropped more than $1 million into a pro-Swalwell committee, said it was convening an emergency board meeting. The California Teachers Association suspended its endorsement. (read more)

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“Swalwell has denied the allegations, but that has done absolutely nothing to stop the bleeding. And the bleeding has been catastrophic.”

• Eric Swalwell’s Political Future is Collapsing Fast (Matt Margolis)

On Friday, a former staffer to Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) came forward with allegations of sexual assault against the longtime congressman. By the end of the day, the dam had broken wide open — and Eric Swalwell’s political future was crumbling right along with it. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a former congressional aide accused Swalwell of two non-consensual sexual encounters, including one where she claims she woke up in his hotel room after becoming intoxicated. CNN then dropped its own bombshell, reporting that four women total allege sexual misconduct by Swalwell — one of whom accuses him outright of rape. “I was pushing him off of me, saying no,” the woman said.


Swalwell has denied the allegations, but that has done absolutely nothing to stop the bleeding. And the bleeding has been catastrophic. First, his campaign experienced an exodus. His campaign co-chairs bailed immediately. Rep. Jimmy Gomez called the accusations “the ugliest and most serious accusations imaginable,” and resigned on the spot. Rep. Adam Gray was equally blunt: “Today’s reports about Eric Swalwell’s conduct while in office are deeply disturbing. Harassment, abuse, and violence of any sort are unacceptable. Given these serious allegations, I am withdrawing my support, and Eric Swalwell should end his campaign immediately.”

Top Democrat Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) also pulled his endorsement. Then came a wave of others. Even the institutional pillars cracked. The California Teachers Association suspended its endorsement. So did SEIU California. Sen. Adam Schiff called on Swalwell to exit the race. But the real problem for Swalwell isn’t the loss of staff or endorsements; it’s that his fellow Democrats are also calling on him to drop out of the race. Now, obviously, his Democrat opponents, former Rep. Katie Porter and billionaire Tom Steyer, have called on him to drop out, but so has Nancy Pelosi. And that’s a political death sentence.

“This extremely sensitive matter must be appropriately investigated with full transparency and accountability,” Pelosi said in a statement. “As I discussed with Congressman Swalwell, it is clear that is best done outside of a gubernatorial campaign.” And she wasn’t alone. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar piled on in a joint statement, calling for a “swift investigation,” and demanding an end to Swalwell’s campaign. “This is unacceptable of anyone — certainly not an elected official — and must be taken seriously,” they said. “No one in a position of power should be allowed to act above the law or with impunity,” Rep. Ro Khanna said. “The same rules must apply to Eric Swalwell.”

Over on the Republican side, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said she was weighing censure and other action “if there is evidence brought forward,” and three sources told reporters that House Republicans were already discussing just that by Friday evening. The response of Democrats to the allegations is quite unusual. They’re not issuing statements saying Swalwell is innocent until proven guilty; they’re telling him to bail. That raises some interesting questions on its own. Do they believe the allegations? I’ve long believed Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign was never really about Sacramento. It was a launching pad for a presidential run. That ambition is finished now. Democrats are abandoning him, which means his political future is over. And frankly, his career might be finished, too.

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There’ll be a lot of huffing and puffing. But 100+ years of car industry as we knew it is over.

• Tesla Gets FSD Supervised Approved in the Netherlands (Electrek)

The Dutch vehicle authority RDW has granted Tesla a type approval for its “Full Self-Driving” Supervised system in the Netherlands, marking the first European country to officially approve the driver-assist technology. The approval, which falls under the UN R-171 regulation for Driver Control Assistance Systems, comes after more than 18 months of testing and is currently valid only in the Netherlands. Other EU member states can choose to recognize it nationally, but that process is not automatic.


The approval
Tesla Europe announced the news on X, stating that “FSD Supervised has been approved in the Netherlands & will begin rolling out in the country shortly.” The company described the system as “trained on billions of kilometers of real-world driving data” and claimed that “no other vehicle can do this.” The RDW confirmed the approval in its own statement, describing it as a “European type approval with provisional validity in the Netherlands.” The Dutch authority stressed that FSD Supervised is a driver assistance system — not an autonomous or self-driving system. The driver remains legally responsible and must be able to take over immediately at all times.

The testing program involved over 1.6 million kilometers of driving on EU roads, more than 13,000 customer ride-alongs, and over 4,500 track test scenarios. Tesla submitted documentation covering more than 400 compliance requirements under UN R-171 and Article 39 exemptions. This approval was originally expected by March 20 but was delayed by about three weeks. Back in late March, the RDW actually pushed back on Tesla’s earlier announcements, saying it had not yet completed its review — a pattern that highlights the disconnect between Tesla’s marketing timeline and the regulator’s actual process.

What it means for Europe
The Netherlands approval does not automatically extend to the rest of Europe. Under EU regulations, other member states can recognize the Dutch type approval nationally, but each country must decide individually. Germany (KBA), France, and Italy are expected to be among the first to act, potentially within 4-8 weeks. Full EU-wide harmonization would require additional regulatory steps beyond national recognition. Tesla has targeted a broader European rollout over the summer of 2026, but that timeline depends entirely on how quickly individual countries process their own approvals.

For context, this is a very different model from how Waymo is approaching Europe. Alphabet’s autonomous driving subsidiary is preparing to launch fully driverless robotaxis in London — an actual Level 4 autonomous system where no human driver is needed. Tesla’s approval is for a Level 2 driver-assist system that requires constant human supervision.

What FSD Supervised actually is
The RDW’s statement is explicit: FSD Supervised “can take over many driving tasks” but the vehicles “are NOT autonomous or self-driving.” The driver’s hands don’t need to rest on the steering wheel, but the driver must be able to intervene immediately. Sensors monitor driver attentiveness and eye focus, and if the system detects inattention, it issues warnings and can temporarily disable itself. Under UN R-171, the system is classified as a Driver Control Assistance System (DCAS) — the regulatory term for Level 2 automation. The driver retains full legal responsibility at all times. The regulation specifically mandates measures to prevent driver overreliance, including a mix of visual, audio, and haptic feedback.

Tesla must also report safety-critical incidents and submit regular performance reports to the RDW — no less than annually. Critically, the RDW notes that the European FSD software “differs substantially” from the US version. European regulation requires type approval before any system can be used on public roads — unlike the US self-certification model where Tesla can deploy software updates without prior regulatory approval. The RDW also points out that other manufacturers already hold similar approvals in Europe: BMW for motorway hands-off driving with lane changes, and Ford for BlueCruise via Article 39. Tesla’s claim that “no other vehicle can do this” is misleading at best.

[..] Tesla’s own tweet claims “no other vehicle can do this.” The RDW’s own statement contradicts that — it explicitly notes that BMW and Ford already hold similar driver-assist approvals in Europe. And if we’re talking about actual self-driving, Waymo vehicles in the US (and soon London) drive themselves with no human supervision required. Tesla’s system requires a fully attentive driver at all times. Framing a supervised driver-assist system as a unique achievement is misleading.

This matters because advanced Level 2 systems create a well-documented complacency problem. As we’ve covered extensively, even experts who understand the risks intellectually get conditioned into overtrusting the system. Research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that after just one month of using adaptive cruise control, drivers were more than six times as likely to look at their phones. FSD Supervised is far more capable than adaptive cruise control — the complacency risk is correspondingly higher.

Tesla has already been found guilty of false advertising over the “Full Self-Driving” name in California and has been forced to change its marketing language. Elon Musk keeps making the same safety claims about every new version, and Tesla will not take responsibility when the system makes mistakes — and it still makes mistakes. New European users encountering this technology for the first time should take the “Supervised” part of the name very seriously. Your hands may not need to be on the wheel, but your eyes absolutely need to be on the road.

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Debt Rattle April 10 2026

Apr 102026
 
 April 10, 2026  Posted by at 9:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  65 Responses »


Jules Adolphe Breton The Song of the Lark 1884


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

 


 

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

 


 


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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Some people like to think the US lost to Iran.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• US Moves Closer To Automated Military Draft (RT)

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


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

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

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

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

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The EU is building a deadly industry.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sundance still has the faith.

“Trust God, and pray for President Trump.”

• Panicans and Division (CTH)

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle April 9 2026

Apr 092026
 
 April 9, 2026  Posted by at 9:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  65 Responses »


Rufino Tamayo Perro aullando (Howling Dog) 1960


• Tanker Passage Through Hormuz Halted As Iran Accuses Israel (ZH)
• The Petrodollar Breakdown is Real (GoldFix)
• Nobody Knows What Will Happen Next (Rabo)
• China Facilitated US-Iranian Ceasefire – AP (TASS)
• US Suffered Major Strategic Defeat In Failed Isfahan Operation (Press TV)
• The Persian Backstabber Strikes Again (John Helmer)
• Senate Democrats Might Not Have November In The Bag (ZH)
• Recognizing The Intervention of Satan In Our Times (Gilbert Doctorow)
• FBI Finds Americans Lose Billions To Cryptocurrency Scams (JTN)
• Hungary Election A US-EU ‘Proxy War’ – Ex-Austrian Foreign Minister (RT)
• Unconstitutional Effort to Bar Trump from Ballot in Maine (Turley)
• Xi Jinping Carries Out Record-Breaking Punishments Inside CCP (JTN)
• This Is What a World Superpower Looks Like (Ben Shapiro)
• Melania vs. the Mean Girls (Sarah Anderson)

 


 

https://twitter.com/MichaelARothman/status/2041722116316524603?s=20 From 10 years ago I would LOVE to dee this contradicted.

 


 


They’re meeting on Friday afternoon in Islamabad. Before then, anything can and will happen. Testing the waters.

• Tanker Passage Through Hormuz Halted As Iran Accuses Israel (ZH)

Summary:

• The Hegseth/Caine presser as expected declared ‘victory’ in Iran while Gen. Caine emphasized the ceasefire is a “pause” but US forces remain “ready to resume combat.” Pentagon is trying to put a bow on Operation Epic Fury. NYT: 10-point plan might differ between Tehran & Washington.

• US, Iran agree to meet for first direct talks in Islamabad Friday, Pakistan PM Sharif announces. Situation fragile given that Iran is threatening to hit Israel again over IDF’s massive Lebanon airstrikes.

• Iran meanwhile demands stiff fees for ships passing through Hormuz during the ceasefire, and says it holds the final authority on which vessels get to pass. Tehran leaders have asserted ‘victory’ for Iran, amid positive international reaction to the ceasefire.

• The first two ships since the ceasefire was announced have crossed the Strait of Hormuz after Iran said it will demand that shipping companies pay tolls in cryptocurrency. Hours later, Fars announces a halt to ships’ passage. This as IDF pummels Lebanon.

• Saudi Arabia’s vital East-West oil pipeline carrying crude from the Gulf to the Red Sea for export has been attacked at a pumping station, oil rises on the news. There’s been sporadic attacks on other Gulf states too. Kuwait sees key energy, water sites hit.

* * *

Differing Versions of the 10-point Plan?

This is alarming and surreal, and doesn’t bode well for what’s already a very shaky ceasefire holding, via the NY Times:

A White House official says that the 10-point peace plan that Iran publicly released on Wednesday differs from the plan that Trump said was a workable basis on which to negotiate. The official declined to elaborate on the differences but said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, was expected to clarify at a 1 p.m. briefing.

There’s talk of Kushner, Witkoff, and maybe Vance going to Pakistan for planned Friday meeting with Iranian side. Key Energy Sites Hit in Kuwait, Despite Ceasefire Kuwait’s ` Interior Ministry is condemning fresh Iran attacks, reporting “severe material damage” at ` several vital facilities of the ` Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. Also water desalination plants have been hit. “The ministry said fire broke out at some of the attacked sites, which include oil facilities, three power stations and water desalination plants,” Al Jazeera reports.

Oil Transit through Hormuz Halted Again: FARS Iran’s Fars News agency reports that oil tankers passing through Hormuz have been stopped after Israel’s “ceasefire breach.” This as Iranian officials are warning of resumed missile launches on Israel for what’s happening in Lebanon (see below). There’s currently contradiction and confusion over whether the Pakistan-mediated Iran ceasefire deal extends to Lebanon. Pakistan says yes, Iran says yes, while the US and Israel say no. Tehran appears willing to apply its leverage. Oil jumps on initial ‘breach’ rumblings...

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Ii there an alternative for the petrodollar?

• The Petrodollar Breakdown is Real (GoldFix)

After reading a Bloomberg opinion piece deconstructing the Petrodollar stresses currently manifesting from the war with Iran the following became apparent. The longstanding financial arrangement in which the United States underwrote stability in the Middle East in exchange for Gulf states recycling dollar revenues into US Treasuries has fractured. What functioned for decades as a reinforcing loop between energy flows, dollar demand, and sovereign financing is now under strain. The framework traces back to the 1974 agreement engineered under Henry Kissinger, in which Saudi Arabia priced oil in dollars and reinvested surpluses into US assets, primarily Treasuries. Other Gulf states followed, while the United States provided security guarantees and maintained the broader geopolitical order.


A Circular System of Energy and Capital
The system operated with internal consistency. Oil-importing nations paid in dollars; those dollars accumulated in Gulf economies; and surpluses were recycled into US government debt. This loop supported US borrowing conditions and reinforced the dollar’s reserve status. That structure depended on two continuous processes: surplus generation through energy exports, and reinvestment into US assets. Both are now disrupted.

Fracture Point One: Importers Liquidate Treasuries
Following the escalation of the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, foreign central banks have shifted into sustained Treasury selling. Holdings at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York declined by roughly $82 billion over five consecutive weeks to $2.7 trillion, the lowest level since 2012. At the same time, yields diverged from historical crisis behavior. The 10-year Treasury yield rose from 3.9% to above 4.4% instead of falling under safe-haven demand.

“Foreign official sectors are selling US Treasury bonds.”
The mechanism reflects currency defense. Oil-importing economies such as Turkey, India, and Thailand face rising dollar-priced energy costs alongside weakening domestic currencies. Stabilization requires dollar liquidity, sourced through Treasury sales.

Dollar Demand Turns Defensive
Dollar demand remains present, yet its form has shifted. Central banks are accessing liquidity through liquidation rather than accumulation. Treasuries function as a funding tool under stress rather than a passive reserve asset. A system built on steady accumulation behaves differently when forced into periodic selling.

Fracture Point Two: Exporters Unable to Generate Surplus
Historically, higher oil prices increased Gulf revenues, reinforcing demand for dollar assets. This relationship has broken down. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has constrained exports across Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, with production cuts of roughly 10 million barrels per day. Qatar’s declaration of force majeure on LNG exports following strikes on Ras Laffan further highlights the disruption. Without export flows, surplus petrodollars do not form. The loop requires both income generation and reinvestment capacity. Both are impaired.

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“This could be the Golden Age of the Middle East.”

• Nobody Knows What Will Happen Next (Rabo)

Yesterday, the US and Iran threatened to, respectively, “destroy Iranian civilisation” with “new tools” and other countries in the Gulf with old ones. Ahead of the 8PM deadline that Trump had set for “Bridge and Power Plant Day,” US and Israeli forces reportedly already destroyed some bridges and other infrastructure. Washington and Tehran struck a last-minute, two-week ceasefire – provided that the Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened. Notably, this was after China leaned on Iran to listen to interlocutor Pakistan, according to the New York Times. That key intervention underlines the global nature of this war beyond energy and related exports, and how it is resolved.


Markets are trading this as a TACO Tuesday. Brent futures are down 14% at the time of writing, Asian equity markets rallied, and futures pricing suggests the same will happen when European and American markets open. And bets of near-term rate hikes evaporated as the truce ends days before major central banks next reconvene to recalibrate their policy stance. 10-year German Bund yields fell 18bp (!)on the open. Yet, this short-term truce is not a peace deal, and is anyone willing to sail through the Strait as long as the conflict isn’t fully resolved? So, today’s reprieve will be followed by at least two weeks of extended uncertainty – and possibly longer, if both sides agree to extend the negotiations.

Moreover, there is a world of difference between Iran having blinked under US military threats, which would be a huge win for Trump and the US, and the US having blinked in the face of Iranian resistance and oil prices, which would be a massive 1956-style geostrategic defeat for Trump. In the immediate aftermath of the ceasefire, both headlines and missiles kept flying. Iran hit Israel and a GCC energy site. The US said “an” Iranian 10-point plan is a “workable basis on which to negotiate” (might we have an intractable public version and a more pliable private one to save face?), while Iran’s foreign minister is “considering” the directly opposed 15-point US plan.

And, returning to shipping, Iran claimed it will still take tolls from Hormuz with Oman, adding that only 10-15 ships per day can pass, a tiny fraction of normal flows. Is that the “full reopening” of Hormuz that the US set as a precondition?

Subsequently, an unsubstantiated report claimed that Iran has agreed to most US conditions, including: a permanent commitment not to possess nuclear weapons; handing over enriched uranium to the IAEA; allowing the IAEA to monitor all nuclear infrastructure; a complete halt to uranium enrichment within Iran; reducing the range and number of missiles; immediately ceasing support for militias and proxies in the region; ceasing attacks on regional Gulf energy facilities; reopening the Strait of Hormuz immediately and unconditionally; the lifting of all sanctions imposed on Iran; eliminating the mechanism for reimposing UN sanctions; and US support for the Bushehr nuclear power plant, provided it is under direct American supervision.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has stated, “The current negotiations are a national negotiation and a continuation of the field, and it is necessary for all people, elites, and political groups to trust and support this process, which is under the supervision of the Leader of the Revolution and the highest levels of the system, and to strictly avoid any divisive comments.” Trump claimed “total and complete victory”, and posted that it’s a “big day for World Peace”, the US will be “helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz,” while Iran can “start reconstruction,” and the US will be “loading up with supplies of all kinds, and “just “hangin’ around” in order to make sure everything goes well,” where “This could be the Golden Age of the Middle East.”

So, the fog of war is still in place even if the fighting might have stopped for now. Nobody knows what will happen next, but the possible spectrum is clear:

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Everything involves China.

• China Facilitated US-Iranian Ceasefire – AP (TASS)

According to the news agency, Beijing initially tried to act through intermediaries, including Islamabad, Ankara, and Cairo. After that, Chinese officials directly contacted Iran. China directly contacted Iran to persuade Tehran to agree to a temporary ceasefire with the US, the Associated Press (AP) news agency reported. According to the report, Chinese officials were in contact with the Iranian government to facilitate the ceasefire. Beijing initially tried to act through intermediaries, including Islamabad, Ankara, and Cairo.


US President Donald Trump said a bilateral ceasefire between the United States and Iran will be in force for two weeks. The decision is “subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the complete, immediate, and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif invited US and Iranian delegations to Islamabad on April 10 for further negotiations. US Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, businessman Jared Kushner, are expected to take part in the planned peace talks with Iran in Pakistan’s Islamabad, CNN reported.

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Press TV is Iranian.

• US Suffered Major Strategic Defeat In Failed Isfahan Operation (Press TV)

Information obtained by Press TV regarding the recent operation by the US-Israeli coalition in the central Isfahan province reveals a major strategic defeat for the enemy. US President Donald Trump’s frantic threats in the past few days to target Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including power plants and bridges, are a direct consequence of the heavy defeat suffered by the US forces in the Isfahan operation. The failed raid was carried out after the enemy conducted extensive aerial reconnaissance operations in the days leading up to the attack, according to the exclusive information. During those initial infiltration and reconnaissance missions, the US and possibly the Zionist regime lost a significant number of aircraft, including at least one A-10 Thunderbolt II and two Black Hawk helicopters.


The information obtained by Press TV reveals that “zero hour” for the failed Isfahan operation was set during a secret meeting at the White House under the direct supervision of the US president himself. It has now become clear that this operation had no connection to the claimed rescue of a downed F-15 fighter pilot, a narrative initially pushed by American officials. Instead, evidence examined and confirmed by Press TV indicates that the real objective was to infiltrate and attack one of Iran’s nuclear facilities in Isfahan. The landing site for C-130 transport aircraft, chosen based on previous reconnaissance, was an abandoned airstrip located dangerously close to one of these nuclear sites.

The Americans miscalculated, believing that Iran’s air defense would be unable to confront the aircraft involved in the operation. However, Press TV learned that the deployment of numerous US aircraft occurred while the Iranian Armed Forces were in full alert, waiting for them. In fact, American special forces fell directly into a trap set by Iranian forces. The Iranian Armed Forces, including the Army, Law Enforcement (Faraja), the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and local popular forces, initially did not show a serious reaction to the landing of the first C-130, which was carrying dozens of special forces commandos. Evidence shows this aircraft veered somewhat off the runway while landing at the abandoned dirt airstrip.

Minutes later, a second C-130 aircraft approached, carrying specialized vehicles, several MH-6 Little Bird helicopters, and other support equipment. At that moment, Iranian forces on the scene targeted the second aircraft before it could land, turning its normal landing into an emergency one. Two Black Hawk helicopters also arrived shortly after. It was at this moment that the aircraft, helicopters, and commandos who had disembarked from the first plane became perfect targets for the Iranian Armed Forces. After the special forces realized they had fallen into the trap, the White House situation room made a critical decision: the main operation to infiltrate the nuclear site was changed into a desperate rescue operation for the dozens of US commandos trapped under Iranian fire.

The Americans immediately sent several smaller aircraft to extract their forces, barely managing to gather the individuals and withdraw them from the deadly situation. The rescue operation was conducted so hastily that some soldiers and officers abandoned their equipment, including, according to the evidence possessed by Press TV, the identification document of an American officer left behind in the area, to save their lives. After the commandos were evacuated, American fighter jets established a line of fire with a 5-kilometer radius to prevent Iranian forces from approaching the abandoned C-130s at the airstrip. The jets also carried out heavy bombing of their own equipment to prevent it from falling into Iranian hands. I

n this failed operation, US special forces did not even have the chance to fly the special Little Bird helicopters; some were destroyed on the ground, while others were destroyed inside the second C-130 aircraft. Following this disgraceful and heavy defeat, Trump hastily and chaotically held multiple press conferences to cover up the failure and falsely portray it as a pilot rescue operation. The information obtained by Press TV describes these propaganda shows, led by Trump and his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, as reminiscent of Hollywood films – lies that have not even been accepted by many American audiences.The information available notes that Trump will continue to fabricate other “Hollywood-style” operations to falsely claim achievements and appease public opinion in the US.

However, his and Hegseth’s repeated storytelling and lying, which have reduced public confidence in him both in the US and across the world to the lowest possible level, have made his “Goebbels-style lies” very difficult to believe.People in the US and across the world are asking a pointed question: “How is it that a country which supposedly has neither air defense left nor an army or armed forces has managed to shoot down and destroy so many fighter jets and various aircraft, and continues to add to its album of different types of destroyed fighter jets, planes, helicopters, and drones,” a highly-placed source in Tehran told Press TV.

The heavy defeat of the Isfahan operation, he noted, could be recorded in history as the worst and most disgraceful failure of the US military, even worse than the failed Tabas operation of 1980, which saw a botched rescue attempt end in disaster for Washington. The information obtained by Press TV notes that the heavy aftershocks of this “great debacle” for Trump will affect not only the fate of the ongoing war against the Islamic Republic of Iran but also the political future of “America’s gambling and ignorant president,” his Republican party, and the American political scene for years to come.

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” In Moscow, Zarif is known as a Russia-hating, backstabbing liar who negotiates with deceit and whose word is worthless.”

• The Persian Backstabber Strikes Again (John Helmer)

Mohammed Javad Zarif has grown fatter and more swollen-headed since he was replaced as Iran’s Foreign Minister in 2021, then removed as Vice President in 2025. In Moscow, Zarif is known as a Russia-hating, backstabbing liar who negotiates with deceit and whose word is worthless.


For Zarif to publish last week an essay titled “How Iran Should End the War – A Deal Tehran Could Take”, from the tribune of the money establishment in New York, the Council on Foreign Relations, is understandable in Moscow. This is because, comments a Moscow source in position to know, he is “registering his address in Teheran at the very least to tell the Americans to target their bombs and missiles elsewhere. He hates Russians and someone is promoting him. The US has shown what they do with discussions, plans, ideas through the negotiations,” the source said. “They have demonstrated there is zero or less regard for any idea. Trump is fixated on ‘stone age’ destruction and ‘capitulation.’ If and when he does a ceasefire, it will be so he can break it. That’s a lesson the North Koreans alone seem to have learned and not anyone else. “

This is a guarded reference to the Russian look and sound-alikes in Moscow telling President Vladimir Putin to trust President Donald Trump’s “Anchorage understandings” and to end the war on the Ukraine battlefield with schemes for US investments in exchange for Russian assets.

Just so, Zarif’s end-of-war plan includes the proposal “to further consolidate peace, Iran and the United States should initiate mutually beneficial trade, economic, and technological cooperation. Iran, for example, could invite oil companies, including interested American ones, to immediately facilitate exports to buyers. Iran, the United States, and Persian Gulf countries might all partner on projects involving energy and advanced technologies. .. Finally, Iran and the United States should announce and sign a permanent nonaggression pact. By doing so, they would commit to not use or threaten to use force against each other.”

The Russian promoting the same combination of trust in Trump, trust in money that talks through Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner – not yet in the pages of Foreign Affairs – is Kirill Dmitriev. He too is described by his Russian critics as too pro-American to be trusted.

The Iranian Prosecutor is reported to have issued a reprimand for Zarif. “According to follow-up and information from informed sources, following the publication of an article in the American journal Foreign Affairs that has been determined to be contrary to national security, Mohammad Javad Zarif has been issued a reprimand. In this regard, the Prosecutor’s Office, issuing a warning addressed to political figures and those with a public platform, emphasized: ‘During this imposed war, figures and those with a platform must not express opinions or publish material contrary to national interests, national integrity, and social cohesion, nor outside the bounds of their authority.’” The Russian Security Council is highly critical of Dmitriev but he is in no danger from the state prosecutor.

Iran International, the Shah Pahlavi opposition publication financed by Saudi Arabia in London, has quoted the reaction to Zarif by a well-known Iranian government supporter: “Even someone who is blind, deaf, and mute can understand that you [Zarif] are a traitor. In the middle of this proposal you call for improved relations between Iran and the US, an enemy that killed my leader and has shown such disrespect to Iran. I give Zarif three days. If he does not say he screwed up, on the fourth night we will gather and go to (storm) his house.”

The same publication claims that Zarif’s publication accompanies a recent speech by Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president between 2013-21 and Zarif’s political patron, behind the closed doors of the Supreme National Security Council. Rouhani reportedly said: “Alongside heroic resistance, we must be prepared to bring the war to an honourable end in the interest of the country and the people. Preserving the country and the system requires immediate fundamental reforms in policymaking; the people have made their position clear to the authorities…it was necessary to coordinate national resources to prevent attacks on the Persian Gulf islands and maintain control of the Strait of Hormuz.”

Zarif lived in New York when he was Iran’s ambassador to the UN. His children were born in the city and hold dual US citizenship. He has published several articles in Foreign Affairs going back to 2014 when he wrote an appeal to the Obama Administration on Rouhani’s behalf entitled “What Iran Really Wants — Iranian Foreign Policy in the Rouhani Era”.

In the Russian file, Zarif claimed that Foreign Minister Lavrov and President Putin had conspired with General Qassem Soleimani in 2015 – before Trump assassinated him in 2020 – to block the terms endorsed by the US and Zarif of the nuclear-limiting Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The claim was false. The interpretation in Moscow was that Zarif was lying to benefit either his political allies in Teheran or in Washington, or both.

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”The math is brutal. Even in a blue wave scenario where Democrats flip every competitive seat, Republicans would still hold the Senate 51-49“

• Senate Democrats Might Not Have November In The Bag (ZH)

Based on various polls, Democrats are leading Republicans by roughly five to six points on the generic congressional ballot. While this certainly means they have an advantage, the numbers actually show real trouble for the Democrats for this year’s midterm elections. And even CNN isn’t trying to sugarcoat it for the Democratic Party. CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten took a hard look at the numbers, and the picture for Democrats is not what most might expect. They should have a much bigger lead, and the fact that they don’t is a huge red flag.


“This lead is historically low for Democrats at this point with a Republican president,” Enten pointed out. “On average, their lead is actually slightly less. It’s five points. That’s less than it was back in 2018 when it was eight points and way less than it was during the 2006 cycle when it was 11 points.” According to Enten, there’s a huge disparity between how Democrats are performing in generic congressional ballot polling and President Donald Trump’s approval ratings. Trump’s net approval rating is somewhere between -20 and -30 points. This is not a strong position for the party in power. Combined with the historical precedent that midterm elections usually favor the minority party, the numbers should spell disaster for the Republican Party, but it’s not.

“You’d make the argument Democrats should be way ahead, and they’re just only sort of slightly ahead.” A small shift might be enough for Democrats to take the House, but the Senate is a completely different animal, and according to Enten, the numbers suggest Democrats’ hopes of winning the Senate are not good. The math is brutal. Even in a blue wave scenario where Democrats flip every competitive seat, Republicans would still hold the Senate 51-49 because Trump carried states like Ohio, Texas, and Alaska by more than ten points. In this scenario, Democrats would pick up North Carolina and Maine, which would be a huge let down for the GOP, but that’s not enough to flip the upper chamber.

