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Debt Rattle July 16 2026

Jul 162026
 
 July 16, 2026  Posted by at 9:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Edgar Degas Dancers in Blue 1895


• US & Iran Exchange Heavy Strikes For 5th Day (ZH)
• Trump Claims ‘Other People’ Could Lead Ground Campaign In Iran (RT)
• Trump Warns Iran That Next Targets Will Be Power Plants And Bridges (JTN)
• DOJ Records Reveal Jack Smith Got Private Texts From 44 Lawmakers (JTN)
• Europe’s Position On Ukraine Is A ‘Dead End’ – Kremlin (RT)
• Zelensky To Remove Ukraine’s Reforming Young Defense Minister (ZH)
• Von der Leyen Promises Kiev Safe And Secure Production Sites For Drones (TASS)
• Coalition of the Willing Troops In Ukraine, Western Sanctions (TASS)
• Here’s What’s Riding on Thursday’s Starship Flight Test (Stephen Green)
• Joe Biden Slurs His Way Through Video Announcing New Memoir (Margolis)
• Of Marxists and Morons …. (Eric Utter)
• Pinocchio and the Information Society (Mikhail Afanasyev)
• Gallup: Higher Education Hits Another Low in Public Trust (Turley)

 


 

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2077028902048772414?s=20 https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2076865214893765034?s=20

 


 


When this whole thing started, I wrote they would have to find the right words, to allow everyone to save face. They haven’t found those words -yet.

• US & Iran Exchange Heavy Strikes For 5th Day (ZH)

“At 6 a.m. ET today, U.S. Central Command forces began launching a wave of strikes against Iran,” Centcom announced. “The strikes are designed to further degrade military capabilities Iranian forces have used to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.”


The US military further indicated it launched a “seven-hour wave” of strikes overnight – and followed during the next day (Wednesday) by a 90-minute wave. Also the evening prior, the US reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports and alongside launching its fourth consecutive night of strikes on the country, also as President Trump freshly warned that if Iran does not return to the negotiating table, “next week it gets really bad for them, because next week comes the power plants.”

“You better make a deal, or you’re not going to have anything left,” Trump has warned. “Ultimately, we’ll hit energy targets in Iran. Next week comes the bridges. We’re going to knock out all of their power plants. We’ll knock out all of their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.” Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani announced that at least 30 civilians have been killed across the country over 260 people wounded by American strikes of the last few days.

Airstrikes also reportedly took out an Iranian military barracks in southeastern Iran, leaving seven dead. The Associated Press details that “One strike targeted a barracks for Iran’s 388th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, which operates tanks and armored vehicles, in Sistan and Baluchestan province, Iranian state television reported.” “The report said the Americans fired at least 13 missiles in the attack and that the seven dead included conscripts and career soldiers,” AP continues. “A number of troops were wounded.”

Heavy bombardments have focused on the coastal areas, with US strikes reportedly having hit a civilian maritime control tower in Chabahar, southern Iran – location of country’s only deep-water port outside the Strait of Hormuz, which allows Iran direct access to the Indian Ocean without passing through the Gulf.

As expected, Iran’s IRGC has continued launching a wave of retaliatory strikes targeting critical US military infrastructure across the Gulf and even reaching into Jordan. The list of targets hit, according to an array of regional sources, include – Bahrain’s Sheikh Isa Air Base, the US Navy’s 5th Fleet support facility, Kuwait’s Ali Al-Salem and Camp Buehring, and Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base. Also, Emirati sources have reported strikes on the critical Fujairah Port, while Kuwait confirms one of its navy vessels was struck, leaving four crew members injured.

Additionally, social media is awash with unverified footage showing Shahed kamikaze drones striking Kuwait, as well as massive plumes of black smoke rising from burning facilities in Kuwait. US 5th Fleet HQ locations in Bahrain also show signs of damage from inbound projectiles. The IRGC has insisted that the “export of oil and gas from the region will be either for everyone or for no one.” The Iranians have continued to tout their nationalist defiance and have at no point shown signs of backing down as is hoped by Trump:

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“The US president has vowed to escalate strikes against civilian infrastructure unless Tehran bows to his demands..”

• Trump Claims ‘Other People’ Could Lead Ground Campaign In Iran (RT)

US President Donald Trump has refused to rule out a ground campaign in Iran, claiming that unspecified allied forces could seize key strategic sites like Kharg Island without the involvement of American troops, while threatening to expand the bombing campaign to include power plants and bridges. In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Trump said he would consider a ground operation “if I thought it was appropriate.” “Sometimes you need a ground campaign, but we have other people who will do the ground campaign for us… But we have already hit Kharg Island twice, even three times. I said, ‘Hit everything but the oil!’” Trump said.


Located about 25km (15 miles) off Iran’s Gulf coast, Kharg Island handles roughly 90% of the country’s crude exports and serves as the primary outlet for its oil revenues. Ahead of the now-broken April ceasefire, Trump had already threatened to seize Kharg Island “to take the oil.” Asked directly whether he still intended to seize the island, Trump replied: “As far as taking it is concerned, if we degrade them far enough and deep enough, I would do that.” The president also vowed to intensify the air campaign, saying US strikes would continue until he personally decided “it’s enough.”

“They’ll continue until I say it’s enough. Next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges. We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’re going to knock out all their bridges, unless they get to the table and negotiate,” Trump said. Trump further warned that Iran “won’t have anybody left” unless it reached a deal with Washington, claiming US officials had relayed that message to Tehran during contacts held “about an hour ago.” “We’re being very careful with the civilian population,” said Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran into oblivion, once warning that “a whole civilization will die” if Tehran failed to comply with US and Israeli demands.

More than 1,500 civilians have been killed in Iran since the US-Israeli bombing campaign began on February 28, according to local authorities. One of the deadliest incidents was the strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, which killed 168 people, mostly children. Open-source investigations by multiple media outlets have concluded that the school was likely hit during a US strike on a nearby IRGC naval base. Trump repeatedly denied American responsibility but said last month that “mistakes are made” and “nobody did that on purpose.”

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“..and then next week it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants.”

Trump wants to be no part of this. But they won’t listen.

• Trump Warns Iran That Next Targets Will Be Power Plants And Bridges (JTN)

Trump warned Iran that the conflict will end when “I say it’s enough,” and that “energy targets” are next on his list. Iranian bridges and power plants will be struck next week if no deal is reached. President Donald Trump warned the Iranian regime Tuesday that the United States will target its bridges and power plants soon “unless they get to the table and negotiate.” The Middle Eastern conflict resumed last week after Iran struck three commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and the United States has since launched its own strikes on Iran in response.


Trump warned Iran that the conflict will end when “I say it’s enough,” and that “energy targets” are next on his list. Iranian bridges and power plants will be struck next week if no deal is reached. “I’ll save the energy targets for last, but ultimately we’ll hit energy targets,” Trump told Fox News reporter Trey Yingst. “We’re going to hit them very hard tonight. We’re going to hit them very hard tomorrow night. We’re going to hit them very hard the night after, and then next week it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants.

“Next week comes the bridges. We’re going to knock out all their power plants,” he continued. “We’re going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.” Trump defended the U.S.’s recent airstrikes on Iran, likening the country’s regime to a boxer who needs to be beaten down before peace can be achieved. “The only way you can negotiate with these people is through strength, and the only strength is military strength, and that’s what we’ve done,” Trump told Yingst. “It’s like a great boxer. You think you have them beat, and then all of a sudden he comes back and he gives you a shot. They have some fight left, but they don’t have much.”

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“Constitutional alarm raised after…”

“Communications from Members of Congress pertaining to their official legislative duties are protected from criminal prosecution under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause,”

“Everyone involved needs to be PROSECUTED.”

I don’t see how they can not. This is a free pass for Trump’s DOJ to do the same.

• DOJ Records Reveal Jack Smith Got Private Texts From 44 Lawmakers (JTN)

Newly released records reveal that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team bypassed mandatory protocols to secretly access the private text messages of 44 members of Congress during the probe into President Donald Trump, the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday. The disclosure, confirmed by records released by the Senate Judiciary Committee, has become a major constitutional flashpoint. As lawmakers confront the reality that their private communications were accessed without following established filter protocols, the inquiry is igniting a broader debate over the separation of powers between the executive branch and the legislative body.


“Communications from Members of Congress pertaining to their official legislative duties are protected from criminal prosecution under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause,” the Senate Judiciary’s press release said. The Speech or Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 6) serves as a check on executive power and is designed to prevent members of Congress from being “questioned in any other Place,” ensuring they cannot be subjected to the scrutiny of the Justice Department or the judicial branch for their legislative acts.

Yet DOJ records released to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, reveal that former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team reviewed the texts of 44 members of Congress, including 40 Republicans and four Democrats, during the investigation into President Donald Trump. The investigation, led by Grassley and Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., uncovered these records after receiving legally protected whistleblower disclosures, after which they formally requested records from the DOJ.

“This is a blatant abuse of power, and exactly what our Founders warned about,” Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., also wrote on X. Paul also called out Jack Smith, where, during a December 2025 congressional deposition when he was asked under oath whether his team had reviewed the content of text messages belonging to members of Congress, he answered, “No.”

Smith had been appointed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to oversee the Biden DOJ’s investigation into President Donald Trump after his announcement of this third presidential campaign. The records released by Senators Grassley and Johnson provide evidence that the Biden DOJ established a “Filter Team” to evaluate materials obtained in the course of Jack Smith’s investigations. These included a probe relating to January 6 codenamed “Project Coconut,” an investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, known as Project “Cranberry,” all part of “Arctic Frost,” a sweeping probe into efforts to challenge 2020 election results, the press release said.

While the Filter Team’s purpose was to prevent investigators from the Special Counsel’s Office and the FBI from accessing privileged materials among records obtained, evidence shows that investigators bypassed this, potentially infringing on constitutional guardrails, according to the release. Smith was ultimately unable to secure a conviction against Trump, bringing his efforts into further scrutiny. The Special Counsel’s Office had obtained the private text messages through a subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration for phone records stored between October 2020 to January 20, 2022, which were handed over on August 21, 2023.

The phones were associated with a long list of officials serving in the White House during President Trump’s first term, including Trump himself, as well as Stephen Miller, Rudy Giuliani, Kellyanne Conway, Peter Navarro, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Vice President Mike Pence. Smith’s investigative team downloaded and began reviewing the texts without waiting for the Filter Team’s evaluation.

“Based on the information that’s been produced to me and Senator Johnson, Biden, DOJ and FBI investigators apparently ignored their own routine investigative protocols to obtain and review work-related messages from me and dozens of my Republican and Democrat colleagues,” said Grassley in his statement, who was also targeted in these investigations. Meanwhile, the scope of this investigative overreach has been igniting sharp backlash on Capitol Hill.

“They’re sick and tired of Americans being spied on. And my message to the American people is: if they’ll do it to senators and congressmen, guess what? They’ll do it to you as well,” said Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz, a former U.S. Navy SEAL on the Just the News, No Noise show on Tuesday.Crane also said that he had “several friends” who had found out they had been spied on, including Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., saying that “these individuals who engaged in that type of behavior absolutely need to be held accountable.”

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley also slammed the findings of the DOJ records, writing on X, “Joe Biden’s DOJ not only tapped my phone; I just learned they ILLEGALLY obtained my texts with members of President Trump’s administration,” adding, “Everyone involved needs to be PROSECUTED.” Lawmakers are now calling for a full-scale investigation into the breach, decrying what Senator Ron Johnson described as the “Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department.” At the core of their concerns is whether the government has prioritized its investigative reach over constitutional restraints.

Grassley has stated he intends to have former Special Counsel Jack Smith appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold him accountable. “I hope my Democrat colleagues, several of whom had their own texts swept up, finally put partisanship aside and recognize the severity of these actions. Smith’s team ran roughshod over the Constitution even after repeated warnings,” Grassley said. Crane echoed these concerns. “You know what they say: if these folks aren’t held accountable, it’s going to happen again, and the American people are sick and tired of a two-tiered justice system,” he said.

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Russia has been preparing for this since at least 1991. Well before Ukraine became an issue.

Ukraine is the issue the West chose to start the fight with Russia.

Which has more nukes than we do, and said they will use them when threatened.

“A resolution of the conflict without Russia is impossible, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.. “:

• Europe’s Position On Ukraine Is A ‘Dead End’ – Kremlin (RT)

Europe cannot play a meaningful role in resolving the Ukraine conflict while trying to exclude Russia from the process, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, calling the bloc’s position a “dead end.” Peskov was responding to remarks by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who argued that any future “security guarantees” for Kiev should be determined by Ukraine and its Western backers without Russia’s participation. “Such statements demonstrate that the position taken by the Europeans is a dead end. If they insist on it, they will have no role in the settlement process,” Peskov told reporters on Tuesday.


Merz made the comments at a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ summit in Paris on Monday, where he pledged that Germany and Ukraine’s other Western supporters would continue supplying military aid to Kiev after any future ceasefire. The group brings together several EU nations, as well as the UK, Norway, Iceland, and Türkiye. It has been discussing post-conflict security arrangements for Ukraine, including proposals to deploy a multinational force, despite Russia’s repeated rejection of foreign troops near its borders.

At last week’s NATO summit in Ankara, member states agreed to provide Ukraine with more than €70 billion ($80 billion) in military assistance this year and next. Germany pledged the largest national contribution. Germany has been the EU’s biggest supporter of Ukraine since the escalation of the conflict in February 2022, providing around €55.5 billion in military aid, according to government data. German media have also reported that Berlin will finance the purchase of 50,000 attack drones for the Ukrainian military.

The latest pledges come as Ukraine has intensified drone strikes on Russian energy infrastructure and residential areas in recent months amid continued setbacks on the battlefield, launching several hundred UAVs a day on average. Moscow has also reported a growing number of FPV drone attacks, including AI-guided models, targeting passenger buses and private vehicles.

The Kremlin has repeatedly said that any lasting peace settlement must address the root causes of the conflict, including Ukraine’s neutrality, demilitarization, protection of Russian speakers, and recognition of the territorial realities on the ground. Russian officials have also argued that Britain, France, and Germany undermined previous peace efforts, including the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements and the 2022 Istanbul draft deal. Moscow has warned that any deployment of Western troops to Ukraine would be treated as foreign intervention.

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Ha ha. The guy does his work too well, so piano dickus fires him. And WE pay for that.

“..Fedorov had been a barrier to interests seeking to profit from Ukraine’s vast wartime defence budget..”