For years, Democrats have fantasized about flipping Texas, and they think that James Talarico is the perfect candidate to make it happen. But as Enten noted, Democrats have never been able to flip Senate seats that Trump won by 10 points or more. So, what’s holding the Democrats back? Favorability, or the lack thereof. In 2018, Democrats held a 12-point net favorability advantage over Republicans at this stage of the cycle. In 2006, that gap was 18 points. Today? Republicans are actually ahead on net favorability by five points.n”Democrats are just, simply put, running behind their previous benchmarks,” Enten said, “and they need to be running well ahead of them if they want to take back the United States Senate.”

Democrats have spent months positioning themselves as the resistance to Trump’s second term, betting that public anger at the administration would carry them into the majority and give them the power actually to block his agenda. But if voters dislike Democrats even more than they dislike Republicans, that entire strategy blows up. A six-point generic ballot lead just won’t cut it if Democrats want to win back the Senate. This, of course, is a huge problem for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose future in party leadership is in doubt. Senate Democrats are growing increasingly restless with him – and more importantly, with the strategy he’s banking on for the midterms.

Schumer has been supporting more centrist picks he believes have a better shot at winning their elections, while more progressive candidates are being sidelined. According to reports, some lawmakers have already begun informally counting votes to see whether there’s enough support to make a move. He may have the votes to survive a challenge now, but if Democrats fail to win back the Senate, the blame is going to land squarely on him.

Even without control of the Senate, Donald Trump still holds a powerful advantage where it matters most: the courts. Democrats no longer have the judicial filibuster at their disposal, which means they’ve lost one of their last tools for stalling or blocking nominees. So even if they manage to flip the House, it won’t stop Trump from reshaping the judiciary. Judicial confirmations—and even potential Supreme Court appointments – can still move forward, ensuring his influence on the courts endures well beyond his time in office.

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If and when you compare the president of the United Stateds with satan, you count for nothing anymore.

Because over half the American population votes for, and supports, the person.

Go to the supermarket, go to Main Street, today, watch everyday life, and tell me what you saw. Over 50% of Americans are satanists?

Bye Doctorow. You’re done, you’re over.

PS Hitler wasn’t bad enough?

• Recognizing The Intervention Of Satan In Our Times (Gilbert Doctorow)

The personality defects of Donald J. Trump have been the subject of amateur psychology in mass media since his first presidential electoral campaign in 2016. The trait that has been most discussed was and is narcissism. Google’s AI Search has the following to say about this issue: “Numerous mental health professionals and critics have publicly suggested that Donald Trump exhibits traits consistent with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), and paranoid personality disorder, often grouping them under the term “malignant narcissism“. These claims, primarily argued by psychologists and psychiatrists, cite patterns of grandiosity, lack of empathy, need for admiration, and impulsivity.”


This portrait of Trump is the product of specialists operating in our secular culture. However, this is Easter Sunday and I think it entirely appropriate to approach the issue from a Christian binary analytical framework of Good and Evil, God and Satan. This is all the more relevant because Trump professes to take religion seriously. Key members of his administration, like Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, are zealous Believers and speak publicly of their religion.

In this context and considering the Easter Sunday dateline of this message to the Community, I say that Trump and the senior members of his Administration have stepped right out of Dostoevsky’s novel The Possessed. They are Evil Incarnate, they are possessed by Satan in their support of Israeli genocide in Gaza and now in the vicious, inhuman violence they are directing against the Iranian people. Listening to Trump’s daily diatribes, his bloody threats against Tehran, it strains belief that these words are coming from our top elected official.

And so I conclude: Shame on the United States if this man is not impeached and removed from office, sent to face the International Court of Justice for war crimes.

Amen.

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“..more than $11B in 2025 alone..”

• FBI Finds Americans Lose Billions To Cryptocurrency Scams (JTN)

Americans lost more than $20 billion to cryptocurrency and other online scams in 2025, a 26% increase over the year before, according to the latest figures from the FBI. Online fraud is rising fast. Scams that use cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence are getting smarter. This makes it hard for people, especially seniors, to tell what is real and what is a scam. The new FBI data shows these scams are becoming a bigger problem, and police are trying to fight back. According to the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report, nearly $11.4 billion of last year’s $20 billion in online scam losses came from cryptocurrency scams. Of that, $7.2 billion resulted from cryptocurrency investment scams.


The report also says that seniors are the most likely to lose money to scams. People ages 60 and older lost about $7.7 billion, which is 37% more than in 2024.In 2025, the FBI received 81,565 cryptocurrency-related complaints, a 21% increase from 2024. These reports accounted for $11.4 billion in losses, with an average individual loss of $62,604. Over 18,500 complaints involved losses exceeding $100,000. “Cryptocurrency investment scams are sophisticated long-term scams using psychological manipulation, the appearance of legitimacy, and exploitation of cryptocurrencies to deceive victims into investing large sums of money,” according to the report.

“These scams are largely perpetrated by organized criminal enterprises based in Southeast Asia using victims of human trafficking as forced labor to run the scam operations.”In a high-stakes scheme, scammers aggressively lure victims, urging them to transfer cryptocurrency to fraudulent investment platforms or apps. They quickly show victims fabricated profits and dangle the promise of loans, pressing them to invest even more. The moment victims attempt to withdraw funds, they are slammed with bogus taxes and fees, amplifying the devastation. Then, in a final bid to get more money, some offer recovery scams to these victims. “Victims are also targeted in recovery scams, claiming to help recover lost funds,” according to the report. ”

These scams are often devastating because they can leave victims with significant financial loss and emotional distress.” The FBI wants everyone to use the “Take a Beat” method to spot scam warning signs. “Resist pressure to act quickly and assess the situation before turning over money or personal information,” the agency warned. People who are victims or may know victims of a fraud or scam should call their local FBI office or submit a complaint at ic3.gov as soon as possible. Victims should document the name of the scammer, the company, the methods of contact, the dates of contact, the methods of payment, where funds have been sent, and a thorough description of the interactions.

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“Brussels would rather “paralyze” the member state or stage a coup than allow Viktor Orban to stay in power, Karin Kneissl has told RT..” Vance in Budapest in just theater. Kneissl is not.

• Hungary Election A US-EU ‘Proxy War’ – Ex-Austrian Foreign Minister (RT)

The US and EU are engaged in a political “proxy war” in Hungary, with Washington and Brussels backing rival sides ahead of the country’s parliamentary elections, according to former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl. Kneissl made the remarks in an interview with RT as US Vice President J.D. Vance visited Budapest on Tuesday in a show of support for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. During the trip, Vance criticized “bureaucrats in Brussels, who have done everything that they can to hold down the people of Hungary,” ahead of Sunday’s vote.


According to Kneissl, Vance’s decision to visit Europe while the US was simultaneously involved in a contentious war with Iran “says a lot” about the importance Washington places on the elections. She noted that the move aligns with the US National Security Strategy released last December, which identifies “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations” as a priority. She said the language is “very telling” about how the Americans “feel about Brussels,” noting that Washington is known for being persistent in pursuing its geopolitical objectives. “Yes, you can call it interference – what the Americans are doing. The same thing they did in Yugoslavia, Serbia in 2001,” the former diplomat said.

Brussels has been openly critical of Orban – described by Kneissl as a life-long “Hungarian nationalist” and “sovereignist” critical of many agendas pushed by EU leaders – labeling him as ‘pro-Russian.’She also pointed to Brussels apparently backing Ukrainian efforts to bar Hungary’s access to Russian oil – for which Budapest retaliated by blocking a joint EU loan for Kiev – as well as discussions in the bloc about potentially suspending Budapest’s voting rights if Orban remains in power.

”They will just put a member state… paralyze it. And some people even speak of – they use the word ‘Maidan,’ they use the words ‘color revolution.’ Not in a third country, but inside an EU member country,” Kneissl said.

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“:This is akin to Pete Rose sending out copies of the MLB betting policy.”

• Unconstitutional Effort to Bar Trump from Ballot in Maine (Turley)

Maine’s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is actually running for governor on her willingness to take flagrantly unconstitutional action. Bellows is touting her removal of Trump from the ballot, an effort that led to a unanimous Supreme Court swatting down Colorado and Maine. Bellows is virtually giddy recounting her efforts to stymie democracy and prevent voters from casting their ballots for the man who ultimately won the election.


Democrats have been running this year on the pledges to launch a virtual roundup of Trump officials and supporters for investigations and impeachments. New York congressional candidate George Conway is pledging to change impeachment rules to secure the removal of President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. However, Bellows, the former ACLU executive director in Maine, is parading her willingness to do things barred by the Constitution. Campaigning on an unconstitutional act rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court (including three liberal justices) truly captures this age of rage. It is the equivalent to how mobsters “make their bones” by whacking someone. Bellows is effectively saying that she was willing to do what other Democrats were unwilling to do: violate the Constitution.

Shenna Bellows has long embraced extreme political and historical viewpoints, including denouncing the electoral college as a “relic of white supremacy.” Bellows also declared that voter ID laws are “rooted in white supremacy.” Bellows previously declared that “the Jan. 6 insurrection was an unlawful attempt to overthrow the results of a free and fair election…The insurrectionists failed, and democracy prevailed.” A year after the riot, Bellows was still denouncing the “violent insurrection.” In her campaign speeches, she is still calling the riot an “insurrection” and heralding her own bravery in seeking to block a democratic vote.

Notably, polls show the public rejecting the claim of an insurrection and neither Trump nor his associates were ever charged with insurrection. Yet, it is certifiably established that Bellows attempted to violate the Constitution and subvert the democratic process. In its unanimous rejection of the move, the Court declared “Nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos.” Bellows was one of those agents of chaos. As Bellows relished the national attention for her consideration of cleansing the ballot, some of us argued that the act would be outrageously unconstitutional.

Ironically, Bellows never got very far in her effort. A superior judge enjoined her, and she repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to get the matter before a higher court. In other words, it did nothing but generate publicity for Bellows and was an utter failure that ended in the 9-0 loss in the Colorado case. Bellows did not even get to join Colorado in defending the effort. Even Maine’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden denounced Bellows decision.The irony is crushing. Bellows is posting videos declaring that she has attempted to instruct Trump on the Constitution, but “The President clearly didn’t get the copy of the Constitution I sent him.”

This is akin to Pete Rose sending out copies of the MLB betting policy. bThere is no sense of self-awareness as Bellows proclaims, “there are no kings in America…we have a democracy.” She sought to prevent democracy by blocking the candidate who went on to win the election handily.

In my recent book “Rage and The Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution”, I discuss the rise of the “new Jacobins,” radicals who are calling for the scrapping of the Constitution or utilizing unconstitutional means to achieve political power. “By any means necessary” has become a mantra on the left.

The true tragedy is that this is likely to work in garnering support. Bellows and other Democrats are in a race to the bottom in proving that they are willing to do things that might make others hesitate. While she may be viewed as bonkers by the courts, Bellows is bona fide for the perpetually enraged.

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Almost a million party members were punished.

• Xi Jinping Carries Out Record-Breaking Punishments Inside CCP (JTN)

More evidence comes in pointing to Xi Jinping having purged the ranks of the PLA and CCP. Reports say the Chinese Communist Party disciplined 983,000 party and government officials last year . China’s strongman leader Xi Jinping carried out a record number of disciplinary actions against Chinese Communist Party members and government officials, a Taiwanese intelligence agency assessed, as Xi conducted a massive purge of People’s Liberation Army leaders ahead of a 2027 deadline to be ready to invade Taiwan.


The Taiwan government’s National Security Bureau reportedly assessed that the CCP had punished nearly one million CCP members and People’s Republic of China officials during 2025, a new report found, which seems to dovetail with Xi’s removal of a host of high-ranking Chinese military brass as he prepares the PLA for war and increases his already iron-like grip on power in the country.

44 generals and admirals, as well as 57 lieutenant generals and vice admirals removed
“The Chinese Communist Party last year disciplined 983,000 party and government officials, a record high during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s tenure, according to a report by the National Security Bureau,” the Taipei Times reported on Tuesday, with the assessment reportedly being sent to Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan — the democratic island nation’s equivalent of the U.S. Congress — ahead of the scheduled committee testimony of Tsai Ming-yen, the director-general of the important Taiwanese intelligence agency. The Department of War’s annual report on China from December assessed that “China expects to be able to fight and win a war on Taiwan by the end of 2027.”

Xi has carried out a multi-year spree of removing top Chinese military commanders from the highest echelons of the PLA, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies finding that the Chinese leader has removed 44 generals and admirals as well as 57 lieutenant generals and vice admirals since 2022. CSIS added that, of the nearly four dozen PLA leaders who were generals in 2022 or were promoted to three-star roles post-2022, 87 percent of them “were purged or potentially purged” as of February of this year.

“Among those whose titles the CCP revoked last year were eight top researchers, including Liu Cangli, former director of the China Academy of Engineering Physics, the country’s main institution for research, development and testing of nuclear weapons and related technologies,” the Taipei Times said the new intel report also found. The outlet wrote on Tuesday: “Since the beginning of this year, the CCP has investigated many senior officials, including two high-level CCP officials — Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, chief of the commission’s Joint Staff Department — as well as politburo member Ma Xingrui, Chongqing Mayor Hu Henghua, and 17 centrally managed cadres, the NSB said.”

CCP purges might be driven by U.S. military successes
Some assessments have contended that changes within the Chinese military leadership have occurred due to fears about U.S. military superiority demonstrated on the battlefield. The Taiwanese intel assessment from this month reportedly found that “the removals” of top Chinese generals and admirals “might have been linked to the CCP’s sale of military equipment to countries such as Venezuela that have performed poorly in conflict scenarios in the past few years.” Miles Yu, the director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute, also wrote in late March that the waves of Xi-led purges inside the PLA might be being driven by recent impressive performances by the U.S. military.

“The modern trajectory of China’s weapons development cannot be understood without recognizing a recurring pattern: Every major leap in the People’s Liberation Army has been triggered by decisive demonstrations of U.S. military superiority,” Yu wrote in the Washington Times. “From the Persian Gulf War to more recent confrontations involving Iran and Venezuela, American battlefield dominance has repeatedly exposed systemic weaknesses in China’s military-industrial complex, forcing cycles of hurried modernization, internal crisis, and political purges.”

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The Artemis story I don’t quite get. They’re doing stuff that NASA should have done 50 years ago, and pretending it’s party-worthy?1

• This Is What a World Superpower Looks Like (Ben Shapiro)

America is living through a moment difficult to describe without sounding a little unhinged. But here goes: We are watching the United States do things that only the United States can do. In the span of a few days, Americans have watched astronauts push farther into space than any human beings in history, while U.S. forces execute military operations so precise and technologically overwhelming that they look like something written for a Hollywood script. Pilots are being rescued in missions that resemble “Mission: Impossible.” Terrorists are being eliminated with the kind of targeted strikes that only a modern superpower can carry out.


And somehow, this has become so normal that we barely stop to appreciate it. On Monday, Artemis II made history. According to The Wall Street Journal, the astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft traveled more than 248,655 miles from Earth — farther than any human beings have ever gone. It is worth repeating: farther than any human beings have ever gone. Not in science fiction. Not in a theoretical model. In real life. In real time. With Americans at the controls. President Donald Trump called the crew to congratulate them, and what followed was a reminder of how far beyond our daily politics the American project really reaches.

“Tell me, what is the most unforgettable part of this really historic day?” the president asked. “The whole world is watching and listening. Please tell me.” Commander Reid Wiseman responded with the kind of awe you would expect from someone looking at the universe from a vantage point no human being has ever had before. He spoke of seeing the moon from a new perspective, of witnessing sights “no human has ever seen before,” even during Apollo. He described an eclipse — the sun, the moon, darkness outside the window, the corona visible — and even the “planet train” lining up in the distance.

Then he said something that sounded less like an astronaut’s report and more like a statement of national destiny: America, he said, was becoming part of the story of a “two-planet species.” That is what the United States is doing right now. And it is not happening in isolation. It is happening alongside a broader national posture that is unmistakably American: an insistence that the country is not merely capable of greatness but obligated to pursue it. For years, Americans have been trained to speak about their own country in tones of apology. The national mood has been one long exercise in self-criticism, as if confidence itself were a moral failing.

But there is a reason the rest of the world still looks at the United States as the place where things happen. People don’t just come here because we have jobs. They come because America still offers something rare: the opportunity to build, to create, to rise. The system is imperfect, but it remains the most powerful engine for human advancement ever constructed.And that same system, the same country capable of sending astronauts a quarter-million miles into space, is also the guarantor of global security — whether people want to admit it or not. That brings us to Iran.

For decades, the Iranian regime has played the same game: fund terrorism, destabilize the Middle East, pursue nuclear weapons, develop long-range ballistic missiles, brutalize its own population, and then demand to be treated as a legitimate member of the international community. The Trump administration’s position is simple: That game is over. What critics conveniently ignore is that Iran has been offered an off-ramp repeatedly. The United States has not demanded cultural surrender or humiliation. The requirements are basic: Stop pursuing nuclear weapons, stop developing long-range missiles, and stop funding terrorism. That is it.

Iran could have chosen that path at any time — not just in recent years but over nearly half a century. They could have been reintegrated into the world economy. They could have normalized relations. They could have chosen prosperity over fanaticism. Instead, they chose escalation. They chose theocracy. They chose regional domination. They chose to bankroll terror groups and accelerate toward nuclear capability. They chose to become a permanent source of instability. And now, they are facing the consequences.

The United States has unleashed military power with a level of dominance that has few parallels in history. The Iranian navy has been devastated. Its air force has been neutralized. Missile-launching capacity has been pushed toward collapse. Key industrial targets have been hit. Nuclear facilities have been bombed. Checkpoints and regime infrastructure have been struck with precision. This is not a stalemate. This is not a quagmire. By any reasonable historical standard, it is a superpower dismantling a hostile regime’s military capacity in real time.

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Isn’t this how this all started? All the Dems saying in 2015 he had no chance in hell to win the election, were also claiming there was no way she loved him. Today, you can only WISH for your lady to love you how she does.

• Melania vs. the Mean Girls (Sarah Anderson)

We can also all agree that women can be catty when it comes to other women’s looks. No one wants to be the ugliest girl in the room, and I can imagine it may feel that way when you’re frumpy and dumpy and standing next to Melania Trump. The first lady is a good bit older than me, and I’ll be the first to admit that I will never look like she does. Even if I work out for hours a day, go on a special diet, have all the surgery and procedures, buy all the products, and wear outfits worth tens of thousands of dollars.


But I’m okay with that. I accept it. The older I get, the more I realize that someone’s physical appearance isn’t nearly as important as who they are, as cliché as that sounds. While I do enjoy seeing what Melania is wearing at various events, I’m far more interested in watching her interact with sick children in a hospital, talk to people who just lost their homes to national disasters, or interact with former hostages. She truly shines in these situations. Unfortunately, other women are not able to put that aside. Initially, I thought it was all politics — they hate Trump, so they’re going to bash his wife. But now I’m beginning to think that they are just catty and jealous.

They’re the frumpy and dumpy — and incredibly shallow — who can’t stand to be outshined by Mrs. Trump’s beauty. Some of the latest examples of this are actress Meryl Streep and former Vogue editor Anna Wintour. I guess they’re promoting a new movie, The Devil Wears Prada 2, and they had “a conversation” as part of this month’s Vogue cover story. I’ll admit that I partially read that article so I could write this one, and by the time I was done, I wanted to go take a shower or bleach my brain or something. It was the most pretentious, hoity-toity crap I’d ever read. These women need to get out of their limos and touch grass. Or maybe Artemis II can grab them and bring them back down to earth with it on Friday. But I digress.

Anyway, the Melania-bashing began when filmmaker Greta Gerwig, who was conducting the interview, posed the question: “Do you think about how women are meant to dress to communicate power?” Because of all the things going on in the world right now, this is important. Wintour responded by propping up the “women one admires:” Michelle Obama and Rama Duwaji, wife of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani — you know, the one who cheered on Hamas on October 7 and uses racial and homophobic slurs on social media. No, Anna, one does not admire these women. At least not one with a brain.

“Think about the women that one admires: Mrs. [Michelle] Obama comes to mind,” Wintour said. “Whether she’s wearing J.Crew or Duro Olowu or Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel, she always looks like herself. I’m full of admiration for New York City’s new first lady because she looks so cool and wears a lot of vintage—young and modern and also entirely herself.” Then she added this: “To be fair, Melania Trump also always looks like herself when she dresses.” There was no explanation, no breakdown of what she wears, just a blunt statement that came across as an insult and was presumably meant that way.

Streep claimed she had “so many thoughts about this” and brought up one particular outfit that Mrs. Trump wore in June 2018. “I think the most powerful message that our current first lady sent was in the coat that said ‘I Really Don’t Care, Do U?’ when she was going to see migrant children who were incarcerated.”

Nice try, Meryl, but let’s add some context. The “coat” she’s referring to is this one:

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Debt Rattle April 5 2026

Apr 052026
 
 April 5, 2026  Posted by at 9:57 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  52 Responses »


John Singer Sargent Palmettos, Florida 1917


• EU ‘15 Years Too Late’ To Prepare For Energy Shock – Dmitriev (RT)
• Trump Reminds Iran “48 Hours Before All Hell Will Reign Down” (ZH)
• Rescue Operation Underway After Iran Downs Two US Fighter Jets (RT)
• Has Concern Over Hormuz Made Us Forget the Red Sea? (ET)
• What Exactly Is the Purpose of NATO in the Year 2026? (Josh Hammer)
• The non-Zionist Israeli Population Could Save the Day (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Kevin Hassett on Latest Jobs Data and Economic Impacts from Iran Conflict (CTH)
• Will the Jones Act Waiver Undermine Trump’s Immigration Policy? (Landrith)
• Kamala Calls to Oppose New Court Nominees “Before They Happen” (Turley)
• Trump; Boycott Bruce Springsteen Over ‘Incurable’ TDS (JTN)
• The New York Times Made a Humiliating Error (Matt Margolis)
• DOJ Is Done Releasing Epstein Files (MN)
• SpaceX IPO: Don’t Bet Against Elon Musk (Tim O’Brien)

 


 

https://twitter.com/lovetocook12345/status/2040068475922628876?s=20

 


 


Maybe opening with this will wake some people up.

And yes, I am in Europe. And the lack of competence and vision is scary.

• EU ‘15 Years Too Late’ To Prepare For Energy Shock – Dmitriev (RT)

The EU has failed to offer any real solutions to the current energy crisis, Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev has said, arguing that Brussels is too late to start preparing for a supply shock. The remarks came in response to EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen’s interview with the Financial Times on Friday in which he said that the US-Israeli war on Iran was likely to have “structural, long-lasting effects” on the bloc’s energy security. He added Brussels was preparing for “worst-case scenarios” and “looking at all possibilities,” including releasing strategic oil reserves and possibly rationing jet fuel or diesel. “Still only warnings, NO REAL FIXES,” Dmitriev, who serves as President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, wrote on X on Friday.


“EU warns 15 YEARS TOO LATE it is not prepared for a ‘long-lasting energy shock.’ EU failed to diversify energy flows, guided by Russophobic, Green, and woke ideology,” he added.The EU implemented a set of energy reforms in 2009–2011 aimed at accelerating the transition to renewable energy and diversifying away from single suppliers, such as Russia. In his interview, Jorgensen ruled out a return to Russian energy imports, insisting that there would be no change to EU plans to end imports of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) by the end of 2026. The US and “other partners” will provide additional supplies, he said. Brussels will also phase out Russian pipeline gas imports by autumn 2027. Russia still accounted for an estimated 13% of total EU gas imports in 2025, according to official data.

President Vladimir Putin warned last month that Russia may withdraw from the EU gas market and redirect its supplies to “emerging markets” without waiting for Brussels’ ban to take effect. The energy crisis in the EU is the result of the “misguided policies” pursued by the bloc over “many years,” Putin said. The conflict in the Middle East has disrupted global supply chains and thrown energy markets into turmoil. On Thursday, the price of crude rose to around $111 per barrel, while the price of gas in the EU spiked to around €50 ($58) per MWh, a 56% increase from February.

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“Reign Down”?

• Trump Reminds Iran “48 Hours Before All Hell Will Reign Down” (ZH)

With U.S. and Israeli air-delivered munitions still striking targets across Iran, and Tehran retaliating by hitting high-value sites around the Gulf area, while continuing to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz, the conflict is now entering its sixth week with no credible signs of near-term de-escalation. Add in President Trump’s speech last week, which warned that intense targeting could continue for a few more weeks, and it’s a very fair assessment that the conflict will carry into next week, with momentum and escalation to the upside.


On Saturday, the U.S. military continued search operations for an American airman who ejected after an F-15E fighter jet was shot down over Iran, marking the first downed U.S. aircraft in the conflict. One crew member was rescued, but the second remained missing, with Iranian forces also racing to find the missing pilot. The downed F-15 jet came shortly after a U.S. Black Hawk was hit by ground fire, and an A-10 Thunderbolt II reportedly crashed Friday near the Hormuz chokepoint. Friday was not a great day for U.S. aircraft as the conflict intensified. C-17 Globemaster IIIs are on the move.

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2040333544023621698

In a rapidly escalating phase of the US-Israel war on Iran (now around day 36+ since late February strikes that targeted Iranian leadership and infrastructure), Tehran has intensified its retaliation while the US and Israel press air campaigns. Iranian missiles struck central Israel on Saturday, triggering widespread sirens and causing visible damage, including to residential areas and an industrial zone near Beersheba. Reports mentioned cluster bomb effects and shrapnel injuries, though Israeli defenses intercepted many projectiles.

At the same time, Israel launched heavy strikes on Tehran, targeting Iranian air-defense and ballistic-missile sites, while a projectile also hit the perimeter of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant, according to the semiofficial Iranian Tasnim news agency. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had notified them about the incident.

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2040412534751313983

Let’s not forget President Trump’s speech on Wednesday, in which he suggested the conflict could continue for weeks and insisted the missing airman would not alter efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict. Iran launched a fresh missile barrage at central Israel, causing fires, damage in areas like Negev, Rosh Haayin, Bnei Brak, and reports of cluster munitions; minor injuries reported, with one man hurt in Bnei Brak. An apparent Iranian drone damaged the Dubai headquarters of the U.S. tech giant Oracle on Saturday after Iranian forces threatened dozens of US firms. Iran has been targeting Gulf area data centers, and reports of a water desalination plant on Friday made headlines.

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According to American media, two of the three pilots have been located and brought to safety

• Rescue Operation Underway After Iran Downs Two US Fighter Jets (RT)

Iran shot down a US fighter jet over its territory on Friday, prompting a rescue operation for the crew, according to US and Iranian media.m,According to multiple outlets citing US officials, one of the two crew members of the twin-seat F-15E Strike Eagle has been rescued, while the whereabouts and status of the second remain unknown. Although Iran claimed it had downed a newer F-35 aircraft, analysts say that images of the wreckage, including an ejection seat, are consistent with an F-15. A second US military aircraft, a single-seat A-10 Thunderbolt II, managed to leave Iranian airspace before its pilot ejected and was rescued, US media reported.


US President Donald Trump has threatened to step up strikes on Iran, saying Iranian power plants could be targeted next. The announcement came just hours after US forces hit the country’s tallest highway bridge linking Tehran and Karaj, rendering it inoperable.“Our Military… hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants! New Regime leadership knows what has to be done, and has to be done fast!” Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari responded, warning of immediate retaliation if Washington follows through.

“If the US proceeds with its threats regarding Iran’s power plants, immediate retaliatory actions will be taken,” he said in a video address, adding that Israeli energy and IT infrastructure – as well as regional companies with American shareholders – would face ”complete and utter annihilation.” The video featured footage of the Stargate UAE project, a major AI infrastructure hub under construction in Abu Dhabi, part of a US-backed initiative led by OpenAI. Zolfaghari said Iran would ”do whatever it takes” to defend its interests, suggesting these projects could become targets. Earlier, Iran said the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed ”in the long term” to US and Israeli ships. Trump urged Tehran to ”make a deal before it is too late.” Iranian officials have denied they are seeking a ceasefire or engaging in talks.

Latest developments: • Trump said he hopes that the pilot of a downed US aircraft will not be captured or harmed by Iranian forces. • Israel reportedly canceled some planned strikes on Iran to avoid interfering with the ongoing rescue operation. • An Iranian drone struck Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery, while the debris from an intercepted UAV set fire to the UAE’s largest gas processing hub, Habshan, authorities in the Gulf state have reported. • Iran has refused a 48-hour ceasefire offer from the US, delivered via a third country, according to Fars news agency. Indirect attempts to secure an armistice have “reached a dead end,” according to the WSJ. • Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said strikes on civilian infrastructure, including bridges, would not force Iran to surrender, calling them a sign of “defeat and moral collapse.”

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Colorful.

• Has Concern Over Hormuz Made Us Forget the Red Sea? (ET)

Wartime concerns about the security of maritime energy traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—connecting the Indian Ocean/Gulf of Oman with the Persian Gulf—have overshadowed the fact that the related issue of Red Sea security is far from resolved and is, in fact, becoming more dynamic. The Red Sea–Suez link between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean is of equal strategic importance to global trade as the Hormuz choke point and is, through geography and common players, intrinsically linked with the Persian Gulf conflict.