• Zelensky To Remove Ukraine’s Reforming Young Defense Minister (ZH)

The Ukrainian leader is “expected to remove defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov, the 35-year-old architect of Ukraine’s wartime defence technology drive, after just six months in the post as part of a major cabinet reshuffle,” FT writes Wednesday. “Several senior figures close to Zelensky said the president had held conversations about replacing the minister as he prepares to unveil his new government on Thursday,” the report adds. The FT report suggests that the young defense chief’s anti-corruption zeal is alienating powerful figures who wish for the wartime situation to be looser with less oversight:


“But defense industry officials, senior Ukrainian officials, MPs from Zelenskyy’s party and others familiar with the matter have said — some publicly — that Fedorov had been a barrier to interests seeking to profit from Ukraine’s vast wartime defence budget… Fedorov repeatedly blocked attempts to steer lucrative procurement contracts to favoured companies, which put him at odds with powerful figures inside Ukraine’s political and defence establishment, said people familiar with the situation.”

And yet interestingly President Trump has of late issued positive praise of Ukrainian forces’ accomplishments in the area of drone warfare against Russia.mKiev has further been boasting of its drone tech, and is even seeking to market it abroad, especially in the Middle East where Gulf countries are hungry for better defenses against smaller suicide drones. Fedorov has been widely seen as having rapidly implemented a transformative vision on this front. For example, earlier this week The Economist wrote:

“Tensions simmered barely below the surface at a war-council meeting in early July. Ukraine’s military leaders had mostly good news for their president. Middle- and long-range drone operations were seeing continued successes. A campaign to isolate Russian-occupied Crimea was running ahead of schedule. But as Power Point slides were shown to the testosterone-filled room, the generals griped about missile and ammunition procurement. The focus of their criticism, Mykhailo Fedorov, the 35-year-old tech-savvy defence minister who is known—and occasionally mocked—for his Silicon Valley style presentations, responded in kind.”

If it wasn’t for his emergency drone-purchasing decisions at the beginning of the year, which required borrowing money earmarked for salaries, there would be no Crimean operation to speak of. A witness to the proceedings describes “two different co-ordinate systems” in a clinch: “No common language, even if holding back from direct conflict.”

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“..to attack Russia..”

• Von der Leyen Promises Kiev Safe And Secure Production Sites For Drones (TASS)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has promised the Kiev regime “safe and secure production sites” for drones on the territory of the European Union for strikes against Russia. On a visit to Kiev, she signed an agreement of intent with Vladimir Zelensky on the production of drones for Ukraine in the European Union, similar to the documents that Ukraine signed with various NATO countries at the bloc’s summit in Ankara. Von der Leyen also promised “huge technological and industrial capacity” in Europe.


In April, the Russian Defense Ministry released the names and addresses of enterprises in Europe that produce drones for strikes against Russia, warning that the European public should know where the real threats to their security come from. Von der Leyen was awarded the Ukrainian Order of Europe, which she called a “great privilege.”

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“The conflict in Ukraine can only be resolved if arms supplies to Kiev stop, Maria Zakharova said..”

• Coalition of the Willing Troops In Ukraine, Western Sanctions (TASS)

The deployment of any military contingents from the countries of the Coalition of the Willing to Ukraine is unacceptable, and they will become legitimate military targets if stationed there, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing. Sanctions against VK reflect the EU’s impotent anger and will not affect the development of the holding company, Zakharova said. She also noted that Moscow views Poland’s announced drills near the borders of Russia and Belarus as an inappropriate attempt by Warsaw to “flex its muscles.” TASS has compiled the key statements by the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman.


Western support for Ukraine’s aggression
The conflict in Ukraine can only be resolved if arms supplies to Kiev stop: “Arms deliveries are one of the obstacles to a Ukrainian settlement.” The West should cease hiding behind talk of peace: “They should stop hiding behind talk of peace and openly say that they want only one thing – aggression.”

The deployment of any military contingents from the countries of the Coalition of the Willing to Ukraine is unacceptable, and they will become legitimate military targets if stationed there: “In this context, we would like to once again emphasize that our country considers the deployment of any military contingents from the countries of the so-called Coalition of the Willing to Ukraine unacceptable. I repeat once again: this will de facto mean foreign intervention and an increase in threats to Russia’s security. Such units will be regarded by us as legitimate military targets.”

Sanctions against VK
EU sanctions against Russian company VK reflect Brussels’ impotent anger: “This is a manifestation of absolutely impotent anger and chronic Russophobia.” The sanctions will not affect the development of the national messenger Max, designed by the holding company: “All these sanctions are unlikely to have any significant impact on the development of the national messenger, but for EU bureaucracy it is more important to try by any means to discredit a resource beyond its control and undermine trust in it.” Brussels has once again demonstrated its pathological desire to make life more difficult for Russian citizens by any means possible, and “this approach has nothing in common with genuine democracy.”

Prospects for restoring Russia-West dialogue
Dialogue between Russia and the collective West can only be restored if Europeans abandon “unfriendly and sometimes aggressive Russophobic actions” against the country,” their anti-Russian course, and interference in the nation’s internal affairs. There are currently no prerequisites for restoring dialogue: “As for prerequisites, do you see any? I have given examples today; in my opinion, they are absent.”

Nord Streams
The West must identify those who ordered the terrorist attack on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, not only those who carried it out: “The Russian side has insisted and will continue to insist that not only the perpetrators but also the masterminds behind this unprecedented terrorist attack must be identified and publicly named.”

US disregard for CTBT
A total of 179 countries have ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), but this “dynamic is being overshadowed by the opportunistic policy of the United States, which for many years has prevented the CTBT from entering into force by refusing to ratify it, although at one time [the US] advocated the development of this treaty.” The United States treats international agreements, including the CTBT, with arrogance and disregard: “Washington’s position is an obvious manifestation of arrogance and the US side’s dismissive attitude toward international law, including in the areas of arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation.”

Washington “does not want to tie its own hands” and seeks to act without regard for the CTBT: “In this matter [the possibility of resuming nuclear tests], Washington intends to act without regard for the treaty, covering up its confrontational course with unsubstantiated and false accusations against other countries.”

NATO in Arctic
NATO’s actions in the Arctic region significantly increase the risk of incidents “that could have the most negative consequences for the region”: “The region where the principle of ‘high latitudes, low tensions’ prevailed for many years is now, through NATO’s efforts, being steadily and rapidly transformed into an area of geopolitical confrontation with our country.” Due to NATO’s actions, the Arctic today “is not simply an apple of economic discord but, unfortunately, a zone of militarization.”

Read more …

V4.

• Here’s What’s Riding on Thursday’s Starship Flight Test (Stephen Green)

There is so much more riding on Starship Flight Test 13 than the first 20 functional Starlink V3 satellites, which are designed to deliver fiber-like internet speeds anywhere on land, air, or sea. People’s retirement portfolios, for example. SPCX shares have struggled since the company’s June initial public offering. Originally offered to the public at $135 on June 12, SPCX shares actually opened at $150 (an 11% pop) amid massive demand and hype. I bought exactly one on launch day, my “vanity share,” as I like to call it. Prices hit an intraday peak of $225.64 just four days later, but have since sagged to as low as $136.