But it is Ethiopia’s civil war, brewing with different factions and with varying intensity since the coup against Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1974, which is again moving in ways that could prove decisive. Always, in the background, is the reality that Ethiopia could revive its historical influence over the Red Sea–Suez sea line of communication (SLOC). Inside Ethiopia, the conflicts that have been raging since 1974 between different governments and different factions are at a new level.

The four different Fano opposition militia groups, representing different areas of the Amhara heartland, have been fighting against the central government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali for several years. In early 2026, they came together with a united manifesto of their intentions. This has revived the momentum of the threat to Abiy’s Prosperity Party government. A statement issued by a united Fano on Jan. 17, 2026 (Tir 9, 2018, in the Ethiopian calendar) noted:

“So that the Amhara struggle may become one, the leaders of the Amhara Fano National Force and the Amhara Fano People’s Organization, through a historic decision that demanded courage, open-heartedness, decisiveness, and trust in the people, have been able to make Fano unity a reality. … We have designated one leader, one organization.” Significantly, the leadership of the united Fano all titled themselves as “Arbegna,” a nod to the Arbegnoch, the Patriots, who, under the banner of Emperor Haile Selassie I, fought against the Italian invaders of Ethiopia from 1935 to 1941. This led to the ouster of the Italians at the Battle of Gondar, in late November 1941, the first major Allied victory of World War II, in the ouster of an Axis power (Italy) from territory it had seized.

Today, the result of the four separate Amhara Fano groups fighting against the Abiy government over the past several years was the creation—finally—of the Amhara Fano National Movement (AFNM) as an umbrella for all civil and military operations. AFNM, however, described itself as working on behalf of all Ethiopians desirous of the restoration of the multi-ethnic empire. (Ethiopia is home to some 80 ethnic and linguistic groups.) Prime Minister Abiy, half-Amhara and half-Oromo, has consistently identified with Oromo causes and first fought against a Tigrean-dominated government of Ethiopia, and then against the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) militia, which was forced into a ceasefire—essentially a military surrender by the TPLF—in November 2022.

Abiy’s Prosperity Party government has increasingly been rejected by his original Oromo militant supporters, who regard him as “insufficiently Oromo” in outlook, and the government’s writ—or its area of focus—now rarely extends beyond the capital, Addis Ababa. The exception for Abiy’s travels is to some major projects such as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in the Benishangul-Gumuz Region of western Ethiopia. The dam has been the subject of some hostility from Egypt, which sees its existence as infringing on Egypt’s “right” to control the waters of the Blue Nile, even though they originate in Lake Tana in the Amhara Highlands of Ethiopia, outside Egypt’s territories.

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NATO’s purpose was anti-Russia. That ended in 1989. Questions?

• What Exactly Is the Purpose of NATO in the Year 2026? (Josh Hammer)

One month into Operation Epic Fury against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a long-overdue conversation has finally broken into the open: What, exactly, is the enduring rationale for NATO? For decades, this question has been treated in Washington foreign policy circles as heretical. But it isn’t. And to their credit, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are now saying so plainly. As Trump recently put it, “They haven’t been friends when we needed them. We’ve never asked them for much. … It’s a one-way street.” Rubio has been similarly blunt: “If NATO is just about us defending Europe if they’re attacked but then denying us basing rights when we need them, that’s not a very good arrangement. … So all that’s going to have to be reexamined.”


They’re spot-on. At best, America’s European “allies” have spent decades free-riding on the U.S. security umbrella. Despite repeated commitments to meet baseline defense spending targets, many NATO members still under-invest in their militaries and outsource their national defense to American taxpayers. The imbalance is staggering: The United States accounts for the overwhelming majority of NATO’s military capabilities, logistics, and strategic lift. Overall, American taxpayers contribute about 60% of total spending on NATO defense.

At worst, some of these same European allies actively undermine U.S. operations at critical moments. Major Western European countries such as Spain and France have restricted or complicated U.S. use of their airspace during Operation Epic Fury. That is farcical. A so-called alliance in which members obstruct one another’s ability to wage war is not actually an alliance — it is a liability.This raises the core question: Why, exactly, does NATO exist in the year 2026? Let’s recall its origins. NATO was founded in 1949 with a clear and urgent mission: to contain and, if necessary, defeat the Soviet Union. That mission was compelling — indeed, existential. Western Europe lay devastated after World War II, and the Soviet threat was real, immediate, and hegemonic. But that world quite literally no longer exists.

The Soviet Union collapsed three and a half decades ago. The Berlin Wall fell the year I was born. The Cold War is now a relic of history. By any reasonable metric, NATO achieved its raison d’etre by the early 1990s. But instead of declaring victory and recalibrating, the alliance drifted. It expanded ever further into Eastern Europe and shifted its ostensible mission into… well, something.Simply put, NATO is today an organization in search of a purpose.

Is NATO a collective defense pact against the geopolitical successor to the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation? If so, why do so many European NATO members fail to take that threat seriously enough to invest in their own national defense? Is NATO now instead a vehicle for global counterterrorism? If so, why have its members sat on the sidelines and refused to join the United States as it goes to battle against the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of jihad? Or is NATO nowadays just a political club for liberal democracies? If so, what does that have to do with a hardheaded conception of the U.S. national interest?NATO has become a catch-all institution, long on triumphalist platitudes but short on the strategic realities on which its existence was predicated.

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“Netanyahu’s party has 23.41% of the vote.”

• The non-Zionist Israeli Population Could Save the Day (Paul Craig Roberts)

Trump’s blustering April Fool’s day speech would easily have served as a hilarious April Fool’s day joke. But it was just bluster to take the place of the discarded 10-day ultimatum that replaced the discarded 5-day ultimatum with a 3 or 4 week ultimatum. As I asked, if Iran is as totally destroyed as Trump asserts, what is the purpose of Trump’s ultimatum?


Time is running out for Trump, not for Iran. The last time an American president took America to war Constitutionally was 1941 when Congress gave the executive branch permission to enter the war with the Constitutionally required Congressional Declaration of War. As time went by Congress finally responded to presidential decisions to go to war without a Congressional declaration of war not by impeaching the President, which should have been done in order to protect the Constitutional political order and separation of powers, but by requiring the president who initiates military action without Congressional approval to come to Congress with a deadline of 60 days after initiating military action for congressional approval to continue the military action.

In other words, Congress failed to defend the Constitution’s Separation of Powers by allowing the executive branch to exercise a power it does not have to go to war and, afterward, to come to Congress for approval. In the past Congress has rubber-stamped the President’s decision. But this time it is different. Polls indicate that a majority of Americans do not share Trump’s concern about the Iranian threat to America. They do not support Netanyahu’s war. Even many American Jews do not support the war.

On April 2 the Times of Israel reported that “the US Democratic National Committee is set to consider a resolution at a meeting next week that “condemns the growing influence” of AIPAC. This is extraordinary considering that in the US Senate there are 9 Jewish Democrats and no Republican ones and that of the 25 Jews in the House of Representatives, 21 are Democrats. https://www.timesofisrael.com/democrats-to-weigh-resolution-against-aipac-fueling-concerns-about-undercurrent-of-antisemitism/

The Times of Israel reports that: “A recent NBC poll found that 57% of Democratic voters have a negative view of Israel, compared to 13% who have a positive view of the country. Meanwhile, a growing number of the party’s congressional candidates—and politicians thought to be seeking its 2028 presidential nomination—are swearing off AIPAC, and crossing its red line of supporting conditions on military aid to Israel.” What Trump has done is to ally the American Democrat Party against Israel and the Republicans with Israel Or to put it more correctly with the current Zionist government of Netanyahu.

Netanyahu’s party has 23.41% of the vote. To be in office Netanyahu has to rely on far right-wing extremist parties who fervently believe in Greater Israel from the Nile River to Pakistan. It is for this Greater Israel agenda that Americans have been fighting for the first quarter of the 21st century. But support for this agenda is not only weak in the US, it also seems to be week in Israel. Zionism has always been a minority position among Jews and the Israeli population. The Israelis tolerated Zionism because it did them no harm. No missiles fell upon them and the Americans protected them with money, weapons, and diplomatic cover.

But now the vaunted Israeli Iron Dome is penetrated at Iran’s will. The Iranian missiles have destroyed the American radar systems that enabled US defenses to prevent attacks on the Persian Gulf states and Israel. If Trump declares victory and goes home, Zionist Israel has no chance of survival. Israel’s nuclear weapons are cancelled by Iran’s demonstrated ability to hit the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona and Israel’s storage site of its nuclear weapons. Iran doesn’t need nukes to destroy Israel. A strike on the Dimona nuclear facility would suffice to spread radiation over tiny Israel.

Trump cannot stay in the war, because he cannot risk Congress rejecting his justification for attacking Iran and for continuing the war. For Trump, being defeated by Congress is worse than being defeated by Iran. Trump has until April 28 to extricate himself from the war. So what happens to Israel, defenseless from Iranian missile attack, when Trump leaves the scene? mNetanyahu, who is under indictment in Israel, also faces elections this autumn. What if he cannot put together another ruling coalition? What if the Israelis for the first time are experiencing heavy costs of the Zionist Agenda of Greater Israel and decide that the Zionist agenda does not serve the security of Israel?

There is a possibility that Trump and Netanyahu have made the Israeli population aware of the heavy cost of the Zionist agenda. I do not know what the odds might be, but it is not impossible that Israelis, with the cost of the Zionist agenda now brought home to them, will reject the Zionist agenda and announce that they are satisfied with Israel’s current borders. It is possible–I do not know the odds–that the non-Zionist population of Israel will take the agenda out of the hands of the Zionist war-mongers, and form a government that rejects the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel. This, other than Israel’s destruction, is the only avenue to peace in the Middle East.

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MAGAnomic .

• Kevin Hassett on Latest Jobs Data and Economic Impacts from Iran Conflict (CTH)

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett appears on Bloomberg News to discuss the US March jobs report and oil market supply disruptions related to the military action in Iran against the impact of oil prices on the US economy. Director Hassett notes the continued goal of the Trump MAGAnomic plan is to build momentum, keep driving domestic investment and the short-term impact from Iran should mitigate quickly.

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“The Jones Act, formally known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920..”

• Will the Jones Act Waiver Undermine Trump’s Immigration Policy? (Landrith)

There are moments when a temporary policy change forces an examination of deeper legal and strategic questions. The 60-day Jones Act waiver issued last month is one of those moments. While framed as a narrow national security measure, this waiver raises serious concerns about whether the very laws designed to protect American maritime strength and national sovereignty will be inadvertently undermined.


The Jones Act, formally known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, is a cornerstone of American maritime policy. It requires that goods transported between U.S. ports be carried on vessels that are built in the United States, owned by American citizens, and crewed by American mariners. The law was enacted as a vital national security safeguard. A strong domestic merchant marine provides critical sealift capacity during wartime or national emergencies, ensuring the military can move troops, equipment, and supplies without relying on potentially unreliable foreign vessels. On March 17, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) exercised its purported authority to issue a temporary waiver of the Jones Act for certain commodities.

Supporters argue this was a prudent, limited step to address immediate logistical needs amid ongoing global tensions. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has since implemented detailed compliance procedures: operators must provide advance notice, submit cargo manifests, meet vessel entry requirements, and file final voyage reports with the Maritime Administration (MARAD), which then posts them publicly.These steps show the government is attempting to maintain oversight. However, the waiver only suspends certain “navigation and vessel-inspection laws” under 46 U.S.C. § 501. It does not address — and cannot automatically override — other important bodies of federal law, particularly immigration regulations governing foreign crew members.

This is where the problem becomes serious. Most foreign mariners enter the United States under C-1/D or D crewman visas. These visas are intended for international voyages only. Federal immigration law is explicit: crewmen in this status “may not be employed in connection with domestic flights or movements of a vessel.” The law was written with the assumption that foreign vessels would engage primarily in international trade, not domestic shipping between U.S. ports. A Jones Act waiver may relax one statute, but it does not clearly authorize foreign crews to engage in purely domestic transportation under their existing immigration status.

This creates a gray area that has received far too little attention. During a time of heightened national security concerns — particularly with Operation Epic Fury underway against Iran — we should be increasing scrutiny of foreign personnel entering U.S. waters and ports, not potentially loosening controls. The risks are practical as well as legal. Immigration law imposes real obligations and penalties on both crew members and vessel operators. Overstays, unauthorized activities, and violations of crewman status carry civil and criminal consequences. Shipowners and charterers relying on this waiver may believe they are fully protected because CBP has approved the cargo movement. But satisfying one agency’s requirements does not necessarily satisfy every applicable federal statute.

Additionally, Congress recently strengthened the public reporting requirements attached to Jones Act waivers. Operators must now disclose the vessel name, flag state, ports of call, cargo details, and the specific national defense justification. MARAD is required to publish this information promptly. While transparency is generally positive, it also creates a public paper trail that could invite future congressional oversight, lawsuits, or enforcement actions if questions arise about immigration compliance.

This waiver is not occurring in a vacuum. America’s maritime industry has already been weakened over decades by high costs, regulatory burdens, and declining shipbuilding capacity. The Jones Act exists to prevent further erosion. Waiving it — even temporarily — sends a signal that domestic shipping rules can be set aside when convenient. If foreign-flag vessels and crews can now perform work traditionally reserved for Americans, there is a risk of accelerating the decline of our domestic merchant marine at the very time when great power competition and supply chain vulnerabilities make it more important than ever.

Supporters of the waiver argue it is narrowly tailored and time-limited. That may be true on paper. But policy often creates precedents. Once foreign vessels are allowed into domestic trade routes, pressure will build to extend or expand such waivers in the future. Shippers naturally prefer lower costs, and foreign operators will seek to expand their access to the lucrative U.S. domestic market and bypass visa requirements.

Before embracing this or future waivers, policymakers and industry participants should ask a disciplined set of questions: Exactly which laws have been waived? Which laws remain fully in force? Have we properly reconciled the conflict between navigation waivers and immigration restrictions? And most importantly, does this action strengthen or weaken America’s long-term maritime, immigration, and national security posture?

A temporary waiver may solve a short-term logistical problem. But if it creates uncertainty, invites legal challenges, or further weakens America’s domestic maritime capabilities or immigration enforcement capabilities, it could ultimately do more harm than good to national security. In an increasingly dangerous world, preserving the integrity and strength of the Jones Act should remain a high priority — not an afterthought.

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Nobody likes Kamala.

• Kamala Calls to Oppose New Court Nominees “Before They Happen” (Turley)

Former Vice President Kamala Harris is rallying Democratic donors to oppose “additional justices” that might be nominated by President Donald Trump “before they happen.” Harris is heralding the fundraising by Josh Orton, president of the dark-money group “Demand Justice” (made infamous for its campaign to push Justice Stephen Breyer to resign). Demand Justice has pushed a radical agenda, including court packing. In a post on X, Harris highlighted a New York Times article on the “liberal organization” “preparing a multimillion–dollar effort to oppose potential Trump Supreme Court appointees before they happen.” Orton announced that “the project would cost $3 million to start and $15 million more if vacancies occurred.”


The group expressly cited the possibility of Justices Clarence Thomas (77) and Samuel Alito (76) retiring. Harris pushed people to contribute, posting that :“We must be clear eyed about what is at stake with the Supreme Court right now. We cannot allow Donald Trump to hand pick one, if not two, additional justices. The nation’s highest court must be stopped from becoming even more beholden to him.” Harris reportedly supports court packing and could use radical groups like Demand Justice to push through an expansion of the Court to produce an immediate liberal majority if Democrats take power. Harris is right about one thing. This is an clear-eyed, remorseless strategy on the left to remove an obstacle to an equally radical agenda.

Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.,mLikewise, Democratic strategist James Carville explained how this process of how the pack-to-power plan would work:

“I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen. A Democrat is going to be elected in 2028. You know that. I know that. The Democratic president is going to announce a special transition advisory committee on the reform of the Supreme Court. They’re going to recommend that the number of Supreme Court justices go from nine to 13. That’s going to happen, people.” The rhetoric for this renewed push for court packing and war chests on the left remains entirely unconnected to the actual record of conservatives on the Court, who have been repeatedly attacked by President Trump for voting against major cases by the Administration. From the tariffs decision to the expected birthright citizenship ruling, the conservative justices have routinely voted against the Administration.

Moreover, the vast majority of opinions on the Court remain unanimous or nearly unanimous. The ideological split on the Court is only present in relatively few cases each term. While those cases admittedly have significant impacts, this is not a rigidly or robotically divided court in most cases. Indeed, liberal justices have pushed back on the left calling for court packing or describing the Court as conservative or ideological. Yet, Harris continues to rally donors and voters with claims of an “activist” court.

What is most striking about the “clear-eyed” leadership of Harris is that her model for a new justice appears to be the only Biden nominee, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Both conservative and liberal justices have publicly criticized Jackson in past opinions. Jackson has lashed out at her colleagues while adopting analysis that would effectively gut areas like First Amendment jurisprudence. Many of us have found Jackson’s opinions to be unnerving and unhinged. However, liberal groups and Harris would like to replicate her approach to jurisprudence — suggesting not only a packed court but one populated by unrestrained jurists.

For her part, Justice Jackson shocked many by effectively endorsing Harris in her presidential run. Jackson publicly praised her nomination on ABC’s The View as “historic” and something that “gives a lot of people hope.” With the millions being raised and radical groups positioning themselves for a court-packing push, there are many who see a second Harris nomination as a cause for “hope.” For the rest of us, it is not just “clear-eyed” but unblinking dread at what could await this country if this strategy succeeds in the coming years.

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He’s Obama’s best friend. And the people he would sing about, all vote Trump.

• Trump; Boycott Bruce Springsteen Over ‘Incurable’ TDS (JTN)

Springsteen has been a long-time critic of the president, stating in 2016 that the “republic is under siege by a moron,” and spoke out against Trump last year in Europe. President Donald Trump called for his supporters Thursday morning to boycott famed singer Bruce Springsteen and his concerts over the icon’s “incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.” The president’s call comes after Springsteen launched his new tour this week in Minneapolis, where he claimed: “The America that I love, the America … that has been a beacon of hope and liberty around the world is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous administration.”


Springsteen has been a long-time critic of the president, stating in 2016 that the “republic is under siege by a moron,” and spoke out against Trump last year in Europe. He also released a song about the fatal shooting of two protesters earlier this year titled “Streets of Minneapolis.” “Bad, and very boring singer, Bruce Springsteen, who looks like a dried up prune who has suffered greatly from the work of a really bad plastic surgeon, has long had a horrible and incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, sometimes referred to as TDS,” Trump ranted in a post on Truth Social.

“The guy is a total loser who spews hate against a President who won a landslide election, including the popular vote, all seven swing states, and 86% of the counties across America,” he continued. “Under Sleepy Joe and the Dems, our country was dead, and now we have the ‘hottest’ country, by far, anywhere in the World. “MAGA should boycott his overpriced concerts, which suck,” he added. “Save your hard earned money. America is back!” Springsteen’s union, the American Federation of Musicians, slammed the president for “personally” attacking the singer, who it lauded as one of its “most celebrated members,” according to Deadline.

“Bruce Springsteen is not just a brilliant musician, he is a voice for working people, a symbol of American resilience, and an inspiration to millions in this country and around the world,” the union’s leaders said in a statement. “Musicians have the right to freedom of expression, and we stand in complete solidarity with Bruce and every member who uses their platform to speak their conscience. Local 802 and Local 47 will always defend that right.”

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“It’s hard to see how any European country will now be able and willing to trust the United States to come to its defense..”

• The New York Times Made a Humiliating Error (Matt Margolis)

The New York Times set out Friday to embarrass President Donald Trump over his hardline stance on NATO. It wound up spectacularly backfiring on them. Several NATO nations have declined to join a U.S.-Israel military operation targeting Iran. Alliance members also refused Trump’s requests to deploy their forces to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, much to the chagrin of President Trump, who figures that if NATO allies won’t help the United States, then the alliance has become meaningless. So the paper ran a piece criticizing Trump’s threats to withdraw from the alliance, and the print edition’s headline asked a pointed question: “A North American Treaty Organization Without America?”


There’s just one problem. NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Times apparently forgot that detail, and, after being mocked on social media, quietly issued a correction through its communications team on X. Trump also joined in on the mocking. “The Failing New York Times, whose lack of credibility, and their constant Fake News attacks on your favorite President, ME, has caused its circulation to absolutely PLUMMET, referred to our severely weakened and extremely unreliable ‘partner,’ NATO, as the North American Treaty Organization,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Saturday morning. ‘The correct name is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – A very interesting mistake! The hiring and educational standards have gone way down at the NYT.”

He added, “Bring back, ‘ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO PRINT’ and, Make America Great Again!” Here’s what makes this especially painful for the Times. The article wasn’t some throwaway weekend filler. It was a deliberate piece designed to frame Trump as reckless for pushing back against an alliance his critics treat as sacred. “Since his re-election, President Trump has threatened to leave the NATO alliance several times. On Wednesday, he did it again, frustrated that European nations had refused to join the so-far indecisive United States-Israeli war against Iran,” the article began. “But the more he disparages NATO and threatens to abandon it, the more hollow it becomes.”

The alliance, built after World War II to deter the Soviet Union and keep the peace in Europe, is in crisis, with some questioning whether it can survive. The Mideast war has brought existing doubts about American commitment to the alliance to the fore, argued Ivo Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO. “It’s hard to see how any European country will now be able and willing to trust the United States to come to its defense,” he said. “Hope, perhaps. But they can’t count on it.” In his speech to the nation Wednesday night, Mr. Trump did not mention NATO, to the relief of allies. But a senior European official said he thought most Europeans did not believe that Article 5, the NATO commitment to collective defense, still had teeth.

The United States now seems part of the problem of world disorder, the official said, speaking anonymously given the sensitivity of the topic. The country is no longer the solution and the guarantor of last resort, he said. The whole premise depended on the Times looking like the serious, credentialed adults in the room. Instead, they demonstrated that they didn’t even know the true name of the organization they were defending — right there in the headline, in print, that no amount of corrections can erase.NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is scheduled to travel to Washington next week to try to smooth things over with Trump directly.

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And now they can all go after Todd Blanche..

• DOJ Is Done Releasing Epstein Files (MN)

In a move sparking fresh skepticism among Americans demanding full accountability, the new acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has declared the Jeffrey Epstein files chapter closed. This came just hours after President Trump reassigned Pam Bondi, with Blanche – Trump’s former personal attorney – stepping in as acting AG and signaling it’s time to move on from the scandal. “The DOJ has now released ALL the files with respect to the Epstein saga,” Blanche stated on Fox News. He added, “I think that to the extent the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward.”

Jesse Watters pressed Blanche directly on whether he thought Bondi mishandled the Epstein files. Blanche responded, “First of all, I have never heard President Trump say that the Attorney General was, that anything that happened to her had anything to do with the Epstein files. So look, the Epstein files has been a saga that’s lasted for the entire for the past year.” He further defended the process, noting that Bondi and he “appeared in front of Congress voluntarily a couple weeks ago to answer any questions they had” and made documents available for review.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2039865199729983783

When Watters asked, “Who was Epstein spying for?” Blanche replied, “I don’t know that he was spying for anybody. Nobody’s ever said that.” He claimed there is “no evidence in the Epstein files” suggesting Epstein worked for a foreign country.

On the question of releasing names of men who abused girls, Blanche previously pushed back, asking “What does that mean? I don’t understand what that means.” He also stated plainly, “It’s not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein.”

https://twitter.com/Xx17965797N/status/2039969129382228244

Blanche doubled down on the administration’s position: “When Trump said let’s release the Epstein files… we did it.”The timing aligns with Trump’s decision to move Bondi to the private sector amid reported frustrations over her pace on key matters, including the Epstein files. Critics had highlighted her earlier claims of possessing a client list and distributing repetitive binders, followed by a DOJ memo stating no such list existed. Yet the assertion that “all files” are out faces immediate pushback. The DOJ reviewed roughly six million potentially responsive documents but released only about 3.5 million publicly, leaving millions still unreleased, redacted, or withheld.

This latest development deepens concerns over an Epstein cover up. FBI officers have raised alarms, with suspicions of document shredding after his death. Separately, a foreign hacker who cracked into the FBI’s Epstein files in 2023 was reportedly disgusted at the scale of child sexual abuse material uncovered, underscoring how much sensitive content may still remain hidden. Epstein survivor reactions and ongoing victim calls for transparency continue to highlight the stakes.

Blanche has remained guarded on specifics. His responses often circled back to congressional access rather than new public disclosures, while emphasizing a pivot to other fraud cases nationwide. The Epstein operation represented far more than one man’s crimes — it exposed a network that reached the highest levels of power, protected for years by institutional gatekeepers. Declaring the files “done” while millions of pages stay locked away does little to rebuild trust in a system long accused of shielding the elite. Americans who supported Trump’s mandate expect genuine sunlight on these matters, not a premature shutdown dressed as completion. The deep state’s habits of concealment die hard, and the demand for full disclosure — for the victims and the public’s right to know — will not fade quietly.

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Uomo Universalis?!

• SpaceX IPO: Don’t Bet Against Elon Musk (Tim O’Brien)

Tesla isn’t just a car company, and SpaceX isn’t just a space exploration company. Elon Musk’s two marquee companies, and his many other ventures have a lot in common and complement each other by design. The common thread is that Musk wants to leave his mark on this world having changed civilization’s footprint. If he does that, he would be one of the most consequential humans who ever lived. To accomplish that, he had to create technologies that didn’t exist. Benchmark accomplishments have had to happen and still need to happen that, each one in its own right, is almost equivalent to the significance of Christopher Columbus discovering America.


In the course of creating self-driving, electric vehicles (EVs) at Tesla, Musk has been advancing robot and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. At SpaceX he’s led the way on space travel innovation in ways NASA once monopolized. He’s not doing these things just to say he did them. He’s got a vision, which he constantly talks about. He wants to colonize the Moon and Mars. He wants mankind to start to think bigger. His company Neuralink has created a brain-computer interface that translates neural signals into actions. The initial applications for this are for disabled people who can be aided by his devices which control computers and robotic arms with thought. As this technology evolves, it’s not hard to imagine how it can be used by able-bodied or disabled astronauts and human colonizers on other celestial bodies.

Musk’s satellite internet provider company Starlink is yet another capability that may become critical to realizing his vision in space. Already, the company operates thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit to give users on the ground wireless internet access. While rural users and people in Third World have been some of the early beneficiaries of the technology, its future applications are limited only by Musk’s imagination. Another little-known Musk company is called The Boring Company, which is a tunnel-building firm. Right now, that company’s technology and capabilities are used to more efficiently build affordable tunnels faster. In Las Vegas, you can go to the Convention Center Loop and see how Teslas are used underground to transport people rather than use rail cars.

It’s never a good idea to judge a tech company by the first uses of its technology or platform. If you did that when Amazon first started, you would have just seen that company as an online bookstore, which is what it was at first, but that was never founder Jeff Bezos’s full vision for the company. The same is true here. Long before anyone took him seriously on any of this, Musk started seriously looking at what it would take for him to realize his vision. He knew he had the money to get started, and he knew if his ventures were successful, the money to further invest in his ideas would come.

So he worked backward. He started with that wild vision, and then he followed the pathway back to our current reality. With that, he had a list of technologies and solutions that needed to be invented. He knew the kind of companies that needed to be started. And he knew what problems those companies needed to solve in their infancy before they could do the big stuff. To date, all the headlines around Tesla was its EV advantage, helping people and governments realize the benefits of electric vehicles. But already, it’s possible to see that this was just a baby step for Tesla. The autonomous vehicle development at the company made it as much a robot company as an automotive one. In March, Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX launched a joint venture to consolidate all phases of semiconductor production in the same plant. That venture is called Terafab.

Self-sufficiency To more fully appreciate what Musk is doing, a term comes to mind – self-sufficiency. Musk realized he couldn’t achieve his master vision if he were counting on others and other firms for key parts of the puzzle. He needed the self-sufficiency it will take to get to Mars. He needed it to generate all the sustainable energy you need from the sun, to use that energy to power satellite networks. He’s needed it to go about city-building, for underground tunnel construction, and to do all of this while creating your own chips, doing the work with your own people, your own robots, and using your own AI platforms.

Compatibility is just as important and is part of the self-sufficiency equation. Anyone who has worked in tech knows that once you have two separate companies, a good deal of time, effort and work is focused on helping two companies’ technologies to talk to each other and work with each other. Musk’s consolidated approach eliminates a lot of that. When you look at it that way, the tunnel company makes perfect sense. Underground tunnels enable you to create more controlled environments on planets and moons. They reduce certain risks associated with living in these harsh environments, and they make the notion of living there more sustainable and a pragmatic possibility.

My colleague Rick Moran wrote about the potential opportunities that could come from mining asteroids, and in the process, he touched on the planned SpaceX Initial Public Offering (IPO). He also mentioned Musk’s role in all of this, which cannot be overstated. At the moment, Musk is even looking at ways to build datacenters in space which would generate power to be used here on Earth. Once again, Musk focuses on solving a real problem on Earth that falls right in line with giving him the new tools he needs to achieve his goal of expanding the human race to the moon and beyond. Since Musk is who he is and has lived the life he’s lived, he’s learned not to hit people with his grand vision all at once. It’s too easy to laugh off a guy like that. He’s learned to reveal his master vision over time to provide context by emphasizing his near-term focus.