For SpaceX, everything — not just the value of SPCX shares, but literally everything — rides on making Starship live up to Elon Musk’s promises. That’s why Thursday’s launch matters so much. The launch window for the next test of just that opens at 6:45 p.m. ET on Thursday, July 16, with some nice additions from FT12 in May. FT13 will follow the same flight path as FT12, with the booster sending Ship 40 (S40, making its first flight) on a suborbital trajectory before splashing down — with the usual 4K video provided by a buoy — about 65 minutes after liftoff. If this seems a little same-old same-old, nothing could be further from the truth.

For starters, FT12 suffered serious engine anomalies that are supposed to be corrected. Here’s Grok’s summary of what went wrong in May: Slight timing differences in Ship engine startup during hot-staging caused the booster to flip ~90° off-axis. This led to heat effects on propulsion components during ascent and erroneous engine alarm/abort settings. As a result, only a few of the 33 Raptors relit properly for the boostback burn, causing an early shutdown and a hard splashdown instead of a controlled one.

TL;DR? The boostback ignition partly failed, and that giant booster hit the Gulf of America like a brick. And about 40 seconds after separation, the upper Ship stage had one of its three vacuum-optimized engines fail. It still made its planned flight, proving an important “engine-out” capability, but SpaceX had to scrub a planned in-space engine relight. Since then, SpaceX has taken FAA-approved corrective actions, leading to the agency giving its blessing to FT13 earlier this week. Here’s how it should go.

Read more …

Who would buy that book?

• Joe Biden Slurs His Way Through Video Announcing New Memoir (Margolis)

We knew it was coming. Now, it’s finally been announced. In a video shared to social media, Joe Biden issued a statement about his forthcoming presidential memoir, Promise Me, America, and the rollout told you almost everything you need to know before you bother to crack the spine. Biden’s voice sounded muffled, as if he were talking with a mouthful of cotton balls. It was hard to watch, but I sat through it. “Since I left the presidency, I’ve had a lot of people ask me, ‘Joe, what have you been doing?'” Biden claimed in the video. “I’m dealing with a cancer diagnosis, and I’ve been getting treatment, and it’s been going really well,” he said. He thanked supporters for their prayers before pivoting to the actual sales pitch. “I’ve written a book about my time as president. It’s called Promise Me, America,” he said.


The book hits shelves on Nov. 17, and, says Amazon, it runs 448 pages and retails for $42. According to the description from publisher Little, Brown and Company, the memoir is a “candid and revealing” account of “the challenges, triumphs, sorrows, and accomplishments” of Biden’s administration. The publisher goes further, describing how Biden “took the oath of office on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, where — just two weeks earlier — rioters had stormed the halls and threatened the very foundation of our democracy.” Time for a collective eye roll.

The book also plans to present Biden as the hero who led the country through a pandemic and out of a recession. We’ve heard his talking points before, so that will be nothing new. I’m sure it will gloss over the record inflation his policies caused. Biden’s mandate, the description insists, was to “heal a divided country, restore the integrity of its frayed institutions, and prove to a skeptical public that the world’s greatest democracy could still deliver for its people.” Good lord, did Karine Jean-Pierre write this description?

There is exactly one section of this memoir that might actually be worth a read, and it is not because anyone expects honesty. The description teases that Biden will, “for the first time,” reveal “the deeply agonizing calculation behind his decision in the summer of 2024 to step aside from the presidential race and to put his party and the nation before his personal ambitions.”

Everyone remembers how that actually went down: a stumbling debate performance, a party in open revolt, and a candidate dragged out of the race by his own donors and colleagues while he insisted for weeks that he was staying put. Now he is going to spend a chapter reframing that humiliation as some noble act of sacrifice. The only real intrigue here is who gets thrown under the bus in the retelling, and how many former allies wake up in November to find themselves recast as villains in Joe’s origin story. Nancy Pelosi? Barack Obama?

The only question I have now is “Who actually wrote the book?”

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“Communism has never worked, but that doesn’t stop the left.”

• Of Marxists and Morons …. (Eric Utter)

Most of us have heard the horrific figures: Marxist communism was responsible for more than 100 million deaths in the 20th century alone. There are two preconditions necessary for people to accept or even welcome communism: one, frustration with current economic and/or political conditions, and two, a moral decay that generates a disdain for work and an excessive entitlement mentality, demonizing others’ success, accomplishments, and wealth. For far too many, this demonization of what others have leads not unto desire to make the right decisions and work hard enough to earn it yourself, but envy, greed, wrath and sloth, four of the Seven Deadly Sins.


And a demand that much of what others’ have be confiscated and handed over to one’s self and one’s demographic group … without one having to work for it.This, as history clearly shows, is an automatic death sentence for a society. Every time. In every case. Whether it be the erstwhile Soviet Union, its satellite in Cuba, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or, more recently, previously wealthy Venezuela.

It could not possibly be otherwise. If I work hard, say, for 60-hour weeks, and I and my family are not going to be very appreciably better off than someone who is unemployed and able to sit on his couch all day because of my tax money, it would literally be immoral, as well as against human nature, for me to continue to do so. Why? Because I would not only be allowing the excessive and arbitrary taxation of my earned labor, while robbing myself of precious time with my family, but quite possibly, in the long term, degrading my health. And subjecting myself to various opportunity costs/losses.

Margaret Thatcher famously said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” That in itself is spot-on, but there is far more to it than that.

Ayn Rand: “There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the same ultimate end: Communism proposes to enslave men by force, Socialism by the vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”

When people address this issue, they almost always start by saying, “Capitalism with all its faults …”

I am not willing to do that. This is life. This is Earth, not heaven. In this sense, capitalism doesn’t have any faults. True capitalism does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex … or anything else. The supply and demand curve determines what price any given product can bear. Charging less than that is not altruistic, but stupid and fraught with possible bias. Nothing can be truly worth other than what people will pay for it. That is why art is so subjective. One person looks at a painting and thinks, “I’d pay anything for that masterpiece,” another says to herself, “You couldn’t pay me to take this ridiculous piece of crap home.”

In command (communist/Marxist/socialist) economies, one or a very few people determine what the cost of any given item “should be.” Since there is no market feedback, their biases come into play. Lots of them. Shockingly, these biases always lead to a handful of leaders living well, and everyone else being paupers and puppets.

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“UNESCO data suggest a new global reversal: as gadget-raised children come of age, school participation is no longer rising”

• Pinocchio and the Information Society (Mikhail Afanasyev)

In many countries around the world, the number of children not attending school is rising. UNESCO has already recorded this alarming trend, and it demands an explanation. UNESCO regularly collects and publishes information on progress toward one of the key Sustainable Development Goals: the universal inclusion of school-age children in primary and secondary education. In recent years, negative developments in this sphere were often linked by experts to the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath. But the latest Global Education Monitoring Report 2026 allows the picture to be clarified significantly: it appears that we are dealing not with temporary difficulties, but with a change in the global trend – and the turning point seems to have occurred even before the pandemic.


While in the 1990s and 2000s most countries in the world recorded high growth rates in children’s participation in education, after 2015 those gains slowed almost everywhere. Moreover, in a number of countries, the number of children not attending school has increased. Since this primarily concerned countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, it might have seemed like just another example of ordinary African difficulties: tribal wars, corruption, and so on. Then the pandemic began, and everyone was sent home. But now ten years have passed, and it turns out that the share of children not going to school is not shrinking at all – on the contrary, it is growing, and already on a global scale.