Henry Ford spent his entire life on the automobile, and society was never the same as a result. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates spent their active careers personalizing computer technology, and once again, society was never the same. Musk has always thought so much bigger than that, that he’s had to learn to rein himself in so that he tends to talk about each step in its own time. NASA’s Artemis mission to the moon, along with increasing disclosures centered on that SpaceX IPO are making it more obvious that Musk’s disparate ventures are starting to converge. It’s becoming more apparent what he’s ultimately trying to do, and it’s not just talk.

https://twitter.com/defense_civil25/status/2039482814031167526

NASA has already selected the SpaceX Human Landing System (HLS) for Artemis as the means to land people on the moon. SpaceX’s Raptor engines and reusable rocket technology may also come to play.

https://twitter.com/theinformant_x/status/1986890516043337983

Not coincidentally, SpaceX this week took a major first step towards its IPO which will generate the cash SpaceX will need to further realize its potential and Musk’s vision. According to Bloomberg, SpaceX’s IPO could be the largest public offering ever after filing with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). The newswire reported that SpaceX could raise up to $75 billion through the IPO.

Reuters has reported that while the company is valued at $1.25 trillion right now, Musk and SpaceX are seeking a valuation of $1.8 trillion through the IPO. While no official date has been disclosed, reports are to expect it in June. If you’ve only been casually paying attention to Musk and his various business ventures because they may have seemed too far out for you to get your head around, now may be the time to start paying closer attention. Even if all you have is a 401(k) or an IRA account, chances are pretty good that a part of your own nest egg will depend on Musk to achieve some of those goals of his.

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Debt Rattle April 3 2026

Apr 032026
 
 April 3, 2026  Posted by at 9:21 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  70 Responses »


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


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

 


 

 


 


Let’s open with the first trillionaire.

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

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

The smartest man is also rhe richest?

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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Epstein victim?!

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The reason to attack them.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

• The Price of Underestimating Iran (Lukyanov)

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Iran has become the test case.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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A.K.A. Shock and Awe.

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

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


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

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

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More Shock and Anxiety.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


Read more …

Could it trigger the end of the EU?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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Too small brains.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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We have questions.

• AI Giant Anthropic Suffers Strategic Code Hemorrhage (RT)

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


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

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

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

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Just passing on. Are mini-nukes the answer?

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

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


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

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

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

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What on earth happened since 1969?

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Good points.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 23 2026

Mar 232026
 
 March 23, 2026  Posted by at 9:42 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  106 Responses »


Claude Monet Misty Morning on the Seine 1897

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• Saudi Arabia & UAE Inch Closer To Joining US-Israeli War (MEE)
• Trump Gives Iran 48-Hour Ultimatum on Strait of Hormuz (Catherine Salgado)
• Iran’s New Supreme Leader Has Never Been Seen Since Taking Office (ZH)
• Netanyahu: 48 Hours Proved Iran Is the ‘Enemy of Civilization’ (Salgado)
• America’s War With Iran Could Destroy NATO From Within (Sadygzade)
• The Middle East Crisis Is Rewriting Energy Security Doctrine (Vaid)
• Join The US Military – Kill And Die For Israel (McGlinchey)
• Artificial Intelligence Is Taking Over Political Campaigns (George Caldwell)
• Report: Pentagon to Adopt Palantir as Core U.S. Military System (CTH)
• Trump Says ICE Will Run Airport Security If Dems Don’t Fund TSA (Salgado)
• Senate Democrats Are Quietly Plotting To Oust Chuck Schumer (ZH)
• Russia to Refer Childless Women for Psychiatric Evaluations (Martin Armstrong)
• Rhinos back in African Park For First Time After 40 Years (RT)

 


 

https://twitter.com/Thevictoria76/status/2035326809483706368?s=20 https://twitter.com/ivan_8848/status/2035321243969241307?s=20

 


 


Splitting up the Arab world.

• Saudi Arabia & UAE Inch Closer To Joining US-Israeli War (MEE)

Earlier this month, Elbridge Colby, a senior official in the US Department of War, held a call with Saudi Arabian Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman, who is also the brother and top adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Iran’s attacks on US bases in the Gulf were heating up, and the US needed expanded access and overflight permissions. Saudi Arabia agreed to open King Fahd Air Base in Taif, in Western Saudi Arabia, to the Americans, multiple US and western officials familiar with the matter told Middle East Eye.


The base is important because it is farther from Iranian Shahed drones than Prince Sultan Air Base, which has come under repeated Iranian attacks. Taif is also close to Jeddah, the Red Sea port that has become a critical logistics hub since Iran effectively took control of the Strait of Hormuz. Current and former US officials tell MEE that if the Trump administration is preparing for a longer war on Iran, Jeddah may be critical for sustaining US armed forces. Thousands of US ground troops are en route to the region from East Asia.

Saudi Arabia’s decision to expand base access, current and former officials say, underscores a shift in how the kingdom and some other Gulf states are responding to the US-Israeli war on Iran. “The attitude in Riyadh has shifted towards supporting the US war as a way to punish Iran for strikes,” a western official in the Gulf told MEE. Trump and the Saudi crown prince have been holding regular phone calls for the last three weeks, the US and western officials told MEE. The UAE has also told the US that it is geared up for a long war, putting no pressure on Washington to wrap up the conflict soon. In a phone call earlier this month, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed told his counterpart, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, that the UAE is prepared for the war to last up to nine months, the US official told MEE.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar lobbied US President Donald Trump against attacking Iran. While they host US military bases, the states insisted that they not be used as launchpads when the US joined Israel on 28 February to attack Iran. Despite this, the Gulf states have paid the heaviest price for the US’s decision to go to war. The UAE alone has intercepted 338 ballistic missiles and 1,740 drones since the start of the war. Qatar suffered the worst attack of any Gulf state despite being a critical mediator that has consistently focused on de-escalation. Iran responded to an Israeli attack on its South Pars gas field this week by launching missiles at Qatar’s Ras Laffan refinery. The damage will take three to five years to repair and affects 17 percent of Qatar’s gas production, according to Qatari energy minister Saad al-Kaabi.

Some states, like Oman, have said that Israel hoodwinked the US into launching an unlawful attack on Iran. There is also anger at the US over its value as a security guarantor. The US has been unable to replenish the Gulf states’ Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defence interceptors. The US bases in the Gulf, meant to protect the Arab monarchies, have been targeted. Meanwhile, oil and gas exports have ground to a halt. Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi wrote in The Economist this week that this is “not America’s war” and that Washington’s allies needed to make clear to the US that it was dragged into a conflict with little to gain.

Busaidi’s remarks contrasted with those of Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan. After Riyadh and the port of Yanbu were attacked by Iran, he delivered a blistering message to the Islamic Republic. One former US intelligence official described it as “fighting words”. Farhan said Iran had committed “heinous attacks” which “are an extension of [Iran’s] behavior that is based on extortion and sponsoring militias, threatening the security and stability of neighbouring countries”. “Saudi Arabia has repeatedly tried to extend its hand to the Iranian brothers…but the Iranians did not reciprocate,” he said, adding that the kingdom reserved the right to take “military action”.

While no one in the Gulf wanted a war with Iran, the Gulf states are approaching the conflict from varied, evolving perspectives as it drags into its fourth week, experts say. Saudi Arabia is the largest country in the region, and like the UAE, it has ambitions to project hard power abroad. In fact, Saudi Arabia attacked the UAE’s allies in Yemen just before the war on Iran erupted. Oman has carved out a niche for itself as a mediator. As one of the countries least hit by Iran in the region, the relative security of its capital, Muscat, is also being noticed by expatriates leaving Dubai. “There is a divide emerging in the Gulf,” Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, who speaks with the Saudi Arabian crown prince, told MEE.

“Saudi Arabia and the UAE were neutral before this war. But as they have been attacked, they have come to the realization that they cannot live with this hardline Iranian regime next door, which can, at a moment’s notice, extort the region by closing the Strait of Hormuz,” he added. The Saudi capital, Riyadh, and the kingdom’s energy infrastructure have been targeted by Iran. But the conflict is widely seen in the region, and increasingly inside the US, as an Israeli power grab. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said that Israel is guilty of committing genocide in Gaza. The Israeli war on the enclave has killed over 72,000 Palestinians since it started in October 2023.

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“The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — The United States does not!”

• Trump Gives Iran 48-Hour Ultimatum on Strait of Hormuz (Catherine Salgado)

President Donald Trump has delivered a specific deadline to the terror-sponsoring Iranian regime to stop terrorizing a strategic waterway or face devastating consequences. On the afternoon of Saturday, March 21, Trump posted on Truth Social, “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”


The Trump administration has been trying to pressure other nations into helping patrol the Strait of Hormuz, which is actually much more necessary for their economies than for ours, but most of the governments have been reluctant to commit any resources. Great Britain, Japan, France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands finally issued a joint statement expressing a willingness to help protect the strait, but it is not clear if they have actually provided the means to do so as of yet.

Besides Israel, which has been America’s partner in the joint Iran operation, none of our allies seemed eager to step up to the plate, and many of them actively complained about the operation. The Republic of Somaliland has offered a long-term military and economic partnership with the United States in exchange for recognition, but the Trump administration has not yet accepted the offer. Besides our allies’ whining and moaning, one of Trump‘s pet peeves throughout this Iran operation has been Western mainstream media claiming the operation has been a disaster for America. He addressed another such claim on Truth Social just before delivering his ultimatum to the Iranian regime.

“The United States has blown Iran off of the map, and yet their lightweight analyst, David Sanger, says that I haven’t met my own goals,” the president posted. “Yes I have, and weeks ahead of schedule! Their leadership is gone, their navy and air force are dead, they have absolutely no defense, and they want to make a deal. I don’t! We are weeks ahead of schedule. Just like their incompetent Election coverage of me, The Failing New York Times always gets it wrong!”Trump also hinted that the Iran operation is going so successfully that it might be coming to a close soon. In a Friday post, he declared:

We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran: (1) Completely degrading Iranian Missile Capability, Launchers, and everything else pertaining to them. (2) Destroying Iran’s Defense Industrial Base. (3) Eliminating their Navy and Air Force, including Anti Aircraft Weaponry. (4) Never allowing Iran to get even close to Nuclear Capability, and always being in a position where the U.S.A. can quickly and powerfully react to such a situation, should it take place. (5) Protecting, at the highest level, our Middle Eastern Allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others.”

As noted above, the strait remains a key area of concern for him as foreign hysteria about it impacts international energy prices. “The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — The United States does not!” Trump wrote bluntly. “If asked, we will help these Countries in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn’t be necessary once Iran’s threat is eradicated. Importantly, it will be an easy Military Operation for them. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”Israel and America are doing the whole world a favor by taking down the worst terror-sponsoring regime on the planet.

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First ever AI leader.

• Iran’s New Supreme Leader Has Never Been Seen Since Taking Office (ZH)

Amid widespread reporting that Iran had long ago moved into a emergency wartime decentralized command among autonomously-acting units, serious questions persist as to the role of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who replaced his slain father, longtime leader Ali Khamenei. What’s clear is that the new, younger Khamenei – who may have been wounded in the early days of US-Israeli strikes, hasn’t been seen in any public way, not even on TV, throughout the war. There have not so much as been official recent images of him circulated. This has raised obvious questions on the degree to which the Ayatollah is actually running the country and the wartime response, also after national security official Ali Larijani was killed. Larijani had clearly been the interim public face of the Islamic Republic, before his death less than a mere week ago (reportedly on March 17).


In the meantime The Wall Street Journal on Saturday writes that Iran is filling the gap of the Ayatollah’s public absence with AI and voice-overs: In his first, fiery address to the Iranian nation on March 12, new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei vowed to “avenge the blood of our martyrs” and to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed. That message of defiance wasn’t delivered by Khamenei himself: It was read out on state television by a female news anchor. Since then, the mystery surrounding Khamenei’s whereabouts and well-being has only deepened. Khanenei hasn’t appeared in public, nor has the Iranian government issued new images of him or even recordings of his voice.

His 86-year old father did not appear to have been in hiding at all when he was slain by airstrike on the very first day of Operation Epic Fury. It could be that the younger Khamenei is directing the war from a much more secure and hidden setting, for example a deep underground bunker – or in a remote part of the country. Axios newly reports:The CIA, Mossad and other intelligence agencies around the world were watching during Nowruz on Friday to see whether Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei would follow his father’s tradition and give a new year’s address.The intrigue: When the holiday passed with only a written statement from Mojtaba, the mystery around his physical condition, whereabouts and role in Iran’s war effort deepened.

As for who is really at the helm of the Iranian state, there’s little doubt that the elite IRGC is now largely driving the response. To some degree, amid ongoing reports of assassinations by aerial bombing of a slew of top military leaders, it doesn’t ultimately matter who precisely is in charge. Iranian institutions have deep benches, in the sense that especially high military officials are replaceable.

https://twitter.com/MirzaMahan/status/2035371388861571168

At the same time, Tehran has signaled it is ready for a ‘long war’ – and will keep fighting while imposing a high cost on its attackers. This means it doesn’t have to ‘win’ in a conventional sense, but just has to survive and exact pain. The WSJ writes, “Three weeks into the war, the Iranian regime is signaling that it believes it is winning and has the power to impose a settlement on Washington that entrenches Tehran’s dominance of Middle East energy resources for decades to come.”

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And Bibi’s the friend?!

• Netanyahu: 48 Hours Proved Iran Is the ‘Enemy of Civilization’ (Salgado)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu impressed upon foreign nations griping about the joint U.S.-Israel Iran operation that the Islamic regime of Iran is an enemy to civilization — and even to human life itself.It is rare to find a conflict in history where one side is thoroughly evil and even demonic, while the other side is fighting for truly noble goals. But the fight between America and Israel (and the Persian people) on oneside and the terrorist Iran regime on the other is just such a conflict. The Iranian regime is literally illustrating that more every single day.


Just after an Iranian strike caused a mass casualty event in Arad, at least 25 people including a 10-year-old boy also suffered injuries from Iranian missile fire striking the city of Dimona, Israel. From the scene of the strike, Netanyahu said, “If anyone needed explanation of why Iran is the enemy of civilization, and the enemy and the danger to the entire world you got it in the last 48 hours.”

He explained further, “In the last 48 hours, they fired … on civilians, on children. There’s a children’s nursery here. There’s an old …person’s home here. Civilians, families, they fire terror weapons on civilians. And often they use cluster bombs, which are forbidden by international law.” Besides that, Netanyahu emphasized, “The second thing that [Iran’s regime] did is that they fired on Jerusalem right next to the holy places. They sent ballistic missiles that could have destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Al Aqsa Mosque, and the Western Wall, the three holiest sites to the three monotheistic religions, they don’t care. They fired at everyone.” https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/2035025896440996079

Thirdly, Netanyahu stated, Iran’s regime “fired an intercontinental ballistic missile 4,000 kilometers right into Diego Garcia, the American British base. They can reach down with these ballistic missiles everywhere in Europe, almost everywhere in Europe. I’ve been warning that for years.” This is why NATO needs to quit whining about Donald Trump and realize this is their war too. Speaking of which, Netanyahu’s fourth point was Iran’s regime having “shut down the important maritime Strait of Hormuz trying to blackmail the world with oil — terror blackmail. Four things that they’re doing in 48 hours.”

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EU countries are doing that. Ever since it was founded.

80 years later, Trump is the first one to say something.

• America’s War With Iran Could Destroy NATO From Within (Sadygzade)

The widening confrontation driven by the military actions of the US and Israel against Iran is exposing something far larger than a regional crisis. It is revealing the accelerated decomposition of Western unity at the very moment when the old architecture of unchallenged American hegemony is visibly fading. In that sense, the strikes on Iran are not simply an act of escalation in one theater. They are a historical stress test for NATO itself, for the credibility of Washington’s leadership, and for the entire Western claim to strategic coherence in an age of global turbulence.


For decades, the Atlantic alliance rested on a simple assumption. The US would lead, Europe would follow, and even when there were frictions, the structure would hold because all parties believed that the preservation of American primacy was identical with the preservation of their own security. That formula is breaking down in real time. The war around Iran has made this impossible to ignore. Western European leaders are no longer merely expressing discreet discomfort or ritual concern. They are publicly and demonstratively refusing to be drawn into an American military adventure whose goals they do not understand, whose consequences they do not control, and whose costs they know they will be forced to absorb. Germany, France, the UK, and Spain have all rejected direct involvement in the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, while leading European officials have stated in essence that this is not their war, that Europe had not been properly consulted, and that Washington had not offered any convincing plan for success.

That matters because the dispute is not about tactics alone. It goes to the heart of alliance politics. If Washington can ignite a conflict with enormous global implications and then demand support from its allies after the fact, while offering neither consultation nor a credible endgame, then NATO ceases to function as an alliance of coordinated strategy and begins to resemble a system of imperial requisition. The Europeans understand this. Their refusal is a message, that the US increasingly treats its allies not as sovereign partners but as instruments to be mobilized after decisions have already been made in Washington and West Jerusalem. It says that when the strategic center becomes erratic, unilateral, and ready to externalize risk, the periphery begins to detach.

Donald Trump’s own rhetoric has thrown this reality into even sharper relief. When NATO members refused to support the American effort around Iran and to commit naval forces to the Strait of Hormuz, Trump did not respond as the steward of an alliance. He responded as a resentful patron whose clients had failed to obey. Media reports quoted him calling NATO’s refusal a very foolish mistake and making it clear that the US would remember that everyone agreed in words but did not want to help in deeds. In the same political atmosphere, he also signaled that because of American military power, the US no longer needed or desired NATO assistance and, in essence, never truly had. Washington is increasingly willing to threaten, humiliate, or discard its own allies whenever they cease to be tactically useful.

This is why the current split is so serious. It is not only Europe resisting a war. It is Europe being forced to confront the possibility that the US would rather risk the cohesion of NATO than restrain its own escalation. In other words, Washington appears increasingly ready to sacrifice not only the comfort and stability of its allies, but potentially the political substance of the alliance itself, if preserving American freedom of action requires it. That is what imperial decline often looks like. A hegemon in ascent builds institutions because institutions extend its reach. A hegemon in decay empties those same institutions of meaning because they begin to constrain its impulses.

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The EU is the odd one out.

• The Middle East Crisis Is Rewriting Energy Security Doctrine (Vaid)

Missile and drone attacks on energy hubs across the Gulf have drawn the wider US-Israeli war with Iran directly into the core of global energy routes. Within three weeks, the region has shifted from a zone of latent risk to the epicenter of heightened security concerns around energy infrastructure and commercial shipping. The Strait of Hormuz, which carries about 21% of global petroleum liquids, has transformed from background anxiety to an overt risk corridor. As insurers reassess exposure and tanker activity slows, the chokepoint itself has become the flashpoint for geopolitical contagion into energy markets.


A week into the conflict, the United States pledged naval escorts and broader supply side measures, however it failed to secure backing from European allies to get involved militarily. On March 19 a host of European countries, as well as Japan and Canada, had expressed their readiness to contribute to efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait. However, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told reporters on the same day in Brussels that Berlin would only involve itself in the region after military action comes to a halt, stating, We can and will only be able to get involved once the guns fall silent.

While various data and media report suggest that some tankers are effectively able to traverse the Straight, for which some countries, including Pakistan, China, Iraq, and Malaysia are having talks with Iran, safe navigation has still not been fully restored, and markets remain unconvinced that diplomatic signaling alone can quickly normalize flows.

Oil markets reacted swiftly, as Brent rose above $119 per barrel on March 19 before easing to about $109.85 on March 20, still leaving it nearly 7% higher for the week. More strikingly, the benchmark Middle East Dubai crude hit a record of around $166.80 per barrel, underlining how physical market tightness is now outpacing headline futures benchmarks. Analysts continue to warn that any sustained Hormuz disruption could push crude far higher. Even absent a full blockade, costlier freight, insurance, and rerouting are embedding a durable war premium, redefining OPEC+ s role, and especially the Saudi Russia axis, as guardians not just of oil prices but of the credibility of Gulf sea lane security itself.

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“Once again, US service members are thrown into an unjust war for a foreign power ..”

• Join The US Military – Kill And Die For Israel (McGlinchey)

President Trump’s decision to join Israel in launching a regime-change war on Iran has so far cost the lives of at least 13 American service members. More than 200 have been wounded, dozens seriously enough to require evacuations to military hospitals in Europe and the United States. Among them are individuals who’ve suffered traumatic brain injuries, burns and shrapnel wounds. One was facing potential amputation of an arm or leg. As much as these service members and their families are victims of Iran’s justified retaliation for a surprise attack perpetrated amid ongoing negotiations, they’re victims of a betrayal perpetrated by their president and the joint chiefs of staff, who cast them into an unconstitutional war of aggression, packaged in lies and initiated to advance the agenda of a foreign government, while undermining the security of their own country.


Of course, US casualties comprise a small subset of the total bloodshed. In executing this unjust war, Americans have collectively inflicted far more death and dismemberment than they’ve endured, teaming up with their Israeli counterparts to kill more than 3,000 Iranians, including some 150 schoolgirls — mostly between age 7 and 12 — whose school was destroyed by Tomahawk cruise missiles at the war’s very start.

Though it should have already been apparent, Operation Epic Fury should make clear that — service members’ good intentions aside — combat waged under the US flag rarely has anything to do with American security. Moreover — and I say this as former Army Reserve enlistee and Regular Army officer — anyone thinking of starting or extending a military career should understand that their government may send them to be killed, maimed or psychologically damaged, and to slaughter foreign innocents, so long as it helps those in power remain in the good graces of the extremists who rule Israel, and their powerful collaborators inside the United States.

A New Regime-Change War Built On False Premises
Under international law, a war of aggression is considered a supreme war crime unto itself, and Operation Epic Fury is precisely that. Like so many of America’s wars before it, this one was launched on false premises. Contrary to the US-Israeli narrative… Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon. In 2007, the US intelligence community assessed that Iran halted any effort to develop a nuclear weapon in 2003. Since then, the intelligence community has periodically re-validated that conclusion, most recently in March 2025. Belying Trump’s claim that the United States had only two weeks in which to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard this week testified that Iran had made “no efforts” to rebuild its enrichment capacity after it was devastated by last summer’s US bombing.

Note that, in 2005, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa — a formal interpretation of Islamic law — asserting that “the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons.” In the opening act of their latest warfare on Iran, the United States and Israel collaborated to kill him.

Iran did not stray from the 2015 nuclear deal until Trump did. When Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran was in full compliance. Among other things, the JCPOA required Iran to eliminate its medium-enriched uranium, slash its cache of low-enriched uranium by 98%, limit future enrichment to 3.67%, agree to even more external monitoring than it was already submitting to, and render its heavy-water reactor worthless by filling it with concrete. After Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in 2018 and reinstated sanctions, Iran waited a year, but then began straying from its own commitments, using elevated enrichment as a lever to push for a new agreement and relief from suffocating sanctions. Iran says the JCPOA permitted it to suspend its commitments after Trump’s withdrawal, citing language governing “material breaches” and “significant non-performance.”

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How far can you go? What if you make your opponent say terribly racist things in AI?

• Artificial Intelligence Is Taking Over Political Campaigns (George Caldwell)

Artificial intelligence is dominating the 2026 midterms—and not just as a political issue. Major congressional campaigns are increasingly using “deepfake” AI technology in videos that slam their opponents and amplify endorsements from allies. Incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, is seeking to fend off a primary challenge from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and is employing some unusual strategies. The Cornyn campaign released an AI-generated music video with a parody of the B-52s’ 1989 hit “Love Shack” as the soundtrack. It depicts an animated likeness of Paxton engaged in corruption and marital infidelity.


The B-52s told TMZ in a statement upon the ad’s release, “Today we learned that our song ‘Love Shack’ is being used without our approval for a political attack between two politicians in the beautiful state of Texas. We do not endorse either candidate. We have already formally demanded the song immediately cease to be used in this tasteless and illegal way.” The Cornyn campaign declined to comment on the ad’s use of AI and whether it had responded to the band’s request. Paxton’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) recently employed deepfake technology to go after Texas Democrat Senate nominee James Talarico for past social media posts.

The state representative is attempting to win in a state that has not elected a Democrat U.S. senator since 1988. “Radicalized white men are the greatest domestic terrorist threat in our country,” a realistic likeness of Talarico says, quoting an actual 2021 social media post from the candidate. The NRSC ad includes a small watermark in the corner stating that the content is “AI generated.”

“In my faith, God is non-binary,” Talarico’s likeness says later, quoting another 2021 post. Talarico’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the video’s representation of him. Jesse Jackson Jr., who lost in the Democrat primary for Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District on Tuesday, used AI to amplify an endorsement from former Rep. Bobby Rush, who represented the state’s 1st Congressional District for three decades. Rush’s voice has been weakened due to throat cancer. At the beginning of the advertisement, he speaks with his natural voice before his digitally altered voice kicks in.

“Cancer damaged my vocal cords, but it didn’t take away my voice,” Rush says. “I’ve asked the producers to use AI, artificial intelligence, to help me.” He says in his altered voice, “Like me, Jesse is a lifelong social justice warrior and passionate advocate for the marginalized.” Jackson, the son of the late Rev. Jessie Jackson, served in Congress from 1995 to 2012 alongside Rush, but left amid a fraud investigation, for which he later spent time in prison. He lost his primary on Tuesday.

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AI.

• Report: Pentagon to Adopt Palantir as Core U.S. Military System (CTH)

Recently when the Anthropic software and ideology conflict with the Pentagon surfaced as a result of limits placed by the provider, alternative provider Palantir’s CEO remarked that any AI developer who challenges the U.S. military application of the product was foolish because the U.S. government could just take control of the company under the claim of national security.In essence, Palantir CEO Alex Karp was saying AI developers who contract with the govt ultimately become bound to the limits or lack thereof as determined by the govt. If software developers want to contract with the military, then fight the Pentagon over use of those software applications, they will lose.


In response to the Anthropic issue, the Pentagon withdrew from their purchase arrangements and blacklisted them from further federal contracts. Now a report is highlighting that Palantir will take the lead position in providing the software, the Maven Smart System, for the core U.S. military functions.As described, “Maven is a software platform that uploads information from drones, satellites, sensors, radar, and other battlefield intelligence sources. The system then analyzes battlefield data in real time, identifying and prioritizing potential targets — including buildings, enemy vehicles, and weapons and ammunition stockpiles — for intelligence analysts to review and act on.”

NEW YORK, March 20 (Reuters) – Palantir’s Maven artificial intelligence system will become an official program of record, Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg said in a letter to Pentagon leaders, a move that locks in long-term use of Palantir’s weapons-targeting technology across the U.S. military. In the March 9 letter to senior Pentagon leaders and U.S. military commanders, Feinberg said embedding Palantir’s Maven Smart System would provide warfighters “with the latest tools necessary to detect, deter, and dominate our adversaries in all domains”.

The decision is expected to go into effect by the close of the current fiscal year, which ends in September, according to the letter, which was reviewed by Reuters and has not been previously reported.Maven is a command-and-control software platform that analyzes battlefield data and identifies targets. It is already the primary AI operating system for the U.S. military, which has carried out thousands of targeted strikes against Iran over the last three weeks.

Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX) and Alex Karp (Palantir)
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“.. Trump and the American people are fed up with the nonsense, all inflicted on behalf of illegal alien criminals.”

• Trump Says ICE Will Run Airport Security If Dems Don’t Fund TSA (Salgado)

President Donald Trump just made a major power move in the ongoing fight with Democrats over funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as he threatened to put immigration officers in charge of airport security if funding is not immediately forthcoming. Chaos continues to reign at many American airports as the partial Democrat shutdown lengthens and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees increasingly don’t show up for work, leading to extremely long lines and travel delays. The Democrat congressmen who don’t have to deal with ordinary TSA lines don’t care, but Trump and the American people are fed up with the nonsense, all inflicted on behalf of illegal alien criminals.


Trump warned on Truth Social Saturday, “If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country.” With tens of millions of illegal aliens in our country, the likelihood is that a fair number of them are using air travel. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know just how many? And to top it off, Trump promised Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers would have a “heavy emphasis on those from Somalia, who have totally destroyed, with the approval of a corrupt Governor, Attorney General, and Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, the once Great State of Minnesota. I look forward to seeing ICE in action at our Airports. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Honestly, it would be pretty amazing to see this threat put into action, partly out of curiosity to see just how many illegal aliens and criminals ICE would find flying, and partly because Democrats’ heads would literally explode. The DHS funding showdown affects millions of people. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on X in frustration, “Hardworking TSA agents are sleeping in their CARS to save money on gas because Democrats won’t end the SCHUMER SHUTDOWN and fund DHS! What happened to the Democrats who claimed to be the party of the WORKING CLASS?!” The party of slavery has always lied about its dedication to the American working class, but its false pretense is particularly obvious right now.

This is exactly the way that Republicans should be dealing with Democrats, not granting them concessions, but putting the pressure on them to do the right thing. We cannot trust anything Democrats say, and multiple Republican presidents have found out to their cost after they made unwise concessions that they were the only ones who intended to uphold the bargain. Our national security and immigration enforcement are much too important to gamble away bit by bit on trying to please Democrats who will never be happy with any amount of compromise. So instead, Republicans should be threatening consequences that will panic Democrats, like replacing TSA with ICE.

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They want someone who refuses all talk.

• Senate Democrats Are Quietly Plotting To Oust Chuck Schumer (ZH)

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has had a fractured relationship with the Democratic Party base ever since he voted to fund the government last March. Unfortunately for him, time hasn’t healed that wound, and there’s a growing resistance to Schumer that hopes to oust him from his leadership position after the midterms. The Wall Street Journal, drawing on more than four dozen interviews with Democratic senators, candidates, current and former congressional aides, activists, and advisers, found widespread unease about the New York senator’s grip on the party’s direction. The report makes it clear that Schumer’s own colleagues increasingly see him as an anchor, slowing their response to President Trump, steering primaries toward centrists they don’t want, and draining the fundraising pipeline that Democrats desperately need heading into the midterm elections.


According to the report, last month, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut met with progressive activists at a French restaurant in Georgetown. The conversation turned to what to do about Schumer. According to people familiar with the dinner, Murphy disclosed that some lawmakers had already been running informal vote counts to see whether enough support existed to remove Schumer from his leadership post. Murphy added that Schumer had enough backing to survive. But the fact that anyone was counting at all said something. Murphy has since walked it back, carefully. “Could someone infer from that that someone was keeping a count? Maybe, but that’s not what I meant,” he told reporters. “I meant that he has the support of the caucus.”

But Murphy’s backpedaling doesn’t change the reality. Murphy is reportedly part of a group of senators who have been actively canvassing colleagues about their frustrations with Schumer. This group, nicknamed “Fight Club,” (hey…) is a Signal chat group where progressives coordinate strategy around opposing Schumer’s preferred candidates in key 2026 races. The Fight Club’s grievance, at its core, is that Schumer is tilting the playing field toward centrists while an insurgent energy on the left goes untapped. The group includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) and Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and it appears that Warren has been initiating those conversations directly. Smith’s advisers have gone further, holding discussions with other Senate staff about concrete scenarios to challenge Schumer’s leadership.

The concern isn’t purely ideological. It’s financial, and that’s where things get uncomfortable. Schumer’s aligned super PAC, Senate Majority PAC, got outpaced by its Republican counterpart last year. Entering 2026, the Democratic super PAC had $36 million in cash on hand and $12.4 million in debt. The GOP’s equivalent had $100 million on hand and zero debt. In the money primary – the one that quietly decides Senate races before a single vote is cast – Schumer’s side is getting lapped Making matters worse for Schumer, meetings among Democratic Senate chiefs of staff, which should be routine operational sessions, have reportedly become forums for airing discontent with Schumer’s stewardship. The pressure building in those rooms is aimed at a specific outcome: Schumer commits to retiring from the Senate when his seat is up for re-election in 2028, clearing a path for whoever comes next.

That next person may already have a name attached. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii has been identified as Schumer’s own preferred successor. Apparently, Schumer has thought this through enough to have a pick. But Schatz isn’t moving until Schumer moves first. His posture, per senators and aides familiar with the discussions, is to wait it out. Schumer may have the votes to survive a mutiny for now. But his colleagues are doing the math, his fundraising is underperforming, his preferred candidates are generating internal blowback, and the party seems anxious to see him go. The caucus isn’t in open revolt yet, but it’s not looking good for Chuck Schumer.

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It’s global. Armstrong can’t explain it either.

• Russia to Refer Childless Women for Psychiatric Evaluations (Martin Armstrong)

Russia is now advising psychological counseling for women who do not intend to have children, which is precisely the type of response governments default to when they refuse to confront economic reality. They search for cultural or emotional explanations when the issue is economical. Russia’s fertility rate has fallen to roughly 1.4 children per woman, well below the 2.1 replacement level, and total births have declined to near post-Soviet lows at just over 1.2 million annually. This decline has been persistent, not cyclical, and the population is aging rapidly as deaths continue to exceed births. At the same time, the war has removed a significant portion of young men from the population.


The same pattern is unfolding across all developed economies. Europe’s fertility rate is now near 1.3. Spain and Italy are closer to 1.1. Germany is around 1.4. France, once the exception, has fallen sharply and recently recorded more deaths than births for the first time in decades. Japan has been below replacement for years and continues to contract. Even countries that implemented aggressive family subsidies, such as Norway and Hungary, have failed to reverse the trend.

Globally, fertility has collapsed from more than 5 children per woman in the 1960s to just above two today, and the developed world is already well below replacement. The common explanation offered by governments is psychological or social. They speak of changing values, delayed adulthood, or lifestyle preferences. That explanation collapses under scrutiny because it ignores the economic structure that determines behavior.

People do not make long-term commitments, such as having children, without confidence in their financial future. Children represent the largest long-term investment a household can make. When confidence declines, that investment is postponed or abandoned. At the same time, dual-income households became the norm not by choice but by necessity. A single income no longer supports a family in most developed economies. This fundamentally changes having children because both parents must remain in the workforce to maintain financial stability. Long ago, children helped to secure a family’s financial future, but the opposite rings true today.

Russia’s situation simply reflects these dynamics in a more concentrated form. Economic uncertainty, war, sanctions, and structural inefficiencies amplify the same forces present elsewhere. When surveys show that a large percentage of women do not plan to have children in the near term, that is not a psychological condition. It is a rational response to economic instability amid war. Women in Russia must now face the harsh reality that their husbands will face a compulsory draft, and they will be left raising children alone.

Historically, birth rates rise during periods of expansion and confidence. The post-World War II baby boom occurred because housing was affordable, employment was stable, and future prospects were positive. The economic structure supported family formation. Today, the structure works in the opposite direction. Housing costs, taxation, childcare expenses, and job insecurity create an environment in which the cost of raising children exceeds the perceived benefits. Governments attempt to offset this with subsidies, but those programs do not address the core issue, whixh is the declining return on productive activity relative to cost.

This is why policies focused on incentives have failed. Hungary introduced substantial financial benefits for families. Norway expanded welfare support. France has long provided family subsidies. None of these measures reversed the long-term decline because they do not change the underlying economic equation. The demographic consequences are significant. A declining birthrate leads to a shrinking workforce, increasing dependency ratios, and pressure on pension systems. Governments respond by raising taxes or increasing borrowing, which further reduces the net income available to working households. This creates a feedback loop that reinforces the decline.

When confidence in the future declines, long-term investments decline. Children are the most fundamental long-term investment in any society. The decline in birth rates is therefore not a social anomaly but a direct reflection of economic confidence. Russia proposing psychological counseling illustrates how far removed policy responses have become from reality. This is not a question of convincing people to want children. It is a question of creating an economic environment where having children is viable.

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Got to try.

• Rhinos back in African Park For First Time After 40 Years (RT)

Uganda has begun reintroducing rhinos to its Kidepo Valley National Park, marking the species’ return to the area 43 years after it was wiped out by poaching, the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) has reported. The first two southern white rhinos were transported from Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary to Kidepo on Tuesday, part of a phased plan to relocate a total of eight animals, according to UWA. The effort is aimed at restoring a population that disappeared from the park in the early 1980s.


The move follows years of preparation, including the construction of a fenced sanctuary, ranger outposts, and monitoring systems to ensure the animals’ protection and adaptation to the new environment. The park, one of Uganda’s most intact savannah ecosystems, was identified as suitable after feasibility studies assessed habitat conditions and security. “This moment marks the beginning of a new rhino story for Kidepo Valley National Park,” UWA Executive Director James Musinguzi said, adding that the translocation was the first step toward re-establishing a population.

Officials said the animals will initially be kept under close observation inside a secure sanctuary before being gradually integrated into the wider park ecosystem.Rhinos once roamed widely across Kidepo Valley, but heavy poaching led to their local extinction, with the last recorded animal killed in 1983. Conservation efforts accelerated in 2005 with the launch of a breeding program at Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, helping rebuild Uganda’s rhino population to more than 60. Authorities say the return of rhinos is expected to boost biodiversity and tourism while supporting efforts to restore endangered wildlife species in one of Africa’s most isolated national parks.

In January, UWA relocated four southern white rhinos from Ziwa sanctuary to Ajai Wildlife Reserve in northwestern Uganda and aims to move up to 20 rhinos to the reserve. Uganda’s move comes amid wider efforts across Africa to protect rhino populations. Separately, Kenya in December opened what it says is the world’s largest rhino sanctuary in Tsavo West National Park, bringing together around 200 black rhinos in a protected area of more than 3,200 square kilometers.

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https://twitter.com/HungaryBased/status/2035408598038405213?s=20 https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/2035350715695276059?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 22 2026

Mar 222026
 
 March 22, 2026  Posted by at 10:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  72 Responses »


Edward Hopper Hotel window 1955


• Trump: US “Close to Meeting Objectives” and “Considering Winding Down.” (CTH)
• US “Degrades” Threats To Hormuz Traffic As Iran Missile Strike Fails (ZH)
• World’s Largest Gas Field Hit: How Close Is A Global Energy Crisis? (RT)
• The Shadow War Against President Trump (Josh Hammer)
• Robert Mueller Dies. Trump’s Reaction Was VERY Trump. (Matt Margolis)
• Letitia James and Transgenderism Wreck America This Badly (O’Brien)
• Report Reveals That Democrats Are Plotting Against Chuck Schumer (Matt Margolis)
• BOMBSHELL Bill Clinton/Epstein Info Drops (MN)
• Chicago Ramps Up Taxes and Debt in Familiar Death Spiral (Turley)
• Elon Musk Offers Lifeline To TSA Agents As Dems Hold Paychecks Hostage (ZH)
• The Democrats’ Strategy on the SAVE Act Is Imploding (Matt Margolis)
• What Is It With The Fickle Europeans? (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Battle for Hungary: How the EU Plans to Defeat Viktor Orban (RT)

 


 

https://twitter.com/PeriklesGREAT/status/2035037879546659070?s=20 https://twitter.com/Sassafrass_84/status/2035058582173990988?s=20 https://twitter.com/VictoriaSask/status/2035154376172478740?s=20

 


 


Contradictory messages?!

• Trump: US “Close to Meeting Objectives” and “Considering Winding Down.” (CTH)

President Trump released the following message via Truth Social:

“We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran: (1) Completely degrading Iranian Missile Capability, Launchers, and everything else pertaining to them. (2) Destroying Iran’s Defense Industrial Base. (3) Eliminating their Navy and Air Force, including Anti Aircraft Weaponry. (4) Never allowing Iran to get even close to Nuclear Capability, and always being in a position where the U.S.A. can quickly and powerfully react to such a situation, should it take place. (5) Protecting, at the highest level, our Middle Eastern Allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others. The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — The United States does not! If asked, we will help these Countries in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn’t be necessary once Iran’s threat is eradicated. Importantly, it will be an easy Military Operation for them. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

~President DONALD J. TRUMP

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“Vastly Expands Threat Radius”

• US “Degrades” Threats To Hormuz Traffic As Iran Missile Strike Fails (ZH)

President Trump’s late in the day Friday comments proclaiming “I think we’ve won” suggested he might be readying the announcement of an offramp or at least de-escalation, but that speculation has proven premature as things definitely escalated overnight. For apparently the second time of Operation Epic Fury, Iran’s flagship enrichment site at Natanz nuclear facility has come under attack. Iran’s nuclear agency confirmed the strike but is keeping details deliberately vague, saying nothing about how it was carried out or what weapons were used. What it did emphasize, however, is that “no nuclear radiation” was released.


Natanz – alongside the Isfahan nuclear facilities – sits at the core of Tehran’s nuclear program, long viewed as a prime target in the US-Israel campaign to cripple Iran’s ability to produce an atomic bomb – though it remains that even Iran’s current wartime leadership is saying it has no intent to produce a nuclear weapon. The AP says Natanz was earlier struck at least once at the opening of the conflict, writing: “The facility, Iran’s main uranium enrichment site, was hit in the first week of the war and several buildings appeared damaged, according to satellite images.” All of this, along with steady the overnight and early morning heavy bombing of Tehran marks a definite escalation despite Trump having floated the idea of “winding down” operations in the late Friday comments.

Iran Vastly Expands Threat Radius: Diego Garcia
Another huge escalation and development: British officials are staying tight-lipped after an attempted Iranian strike on the key Indian Ocean air base on Friday reportedly failed, offering no details on what exactly happened. But this risks pulling in the UK, which has appeared reluctant to directly participate in Trump’s operation. Britain has generally condemned “Iran’s reckless attacks.” Just hours after Iran targeted the Diego Garcia base, Britain confirmed US bombers can continue using UK facilities – including the same base – for operations aimed at stopping Iranian attacks on shipping in Hormuz.

“Iran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint U.S.-U.K. military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean, according to multiple U.S. officials,” The Wall Street Journal details. “Neither of the missiles hit the base, but the move marked Iran’s first operational use of IRBMs and a significant attempt to reach far beyond the Middle East and threaten US-UK interests.”

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“Rising LNG prices would be particularly bad news for Europe, which has become heavily reliant on LNG in light of its rejection of Russian pipeline gas. [..] The US, as a LNG exporter, would benefit from rising prices.

• World’s Largest Gas Field Hit: How Close Is A Global Energy Crisis? (RT)

Although the natural gas reservoir housing South Pars is the world’s largest, Iran’s ability to export gas is limited by sanctions. Therefore, damage to the field or related facilities is mainly a domestic issue. The majority of the gas extracted from South Pars goes to the domestic market, although some is exported to Iraq and Turkiye. Israel struck the South Pars field and the infrastructure that services it at the nearby Asaluyeh processing hub on March 18. Iran retaliated with strikes on Saudi Arabia, the UAE and, most critically, Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest LNG export hub.


More concerning globally is not the South Pars strike but the retaliatory attack against the LNG hub at Ras Laffan. This is where the gas from the North Field, which is the Qatari side of the same reservoir that South Pars taps, is processed. The North Field – also called the North Dome – is responsible for about 20% of global LNG supply, practically all of which is processed at Ras Laffan. Qatar has admitted that the attacks caused “significant damage.”

While the complex had already been largely shut since early March due to the war, analysts at Wood Mackenzie now warn that damage to the hub could delay any restart and “fundamentally reshape the global LNG outlook. Rising LNG prices would be particularly bad news for Europe, which has become heavily reliant on LNG in light of its rejection of Russian pipeline gas. Other major consumers of LNG include Japan, Turkiye, and India. The US, as a LNG exporter, would benefit from rising prices.

The damage could be long term
Importantly, unlike many other leading gas fields, the geologically unified reservoir feeding South Pars and the North Field is only at 10% depletion, meaning 90% of the gas is still there. The significance of this cannot be overstated. The gas from the world’s largest reservoir – and one expected to play a critical role in meeting future global demand – may not be extractable if the infrastructure on both sides is destroyed. This becomes an issue not just of near-term prices but the state of structural physical supply. Any sustained disruption to Qatari production would reverberate across the global gas market. Losing even part of Qatari output for an extended period would tighten supply, drive prices higher, and leave import dependent economies scrambling for alternatives.

Unfortunately, alternatives may be scarce. The LNG market was tight even before the war. US LNG export capacity was already near its limits, meaning the country s ability to offset lost Persian Gulf supply is constrained. Meanwhile, repairing damaged LNG facilities is a highly complex and costly undertaking that could take years. Projects implemented in the Ras Laffan Industrial City cost $70 billion to build, according to Qatar News Agency. So even if a ceasefire is reached today, the damage already sustained could reverberate for years.

Read more …

“Kent resigned this week in flamboyant fashion, rationalizing his stunt with hyper-conspiratorial, antisemitic rhetoric better suited for a Code Pink rally than government letterhead.”

• The Shadow War Against President Trump (Josh Hammer)

The joint American-Israeli military operation against the Iranian regime is now three weeks old, but there is another war — a more silent one — raging here on the home front. President Donald Trump’s second administration is facing a highly coordinated shadow war — one waged both by some influential outside voices on the right and, more dangerously, by their subversive allies within Trump’s very own government.


If this campaign is not confronted and decisively defeated, the result will be calamitous: a second Trump term that drifts into lame-duck status not due to a voter backlash but because of an insurrection from within. What this column has previously referred to as “Operation Divide MAGA” has reached fever pitch. And Trump, to his great credit, has begun to settle all the MAGA family business. But an even more concerted effort is needed to clean out the Augean Stables once and for all.

First, let’s take a step back.
In any healthy political coalition or movement, debate is inevitable and often desirable. But what we have seen from certain high-profile podcasters, such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, is nothing less than a full-scale assault on Trump and his agenda. These provocateurs first outed themselves last summer, when they all but accused Trump of covering up a global (Mossad-tied?) pedophile ring over his Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files. But above all, the podcasters’ subversion has focused on foreign policy — most recently, on Iran and Operation Epic Fury.

Trump is a conservative nationalist. His foreign policy is rooted in confidence and “peace through strength”-style deterrence. Yet Carlson, Kelly and their fellow travelers have blasted the Iran conflict as everything from “evil” (Carlson) to “clearly Israel’s war” (Kelly). The not-so-dynamic duo is thus accusing the man they quite literally campaigned for in 2024 of engaging in heinous acts and of being the unwitting dupe of a foreign government.

True, Carlson and Kelly do not actually speak for the MAGA base: A brand-new poll from J.L. Partners shows that 83% of Republican voters support Epic Fury. Moreover, Republicans agree with Trump over Carlson and Kelly on foreign policy by a whopping 84%-6% margin. But still: Their platforms are enormous. When Carlson, Kelly and their allies consistently excoriate the leading priorities of the administration they purport to support, the effect is Republican voter confusion, resentment and depression as we head toward November in a midterm election year.

Even worse, the shadow war subversives are not merely shouting into their microphones from the rafters. They have allies inside the administration, with whom they are all but assuredly coordinating, engaging in outright sabotage against the one man — the president of the United States — who was actually elected to wield the “executive Power” of the federal government and serve as commander in chief. The most alarming developments are emerging from within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. A former Democratic congresswoman with a pro-Moscow slant once seen as a heterodox ally, Gabbard now oversees an environment that increasingly bears the markings of an anti-MAGA coup.

Take Gabbard’s recent rehiring of Dan Caldwell. Dismissed last year by his (former longtime friend) Secretary of War Pete Hegseth amid allegations of leaking, Caldwell is now back in a highly sensitive role. Leaks of this nature are not bureaucratic slip-ups; they are direct assaults on national security and the integrity of the constitutional chain of command. It is difficult to interpret the isolationist-leaning Gabbard’s move as anything other than a direct shot across the bow at Hegseth — and, by extension, the boss Hegseth has so passionately defended since Epic Fury began, Trump.

Consider also Joe Kent, who until recently served under Gabbard as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent resigned this week in flamboyant fashion, rationalizing his stunt with hyper-conspiratorial, antisemitic rhetoric better suited for a Code Pink rally than government letterhead. Within hours after tendering his resignation, Kent announced he would be joining — who else? — Carlson to tell his story. An alleged serial leaker, Kent is now under FBI investigation for spilling national security secrets. Unsurprisingly, Iranian regime propaganda television gobbled up the interview and regurgitated it for an impressionable English-speaking audience.

That Kent came to Carlson’s platform to try to get ahead of the FBI investigation revelation is not coincidence. It is all orchestrated. After being fired by Hegseth last year, Caldwell similarly ran to Carlson to tell his side of the story. Moreover, one of Caldwell’s higher-ranking colleagues at ODNI, Will Ruger, shares Caldwell’s professional background in the isolationist Koch network. Surprise! The White House Presidential Personnel Office, formerly directed by ex-Rand Paul staffer Sergio Gor (since shipped halfway around the world to India), has allowed in individuals across the defense, intelligence and national security spaces that are functionally anti-MAGA. Perhaps this was done for self-serving reasons. Perhaps Gor and PPO were under the understanding that MAGA is something other than what the boss says it is.

Frankly, it does not really matter. Because the boss has now spoken. He’s cast Carlson and Kelly out of MAGA in emphatic fashion. And after Kent’s obnoxious resignation stunt, Trump said of those (like Kent) who do not believe Iran is a threat to the United States: “We don’t want those people.” Translation: Get out. The message could not possibly be clearer.

But is Trump’s PPO listening? Is Gabbard’s ODNI fully in line? Gabbard, in Senate testimony this week, couldn’t bring herself to agree with her boss’s assessment that Iran posed an “imminent threat” prior to the launch of Epic Fury. It’s time for the president to team up with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and other arch-loyalists, such as Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and clean house. The internal anti-MAGA sabotage must be ended, and the external anti-MAGA sabotage must be combated. The success of the remainder of Trump’s second term hangs in the balance.

Read more …

Mueller is defined by his stuttering performance in the hearing afterwards. Hard to believe that actually happened.

• Robert Mueller Dies. Trump’s Reaction Was VERY Trump. (Matt Margolis)

Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who spent nearly two years investigating the Russian collusion hoax in the 2016 presidential election, died Friday night at the age of 81. His family confirmed the news Saturday in a brief statement asking for privacy. “With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away,” his family said in a statement Saturday. “His family asks that their privacy be respected.” Mueller’s death was not unexpected. In August 2025, his family disclosed that he had been battling Parkinson’s disease since 2021. He served as FBI director from 2001 to 2013, making him the second-longest-serving director in the bureau’s history after J. Edgar Hoover.


The New York Times has more: “A button-down, lockjawed rock-ribbed exemplar of a vanishing caste, the liberal Republican, Mr. Mueller became the F.B.I. director just a week before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He went on to impose the most significant structural and cultural changes in the history of the F.B.I., seeking to transform the bureau into a 21st-century intelligence service that could protect both national security and civil liberties. And his counterterrorism agents were the first to blow the whistle on abuses at the secret prisons that the C.I.A. had established after 9/11 to detain, interrogate and, in some cases, torture terrorism suspects.

But he may be best remembered for what he did after he left the F.B.I., when he was summoned to investigate a sitting president. The Justice Department named Mr. Mueller special counsel on May 17, 2017, eight days after Mr. Trump dismissed the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, who was investigating the interactions between the Trump campaign and a Russian covert operation to help him win the White House. The president’s reason for dismissing Mr. Comey was no secret. The next day, in the Oval Office, he told the Russia foreign minister and the Russian ambassador: “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy.” Mr. Trump continued: “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

It gets worse from there, so I’ll move on. Trump wasted no time responding to the news. Within hours of the news breaking, he posted on Truth Social: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”Mueller’s investigation was a constant sore spot for Trump, who was ultimately vindicated when Mueller failed to find the evidence of collusion that Democrats were counting on. Trump called the final Mueller report a “complete and total exoneration” after it was released.

Despite the Mueller report’s findings, Hillary Clinton has long claimed that the 2016 election was stolen from her. “You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you,” Clinton said back in 2019. Democrats and the mainstream media have all incorrectly implied or claimed that the Mueller report confirmed that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

Read more …

“James wants to bully doctors to keep providing ‘gender care’ treatments ..”

• Letitia James and Transgenderism Wreck America This Badly (O’Brien)

If you need a reminder of just how much Joe Biden wrecked the country while he was in the White House, here is yet another example. A Biden judicial appointee in Oregon ruled against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on issues tied to controversial transgender medical treatments, and that’s just the start. While this would not come as a surprise to any thinking person, the more you peel the layers back on this story, the more it affirms just how bad Biden was for America. Judge Mustafa Kasubhai decided that in December, when the HHS issued a declaration that dubbed certain gender procedures and treatments unsafe and ineffective for minors, the federal agency went too far. These treatments included puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and sex-change bottom and top surgeries.


Kasubhai said that Kennedy did not follow the appropriate administrative processes when HHS made the declaration. HHS reportedly informed doctors and health providers that if they provide these treatments to minors, the administration might exclude them from such federal health programs as Medicare and Medicaid. What this latest ruling does is give certain relief to doctors and providers who want to continue to making bank by destroying the lives of children through such life-altering treatments. Here is where it gets worse. Celebrating the judge’s decision was a familiar name and face.

“Today’s win breaks through the noise and gives some needed clarity to patients, families, and providers,” said New York’s attorney general Letitia James, who served as lead counsel on the lawsuit. “Health care services for transgender young people remain legal, and the federal government cannot intimidate or punish the providers who offer them.” Not coincidentally, in another case we’ll get to in a bit, she is the one who is trying to intimidate a hospital that wants to shut its ‘gender care’ operation down, and she is trying to bully the hospital into keeping it going.

In this case, Judge Kasubhai said with regard to Robert Kennedy’s declaration, “The notion that ‘I will go forward and issue a declaration and see if we can get away with it’ is not a principle of governance that adheres to the overarching commitment to a democratic republic that requires the rule of law to be regarded and respected and honored as a sacred.” In this case, 21 states and the District of Columbia filed suit against HHS, Kennedy, and HHS’s inspector general over the declaration. The plaintiffs claimed that Kennedy’s declaration sought to coerce doctors to stop providing those controversial treatments for minors, while doing an end-around on certain legal requirements for when an administration seeks to institute a policy change.

One thing the suit contended that the Trump administration did not do and should have done was to give the public notice and a chance to comment before material changes were made to federal health policy. What HHS actually did was make its declaration after consideration of a peer-reviewed report and its conclusions. The report recommended that behavioral therapy be the first option provided to gender-confused minors. HHS called for doctors to give this option the best possible chance and more time to work, rather than choosing the chemical and surgical route right from the start. Separately, in February, I reported on the fallout from a $2 million award to a victim of “gender affirming care” treatments in yet another case.

Right after that judgment, the American Medical Association (AMA) renounced gender surgeries on children, and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) did the same. While the Trump administration and the real world have clarity on the risks to children of gender mutilation and treatments, the Democrats are dead set against fixing some massive problems they created on gender issues. As with anything where the left is involved, it only gets even more complicated at this point.

James wants to bully doctors to keep providing ‘gender care’ treatments
In yet another case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has had to step in and warn James that it might be compelled to defend New York hospital NYU Langone Health if she decides to push the healthcare provider to reverse its decision to stop providing certain “gender care procedures” for minors. That’s right. A hospital wants to stop messing with kids’ lives through “gender care,” and James wants to prevent that. This has led to a showdown between the federal government and James. The DOJ sent a letter to James on March 18, telling her that she cannot use her state’s anti-discrimination law to force NYU Langone to provide what Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche described as “sex-rejecting procedures” for minors.

 


 

During Kasubhai’s confirmation hearings in 2023, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and John Kennedy (R-La.) shredded the leftist judge with his own words. Cruz described the judge’s record as “so far out of the mainstream” that all of the Judiciary Committee’s questions were directed toward him. The Republicans then focused on a ruling Kasubhai handed down that invalidated Eugene, Ore.’s citywide curfew during the 2020 riots over George Floyd’s death.

Kennedy zeroed in on Kasubhai’s own courtroom rules, which instructed attorneys and others in his courtroom to provide their “pronouns and honorifics,” and to use them when referring to others in the courtroom. As Rush Limbaugh would say, “for those of you in Rio Linda,” honorifics are the titles we use as a preface to our names – things like Mr., Ms., etc. During Kasubhai’s confirmation hearing, all the red flags were there. Marxism, wokism, racism, “equity,” the whole bit. Even his rather bizarre poetry and writings. After watching this video from the confirmation hearings, it’s no wonder Kasubhai is doing his level best to carry out the Biden manifesto, which, though unsaid, amounts to one simple objective – destroy America as we know it.

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“.. a batch of senators dubbed “Fight Club” who are particularly incensed by Schumer’s approach to the midterms.”

• Report Reveals That Democrats Are Plotting Against Chuck Schumer (Matt Margolis)

Based on the polls, Republicans may be sweating the midterms right about now, but Democrats are dealing with something uglier — a full-blown leadership crisis hiding in plain sight on Capitol Hill. The Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell on Friday: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is facing a level of internal revolt that has some members of his own caucus quietly counting heads to see if they can push him out. Schumer’s political future has been less than certain ever since he voted to keep the government open a year ago. His poll numbers tanked, and rumors flew of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) challenging him when he’s up for reelection in 2028. There have also been reports that Democrats were looking to oust Schumer from leadership, and it looks like that hasn’t died down.


According to this latest report, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) sat down to dinner with progressive activists at a French restaurant in Georgetown last month, during which Murphy told the group that some lawmakers had already done informal vote counts to gauge whether enough support existed to remove Schumer from leadership. Murphy added that Schumer had the votes to survive — for now. Murphy is among a group of senators and top advisers who have grown increasingly dissatisfied with Schumer’s leadership, according to people familiar with the conversations. That group includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has been initiating conversations with other senators to gauge frustrations with Schumer, some of the people said.

Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota has also been active in discussions about her frustrations with Schumer, and her advisers have spoken with other Senate staff about different scenarios to challenge Schumer’s leadership, other people said. In an interview, Murphy said he is frequently asked about Senate leadership, but he doesn’t have a count of who would vote to remove Schumer and doesn’t recall mentioning one. “Could someone infer from that that someone was keeping a count? Maybe, but that’s not what I meant,” Murphy said. “I meant that he has the support of the caucus.” He said he still supports Schumer.