The UNESCO report, of course, says nothing about this new global trend and, following the statistical reports of governments, paints a picture of the steady development of primary and secondary education systems worldwide. At the same time, the report notes that in “the four most populous regions of the world (Europe and North America, East and Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa), growth in children’s participation in school education has stopped over the past ten years. And in a number of countries, the share of children not attending school has even increased somewhat after 2015.”

To understand what this means, we should first assess the scale and geography of the phenomenon. The best to do this way is to compare out-of-school rates for 2024 versus 2015, as reported by UNESCO, and looking at the countries where such growth was recorded. As we can see, in 148 countries – that is, almost all countries of the world with only a few exceptions – full upper secondary education is de facto not universal. Moreover, 131 countries do not ensure lower secondary education for all children. And in 128 countries, a noticeable share of children do not even attend primary school.

At the same time, in 66 countries, the share of children not attending school has risen over the past decade. So the “number of countries” mentioned in the UNESCO report turns out to be very large indeed. Let us now look at who they are. The authors of the report emphasize the difficult situation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet of the ‘black list’ of 66 countries, only 20 are in Africa. Incidentally, the situation south of the Maghreb is not so straightforward: for 20 countries with negative dynamics, there are 11 where the share of children not attending school has noticeably declined; in the remaining countries there is no clear trend.

So, the historically reversed, regressive increase in the share of children not attending school is far from being an African phenomenon alone. On closer inspection, it becomes clear that the trend is not limited to the ‘underdeveloped periphery.’ The example of Singapore is revealing – a beacon of globalization, a city-state with one of the highest standards of living and near-universal access to education. The idealized image of Singapore now needs revising, because over the past decade a sharply growing share of children there has appeared outside the school system: 5% of children do not attend primary school, 10% remain outside lower secondary education, and 14% are without upper secondary education.

Singapore is not the exception but the beginning of a list of developed countries where the share of children not attending school has risen. The list speaks for itself: the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Finland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Estonia. Meanwhile, EU member states such as Romania and Bulgaria are, by this negative indicator, already comparable to African countries, including those south of the Maghreb.

The global share of children not attending school is also significantly increased by the new leaders of the global economy – India and China, home to around three billion people, the lion’s share of the world’s population. The growth of their vast economies is not accompanied by growing school participation in primary and secondary education. The same can be said of the third economy of North America – Mexico. In short, if anyone has not yet guessed, we are dealing with a global counter-trend: the inclusion of children in primary and secondary education has stopped growing and has begun to decline.

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“A Georgetown study recently found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools..”

• Gallup: Higher Education Hits Another Low in Public Trust (Turley)

According to the latest Gallup poll, only 38% of U.S. adults have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education. One of the Gallup experts told Fox News that one of the key reasons for the continued slide in public trust is “the perception that there’s a political agenda being taught.” That perception is well documented after most departments purged their ranks of any republican, conservative, or libertarian faculty members. At the same time, many faculty oppose the long-standing principle of institutional neutrality for universities, the subject of a recent debate that I had with the President of the American Association of University Professors.


Gallup’s expert added that there is also a view that we are “not teaching people the right kinds of things they need to succeed in the job once they finish.”As I have previously written, this generation of administrators and faculty has destroyed not just public trust in our institutions but their financial viability. Colleges are closing at an alarming rate as both tuition and revenue fall. Yet, faculty members would prefer to lose their jobs than their bias in hiring and teaching. According to Gallup, roughly a third of polled individuals cited partisan bias or indoctrination on college campuses. That is a large chunk of potential applicants and their families. Worse yet, they are not wrong.

Our campuses have been ideological echo chambers where collective orthodoxy is more prominent than academic inquiry. This group think has created an overtly hostile environment for more than half of this country that consider themselves conservatives or libertarians. As schools struggle to maintain financial stability, they are literally cutting away half of their potential applicant pool. Currently, only 37% of Americans report having “some” confidence in the institution. In any other industry or area, that record of alienation and mistrust would prompt massive changes in management. In higher education, however, colleges and universities remain captive to administrators and faculty members who replicate their views and values to the exclusion of many others.

The result is evident in multiple surveys which reveal widespread self-censorship among students, particularly conservative students. When I confronted a Harvard Law professor in a debate at Harvard Law School with those surveys, he responded by calling these students “conservative snowflakes.” It did not matter that only a third of Harvard students felt comfortable expressing their views in classes or on campus. Since Harvard has also shown the same bias in admissions, only roughly nine percent of the students identify as conservative. Thus, the vast majority of the students who are saying that they self-censor are liberals. This is the environment that the current generation of administrators and faculty have created.

As I have previously written, parents and students who value free speech must increasingly look to public universities where faculty are subject to constitutional guarantees. Public universities may be the final line of defense for free-speech advocates. We now largely have two systems of higher education for those seeking education with a diversity of opinions and viewpoints. Except for outliers like the University of Chicago and other private universities holding the line on free speech, the orthodoxy found at private universities remains a barrier to many conservative and independent thinkers.

If we are to protect these bastions of free speech, legislatures will need to play a more active role in addressing the exclusion of both faculty candidates and speakers on public campuses. Too many faculty members continue to take the view that citizens are a captive audience expected to continue funding their departments, while excluding conservative or dissenting views held by many, if not most, citizens in a given state. If faculty members want to continue maintaining echo chambers for their own viewpoints, they should have to seek private donors to sustain such intolerance and orthodoxy.

Legislatures can demand evidence that schools are maintaining intellectually diverse faculties in determining the level of continued support from citizens. When some of us have argued for such campaigns, academics hypocritically claim that we are calling for political litmus tests or hiring based on political parties. It is an absurd argument that I have previously addressed, including in my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

The call is for donors and legislators to withhold funding until they see real reforms, including greater diversity on faculties. They are not directing the hiring but looking at the results. The faculty members objecting to such calls have watched passively (or actively supported) the purging of conservative or libertarian faculty from universities and colleges.When confronted by their own obvious ideological litmus tests, they shrug. Some acknowledge that their departments are overwhelmingly liberal, but insist that they just cannot find “competent” or “intellectually promising” conservatives. A few will admit that they do not believe that conservative views have a place in their departments.

It is impossible to deny the purging of faculties to create an academic echo chamber. If a large corporation effectively eliminated women or minorities while claiming no conscious discrimination, they would be trounced in court. For years, I have raised concerns about the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican as faculty members replicate their own views and values. There is no evidence that any faculty members (including those acknowledging the loss of virtually all faculty from the right of center) are honestly willing to reform their schools.

That ideological echo chamber is hardly an enticement for many facing rising tuition costs and relatively little hope of being taught by faculty with opposing views. A Georgetown study recently found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools — almost identical to the percentage of Trump voters found in the new poll. We are watching the demise of American higher education by its own hand. It will be up to legislators and donors to save these institutions from themselves.

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https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2077197092368294205?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 15 2026

Jul 152026
 
 July 15, 2026  Posted by at 9:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  27 Responses »


Claude Monet Japanese Footbridge 2 1899(?)


• Trump Backs Off 20% Fee Plan For Hormuz (ZH)
• The US Needs to Hit Iran Harder to End the War (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Iran War 3.0 (Alastair Crooke)
• Two Ever-Widening Wars Bring World to Armageddon Moment (Paul Craig Roberts)
• UK Government Lobbied For Putting Migrants And Trans People On BANKNOTES (MN)
• Ann Widdecombe Murder was Political Assassination by Far-Left Extremist (CTH)
• Trump’s White House Front Entrance Improvements (O’Brien)
• Trump Pays E jean Carroll $5m In Damages Over Sexual Abuse And Defamation (BBC)
• Kamala Harris’s Humiliating WNBA Speech Is Painful to Watch (Margolis)
• Ro Khanna Launches Bid as Class Warrior with Expanded Wealth Tax Pledge (Turley)
• War of Words Turns Ugly After EU Migration Vote (RT)
• US House To Vote On Bill Making Daylight Savings Time Permanent (JTN)
• Bill to End Birthright Citizenship by Following Kavanaugh Roadmap (JTN)
• The Digital Euro: Control and the End of Financial Privacy (Daniel Lacalle)
• Mick Jagger Defends Elon Musk (MN)

 


 

https://twitter.com/KellyMarieBrady/status/2076691002186989753?s=20 https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/2076772464701440453?s=20 https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2076696919640858730?s=20

 


 


See what fits. Trump does that in the open.

• Trump Backs Off 20% Fee Plan For Hormuz (ZH)

It’s the return of another TACO Tuesday as President Trump in a lengthy Truth Social missive appears to have reversed his plan to collect a 20% of cargo fee for international vessels wishing to transit the Strait of Hormuz. “Oil is flowing like never before,” he began (except it’s not…), before writing, “Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States. Those Investments will be MASSIVE but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them, and their future.” He echoed the same in follow-up with reporters at the White House:


So Gulf allies, and likely officials within his own cabinet, have talked Trump out of the 20% collection scheme idea, which would have likely in the end just shifted leverage back over to Iran, given its own much cheaper passage protocol scheme.

US OIL PARES GAINS, WTI TRADES NEAR $78/BBL

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“We did the hard work. They’re no longer a threat. We’ve taken out their 47-year, half-a-trillion-dollar military investment.”:

“They don’t ever hit Israel because Israel has announced that their response will be disproportionate and aimed at the surviving government.”

• The US Needs to Hit Iran Harder to End the War (Victor Davis Hanson)

We’re now in the 134th day of, quote-unquote, “the war with Iran.” I’m speaking on July 12. But we got to remember that we really only had March and April. We started on Feb. 28, about 38 days until we stopped fighting on April 8. So, we’re really talking about 90-plus days of negotiations and 38 days of actual fighting. That should tell us something about what the Iranian strategy is. They want to talk, talk, talk, and they do not want to fight, fight, fight. We want to fight and get over and go home, and they don’t. And they … because of the length of the negotiation vis-a-vis the kinetic part, they may be in an advantaged position.


Part of the problem is that we have knocked out at least three centers of the four of their government. The theocracy with the death of Khamenei and the disabling of his son and killing of many of the others is sort of inert. We’ve taken out a lot of the heads of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. There’s a lot of military planners that were central to Iran’s military, industrial, nuclear complex that are gone, and we have a few elected leaders. And so that’s who we’re dealing with, but we’re not sure if they are good cops and the rest of what’s left are bad cops, or if anybody’s any cop.

So, where do we go from here? What’s happening right now is we have no war and no peace. That is about every day and a half or every other day, what’s left of the bad cops—that is, the theocracy, the military, and the Guard Corps—freelance, and they hit one of the Gulf states or a tanker. Notice they don’t ever hit Israel. They don’t ever hit Israel because Israel has announced that their response will be disproportionate and aimed at the surviving government. So, they don’t do that. We haven’t said that. But every other day they do that, and now we’re starting to respond disproportionately, and that means for every 50 or so strikes, we have 120 or 130. But that itself will go on and on and on.

What we need to do is to find a way to do two things: one, stop their ability to make any strikes, and that can be accomplished in various ways. We can either stop all of their supplies, and I mean all of them. That is, we can take out their airlift capacity, their airport. We can take out all the rail lines over land to China. We can take out the Caspian Sea ports. We cannot allow any seaborne traffic into Iran. And we can take out their electrical generation plant, short out the grid, take out more. We can stop their ability to make war rather than just hunt for an individual target, a missile target or a launcher pad or something like that.

And then we have to make the conditions for which we can go home. We did the hard work. They’re no longer a threat. We’ve taken out their 47-year, half-a-trillion-dollar military investment. There’s a lot of other interests that would like the Gulf open, particularly the Gulf Council states, the Europeans, the Japanese, the Chinese, South Koreans. So, we need to make Iran so weak, if they do not want to negotiate, and we’re not going to get into this tit-for-tat cycle, that these other countries will be able to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

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Alastair Crooke is no fan of Trump. That’s why he sees the US losing vs Iran.

To make his point, he drags US polls and even the AI market into the equation. But what have they to do with the Iran war?

“Essentially, Trump has plunged into an escalatory trap, seemingly in part out of pique at his collapsing polls at home.”

Has anyone else seen those collapsing polls? I haven’t. Anyone?

“.. the “hurt” being experienced by Trump back home in the context of his fading political prospects, but also by his dislike for any personal humiliation.”

..”his fading political prospects”, “personal humiliation”: we’re not watching the same movie.

“A downturn in the AI market would send shockwaves throughout the entire economic ecosystem.

A market downturn in the US – exacerbated by an energy crisis – could spell disaster for Trump’s midterm hopes.”

I give up.

• Iran War 3.0 (Alastair Crooke)

When the US Navy, in co-ordination with Qatar and Oman, tried to slip a convoy of four vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, via Omani waters, last Tuesday night – rather than pass via Iran’s officially approved route – Trump may have imagined (or been told) that with the massive funeral for the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei under way, that Iran would not react as the US Navy attempted to force open an American corridor. Trump however, misread the Iranian jibe – Hormuz is its “atomic weapon.” Iran will not relinquish it.


Trump insists – in clear contradiction to the terms set out in paragraph five of the MoU – that Iran has no right to interfere with any ship trying to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Iran nonetheless is acting within the terms of the agreed de-escalation framework, and has warned repeatedly that it would strike any vessel circumventing the Iranian control mechanism. Iran responded directly to Trump’s challenge to Iranian control of the Strait by striking two vessels with missiles and a third with an armed drone. A fourth Qatari-owned tanker, laden with liquefied natural gas, was set ablaze, forcing its crew to abandon the stricken vessel.

These Iranian ripostes provoked Trump to order American air strikes against Iranian targets; to reimpose sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s oil exports; and to revoke the MoU framework he had signed with what he called the “Iranian scum” – thus ending the ceasefire. “We hit them hard last night,” Trump said at the NATO summit in Ankara. “We will probably hit them hard again tonight.” Trump did hit Iran again Wednesday night – even though Iran had not attacked another vessel seeking to by-pass the Iranian corridor. In response, Iran launched ballistic missiles and drones at US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE and Muwaffaq Al-Salti airbase in Jordan.

Vice-President Vance is saying to Iran, “If you try to close the Strait of Hormuz, the American military will respond. It’s that simple” – i.e. Iran either keeps the Strait fully open to all, or the US will keep hitting it, as it did on Tuesday night. Iran insists that it is the US that has violated the MoU and (via the spokesman for Iran’s Parliamentary National Security Committee) warns that further attacks by the US on Iran will be met by a comprehensive all-out surprise offensive by Iran – and potentially by other options too, such as an Iranian withdrawal from the NPT, changing the country’s nuclear doctrine, and closing the Bab al-Mandab Strait alongside the Strait of Hormuz.