Despite Murphy’s attempts to downplay the situation, more than four dozen interviews with Democratic senators, candidates, current and former aides, activists, and advisers point to the same conclusion: concern about Schumer’s leadership is widespread and growing. Apparently, routine meetings between Democratic chiefs of staff on Senate business that keep veering off script into conversations about Schumer and what can be done to pressure him to step aside after November’s elections.

Murphy, Warren and Smith are part of a batch of senators dubbed “Fight Club” who are particularly incensed by Schumer’s approach to the midterms. This group of progressives believes that Schumer favors centrist candidates in some key races and is disregarding the enthusiasm a new crop of outsiders is stoking. The senators maintain a Fight Club chat on Signal where they have discussed how to counter Schumer’s preferred candidates, according to people familiar with the conversations. The existence of the group was reported earlier by the New York Times. And there’s a money angle, too.

Donor frustration with Schumer has already been hurting a super PAC aligned with the Democratic leader, donors and consultants said. Senate Majority PAC was outraised by the Republican leadership-aligned super PAC last year; the Democratic super PAC started 2026 with $36 million in the bank and $12.4 million in debt, while its GOP counterpart had $100 million and no debt, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Schumer, for his part, remains defiant, but the report suggests that internal pressure is still building. The activist wing of the party is still sour over the government funding fights and apparently doesn’t think that he’s standing up to the Trump administration adequately. The GOP certainly has its midterm headaches. But division among the Senate Democrats is something that it could exploit.

Read more …

Not sure I understand this or what would make it relevant. What did the alter ego do that the ego did not?

• BOMBSHELL Bill Clinton/Epstein Info Drops (MN)

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna appeared on Bill Maher’s show and confirmed what the Epstein document dumps have long hinted at: the former president wasn’t just flying on the Lolita Express — he was operating under an entirely different identity in the files. This revelation lands as the House Oversight Committee presses forward with its investigation, following the Justice Department’s release of millions of pages under the Epstein Files Transparency Act signed by President Trump. Lawmakers and victims are still pushing for the remaining 2.5 million documents that remain hidden or heavily redacted, according to recent reporting.


Bill Clinton’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein runs deep and documented. The former president flew on Epstein’s private jet multiple times in the early 2000s, often for Clinton Foundation-related trips, and maintained social ties with both Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell long after red flags emerged. He has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes or visits to the island. Luna laid it out plainly during the interview. When Maher questioned bringing Hillary in, asking, “You have Hillary Clinton come in? This is like three gazillion pages of men behaving badly. And the witness you want is a woman?” Luna shot back: “She was issued a bipartisan subpoena, meaning the Democrats wanted her in, too. Cause Bill Clinton was all over those logs.”

She continued: “We can get at the whole Jeffrey Epstein ties because I actually talked to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton specifically about that, presenting them with the actual document that showed that he had a COMPLETE OTHER ALIAS.” Maher responded: “You get a lot of information that we don’t all have.” Luna replied: “I’m happy to come back.” Maher closed: “We want you. I appreciate it.” What was Bill Clinton doing with another alias? The question hangs heavy. In the files of a convicted child sex trafficker, a second identity isn’t a coincidence — it’s a red flag screaming for answers.This isn’t the first time the Clintons have scrambled to contain the Epstein fallout. Bill Clinton’s chief of staff raged after half-naked photos of the former president surfaced in the latest Epstein drop.

Back in 2024, reports also revealed Clinton allegedly threatened Vanity Fair to kill articles about his “good friend” Jeffrey Epstein. The pattern is clear: suppression, denial, and now — an alias. While the Clintons sat for depositions earlier this year, insisting they saw nothing wrong, Luna’s committee work keeps peeling back layers the deep state hoped would stay buried. The American people are watching. The files don’t lie, and neither do the subpoenas. Every new detail like this alias proves why the fight for real accountability matters — because when the powerful hide behind fake names in pedophile networks, it’s not just scandal. It’s a warning that the old guard still thinks the rules don’t apply.

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I smell a bailout.

• Chicago Ramps Up Taxes and Debt in Familiar Death Spiral (Turley)

As a Chicago native, I have watched my home city unravel under the policies of Mayor Brandon Johnson and the ultra-left city council. Controlled by groups like the teachers’ union, the city has continued to spend lavishly on progressive causes and bloated pension funds while destroying its own economy. The city has a more than $1 billion budget gap, with a roughly $150 million deficit. Roughly, two-fifths of the budget is now going toward debt service and pension costs. The city council is following a familiar death spiral. It is turning to higher taxes against the very industries that it needs to drive the economy. That now includes a roughly 20 percent tourist tax on hotels. These politicians are doing what the Chicago fire failed to achieve: kill a major city.


Johnson has been pushing for irresponsible measures to grab cash now and pay later schemes. Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) lost a fight to secure a $200 million loan to avoid having to reduce the budget or staff. Johnson and the union pushed for a corporate “head tax.” Barely able to convince many companies to stay in the state, Chicago would actually make it more costly to hire Chicagoans with an additional $ 21-per-employee tax. The city council just approved an $830 million borrowing plan to finance infrastructure projects by selling bonds. Notably, the council had to bar Johnson from giving the money to the teachers’ union, given his history of dependency on the union. However, the bond will now make the debt crisis even more acute. The bond agreement allows someone else to pay the massive accrued debt after 20 years.

Chicago now spends 40% of its money on debt servicing. At the same time, Johnson has pushed for city-run grocery stores, and his government has stopped buying treasury bonds for political reasons. Now, pursuant to Ordinance 2026-0022544, the city will raise the tax on hotel rooms within that district to 19% from 17.5%, which includes a combined city, county, and state tax, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The increase will apply to any hotels with more than 100 rooms. Hotel costs are already prohibitively high, and the added tax hits the convention tourism side of the economy. The editorial board of the Washington Post took note of Chicago’s worsening situation and wrote “it takes a long time to kill a city, and the bigger the city, the longer it takes.”

The city is following the same pattern of blue states driving businesses and high earners away. After taking control with Abigail Spanberger’s election, Virginia Democrats immediately pushed for a slew of new taxes and spending plans. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul, who during her campaign told wealthy New Yorkers to “just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, OK?” She added, “Get out of town. Because you do not represent our values. You are not New Yorkers.”

They took her advice in droves. Now she is bewailing that her tax base is collapsing. This week, she asked “high-net-worth” people to support the “generous social programs we want to have in our state” and go to Florida to “see who you can bring back home, because our tax has been eroded.” The point is to preserve the “generous social programs” by asking people to come back who fled due to the high taxes needed to support such programs. New York City, which is pushing for higher taxes, currently has a $115.9 billion budget for 8.48 million people. That is almost as much as the $117.4 billion budget for the entire state of Florida with 23.3 million people.

This week, a study showed that New York is now spending $81,000 per homeless person in a town where the average take-home pay is $40,600. It is projected to increase to nearly $97,000 in the coming year. From Chicago to New York City, Democratic leaders continue to spend wildly as top earners and employers flee. They are quickly learning that, as Margaret Thatcher noted, it works until you run out of other people’s money.In Chicago, the city council is now drifting toward bankruptcy like a ship of fools. For those of us who love our home city, it is a painful thing to watch. Despite a history of corruption under the Daley machine, the city was always a pro-growth town that attracted industries. It is now following Detroit’s path toward insolvency as politicians kick the debt can down the road for someone else to pay.

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“Remember, these illegals are the future voting bloc of the Democratic Party, meant to seize political control by disenfranchising citizens ..”

• Elon Musk Offers Lifeline To TSA Agents As Dems Hold Paychecks Hostage (ZH)

The Department of Homeland Security shutdown entered its 36th day on Saturday after Senate Democrats blocked yet another funding bill for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, and other federal agencies, triggering weeks of chaos at airports nationwide, including long TSA checkpoint lines during the peak of the spring break travel season.Early Saturday morning, Elon Musk, closely tracking the DHS funding lapse, wrote on X that he would personally pay the salaries of TSA agents to get them back to airports and help avert further chaos.


On Friday, a motion to advance a funding bill failed 47-37, falling short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster. John Fetterman (Pa.) was the only Democrat to vote “yes” on the DHS funding bill. Sixteen senators from both parties were absent for the vote. This marks the fifth time Democrats have blocked the Homeland Security Appropriations bill since DHS funding ended in mid-February. Democrats have been absolutely furious over any funding bill for ICE and Cust oms and Border Protection (CBP) that does not include reforms to immigration enforcement operations. That is mostly because they are watching President Trump erode their political power by deporting the very illegal aliens their party allowed to invade the nation under the Biden-Harris regime.

Remember, these illegals are the future voting bloc of the Democratic Party, meant to seize political control by disenfranchising citizens. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) is planning to force a vote sometime today on a proposal to fund the TSA. “The chaos at TSA is reaching a boiling point. We need to reopen it as quickly as possible. That is what Senate Democrats are intent on doing,” Schumer said. By the end of the week, 10% of all TSA workers did not show up for work – just below the record 10.22% absentee rate set at the start of the week. Nearly 400 agents have quit so far in the months-long shutdown, according to DHS.

These workers have been without pay since mid-last month, when the Democratic Party began using these agents as political pawns. The severity of the government shutdown this time has not yet reached the crisis level of travel disruption seen during the 43-day shutdown late last year, when air traffic controllers were used as leverage in political disputes, disrupting air travel nationwide. To prevent such issues in the future, perhaps privatization talks for these agencies should begin. Is it possible that an unhinged, eft-wing judge might try to block Musk from offering to pay TSA agents’ salaries during the funding lapse?

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“65% of Democrats, 95% of Republicans, 79% of independents, 80% of white voters, 80% of black voters, and 77% of Hispanic voters.”

• The Democrats’ Strategy on the SAVE Act Is Imploding (Matt Margolis)

Chuck Schumer stepped onto the Senate floor Thursday and lied about the popularity of the SAVE America Act. “But what have MAGA Republicans chosen to focus on this week?” Schumer asked. “Voter suppression. That is what the Republican Senate is wasting our time on, pushing a voter suppression bill that most Americans do not support — a bill that appeals to only the most fringe element of the MAGA base.”


We’ve tracked the numbers on this bill closely, and the polls are about as one-sided as it gets in American politics. A recent Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll found that 71% of Americans support the SAVE America Act, including 69% of independents and even half of Democrats. A whopping 81% support Voter ID, with 79% of independents and 70% of Democrats on board. Requiring proof of citizenship to vote get 75% support. Removing non-citizens from voter rolls pulls 80%. Even sharing unredacted voting rolls with the Department of Homeland Security — arguably the bill’s most contentious provision — gets 61% backing.

Oh, that’s just one poll, right? Wrong. Pew Research puts support for voter ID at 83%, with wide majorities across racial and partisan lines. Gallup found 84% favor voter ID, including 67% of Democrats. And Rasmussen puts support at 75%, with support trending upward over the past decade. Poll after poll, the same story keeps emerging. But wait, it’s been a few months now, and Democrats have been blasting the SAVE America Act the entire time. Surely, the numbers have changed, right? Wrong. We have a brand-new CBS News survey on the subject, conducted this week. It found that 80% of Americans support requiring a photo ID to vote, including 65% of Democrats, 95% of Republicans, 79% of independents, 80% of white voters, 80% of black voters, and 77% of Hispanic voters.

Proof of citizenship to register draws 66% overall, with 93% of Republicans, 61% of independents, 60% of black voters, and 63% of Hispanic voters in favor. The only cohort that didn’t support the citizenship requirement was Democrats, with only 43% supporting.

https://twitter.com/IAPolls2022/status/2034767257226629317

Democrats have spent weeks hammering the SAVE America Act with “voter suppression” messaging, hoping repetition turns fiction into fact. It hasn’t worked. The polling has held steady. Support hasn’t budged. If anything, this CBS poll just confirmed that the public isn’t buying the narrative they’re selling. Trust me, Chuck Schumer knows how to read a poll, and you can bet Democrats are tracking public opinion on the issue, looking for any nugget in the crosstabs that gives them a glimmer of hope. But there isn’t any. Americans have spoken on this issue.

Schumer has been in Washington long enough to know exactly what the data says. This means his floor speech wasn’t about ignorance; it was a calculated decision to stand on the Senate floor and call the most broadly popular election integrity bill in recent memory “unpopular” and a “fringe” priority. That tells you everything about how seriously Democrats take the voters they claim to represent.

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What, Vic?

“You know, this is the third time Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.”

• What Is It With The Fickle Europeans? (Victor Davis Hanson)

What is it with the fickle Europeans? I know that they have different interests than ours, but we’re both Western entities. You’d think that we’d be more collaborative on the effort to disarm and denuclearize Iran. But a lot of strange things are happening. The traditional use of the Diego Garcia critical airbase in the Indian Ocean, run by the British, but often leased to us and allowed us to have a very valuable base for our long-range bombers. The British initially refused to allow us to use it. And then, only under conditions that it would be used for defensive purposes. I don’t know what that means. But I think they forgot the 1982 Falklands War. They were in big trouble going all the way across the world to attack a country in the Western Hemisphere.


We were trying to be on friendly relationships so that [Argentina] wouldn’t join the other communist nations. And of course, we offered them 2 million gallons of gasoline. We offered them the use of a carrier if they needed it. We gave them sophisticated intelligence. Without the United States’ help, they would’ve had a very hard time retaking it. So, what’s happened?And then Spain has said that we can’t use at all the NATO base there in Spain. [President Emmanuel] Macron in France and [Chancellor Friedrich] Merz in Germany have also said they’ve expressed reservations.

President Donald Trump is now trying to say, you know, we’re using all of our assets to disarm this common threat to the West. Could you just send a few ships to help us, you know, patrol the Strait of Hormuz? And they’re reluctant. This gets back to the United States, who pays an inordinate amount of the NATO budget. And it keeps having to, you know, to harangue and hammer. “Please, please defend yourself. We are here to help you, but we’re across the ocean, 3,000 miles away. And this is in your interest. You know, this is the third time Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.”

So, don’t they have a fear of Iran? I mean, there was a joint missile defense project. Obama canceled it, in that infamous quid pro quo hot mic conversation where he made a deal with the Russians to give him space so he could get reelected. He would dismantle the Czech and Polish project to have missile defense. That was primarily for the protection of Europe. The United States was going to pay a great deal of it. Protection from Iran.= So, what’s going on? What explains this European schizophrenia? That they want to be an ally, but they don’t want to be an ally. They’re scared to death of a nuclear Iran, but they don’t want to do anything about it. They want the United States to handle it, but they want the United States to handle it and keep them out of it.

But most of their oil comes from the Middle East or North Africa. So, they are adamant that they want the supplies, reliable. They want the Strait of Hormuz open. They want the United States to ensure that. They want the United States to clear the Red Sea of Houthi attacks. We know all that, but they’re not there when we need them at all. And a very, you know, a very reasonable request. And so why is this? Well, I think there’s a lot of reasons. I think they’ve made some disastrous, internal and external choices in their policies. First of all, Germany has 16 percent of its population are immigrants that weren’t born in Germany. The vast majority of them are unassimilated, unacculturated, unintegrated Muslims.

Many of them, or most, under Angela Merkel policy. She was the German version of Alejandro Mayorkas, who opened the border and pretty much enacted this destructive policy. In other countries at 6 percent to 10 percent to 12 percent. But the key is there’s a force multiplier of these open-border illegal immigration policies. And that is the Muslim communities that immigrate are more radical often than the countries they left that were radical enough. They don’t want to be part of the West. They feel that their birth rate and their increased immigration will soon swamp these European governments. And the European governments are terrified of them.

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Not so fickle when it comes to power.

• Battle for Hungary: How the EU Plans to Defeat Viktor Orban (RT)

Three weeks out from the most consequential European election of the year, the EU has aimed every weapon in its arsenal at Hungary, as Brussels prepares for its best shot yet at taking out Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Orban’s animosity toward the EU establishment runs deep. For more than a decade, the Hungarian prime minister has often been the bloc’s sole dissident: railing against its open-door migration policies, embrace of LGBT ideology, and “suicidal” plan to welcome Ukraine into the union. Orban has secured carve-outs from the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions that enabled Hungary to continue purchasing Russian oil, and is currently vetoing a €90 billion loan package for Kiev.


The EU has responded by withholding funds equal to 3.5% of Hungary’s GDP over his banning of LGBT propaganda and refusal to accept non-European migrants. With the future of its Ukraine project now on the line, Brussels has pinned its hopes on Peter Magyar and his Tisza party, which promises to overturn Orban’s domestic reforms and Budapest’s opposition to the EU’s designs in Ukraine and beyond. After the European Council failed to find a workaround to Orban’s veto at a March 19 meeting, the EU’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, hinted that work was underway on a “Plan B.” Based on the strategy playing out in Budapest, ‘Plan B’ clearly involves a full-scale campaign of censorship and subversion to influence Hungary’s upcoming elections.

On March 16, European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier quietly announced that the EU had activated its Rapid Response System (RRS) to “combat potential Russian online disinformation campaigns” in the runup to the Hungarian election. The mechanism will be active until one week after the vote, Regnier said. While most Europeans have never heard of this system, the RRS has been a key tool in the commission’s censorship arsenal for years. It empowers EU-approved “fact-checkers” to flag online content as “disinformation” and request its removal from platforms – Regnier cited TikTok and Meta as two examples.

Theoretically, platforms such as Meta and TikTok participate in the system voluntarily. All major social media companies have to sign up to the EU’s ‘Code of Practice on Disinformation’. However, a trove of documents published by the House Judiciary Committee in Washington this year revealed that these companies were threatened – often explicitly – with punishment under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) if they refused to tow the EU line.

The premise resembles a Mafia-style protection racket, with the deputy chief of the commission’s communications directorate telling platforms in 2024 that refusal to sign the codes of conduct “could be taken into account… when determining whether the provider is complying with the obligations laid down by the DSA.” The DSA is now in force, giving Brussels’ fact-checkers the final say over what constitutes “disinformation” ahead of the election.


The argument that these fact-checkers favor Magyar is well founded. Over four European elections in which the Rapid Response System was activated, the Judiciary Committee found that fact-checkers “almost exclusively targeted” right-wing and populist candidates and organizations. “Moreover, the requirement that these fact-checkers be approved by the European Commission creates a clear structural incentive for the participants to censor Euroskeptic opinion and content,” the committee noted.

Hungarian MEP Dora David, a former Meta employee and member of Magyar’s Tisza party, boasted last year that “we’ve seen companies change their behavior” based on the threat of DSA enforcement, citing Meta’s removal of pro-Orban content as an example.

The fact-checkers can count on sympathetic staff within the social media companies. After several members of Orban’s Fidesz party claimed that Meta has already started restricting the reach of their Facebook posts, commentators Joey Mannarino and Philip Pilkington identified Oskar Braszczynski as the employee likely responsible. Braszczynski, who works as Meta’s ‘Government and Social Impact Partner for Central and Eastern Europe’, has shared pro-Ukraine, anti-Orban, and pro-LGBT content on his personal social media accounts.

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https://twitter.com/birdscolour56/status/2035131647243559005?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 20 2026

Mar 202026
 
 March 20, 2026  Posted by at 10:27 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  62 Responses »


Jean-Michel Basquiat In this case 1983


• Netanyahu Declares Iran’s Nuclear Program & Missile Production “Destroyed” (ZH)
• Iran’s Attack On Qatar’s LNG Sends Shockwaves Across Global Energy Markets (ZH)
• US Naval Escort Won’t “100% Guarantee” Tanker Safety In Hormuz (ZH)
• Iran Is Losing. Why Pretend Otherwise? (Ben Shapiro)
• Either Iran or Israel Has to Go (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Where Will The War Take Us? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Dmitriev Calls Strike on Iran’s South Pars Gas Field Tipping Point (TASS)
• The Coroner is Guilty (John Helmer)
• DNI Tulsi Gabbard Releases 2026 Unclassified National Threat Assessment (CTH)
• Belarus Remains Trump’s Ally Despite US Mistakes — Lukashenko (TASS)
• Murphy’s Law (Jonathan Turley)
• Trump Continues to Expel MAGA’s Best Members (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Kent Tells Tucker: ‘Imminent Threat’ Was From Israel, Not Iran (ZH)
• NASA May Shrink Boeing’s Moon-Mission Role, Push SpaceX (ZH)
• When ‘I Don’t Recall’ Meets a DOJ Subpoena (David Manney)

 


 

 


 

 


 


Just when the protests get too loud, the mission is completed.

• Netanyahu Declares Iran’s Nuclear Program & Missile Production “Destroyed” (ZH)

In a rare wartime press conference, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu opened with a jab at rumors about his condition: First of all& I m alive.” He went on to claim that Israel and the US are “protecting the entire Middle East& the entire world” – and after 20 days, he asserted: “we are winning, and Iran is being decimated.” Netanyahu further claimed that Iran’s missile and drone stockpiles are being “massively degraded” and “will be destroyed,” framing the campaign as an all-out dismantling of Tehran s capabilities. Bust most importantly he said production capability has been ended.


He further addressed claims Israel dragged the US into war, calling it “fake news” and adding: “Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Donald Trump what to do? Come on.” He praised tight US-Israel coordination: “We are achieving goals in lightning speed” – and said he and Trump “see eye to eye,” adding the world “owes a debt& to President Trump for leading this effort.” He also stated that Israel acted against Pars alone, but that he will hold off on ordering future such attacks without US consent. Netanyahu also said the war will end “much sooner than people think”. And another key aspect to his remarks:

• Iran No Longer Able to Enrich Uranium
ª Iran Lost Ability to Manufacture Missiles US
ª Israel Destroyed Iran s Fleet in Caspian Sea

“What we’re destroying now are the factories that produce the components to make these missiles and ` to make the nuclear weapons that they’re trying to produce,” Netanyahu said, however without providing evidence of the claim. Just before he spoke, Israel’s military said it anticipates the anti-Iran campaign is only half complete.

Iran through its Foreign Minister has made clear on Thursday it will show “zero restraint” if energy infrastructure is targeted again. President Trump on the same day responded to reports the US has sent more troops to the region.

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“Worse Than Nord Stream”.

• Iran’s Attack On Qatar’s LNG Sends Shockwaves Across Global Energy Markets (ZH)

Brent crude futures surged toward $120/bbl, while WTI remained muted around $96/bbl, as Wednesday marked a major escalation in the US-Iran conflict. Israeli fighter jets struck Iran’s giant South Pars gas field with air-delivered munitions, triggering a retaliatory chain reaction in which IRGC forces targeted critical energy infrastructure across the Gulf. Iranian drone and missile strikes caused heavy damage to Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG hub, while gas plants in Abu Dhabi shut down, Kuwaiti refineries were hit by drones, and Saudi refining assets were targeted. Unlike temporary shipping disruptions in the Gulf waters or the Strait of Hormuz, damage to upstream energy assets, such as production and LNG facilities, is far more serious and could take months or even years to repair, raising the risk of prolonged tight global supply.


Some 20% of global LNG exports originate from Gulf countries, and the latest round of Israeli and IRGC attacks on upstream energy assets shows how the conflict has entered an entirely new phase where energy infrastructure is being directly targeted. Disruptions at Qatar’s LNG facilities threaten to tighten the global gas market, with ripple effects quickly spreading worldwide – across Asia, Europe, and even U.S. gas prices. European natural gas benchmark futures jumped as much as 35% today, pushing prices to more than double their pre-war levels, as traders brace for what only appears to be a prolonged period of disruption from critical LNG hubs that account for a fifth of the world’s total supply.

QatarEnergy warned earlier that LNG facilities inside its Ras Laffan Industrial City were attacked by missiles, “causing sizable fires and extensive further damage.” “This could be a game changer for the LNG industry, akin to the attack on Nord Stream or possibly even worse,” Susan Sakmar, visiting assistant professor at the University of Houston Law Center, said, quoted by Bloomberg. “This is a sudden disruption, with no indication that Qatar could restart anytime soon.” Global Risk Management analyst Arne Lohmann Rasmussen warned, “LNG from Qatar could in principle be offline for months and, in the worst case, for years. For the gas market, the crisis does not end simply because the war ends and the Strait of Hormuz reopens.”

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“We are collateral damage in a conflict when the root causes have nothing to do with shipping..”

• US Naval Escort Won’t “100% Guarantee” Tanker Safety In Hormuz (ZH)

The paralyzed Hormuz chokepoint is becoming the worst disruption to global energy flows ever, as actual barrels quickly disappear from oil markets, driving prices sharply higher in Asia toward $150 per barrel and potentially setting the stage for demand destruction in the weeks ahead.


President Trump has been attempting to fast-track the reopening of Hormuz by providing naval escorts for tankers and other commercial vessels. However, there are a few problems. First, Western US partners have rejected Trump’s request to send warships to help reopen the strategic waterway, which is plagued by IRGC mines and kamikaze drones. Second, Arsenio Dominguez, secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), told the Financial Times in an interview on Tuesday that even if naval escorts materialize in the narrow waterway, they will not provide a “100% guarantee” of tanker safety. “It reduces the risk, but the risk is still there. The merchant ships and seafarers can be affected,” Dominguez said.

The head of the IMO, which sets rules for international shipping, continued: “We are collateral damage in a conflict when the root causes have nothing to do with shipping,” adding that his organization has major concerns about commercial vessels stuck in the Gulf running out of food and supplies for crews. Sending US and allied warships into the narrow waterway, just off the Iranian coast and facing threats from drones, naval mines, and shore-to-ship ballistic missiles, seems like a suicidal mission. “The challenge is going to be dealing with the proximity of the drone launchers and the missile launchers that are going to be along the Iranian coast,” Bryan Clark, an expert in naval operations with the Hudson Institute, told The Hill.

Clark said, “The issue is that you only have a couple of minutes once the launcher comes out before the missiles are going to get on top of you, because you’re only talking about 3 or 4 miles from the shoreline to the transit lane.”mA number of top US partners, including Germany, Spain, and Italy, have no immediate plans to send warships into the waterway. This has only infuriated President Trump, as his administration has voiced frustration with some longstanding allies over their unwillingness to help reopen the strait.

The race to reopen the strait comes as Kpler oil analyst Muyu Xu warned, “The blockade is now the worst disruption to oil flows ever. Actual barrels are now disappearing from global oil markets, which could lead to demand destruction in the weeks to come.”= Three weeks into the US-Iran conflict, tanker activity on the waterway has slowed to a crawl, just about 400,000 barrels per day, compared with the pre-Hormuz-closure average of 14 million barrels per day.

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Views differ.

• Iran Is Losing. Why Pretend Otherwise? (Ben Shapiro)

Don’t fall for the propaganda. Iran is not holding its own in this conflict. It is being systematically dismantled. One by one, the senior figures of the Islamic Republic have been eliminated: generals, security chiefs and regime power brokers. The country’s leadership has been decapitated at the highest levels, leaving behind a hollowed-out command structure struggling to function.mEven the regime’s attempts at continuity appear shaky. A successor was hastily elevated, but reports suggest instability, absence and internal disarray at the very top. Whatever facade of order Tehran hoped to project has given way to uncertainty and silence.


Meanwhile, the military picture is equally stark. Iran’s command-and-control systems have been fractured. Its missile and drone capabilities — once touted as pillars of deterrence — have been severely degraded. What remains is not a coordinated campaign but sporadic, diminished retaliation.The numbers tell the story. Early volleys of hundreds of missiles have dwindled to scattered launches. Drone deployments have followed the same trajectory. Factories, infrastructure and key facilities tied to these capabilities have been destroyed or heavily damaged. What the regime is able to deploy now appears to be the remnants of what once was.

This is not simply a Western narrative. Even regional observers — some hardly aligned with U.S. interests — have acknowledged the effectiveness of the campaign. Analyses describe a deliberate, phased strategy: first neutralizing air defenses and leadership networks, then targeting the industrial backbone that sustains Iran’s military capabilities. The objective is not just to weaken but to prevent reconstruction.mAnd yet, despite this evidence, a counternarrative persists in parts of the West: that Iran is resilient, that it is outlasting its adversaries, that the outcome remains uncertain. That claim is increasingly difficult to square with reality.

Recent developments underscore the point. Senior Iranian officials once positioned as potential successors have been killed. Key internal security figures — those responsible for maintaining order and suppressing dissent — have also been eliminated. Even localized enforcement mechanisms are now under pressure. What remains of the regime’s response resembles less a strategy and more a reaction — disjointed, limited and increasingly ineffective.So the real question is not whether Iran is losing. The evidence suggests it is.The real question is why so many observers continue to insist otherwise.

Part of the answer may lie in broader geopolitical anxieties: fears of escalation, concerns over regional stability, or skepticism shaped by past conflicts. But those concerns, while understandable, do not change the facts on the ground. There are also looming questions about what comes next. Much attention has been paid to strategic chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, though any prolonged disruption there would invite overwhelming international response. More significant, perhaps, is the internal dynamic within Iran itself.

The regime has long relied on force to suppress dissent, as seen in past protests met with lethal crackdowns. But the current moment may be different. With leadership weakened and security structures under strain, the balance between state control and public resistance could begin to shift. If that happens, the future of Iran will not be decided solely by external pressure but by the Iranian people themselves. They have risen before, at great personal risk. The difference now is that the regime they would confront appears more vulnerable than it has in decades. What happens next is uncertain. But one thing is increasingly clear: The narrative of Iranian strength no longer matches the reality.