So, Vice-President Vance is saying if Iran restricts Hormuz (i.e. it stays open to friendly states’ vessels) the US will escalate. And Iran is responding to this threat by warning that it will escalate militarily – two strikes for every one American strike – and that they may also turn to new doctrines of warfare. Essentially, Trump has plunged into an escalatory trap, seemingly in part out of pique at his collapsing polls at home. He did, however, directly put himself in this situation by trying to “act cute” during the Khamenei funeral pre-occupations in order to try to gain a “quick win.”

How long will this escalatory episode last? Certainly, it will not lead to the opening of the Strait; nor bring a return of the status quo ante that preceded the war. As long as Iran maintains its ability to exert control over Hormuz, there is no basis to assume that the situation will return to what it was. On the contrary, and more likely, the crisis will accelerate the onset of looming global economic crisis that could last until the economic pain becomes acute, as the drawdown on sour crude continues – and as the effects on the real economy in the West become visible. With shortages of munitions and the drawdown on air assets from the Middle East already beginning, Trump probably lacks the wherewithal to go full “Iran War 3.0.”

[..] It is not certain that this new US policy will work. The world is changing rapidly. Their expected triumph of Israel over the Middle East has resulted in failure. Trump’s MoU ploy to open Hormuz likely will fail, too. The connected war on Russia and the siege of China are faltering too – and Israel’s (until now unassailable) hold over the US is in question too. A senior US democrat, Rahm Emanuel, and potential 2028 US Democratic presidential candidate, spoke in Israel yesterday; he warned in no uncertain terms that Israel “has lost the world’s support, become a ‘regional pariah,’ [and that its] alliance with the US is ‘at a crossroads’.”

And finally, a “black swan” now can be observed swimming in increasingly sunlit waters – Eric Katz writing in Notus writes that, “a draft report inside the US Treasury Department is set to warn of the risks posed by the artificial intelligence market, likening key aspects of it to the dotcom bubble that upended the US economy when it burst in the early 2000s.” Treasury analysts wrote – “Career Treasury analysts found that AI firms are more deeply entrenched in the US economy than their dotcom predecessors and pose significant risk to the entire system if financial conditions change, productivity goals are missed or various choke points stymie growth.”

A downturn in the AI market would send shockwaves throughout the entire economic ecosystem. A market downturn in the US – exacerbated by an energy crisis – could spell disaster for Trump’s midterm hopes.

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Over the top: “Never in history has a country’s leader displayed such refusal to recognize an existential threat.”

“..In my thinking at this time, the world without its wish is heading into two big wars.

• Two Ever-Widening Wars Bring World to Armageddon Moment (Paul Craig Roberts)

“Russia open to Turkey selling S-400 air defense systems to UAE, sources say” “The Russian government views the potential sale of S-400 air defense systems currently operated by Turkey to the United Arab Emirates in a “positive light”, multiple sources familiar with the issue told Middle East Eye, while cautioning that negotiations have yet to be completed.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirms that the Kremlin is discussing with Turkey the transfer of the S-400 Russian air defense system to Iran’s enemies. This shows you what a piece of shit ally Russia is. Money comes first and nothing else matters. Helmer quotes a Russian source:


” I expect no limits to what the Kremlin will stoop in their money-making now. You can expect, a year from now, Russian S-400s and 500s will be sold direct to the Emiratis and Saudis. No doubt about it. Strictly speaking, the Turks do not have to do a resale. They will say they are giving military defensive cover, jointly with Europe and the US, to the Arabs; the Russians will go along with that.” My understanding is that the operative range of the S-400 covers the entire Persian Gulf and likely Israel and Jordan as well. In other words, the S-400 completely disarms Iran.

Here is my speculation about how this surprising deal is being put together. When Turkey purchased the S-400, a purchase that is inexplicable. Why would the Kremlin deliver the technology of the world standard–the S-400–to a member of NATO? Is the answer the stupid Kremlin chasing money at the cost of Russia’s existence? Helmer’s sources think so. Or was it an ill-conceived plot to bribe Turkey away from NATO into Russia’s orbit? If so, it did not work.

Putin has needlessly, gratuitously, left Russia mired in a 4.5 year old conflict that due to Putin’s irresolution and prevarication has moved from Donbas to deep inside Russia. Putin now faces state-of-the-art drones produced in Germany and transported without Russian interference to Ukraine where they are guided by US targeting systems into attacks on Russian refineries and fuel storage. Russia has been sufficiently damaged that Russia now must import diesel fuel. Putin pretends that this is not war, merely a terrorist operation. Never in history has a country’s leader displayed such refusal to recognize an existential threat.

Putin has been trying to stay afloat by riding two contending horses. One is the horse of the Russian military and patriotic citizens. The other horse is the horse of the Russian oligarchs whose wealth was stolen from the state during the period of the Soviet collapse. My solution, which I presented to the Soviet Union in its last year was not followed, and a few seized the wealth of the country. Those who stole Russia’s wealth were the West’s allies against Russia from day one. And these pro-American, not pro-Russian, interests are 50% of the advice that the Kremlin receives.

Here is what is what is happening. Krill Dmitriev has told Putin that the more the Kremlin sucks up to Trump, the more likely the Ukrainian Conflict will be reconciled by mutually profitable business deals, which is the aim of the Russian Oligarchs. The point was made to Putin that protecting Israel and the American Gulf states that host the US attacks on Iran from attack by Iranian missiles wins brownie points that can free Russia from the sanctions on its oligarchs..

Where does all this go? In my thinking at this time, the world without its wish is heading into two big wars. All of humanity will be destroyed. No where in the governments of the world is there any capability to comprehend the reality that confronts them. Each dumbshit government has its own narrative, and none of them are correct. Where are the leaders of humanity? Why are there none?

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Ungovernable. You can’t make plans like this and then move on.

• UK Government Lobbied For Putting Migrants And Trans People On BANKNOTES (MN)

The UK’s own Cabinet Office pushed hard to overhaul banknotes by elevating LGBT+ and ethnic minority figures, claiming historic greats like Winston Churchill gave an “incomplete picture” of British identity. This push came just before the Bank of England decided to ditch those same towering historical figures for images of hedgehogs and foxes. This latest revelation exposes the ideological machinery at work inside Whitehall. While the public recoiled at the idea of swapping national heroes for animals, government officials were actively lobbying for even more radical identity-driven changes.


In a letter to the Bank of England’s chief cashier last summer, officials from the Office for Equality and Opportunity – part of the Cabinet Office and led by Bridget Phillipson – argued that current historical figures reflected “limited dimensions of British identity.” They called for “greater representation of women, disabled people, ethnic minority communities and LGBT+ individuals” to “send a strong signal of progress and recognition.”

The whole saga is particularly ridiculous because the core argument for axing Churchill and other giants was that they were supposedly too “ideologically divisive” for modern Britain. Yet officials simultaneously pushed to install figures selected explicitly through the lens of identity politics and group representation – an approach guaranteed to be far more polarizing in practice. It reveals the selective outrage: traditional British heroes are labeled divisive for their achievements, while injecting contemporary activism onto the currency is framed as unifying “progress.”