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I llike PCR. And he has much more experience than me, and I was never in the White House. BUT: the US is not in the Middle East because of Israel, it’s -historically- there to control the price of oil.

• Either Iran or Israel Has to Go (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Iranians have demonstrated that Trump badly misjudged their capability. Trump is now calling on other countries, with little success, to send their warships to help keep open the Strait of Hormuz as the task is too big for the US Navy, and he is cutting deals, or trying to, with Putin and Modi to remove sanctions on Russian oil in exchange for the de-sanctioned oil to be sent to Europe and not to Asia. Trump, or his advisors, have come up with a scheme to invade Kharg Island, which seems more like a suicide mission.


The Iranians are holding firm on one level but without realizing it might be cracking on another. I am not convinced that the Iranians fully understand the situation. For example, Mohsen Rezaee, retired commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, now a member of the Expediency Discernment Council, said that the “presence of the US in the Persian Gulf has been the main cause of insecurity over the past 50 years.” The end of the war, he said, requires “US withdrawal from the Persian Gulf.”

It seems to me that General Rezaee misunderstands the situation. It is not the American presence per se that is the cause of insecurity. The cause is that the American bases are there to serve Israel. Moreover, the real cause of insecurity for all of the Muslim states is Israel’s Zionist agenda of Greater Israel. Once defined as “from the Nile to the Euphrates,” Israel has recently redefined Greater Israel to be from the “Nile to Pakistan.” The general does not seem to understand that removing the US from the Persian Gulf does not remove the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel. What Iran should be demanding is the disavowal of the Zionist agenda.

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, hasn’t a clue either. He says the “Only way to end this war” is to recognize Iran’s legitimate rights, payment of reparations (to Iran) and firm guarantees against future aggression.” He is badly wrong. The war might again be put on pause by Iranian officials who fail to comprehend the situation, but the only way war will end is by Israel renouncing the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel. And that Israel will not do. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has rejected the talk of peace negotiations. Trump, he says has already twice deceived and sneak-attacked Iran while engaged in negotiations, and Iran will not make the same mistake again.

In actual fact, Iran is making a much worse mistake. The Zionist agenda of Greater Israel is not consistent with the Existence of Muslim Iran (or Turkey and Saudi Arabia). Unless the Zionist agenda is renounced, Iran has no choice but to fight to its own death or to Israel’s death. The fact that Iran has never seized the initiative, has never used its strategic advantage, but has sat on its butt waiting, indeed inviting, an attack, suggests that Iran does not comprehend the Zionist Agenda. Neither do the Americans, the Europeans, or the media. The real cause of the war is simply not mentioned. If Iran doesn’t wise up, Iran risks being lured into another meaningless agreement.

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“Netanyahu does know what to do–nuke Iran, in order to save Israel.”

No, nuking Iran would be the end of Israel.

• Where Will The War Take Us? (Paul Craig Roberts)

I am disappointed that Trump destroyed the MAGA movement by turning it into the MIGA movement and taking America to another war in the Middle East in behalf of the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel. Using the disguise of a “war on terror,” the United States has spent the first quarter of the 21st Century using American blood and American money to destroy countries that were barriers to Greater Israel, a territory that encompasses the Muslim Middle East from the Nile to Pakistan. Iraq, Libya and Syria are no longer functioning Arab states.


Trump and Netanyahu believed that Iran would fall as easily as the others, but that has proved not to be the case. Indeed, it appears that Iran is winning. Iran is winning because Iran was better prepared. Expecting a quick and easy victory, Trump and Netanyahu went to war without sufficient missiles to continue in the combat. One consequence is the destruction of American radar and military bases in the Persian Gulf. Another is the inability of Israel to intercept incoming Iranian missiles, an inability that will intensify as Iran works its way through its older stock of missiles and begins using it’s modern hypersonic ballistic missiles. It is possible that Israel could end up looking like Gaza.

According to news reports one of the Persian Gulf oil city-states that hosts US military bases has requested that the United States depart as US presence no longer provides protection. Possibly the other hosts of American bases will make the same request, in which case the result of Trump’s war for Israel will be the removal of Washington’s presence in the Middle East and a defeat of Washington’s long-term agenda of controlling oil flows from the Persian Gulf.

Trump and Netanyahu seem to have put themselves into a difficult situation. Both face elections this year, elections unlikely to go well if Trump and Netanyahu are losing their war. The US Navy has had to move out of range of Iranian ship-sinking missiles, and Trump has had to call on other countries–China, Japan, South Korea, France, UK–to send warships to aid the US in taking control from Iran of the Strait of Hormuz. This request is a clear statement by the President of the United States of limited American military capability. Trump has had no takers. Trump’s advisors are talking about landing troops on Kharg Island, surely a suicide mission.

In other words, Trump doesn’t know what to do. Netanyahu does know what to do–nuke Iran, in order to save Israel. Aware of this possibility Iran might hold back from victory and go for a settlement in which Washington and Israel agree to normalize relations with the Iranian nation. Such a settlement would not last, because it is incompatible with the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel. Therefore, during the time for which such a settlement might last, Iran would have to develop and deploy nuclear weapons, knowing that otherwise Iran will be struck by Israeli nukes.

So, the outcome of Trump and Israel’s war could easily be nuclear proliferation and a reduction of Israeli and American power in the Middle East. This could be a good thing as both Israelis and Americans would understand that the agenda of Greater Israel has consequences too severe to justify the agenda.m If the Iranian government holds firm and learns from the experience, there could be a silver lining in Trump and Israel’s war. The Zionist agenda would be exposed as too costly and would have to be abandoned both by Israel and Washington.

The weak-willed governments in Moscow and Beijing would see that it is possible, after all, to stand up to Israeli-dominated Washington, and possibly might start standing up to Washington themselves instead of selling out their allies. If so, this would produce the multi-polar world that Russian President Putin talks so much about but negates the possibly of with his craven behavior. Perhaps XI would understand that it is better to have a determined military, such as the one he just purged, than a moderate one that encourages, as Putin does, ever more serious provocations by refusing to acknowledge them as acts of war.

The future of the world depends on whether leaders can reenter the world of reality or stay lost in a more comforting unreality in which they presently operate.

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“Trump stated that Israel would no longer strike facilities of Iran’s South Pars gas field.”

• Dmitriev Calls Strike on Iran’s South Pars Gas Field Tipping Point (TASS)

Special Representative of Russian President for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries, Chief Executive Officer of Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Kirill Dmitriev called the strike on facilities of the Iranian South Pars gas field, which caused a fire, a “tipping point” in a post on X. This is how he reacted to a White House publication citing statements by US President Donald Trump regarding the situation around the gas field. US President Donald Trump stated that Israel would no longer strike facilities of Iran’s South Pars gas field.


The United States knew nothing about the attack, and Qatar was not involved in it in any way or had any idea it was coming, he wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. The American leader believes the Jewish state carried out the strike out of outrage at what was happening in the Middle East. According to Trump, only a small portion of the field’s facilities were damaged. H e emphasized that Israel would no longer strike the extremely important and valuable South Pars gas field unless Iran made an unwise decision to attack a completely innocent party, Qatar in this case.

On Wednesday, the head of the Assaluyeh District administration in Iran’s Bushehr Province reported that a fire had broken out following an attack by Israel and the United States at several facilities in the South Pars gas field. In this regard, Iran’s elite military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said it would attack oil and gas sites in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.

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New book.

• The Coroner is Guilty (John Helmer)

This is the first book to expose abuse of power by Australian coroners investigating the cause of death when there is suspicion of medical negligence in the combination of popular prescription drugs – widely used benzodiazepines with treatments for non-life threatening conditions such as vertigo, vestibular migraine, and epilepsy. The book records the evidence of the sudden death of Tatiana Vasilievna Turitsyna, my wife, and of the two years which have followed of forensic investigations to uncover the cause, the role of the treating doctor, then the delay, obstruction, and cover-up by the Coroners Court of Victoria.


Throughout the world this court is the only one of its kind to have been investigated and then prosecuted by the state for abuses of power by the coroners in charge – this is corruption in the law. In 2023 the court was found guilty, sentenced, and fined almost $400,000, but no individual was held culpable. That was the outcome of a plea bargain — a cover-up to keep the evidence secret, the individual coroners blameless, and the penalty paid out of public money from the court budget.

In a presentation that is unprecedented in the practice of Anglo-American law, in Australia and Canada, this book has become the jury book or brief of the case of suspicious, sudden drug death. It is now a model for the international public debate on corruption by the pharmaceutical companies in cahoots with government regulators, the medical profession, judges, and lawyers. This is your summons to serve on the jury.

You, the reader, are called to judge the evidence and the legal argument; and then cast your verdict, not only for the doctor and coroner but also the Supreme Court judge who conducted a trial of his own, dismissing every count of the author’s case, and endorsing the coroner’s decisions without qualification. This is also a textbook on subversion in our lives and deaths. This is how the victims of lethal combinations of drugs are blamed for dying of heart attacks that are judged to be “natural causes” when the evidence that they are nothing of the kind is buried according to the “rules-based international order”. If you are a survivor of a crime of “natural causes”, here’s how to fight for your right, and the right of the dead, to natural justice.

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The Unclassified part is not the most exciting.

• DNI Tulsi Gabbard Releases 2026 Unclassified National Threat Assessment (CTH)

In fulfilling her legislatively mandated annual report called the “National Threat Assessment,” Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, releases the combined intelligence assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Additionally, here is the transcript of DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s statement to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:


[TRANSCRIPT] – “I am here today to present the 2026 Annual Threat Assessment, joined by the Directors of the CIA, DIA, FBI and NSA. This briefing is being provided in accordance with ODNI’s statutory responsibility and represents the Intelligence Community’s assessment of the threats facing U.S. citizens, our Homeland, and our interests. nAs President Trump’s National Security Strategy highlights, America is blessed with an enviable geostrategic position, unparalleled assets, resources and a military second to none. Intelligence remains among our sharpest tools in protecting our interests and informing our policymakers and decisionmakers on key national security concerns. In this assessment, we are following the structure of priorities laid out in the National Security Strategy, starting with threats to our Homeland, then shifting to global risks.

The defense of our Homeland is of utmost importance to the American people. Putting America first means committing to an unrelenting vigilance in service of our own citizens, borders, and communities. Recent efforts to bolster Homeland defense have yielded significantly positive results, but challenges persist. For example, President Trump’s strict enforcement of U.S. policies at the U.S. Mexico border and regionally has served as a deterrent and drastically reduced illegal immigration. Based on Customs and Border Patrol data, January 2026’s monthly encounters are down 83.8% compared to January 2025. Encounters declined 79% compared to 2024.

The drivers of migration are likely to continue. Potential worsening instability in countries like Cuba and Haiti risk triggering migration surges. Smugglers who often operate as transnational criminal organizations view chaos as an opportunity for profit and will look to continue to profit from illegal immigration flows. Transnational criminal organizations continue to pose a daily and direct threat to the health and safety of millions of U.S. citizens primarily by producing and trafficking in illegal drugs. Under President Trump’s leadership, fentanyl overdose deaths have seen a 30 percent decrease from September 2024 to September 2025.

Fentanyl potency has also decreased, likely due to disruptions to the production supply chain. U.S. efforts to work with China and India to halt the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals to North America are demonstrating improvement, but there is more work to be done as there are still tens of thousands of fentanyl-related deaths in America every year.] President Trump’s aggressive efforts to more directly and actively target TCOs and reduce the inflow of fentanyl precursors has already had a significant impact which is likely to continue. (continue reading – pdf) The opening statement is 8-pages in full and can be found by following the ‘continue reading’ link above.

Tulsi Gabbard is doing a solid job as DNI, against formidable opposition from all directions.]“It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.”
-Machiavelli, The Prince

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I thought he was Putin’s close(st) ally.

• Belarus Remains Trump’s Ally Despite US Mistakes — Lukashenko (TASS)

Belarus remains an ally of US President Donald Trump despite some mistakes made by the US administration, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday. “I would strongly urge you that we discuss regional problems. Not only the issues surrounding Ukraine, but also global ones. And not only the war in the Middle East,” Lukashenko was quoted by BelTA news agency during a meeting with a US delegation led by Special Envoy for Belarus John Coale at the Palace of Independence.


“I believe my perspective on global issues, especially on the situation in the Middle East, will be important for you, given that you are fighting against our friends. And I am ready to speak frankly on this topic,” the Belarusian president continued. “I would very much like you to convey my perspective to Donald Trump. Although I believe the United States has made certain mistakes, I remain a supporter of your president,” Lukashenko added. Last September, the United States lifted sanctions on the airline Belavia. The US Department of the Treasury issued a general license for financial transactions with Belavia and its subsidiaries.

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Judges doing politics. Under the guise of law.

• Murphy’s Law (Jonathan Turley)

“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” That adage, called Murphy’s Law, came to mind this week with the latest injunction issued by U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy in Boston. Murphy previously drew national criticism for his efforts to enjoin Trump’s immigration policies, resulting in not one but two rebukes from the Supreme Court. He is now back with an order preventing changes to vaccination policies ordered by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.


As with his earlier immigration order, the court seems to take the view that anything that can go wrong for the Trump Administration will go wrong for the Administration. At virtually every critical point, the court seems to adopt the harshest possible interpretation against the Administration. Murphy effectively halted, for now, the meeting of Kennedy’s new Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. Kennedy had replaced many members of the ACIP, including some accused of conflicts of interest. However, Murphy found that Kennedy had made arbitrary and capricious decisions in changing vaccine policies and changing the committee membership.

The Trump Administration has been aggressively fighting for executive authority over agencies, boards, and committees. This case could become one of the most significant of these appeals.Judge Murphy basically lambasts Kennedy for attacking good science and scientific methods. His criticism is laden with assumptions about the “correct” answers to questions governing vaccines. There are good-faith objections to Kennedy’s policy changes. However, the question is who is constitutionally vested with the right to make such decisions. That question is particularly prominent in the Murphy opinion. For example, the court rejects the new board members as unqualified in comparison to the prior members.

The court’s rejection of the new board members is largely conclusory. The court offers little indication of who Kennedy might appoint to meet his standards … other than the prior board members placed on the committee during the prior administration. In determining whether Kennedy had a right to reconstitute the committee, the opinion states that “[t]he Court acknowledges that many of the ACIP members have extensive expertise in their chosen fields.” However, it then questions whether they have truly “relevant” experience. The court insists that only six have relevant experience with vaccines.

The rejection of individual advisers shows how the court dismisses countervailing credentials or belittles advisers selected by the Secretary. Take Dr. Raymond Pollak who “is a surgeon, transplant immunobiologist, and transplant specialist who has published more than 120 peer-reviewed works and served as principal investigator on NIH transplant biology grants and numerous drug trials.” That would seem to be someone who could offer unique insights into vaccines and their approval. Yet, while acknowledging some experience, Murphy dismisses him as lacking sufficient experience.

Then there is Dr. Retsef Levi, Professor of Operations Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, as “a leading expert in healthcare analytics, supply chain and manufacturing analytics, risk management, and biologics and vaccine safety” and note that he has “collaborated with industry stakeholders and public health agencies to develop decision-support models to evaluate biologics and vaccine safety” and co-authored studies examining the association between mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and risks of cardiovascular disease, mortality, and adverse pregnancy outcomes.” He has also published two papers on vaccines. However, Judge Murphy brushes aside that stellar academic record and notes that “both of those [vaccine papers] were published mere months before his appointment.”

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I personally give Trump much more credit than PCR does.

• Trump Continues to Expel MAGA’s Best Members (Paul Craig Roberts)

Trump, again doing the political assassination for the Israel Lobby, is trying to drive American hero US Rep. Thomas Massie out of Congress Three new York Jewish billionaires–Henry Paulson, Miriam Adelson, and Paul Singer–have contributed an enormous war chest for unseating Massie. Trump is contributing his demonization rhetoric: “We got to get rid of this loser. This guy is bad,” Trump said at a rally in Hebron, Kentucky. “He’s disloyal to the Republican Party. He’s disloyal to the people of Kentucky, and most importantly, he is disloyal to the United States of America. And he’s got to be voted out of office as soon as possible.” https://www.unz.com/article/thomas-massie-live-by-the-sword-die-by-the-dagger/


What Trump means is that Massie is disloyal to the Israel Lobby. On Tucker Carlson’s show Massie revealed that every member of Congress has an AIPAC babysitter or handler to make certain the member votes in Israel’s interest. To please Israel, Trump turns on his strongest supporters, such as Massie, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Joe Kent. As Trump does not tolerate dissent, none of his advisers dare to tell him anything. Trump’s schooling as a Jewish-financed New York real estate developer is not leading to anything good. We have an impetuous and unpredictable president with his finger on the button who listens to no one but Zionist Israel.

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“Kent elaborated that Israel was preparing to strike, which would trigger retaliation endangering U.S. personnel – creating the cited “imminent” risk.. “

• Kent Tells Tucker: ‘Imminent Threat’ Was From Israel, Not Iran (ZH)

Joe Kent, former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center who was President Trump’s principal counterterrorism advisor, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to explain his side of the story after stepping down from the administration. Kent announced his resignation Tuesday, citing his opposition to the ongoing U.S. war with Iran, and his belief that Iran posed “no imminent threat” to America – while asserting in his resignation letter that his wife died in “a war manufactured by Israel” in a 2019 suicide bombing in Manjbi, Syria.


In this first public interview since resigning, Kent elaborated on his reasons amid reports emerging Wednesday that the FBI is investigating him for allegedly leaking or improperly sharing classified information (a probe that sources say predates his resignation and is being handled by the FBI’s Criminal Division, per several outlets). Early on in the interview, Carlson referenced Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s justification for the strikes – that Iran posed an imminent threat because Israel was preparing to attack Iranian targets, likely prompting Iranian retaliation against U.S. forces. Carlson reframed it bluntly:

Carlson: “So, the imminent threat that the secretary of state is describing is not from Iran. It’s from Israel.” Kent: “Exactly. And I think this speaks to the broader issue: who is in charge of our policy in the Middle East?” Kent elaborated that Israel was preparing to strike, which would trigger retaliation endangering U.S. personnel – creating the cited “imminent” risk. He stated: Kent: “The Israelis drove the decision to take this action, which we knew would set off a series of events because the Iranians would retaliate.”

Kent insisted there was zero U.S. intelligence of Iran planning a direct attack, nearing a nuclear weapon, or posing an immediate homeland threat. He cited Iran’s religious fatwa against nuclear weapons (since 2004) and said the assassinated Supreme Leader Khamenei had moderated the program: Kent: “There was no intelligence that said, hey… the Iranians are going to launch this big sneak attack… There was none of that intelligence.” On nukes: “No, they weren’t [on the verge of a bomb]. They weren’t in June either. The Iranians have had a fatwa – a religious ruling – against the development of a nuclear weapon since 2004… We had no intelligence that it was being disobeyed.”

https://twitter.com/remarks/status/2034418878143484285?s=20


Kent described how dissenting views were sidelined in the lead-up to strikes. Key officials, including himself, were reportedly barred from direct briefings with Trump. He said he spoke personally with the president before resigning – a conversation he described as “very respectful” – but felt staying would mean silencing his warnings. “A good deal of key decision-makers were not allowed to come and express their opinion to the president,” Kent said, adding “There wasn’t a robust debate.”


In an emotionally charged segment, Kent discussed the September 2025 assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, whom he knew personally. Kent recounted Kirk’s last words to him in the West Wing in June: Kent (recalling Kirk): “Joe, stop us from getting into a war with Iran.” Kent said Kirk had opposed escalation and faced pressure from pro-Israel donors. He revealed the NCTC had leads on potential foreign involvement but was ordered to halt: Kent: “The investigation that the National Counterterrorism Center was a part of, we were stopped from continuing to investigate… There was still a lot for us to look into… there were still linkages for us to investigate that we needed to run down.”= The official narrative focused on lone gunman Ryan Robinson, but Kent insisted unresolved questions remained.

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We should know what happened when Boeing went from an engineers- to an accountants firm. Probe it. McDonnell Douglas.

• NASA May Shrink Boeing’s Moon-Mission Role, Push SpaceX (ZH)

President Donald Trump’s NASA chief could soon announce Boeing’s diminishing role in returning astronauts to the Moon, while leaning heavily on Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company to do the heavy lifting. Boeing’s Space Launch System (SLS), originally the rocket backbone of the Artemis mission, would no longer carry the Lockheed Martin-built Orion crew capsule to the Moon. Under the new plan, SpaceX’s Starship would take the lead.


NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman plans to meet with the companies working on the Artemis program next Tuesday, including Boeing, SpaceX, and Blue Origin, to discuss progress and current paths forward. Sources close to the program said any significant changes could face immediate Congressional scrutiny.”NASA is committed to using the SLS architecture through at least Artemis V, which is necessary to support both human landing system providers, and their associated acceleration plans to return American astronauts to the Moon,” Isaacman said in a statement. “We’re incredibly supportive of both our HLS providers and their plans to accelerate America’s path forward to the moon,” Isaacman added.

If Isaacman does boot SLS from the core rocket during the launch of the Orion crew capsule to the moon, it would be a massive blow to Boeing, which has been mired in setbacks ranging from Starliner capsule issues to SLS launch delays. Notably, Starship still lacks a fully successful orbital flight. The effort to swap SLS for Starship shows Isaacman’s urgent push to accelerate Artemis timelines (target: 2028 landing) after years of delays and cost overruns, with SLS missions costing over $4 billion each.Isaacman has also been weighing alternatives for the HLS on the Moon from both SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin – both of which hold multibillion-dollar contracts to develop Moon landers for Artemis.

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Everyone behind the Steele dossier is walking free.

• When ‘I Don’t Recall’ Meets a DOJ Subpoena (David Manney)

James Comey is back in the spotlight with a familiar flavor. The Department of Justice has issued a subpoena tied to his role in the 2017 intelligence assessment on Russia and the 2016 election. Years passed, but the questions never went away. Now, however, they’ve returned with legal force behind them. The subpoena marks a new escalation after Fox News Digital previously reported that Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan were under criminal investigation related to the probe.Sources at the time said the investigations were examining potential wrongdoing tied to the creation of the 2017 assessment and possible false statements to Congress. Comey, as PJ Media readers know, served as FBI director at the time and played a central role in one of the most consequential investigations in recent political history.


It was an investigation that influenced public opinion, policy debates, and years of political conflict that followed. That assessment referenced the Steele dossier, which a CIA “Tradecraft Review” completed in June under CIA Director John Ratcliffe said “ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment,” according to Axios, which cited the review.Ratcliffe has since referred Comey and Brennan for possible prosecution, Axios reported. Senior officials from multiple agencies contributed to the document, including John Brennan and James Clapper. The document’s conclusion shaped the early narrative around the election and set the tone for investigations that stretched across years.

The current inquiry focuses on process and accountability. Lawmakers and investigators want clarity on how evidence was gathered, how conclusions were reached, and whether political pressure played any role. Those questions may sound procedural, but they carry serious weight; decisions made during that period affected the credibility of major institutions and the direction of national policy. Comey’s past testimony offers a preview of what may come next. During earlier hearings, he often leaned on phrases that signaled caution or distance. “I don’t recall” appeared many times, and the Fifth Amendment remains a legal option available to any witness under oath. A subpoena raises the stakes because it requires answers, even if those answers arrive carefully measured.

President Donald Trump has long argued that the original investigation carried political bias, a view that continues to shape how supporters interpret the renewed scrutiny. Meanwhile, those on the left maintain that the original findings reflected legitimate concerns about foreign interference. There’s enough daylight between those competing views to power a solar panel for minutes.The legal process will move forward step by step. Testimony, documents, and sworn statements will form the backbone of whatever comes next. Investigators will press for clarity, witnesses will weigh their words carefully, and the outcome will depend less on headlines and more on what can be established under oath.

For Comey, the moment carries both legal and personal weight. His time as FBI director placed him in the center of events that reshaped American politics. The subpoena pulls him back into that same arena, where every answer matters and every pause gets noticed. The country has seen versions of this scene before: a high-profile witness, a charged political backdrop, and a series of questions that reach back years.What happens next depends on how much clarity emerges and how much remains unreachable. In other words, wash, rinse, repeat. If we decide on a drinking game, basing a shot of Buffalo Trace on each time we hear “I don’t recall,” we’ll remember the first 15 minutes of his testimony. Regardless, second verse, same as the first verse.

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Quantum entanglement: It’s already there https://twitter.com/IslanderWORLD/status/2034396591088627889 A car in less than 5 seconds

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 19 2026

Mar 192026
 
 March 19, 2026  Posted by at 10:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  76 Responses »


William Adolphe Bouguereau Girl with a pomegranate 1875


• Unidentified Drones Fly Over Army Base Where Rubio and Hegseth Live (Anderson)
• Israel Is Now the Regional Hegemon Iran Wanted to Be (Stephen Green)
• Trump Wonders If Crushing Iran Would Wake Up US ‘Allies’ (Catherine Salgado)
• Japan Signs Major $56 Billion Energy Deal with US (CTH)
• Appeals Court Refuses Trump’s Request To Reconsider CNN Defamation Suit (ZH)
• ‘Europeans Committing Demographic Suicide’ (ZH)
• Restore Britain Vows To EXECUTE Pedophiles, DEPORT Millions of Migrants (MN)
• Berlin Accused Of Prioritizing Migrants Over Merit (Brooke)
• Our New Ungracious Immigrants (Victor Davis Hanson)
• 200,000 Immigrant Truck Drivers Begin Losing Licenses (ZH)
• Migrant-Linked Violence Spirals in Rome’s San Lorenzo (Brooke)
• Greg Gutfeld Shreds Jessica Tarlov’s On-Air Meltdown Over SAVE Act (Margolis)
• Musk’s xAI Turns To Wall Street Bankers To Improve Grok’s Financials (ZH)
• The Inevitability of Self-Driving Cars (QTR)

 


 

 


 

The Western world in general, and certainly Europe, is under threat because the people there fail to acknowledge that islam wants to conquer the world. And once you get to the second generation, when the kids are born on your territory, you’rte already too late. But the people who belong to the Christian part of civilization forget they are part of Christianity, often because they are not practicing Christians. Well, you can either wake up now, or you will be woken later in a muslim world. We need 85-year old John Cleese of all people, to teach us this in a whole series of tweets. He does understand.

 


 

https://twitter.com/Shibumi93730007/status/2033775337629487223?s=20 https://twitter.com/_Patriot1776Q_/status/2033773278465298951?s=20 https://twitter.com/Sassafrass_84/status/2034359917801329050?s=20

 


 

 


 


Odd.

• Unidentified Drones Fly Over Army Base Where Rubio and Hegseth Live (Anderson)

On Wednesday night, the Washington Post reported that “U.S. officials detected unidentified drones above the Washington Army base where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live” and that those officials have not yet determined where they came from. WaPo cites three “sources familiar with the situation,” so keep that in mind.


One of the sources, who the newspaper says is a “senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity” said that the military is currently monitoring threats more closely due to the “heightened alert level as the United States and Israel strike Iran.” In this case, “multiple drones were spotted over Fort Lesley J. McNair on a single night in the last 10 days.” This led to increased security and a White House meeting to determine how to respond.

Here’s more: The drone sightings in Washington come as the U.S. issued a global security alert for overseas diplomatic posts and locked down several domestic bases because of threats. This week, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey and MacDill Air Force Base in Florida raised their force protection level to Charlie — a designation that means the commander has intelligence indicating an attack or danger is possible. The only higher alert level, Delta, is for when an attack has occurred or is anticipated.

Officials are now debating whether to relocate Secretaries Hegseth and Rubio, who are still living at Fort McNair. Back in the fall, several news outlet reported that both men had moved to military bases, along with Donald Trump’s Homeland Security advisor, Stephen Miller. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also had to move to a military base. According to the Atlantic, other members of the administrative have as well. This is a developing story. I’m writing just after midnight (EDT) on Wednesday night, so hopefully, we’ll know more on Thursday.

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TEXT

• Israel Is Now the Regional Hegemon Iran Wanted to Be (Stephen Green)

It began, as so many unpredictable events did, on Oct 7, 2023, with the terror invasion of southern Israel. An army regiment’s worth of Hamas swept through Israel’s largely unmanned Gaza defenses, on foot, in trucks, and even paragliders. They murdered in kibbutzes, at a music festival, and in the streets. The mass murder was as well organized as anything the Nazis achieved before establishing death camps at places like Auschwitz.


Hamas prepared for months, relying on in-person meetings between trusted members to evade Israeli electronic and human intelligence. It achieved complete surprise. Before IDF troops could mobilize and force Hezbollah back into the Gaza Strip — where the real fighting would soon begin — something like 1,200 Israelis were dead, mostly civilians. The dead included babies, children, and women sexually assaulted to death. Another 250 or so taken hostage, the remains of the last of them not returned until early 2026.

There was chatter in the early hours of that desperate Saturday morning of Hamas continuing the rampage northward to the West Bank, where they would join forces with the P.A., effectively cutting Israel in half. Hamas forces in Lebanon would sweep down from the north under an unending rocket barrage. Had Hamas and Hezbollah gotten their way, the Oct. 7 invasion still couldn’t have fulfilled the long-held dream of ending Israel and claiming “Palestine” from “the river to the sea.” But it would have exposed Israel as weak and vulnerable, inviting further attack, weakening her will, and driving her people to emigrate back out of the Middle East.

Behind it all, providing the money, the weapons, and the vision: the Islamic Republic’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Middle East’s new hegemon. And, with a near-witless Barack Obama crony ensconced in the White House, soon in possession of a formidable array of ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads. Or at least that was the plan. And Another Thing: What the Gulf oil states might have done in that scenario is a matter of speculation outside the scope of today’s column. But they’d certainly have had zero reason for continued peacemaking efforts with a weakened Israel.

Before the invasion, Israel wasn’t just seen as boxed in; she was boxed in. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s every decision is tempered by the threat of Hezbollah and Hamas missiles to his north and south. And perhaps even increased terror activity from the West Bank — a dagger aimed at Israel’s heart. Today, Ali Khamenei is dead. His dynastic replacement, Gayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, is dead or might as well be. So many other Iranian political leaders, military commanders, intelligence figures — I could go on — are dead that it’s almost impossible to keep track even with a scorecard.

Iran is boxed in by Israeli/CENTCOM air and naval forces, and a surprisingly resilient (albeit not very helpful) coalition of Arab Gulf states.If the Middle East has a regional hegemon — aside from the out-of-region global hegemon, that is — it’s the Jewish State. Israeli warplanes fly where they will. Israeli intelligence officers go where they will and turn whom they will. The Gulf states largely acquiesce, Hamas and Hezbollah are largely spent forces, and their sponsor state is on the ropes. All because one man — now dead — thought he could change the Middle East on Oct. 7, 2023.

Well, I guess he did.

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“WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”

• Trump Wonders If Crushing Iran Would Wake Up US ‘Allies’ (Catherine Salgado)

President Donald Trump speculated on Wednesday morning whether completely destroying the Islamic regime of Iran would finally inspire our weak and feckless “allies” to protect the waters that are so vital for their own economies.Trump was asking other countries to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open, including multiple European countries and Communist China (which is 100% on Iran’s side and therefore happy to disappoint us). Even our supposed allies are largely digging in their heels and refusing to help, though. Therefore, Trump challenged on March 18, “I wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called ‘Strait?’ That would get some of our non-responsive ‘Allies’ in gear, and fast!!!”


Regime change in Iran is necessary to keep the fanatical Muslim jihadis who currently run it from rebuilding and continuing to attack Americans in the future. But instead of assessing the merits of the case, including the great benefit to themselves if the Iranian regime were to fall, multiple European nations are instead whining about “war” as if they hadn’t aggressively supported war in Ukraine for years.

Trump is also understandably tired of hearing complaints about his taking out a regime that has spread global death, chaos, and destruction for half a century now. “Remember, for all of those absolute ‘fools’ out there, Iran is considered, by everyone, to be the NUMBER ONE STATE SPONSOR OF TERROR. We are rapidly putting them out of business!” Trump posted on Truth Social at around the same time as his message about the Strait of Hormuz. Oddly enough, the strait is actually more important for European energy than American energy.

Trump also expressed his frustration on March 17 with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which is always demanding American money while bashing America. “The United States has been informed by most of our NATO ‘Allies’ that they don’t want to get involved with our Military Operation against the Terrorist Regime of Iran, in the Middle East, this, despite the fact that almost every Country strongly agreed with what we are doing, and that Iran cannot, in any way, shape, or form, be allowed to have a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump wrote. He added:

“I am not surprised by their action, however, because I always considered NATO, where we spend Hundreds of Billions of Dollars per year protecting these same Countries, to be a one way street — We will protect them, but they will do nothing for us, in particular, in a time of need. Fortunately, we have decimated Iran’s Military — Their Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, their Anti-Aircraft and Radar is gone and perhaps, most importantly, their Leaders, at virtually every level, are gone, never to threaten us, our Middle Eastern Allies, or the World, again! Because of the fact that we have had such Military Success, we no longer “need,” or desire, the NATO Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID! Likewise, Japan, Australia, or South Korea. In fact, speaking as President of the United States of America, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World, WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”

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Token. Allegiance.

• Japan Signs Major $56 Billion Energy Deal with US (CTH)

CTH has said to watch the U.S.-Japan trade relationship closely because the outlines of multiple geopolitical shifts can be referenced from a new strategic relationship surrounding multiple sectors, including energy.The U.S, relationship with Japan is both leverage and a hedge against old alliances that may seek to disrupt the global reset currently underway through President Trump policy. The issues with the European Union, U.K, USMCA and other tenuous allies, look entirely different when President Trump has alternative partnerships for massive energy exports.


ENERGY NEWS – In a major move to secure stable energy supplies amid escalating geopolitical tensions, Japan has inked deals worth up to $56 billion with the United States for oil, natural gas, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) purchases and investments. This agreement, finalized at the Asia-Pacific Energy Security Forum in Tokyo on March 14, 2026, underscores Japan’s push to diversify its energy imports and deepen economic ties with the US under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s administration.mThe deals come as part of a broader framework stemming from the 2025 US-Japan trade agreement, where Japan pledged $550 billion in US investments over several years, with energy as a key pillar. ]

The $56 billion package represents a significant escalation in Japan’s commitment to American energy, building on an initial $36 billion tranche announced earlier in 2026.nThis latest round emphasizes immediate purchases and long-term infrastructure projects, responding to global market volatility driven by conflicts in the Middle East and disruptions in key shipping routes like the Strait of Hormuz. […] The agreements encompass a mix of direct energy purchases, joint ventures, and infrastructure investments. As a nation that needs energy partnerships, Japan seeks stability and predictability. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has gone all-in on a strategic energy partnership with the United States.

As the tectonic plates are shaken:
• If Canada wants to try and leverage the energy trade infrastructure against a USMCA reset, President Trump has Venezuela production as an offset. Japanese automakers have already told Canadian trade ministers that if Canada loses the USMCA, there s no value in maintaining auto manufacturing north of the border because the target customers are all in the USA. Japan would move all production out of Canada. I doubt China could replace at scale.

• If Europe, who is now dependent on LNG from Norway and the USA, wants to create geopolitical friction, President Trump now has Japan as a replacement customer. More behavioral leverage. U.S. firms are making a lot of money selling LNG to Europe, but Trump has just created a customer base that is more reliable and politically consistent.

• Then, as the short-term lifting of LNG and oil sanctions on Russia is proving (petrodollars used), think about the potential for India and Southeast Asia to be supported by Russian exports. Who holds that distribution key, again Trump.] It is not accidental that India is sending support vessels to the Strait of Hormuz as requested by President Trump. Here s the kicker& With oil and gas from Russia, India doesn t need the Iranian oil and gas; yet, they are sending support. Why? Because Prime Minister Modi wants Trump to keep their Russian purchase exemptions in place.

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It’s Trump. The judge says you can say about him what you want. Been going on for 15 years+.

• Appeals Court Refuses Trump’s Request To Reconsider CNN Defamation Suit (ZH)

President Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against CNN appears to be dead for the time being, as an appeals court denied his motion to rehear the case. A three-judge panel had held in November that Trump hadn’t done enough to show that CNN compared him to Adolph Hitler when it described his claims about the 2020 election as “the Big Lie.” In a brief unsigned order on March 17, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said that none of its judges asked for a vote to reconsider the case. Trump told the circuit that the three-judge panel erred. He wanted the full panel to consider whether his case should be decided by a jury instead of the court, and to reconsider whether the statements made by the network’s journalists allowed him to sue.


The order also ruled out the possibility of a rehearing by the original three-judge panel. As Stacy Robinson reports for The Epoch Times, Trump sued CNN in 2022 after the network’s journalists repeatedly referred to his disputation of the 2020 election results as a “Big Lie. That terminology has historically been used in reference to Hitler’s Nazi regime, his propagandist Joseph Goebbels, and the push for a genocide of the Jewish people. “CNN has acknowledged that the term the ‘Big Lie’ is a direct reference to Adolf Hitler and Nazism and uses the term in relation to the Plaintiff to create a false and incendiary association between the Plaintiff and Hitler,” Trump’s complaint alleged.

A district court found that CNN’s language was just “hyperbole,” and not meant literally. They dismissed the case. In a unanimous decision, the 11th Circuit affirmed that dismissal. “To be clear, CNN has never explicitly claimed that Trump’s ‘actions and statements were designed to be, and actually were, variations of those [that] Hitler used to suppress and destroy populations,’” its decision read. Trump wanted the full panel to determine if his case warranted a jury trial, and reconsider whether the CNN journalists’ language allowed him to sue CNN asked the court to toss out the case, saying the term “Big Lie” is “rhetorical hyperbole and does not refer to Hitler or Nazism.” Trump could not prove the network acted with “actual malice,” by publishing statements it knew were false, CNN argued.

“Actual malice is an extremely high evidentiary burden for any plaintiff to meet, much less the former President of the United States of America, and he has utterly failed to meet that burden here,” CNN’s response brief reads. In July 2023, Florida District Judge Raag Singhal dismissed Trump’s suit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought again. He ruled that there was “no question” that such statements met the standard for defamation under the law. But, he said, they were statements of opinion, and not fact—even though he found them to be “odious and repugnant.”

“CNN’s use of the phrase ’the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people,” Singhal wrote. “No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference.” Trump appealed that ruling, arguing the judge had failed “to consider the totality and context of the defamatory statements,” by “finding that CNN’s statements were pure opinion or rhetorical hyperbole.”

The CNN case is one of several defamation suits Trump has brought against news outlets. Last year, the president sued the Wall Street Journal for publishing a birthday card he allegedly sent to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. That case is ongoing. In 2024, Trump obtained a $15 million settlement against ABC and its anchor George Stephanopoulos, who claimed on air that Trump was “found liable for rape.”

Last September, a judge threw out a $15 billion suit against the New York Times and some of its reporters on the grounds that Trump’s legal brief broke court rules: It was unnecessarily lengthy and contained improper language, the judge ruled. Trump refiled that suit in October. The president has also teed up a suit against the BBC, after reports it had altered a video of him speaking to supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to make it appear as if he was promoting violence. The BBC on March 16 asked the court to dismiss the suit.

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In one generation.

• ‘Europeans Committing Demographic Suicide’ (ZH)

Europeans are committing demographic suicide and the tools used to managed migration are failing at every level, said Rodrigo Ballester, the head of the Center for European Studies at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium. He made his remark at a recent Ordo Iuris Institute event in Warsaw, Poland, which saw European politicians, policymakers, and other important players gather to discuss a groundbreaking paper: “Taking Back Control from Brussels. The Renationalization of the EU Migration and Asylum Policies.”n“As Europeans, we are committing demographic suicide. We are a continent of old rich people, facing a continent of young, hungry, and determined people — ambitious people.


We’re still trying to manage migration with hopelessly outdated tools, using conventions from a century ago. They have completely lost their meaning today. In practice, I’m talking about the Geneva Convention. This is the ‘sacred cow’ we should get rid of,” Ballester emphasized. The “Taking Back Control” paper, which was recently covered by Remix News, outlines 18 ways Europe can regain control of immigration policy. Ballester emphasized that these policies need to be implemented and quickly. Many of the speakers discussed various aspects of Europe’s ongoing immigration crisis, including the sharply differing trajectories of pro-immigration countries such as Poland versus Germany.

Polish Prof. Zdzisslaw Krasnodebski, a former MEP, spoke to the large audience who had gathered, where he compared the impact of immigration on the Polish city of Warsaw to the German city of Bremen where he lived and worked for a long time. “How did it happen that such a process, which is suicidal, was supported by societies for years? I can tell you that I know two such cities well. One was poor and large, and people were moving away from it. It was Warsaw. Warsaw was also White, if I may use that term. The other city (Bremen) was well-off, middle-class, also White. In 2025, one is almost a ruin. It used to be a prosperous, medium-sized town. Meanwhile, this big, great city we’re in right now has become one of the wealthiest cities in Europe,” he pointed out.

Krasnodebski underlined the trajectory of Warsaw, which is economically booming while still maintaining a strong White majority and rejecting the diversity seen in many other Western cities. Meanwhile, Bremen has been labeled the “most dangerous city in Germany,” where an incredible 73 percent of crime suspects are non-German. The situation has deteriorated so greatly in Bremen that even left-wing politicians in the city have admitted that “massive immigration” has sparked a housing and crime crisis. However, other speakers warned that not all is well in Poland, either.

Jacek Saryusz-Wolski—a former Polish Minister for European Affairs and Member of the European Parliament, currently President Nawrocki’s main advisor for European affairs — took the floor. “Looking at the statistics, you can see that in most of Western Europe, immigrant communities make up a percentage in the teens, or even over 20 percent, of the population. It’s not like that here (in Poland) yet, but we too face the risk of an open-borders policy starting here. We will then, after a certain delay, share the same fate,” noted Saryusz-Wolski.] Saryusz-Wolski further warned that the EU is taking more and more power away from nation-states in order to dictate an open borders policy.

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The potential to get out of hand. But not their fault.

• Restore Britain Vows To EXECUTE Pedophiles, DEPORT Millions of Migrants (MN)

A new force in British politics is making waves with an uncompromising vision for national restoration. Just weeks after its launch as a full political party in February, Restore Britain has already overtaken the Conservative Party in membership numbers, reaching over 114,000 supporters and becoming the fourth largest party in the country. The growth has been entirely organic through social media and grassroots efforts, with almost no mainstream coverage. Campaigns director and spokesman Charlie Downes laid out the bold agenda clearly: “We will not lie to the British people. Restoring Britain will require decisions that are controversial and unpleasant.”


He continued: “We are going to strip millions of healthy Brits who refuse to work of benefits. If that causes outrage from those who think the taxpayer owes them a living, so be it.” “We are going to deport all illegal and burdensome migrants. If that means millions go, so be it,” Downes added. He further urged, “We are going to outlaw incompatible cultural and religious practices. If that means those who refuse to integrate no longer feel welcome, so be it.” “We are going to execute pedophiles, rapists, and murderers if that is what the British people want,” Downes stressed, adding that “If that means we are condemned by subversive ‘human rights’ groups, so be it.”

He concluded by noting “We take no pleasure in these measures. It is a damning indictment of our political class that they are necessary in the first place. But necessary they are.” In a video clip from the party’s launch event, Downes made the philosophy explicit: “We do not believe in conserving the system. We do not believe in reforming the system. We believe in revolution.” This stance marks a clear break from the traditional parties that have presided over mass immigration, welfare dependency and soft approaches to serious crime.It has also immediately become popular with British voters who have become frustrated with Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, over a perceived lack of transparency when it comes to their commitment to mass deportation, in addition to the questionable raft of defections of politicians from the traditional parties, the very people who oversaw the implementation of mass migration into Britain, to Reform.

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Forget about Germany. Stick a fork in it and turn it over.

• Berlin Accused Of Prioritizing Migrants Over Merit (Brooke)

A diversity hiring policy affecting the recruitment of judges and public prosecutors in Berlin has come under renewed scrutiny after the city’s justice senator warned that the system may conflict with Germany’s constitutional requirement that public offices be filled strictly on merit. The policy, introduced in 2021 under then justice senator Dirk Behrendt of the Green Party, stems from amendments to the Law to Promote Participation in a Migration Society, known as the PartMigG. The legislation was adopted by Berlin’s House of Representatives with support from the then-governing coalition of the Social Democrats, Greens, and the Left.


Under the law, recruitment procedures must ensure that applicants with a migration background are invited to interviews in numbers reflecting their share of the population. In Berlin, around 40 percent of residents fall into that category, defined by the Federal Statistical Office as individuals who themselves, or at least one parent, were not born with German citizenship. In practice, the rule means that some interviewees experience positive discrimination and their migration background is a criterion for their selection, regardless of whether other applicants may have stronger academic credentials.

According to Bild, the system has been implemented in recent years by Berlin’s chief public prosecutor, Margarete Koppers, also associated with the Greens. The newspaper noted that internal warnings were first raised when the measure was initially drafted. Officials cautioned that introducing a quota linked to migration background during the selection process could violate Article 33(2) of Germany’s Basic Law, which states that access to public office must be determined by “suitability, competence, and performance.”

Berlin’s current justice senator, Felor Badenberg of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has now drawn attention to the issue and questioned whether the rule is compatible with constitutional principles. Badenberg said she supports efforts to improve integration and participation in public institutions, noting that she herself has a migration background, with parents who came from Iran. However, she emphasized that the constitution must remain the guiding standard.

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Immigrants used to be more grateful?!

• Our New Ungracious Immigrants (Victor Davis Hanson)

The contrast between the grateful immigrants who once embraced America and the resentful newcomers who scorn it reveals how radically—and dangerously—the nation’s immigration ethos has changed. Silicon Valley was energized by legal immigrants from all over the world who founded eBay, Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, Stripe, Sun Microsystems, Tesla, Yahoo, and a host of others. The Greek American Elia Kazan’s 1963 film America, America is a fictional account based on the Herculean struggle of the director’s uncle to immigrate to the United States from an impoverished and hostile Turkish Anatolia.The film summed up Americans’ traditional view of immigrants: They had risked everything for the chance to reach America, and once there, became hyperpatriotic in their gratitude for the magnanimity of their new hosts.


An excellent example is the recently released memoir from Encounter Books, American Trojan, by former University of Southern California president and Cypriot immigrant Dr. Max Nikias. It resonates with thankfulness to America for offering him opportunities undreamed of elsewhere.He and his wife arrived in the U.S. from war-torn Cyprus nearly penniless but determined to work hard, master English, and enrich the country that welcomed them with their talents and education. What followed was an amazing American trajectory that saw Nikias become president of the University of Southern California—arguably the most successful one in recent memory.

I grew up in rural California surrounded by hard-working immigrant farm families from Armenia, India, Japan, and Mexico. Their work ethic, love of America, and productive farms were models for U.S. non-immigrants. Such immigrants explained why the San Joaquin Valley was the most productive and richest agricultural region in the nation. My own Swedish grandfather, disabled by poison gas while fighting on the Western Front in World War I, loved all things Swedish, but not nearly as much as his beloved America.Four Hansons fought on the front lines of World Wars I and II. One was disabled, and another was killed on Okinawa. And all felt blessed that their parents and grandparents had gotten to America.

But recently, something has gone terribly wrong with immigration—an open border, of course, but also a change in legal immigration as well as student visitors. During World War II, Japanese Americans fought heroically in horrific conditions in Italy in the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 100th Infantry Battalion—even as their families were interned in the Western United States. Few native-born Americans were more loyal or patriotic than the Japanese Americans. And now? While America is at war with Iran and de facto with its terrorist proxies, crowds of immigrants, visitors, and foreign students in New York scream anti-American slogans as they cheer on our enemies in theocratic Iran and its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Are we surprised, then, when Islamic terrorists begin hunting down Americans on our own soil?] On campuses today, thousands of Middle Eastern international students, mostly arriving from autocratic, tribal, and failed nations, have staged often violent demonstrations in the years following the October 7, 2023, massacre. They are not shy about cheering on the Hamas slaughter of Israeli civilians. These pro-Hamas students have not just damned Israel but also often harassed Jewish Americans. They revile their host America and expect Americans to smile and shrug. It is hard to determine whether such zealots hate the U.S. more than they love living in America and preserving their student visas and work permits.

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Popular occupation.

• 200,000 Immigrant Truck Drivers Begin Losing Licenses (ZH)

About 200,000 immigrant truck drivers in the United States could lose their commercial driver’s licenses once they expire under a new rule backed by the administration of Donald Trump, according to VNY. Which leads us…and everybody else to ask: we had 200,000 immigrant truck drivers in the United States? But we digress. The policy bars asylum seekers, refugees, and participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses. It is part of a wider crackdown on foreign truck drivers following several high-profile crashes last summer.


Experts warn the change could further strain the trucking industry, which already faces labor shortages while handling the majority of freight in the United States. Trucks transport more than 70% of the country’s cargo, but the sector struggles with long hours, relatively low pay, dangerous road conditions, and extended time away from home. As many American workers leave the field, immigrants have increasingly filled those roles. In recent months, enforcement actions have intensified. The United States Department of Transportation has tightened English-language proficiency rules, leading to thousands of license revocations among immigrant drivers.

VNY writes that under the rule announced on February 11, people with various temporary residency permits will no longer qualify for commercial licenses, even if they are legally authorized to work in the U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said the change aims to prevent “dangerous foreign drivers” from exploiting the licensing system and contributing to road safety risks. Officials have also pointed to several fatal accidents involving immigrant drivers and argued that verifying their work histories can be difficult. Critics, however, say the policy unfairly targets immigrants and relies on unproven claims that foreign drivers are responsible for more accidents than American ones.

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US and EU have different approaches to immigration.

• Migrant-Linked Violence Spirals in Rome’s San Lorenzo (Brooke)

Residents in Rome’s San Lorenzo district are sounding the alarm over a surge in violence they say is increasingly driven by homeless migrants, after another brutal street attack left a man hospitalized and renewed calls for urgent security measures. The latest incident unfolded in Piazza di Porta San Lorenzo, where a 30-year-old Gambian man allegedly slashed a Moroccan man with a broken bottle in the middle of the street, striking his neck and face and leaving him collapsed on the ground.The victim was rushed to Umberto I Hospital, where he remains in serious condition, while police used footage captured at the scene to quickly identify and arrest the suspect after he fled.


For many locals, however, the attack is just the latest in a growing pattern. Residents say the area has become dominated by groups of vagrants, often intoxicated or under the influence of drugs, who regularly fight among themselves but also target passersby at random. “The problem is that they don’t just fight among themselves, they also attack us residents. Men, women, and even children,” Sofia, a waitress who lives near Piazza dei Caduti, told Il Messaggero.According to the Italian newspaper, a neighborhood assembly has now been called in response, with residents describing a situation that has become “unsustainable.”

Katia Pace, head of the local committee organizing the meeting, said violence has escalated sharply in recent weeks. “Cases have increased visibly in the last two months. Just a few days ago, two women were beaten and robbed,” she said. Despite stepped-up patrols and recent police operations that led to multiple arrests in nearby districts, residents say the response falls short of what is needed to restore order.“It’s not enough,” said Maria, another concerned resident. “We can’t live like this anymore.” Scenes of disorder that are fuelling insecurity have become commonplace, locals say. In public parks, families with young children are forced to navigate areas where men sleep on benches, drink heavily, argue, and urinate openly, heightening fears about safety and hygiene.

Concerns have also been raised over attacks involving minors. In one case, a 12-year-old girl was targeted, while a separate incident saw a Tunisian man arrested after assaulting a woman and fracturing her nose and cheekbone. The attack, captured on surveillance footage, triggered a wave of additional complaints from women reporting similar unprovoked violence.“There have been at least 15 cases,” said Pace, adding that those responsible are typically “homeless foreigners” living in the area, many of whom are said to suffer from addiction or mental health issues.Encampments have spread across multiple parts of the district, including along the Aurelian Walls and several central squares, with tents and makeshift shelters now a regular sight. “The patience of those who live here is not infinite,” another resident told Il Messaggero, warning that vigilante-style reactions could emerge if the situation continues to deteriorate.

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They bent over backwards to accomodate the protests.

• Greg Gutfeld Shreds Jessica Tarlov’s On-Air Meltdown Over SAVE Act (Margolis)

The SAVE America Act cleared a big hurdle in the Senate on Tuesday, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean it will end up passing, Republicans are putting the pressure on the Democrats. And the liberals in the media may legit be panicking. Jessica Tarlov lost it on Fox News’ The Five over the SAVE America Act, as her co-hosts shredded her hysterical take. The entire display proved once again that liberals like her just can’t stand a bill that actually protects elections. Remember, all the proposed law would do is require proof of citizenship for federal voter registration and a photo ID to vote — two simple, extremely popular ideas.


Tarlov, ready with her DNC talking points, ranted that the bill disenfranchises everybody under the sun. She claimed young folks, seniors, married women, and adoptees lack the right papers. “Based on what the SAVE Act actually says and what it would require, it would disenfranchise young people, old people, married people, adopted people, which makes no sense at all,” she said. She even floated the idea of the government handing out $165 passports to everyone.

Greg Gutfeld jumped in with zero mercy. “Do you know somebody who doesn’t have an ID? Tell me about it.” She responded by saying she was talking about passports, not ID, but Gutfeld pointed out that liberals for years have been pretending minorities can’t get IDs, which obviously isn’t true, so they’re just pivoting to passports. It was brutal watching Gutfeld and even Dana Perino calling her out and mocking her, and I swear she looked near tears at one point.


https://twitter.com/KarluskaP/status/2034019654373384500?s=20


And the thing is, everything Tarlov claimed was wrong. She had the audacity to invoke what the bill “actually says,” yet clearly she’s never read it, because Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the bill’s sponsor, has already debunked this nonsense and pointed out what is actually in the bill.

“When all else fails, if you don’t have documentation establishing the information on your birth certificate or what would be in a passport or otherwise, the bill contains a provision requiring each state to allow an alternative mechanism by which someone can, by attestation, issue a sworn statement establishing the critical facts underlying their citizenship.” No cost to voters. No legitimate voter left behind. “We took great pains to go out of our way to make sure that no American — no American — would be left in the dark. This will not cost them a dime. And no one will be excluded if they can’t find their documentation.”

Tarlov has never cracked open the bill and read it. She peddles the same tired lefty lines about Americans, particularly minorities, being helpless idiots who are too stupid to be able to get an ID.

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“Musk has acknowledged publicly that xAI still lags competitors in coding tools ..” Wait. What? The system IS the coding tool, no?

• Musk’s xAI Turns To Wall Street Bankers To Improve Grok’s Financials (ZH)

Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI is expanding efforts to make its chatbot Grok more capable in financial analysis by hiring experienced finance professionals to help train the system, according to Bloomberg. Job listings show the company is recruiting investment bankers, traders, portfolio managers, and credit analysts to join its data-training teams. These specialists would help teach Grok how to reason through complex financial work, including leveraged loan syndication, distressed investing, mortgage-backed securities, and collateralized loan obligations. The company is also seeking experts with experience in equity and cryptocurrency markets.


The move reflects a broader push by major AI developers to sell products to financial professionals. Competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic have already introduced tools designed to speed up tasks like market analysis, research, and investment memo writing. These advances have raised concerns that some traditional financial software providers could lose relevance. Compared with those rivals, xAI is generally seen as behind in attracting corporate customers. Much of its revenue so far has come from agreements with Musk-related businesses, including Tesla, Inc. and SpaceX, which merged with xAI last month.

Bloomberg writes that the company is also adjusting its strategy after a turbulent start to the year that included significant staff departures, including members of its founding team, as well as criticism over Grok generating explicit non-consensual images.Recently, Musk recruited two senior employees from Cursor, an AI coding startup currently seeking funding at a reported valuation of around $50 billion. Musk has acknowledged publicly that xAI still lags competitors in coding tools, a category that has become an important revenue driver for other AI companies.

xAI relies on workers known internally as AI tutors to train Grok by supplying data and adjusting responses. At a recent staff meeting, tutor team lead Diego Pasini said the company’s biggest constraint remains the supply of training data. Much of Grok’s dataset currently comes from X. Many of the new tutor roles are focused on credit markets, which are under increasing pressure as private credit funds face withdrawals and other industry challenges. Great timing.

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You driving is too risky. In the future, cars won’t hit anything. You will. Can’t win that one.

• The Inevitability of Self-Driving Cars (QTR)

When you think of self-driving cars, you may imagine scenes from a sci-fi movie, with sleek silver cars sliding perfectly into and out of the flow of traffic. Pedestrians simply express their desire for a car, and in moments one appears. Just as easily, you might also think of media reports you’ve seen about crashes and other malfunctions of these vehicles in the recent past. You may even think of both and think that the sci-fi depiction is far-fetched and unlikely. The reality is actually simpler: self-driving cars are inevitable.


In the US, we love our cars. Nearly 92% of households have access to a motor vehicle. We have car shows, car racing, car dealerships everywhere, and even TV shows about cars. It’s an accepted part of our society. In a geographically expansive country like ours, cars are essential for many. Along with car culture, we also have a cultural acceptance of the dangers and even fatalities that come from car accidents. The US (human) accident rate is approximately 2,000 per million miles driven. Around 40,000 people are killed each year in auto accidents. Right now, hardly anyone talks about these deaths. There are few news articles, and it is generally accepted as the price of driving.

What if we could reduce the number of injuries and fatalities to 50% of what they are now? Or even further, what about 80%? Would it be worth it to switch to self-driving cars then? Interestingly enough, preliminary numbers from Waymo indicate that they already are 80% safer. The media rushes to report any accidents caused by these cars, which may give the impression that they are much more dangerous. The truth is, they actually promise a safer world for all. Imagine a world with safe, self-driving cars. Mothers would feel more comfortable about their children. Parents’ dreadful fears about having a 16-year-old out on the streets would be almost completely relieved. People wouldn’t worry about the vision and dexterity loss of the elderly when they get into a vehicle. Drunk driving would be a thing of the past. Road rage would almost be..

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https://twitter.com/robertdunlap947/status/2034235444154527962?s=20 Soon-Shiong is one of many who we met thru Covid. Thanks for that. https://twitter.com/FabulousWeird/status/2034005961971560757?s=20

 

 

 

 

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