The intervention has sparked accusations that Labour elements conspired to sideline Britain’s most celebrated figures. Shadow minister Alex Burghart slammed the move: “Labour tried to deny any involvement in the cancellation of Winston Churchill and other British heroes. But government officials have been caught red-handed conspiring with the Bank of England to remove them from our banknotes.” He added that banknotes “should feature the greatest Britons – the historic figures that unite our country. They shouldn’t be chosen on the basis of Labour’s equality laws.”

This diversity drive unfolded alongside the Bank of England’s decision to replace Churchill on the £5 note, Jane Austen on the £10, J.M.W. Turner on the £20, and Alan Turing on the £50 with images of British animals, plants, and landscapes. The Bank cited a public consultation where a majority favored nature themes, partly for security reasons on new polymer notes. Critics have pointed out the irony, noting Alan Turing – a gay war hero – was already featured, yet the push continued for broader “under-represented” groups. Suggestions reportedly included figures tied to events like the Empire Windrush. This fits a longer pattern of institutional discomfort with Britain’s historic icons. Our earlier coverage highlighted the absurdity of trading Churchill for hedgehogs and the broader erosion of national symbols.

A serious nation honors the leaders who defended its freedom and shaped its character – not because they tick modern demographic boxes, but because their achievements built the country whose currency circulates today. Swapping out the likes of Churchill for foxes and badgers, while civil servants agitate for identity politics on money, signals a profound loss of confidence. Britain’s history is not a problem to be diluted. It is the foundation worth preserving.

https://twitter.com/ColinKi54036475/status/2076414880307974512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2076414880307974512%7Ctwgr%5Ec3aa6dba427f4106565dfe9c313c6b6c3629a430%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmodernity.news%2F2026%2F07%2F13%2Fthe-uk-government-lobbied-for-putting-migrants-and-trans-people-on-banknotes%2F
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Pay attention Britain.

“.. the reality was her murderer drove over five hours to kill her. “

• Ann Widdecombe Murder was Political Assassination by Far-Left Extremist (CTH)

78-year-old Ann Widdecombe was a well-known conservative in British politics. She was a staunch defender of free speech, a direct opponent to leftist cultural Marxism and an advocate for the commonsense Reform Party. Widdecombe was against abortion, gay rights, transgender advocacy and wokism writ large. Ms. Widdecombe was beaten to death in her home Wednesday July 8th around 12:30pm by an assailant who drove 270 miles to kill her. Immediately the police said her murder was not politically motivated and not connected to foreign or domestic terrorism.


Despite the credulous claim that her brutal murder was not political in nature, the reality was her murderer drove over five hours to kill her. This was an obvious premeditated, calculated and targeted murder. However, the politically correct leftist media and political institutions within U.K. government, were desperate in trying to deny the obvious. Yesterday, the British Counterterrorism Police took over the investigation. “Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, said that as a result of “new information and evidence,” specialist counterterrorism officers were “now leading on the investigation into the horrific murder.”” {citation} Today, it is admitted that her killer had a library of communist and Marxist ideology.


(DAILY MAIL) – […] Yesterday the probe was taken over by Counterterrorism Policing South East which announced the suspect had been re-arrested on suspicion of commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. The suspect, who remains in custody, was the son of a teaching assistant. Relatives said he had become reclusive after the sudden death of his engineer father last year. […] In a dramatic escalation, counter terrorism officers yesterday took over the investigation into the killing of the former Tory minister. It came after the discovery of Russian communist literature and other items of political ideology at the home of the suspected killer. […] Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood confirmed yesterday that the British white suspect, who the Mail is not naming, was not known to the Government’s deradicalisation programme, Prevent. Police are making inquiries about his mental health. (more)

Leftism is a violently dangerous ideology. Those who believe in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion as well as cultural rights and genderisms are intolerant in the extreme. Their ideological arguments do not stand up against scrutiny, natural laws or historic outcomes. As a result, their emotions drive the internal sense of self-hate outward to attack others. These are deeply disturbed, emotionally unstable people. Democrats, Socialists, Communists writ large are extremely dangerous once they achieve power. The larger the population they control or target, the larger the killing field.

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“Trump the builder has looked at our nation’s capital and its iconic landmarks with a critical eye..”

• Trump’s White House Front Entrance Improvements (O’Brien)

Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) tends to enter the ludicrous stage for its sufferers most quickly when President Donald Trump wants to do something that’s inarguably good, mostly to the benefit of future administrations and future generations of visitors to Washington, D.C. Trump the builder has looked at our nation’s capital and its iconic landmarks with a critical eye ever since he took up residence in the White House in 2017. So, in his second term, he’s decided to do something about the problems he’s seen simply by fixing things up. Seriously, who can argue with that? The left, the Democrats, and the legacy media can, that’s who.


My colleague David Manney covered earlier iterations of this issue. And so, we’ve become all too familiar with the ludicrousness the left compulsively dishes up every time the Trump administration tackles another improvement project. The left is now so predictable and so fake about its outrage, it should come as no surprise that, with Trump setting his sights on the front door to the White House, the left would pretend to have a meltdown.

First, let’s take a look at the project, which was specifically prompted by a request from the U.S. Secret Service (USSS). The federal agency has wanted to bolster the front entrance to the White House with “security-focused upgrades” in a project that is expected to take months to complete, CNN has reported. The front entrance to the White House is at the North Portico of the building.

As much as you know CNN wanted to outright blame Trump for every facet of this story and spin it all into a negative, the cable news network said on its website, “The changes, which sources said have long been advocated by the US Secret Service, are aimed at fortifying the White House entrance at the North Portico, which has recently been obscured by scaffolding and a tarp as workers repair the exterior columns at President Donald Trump’s request… But unlike many of Trump’s projects around the White House — from hanging gold signage to paving the Rose Garden — the work on the front door is not cosmetic, and instead focused on enhancing its security, the White House official said.”

CNN further reported that in addition to the front entrance, security fencing is planned for Lafayette Park, “which surrounds the north side of the White House.” Keep in mind, the White House grounds are already fenced off and have several layers of intense security, some that you can see, most that you cannot. Reports are that the USSS, not the president, want to better secure the park so that when there are “presidential movements,” they don’t have to continually erect temporary security barriers. The goal, CNN reported, was to arrive at “a more permanent solution to the existing patchwork of temporary barricades, what officials describe as ‘comprehensive yet flexible fencing strategy for varying security risk.’ The permanent fencing is meant to make it easier to shut down the road when needed.”

The administration is going through all of the proper channels in deciding on the fencing, which means a proposal has been sent by the USSS, the White House, and the Department of Interior to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. That commission will look at the proposal with an eye towards the aesthetic and with historic preservation standards in mind. So, how is the left taking it? Well, Trump is turning Washington into a police state, of course.

The Lincoln Project decided to channel its TDS by using the USSS’s requested security upgrades as proof that Trump wants to be president for life.

On both the fencing story and the front door story, even though it’s clear that the USSS is behind the major changes, someone in the Democrats’ spin room has come up with the “never leaving” theme.

I happen to agree with the left here. Why is the USSS making such a big deal about security around the White House? It’s not like anything bad ever happens around there or could even happen. Just one more conservative conspiracy theory, I think.

Well, OK, there was the time leftists literally tried to breech the White House security perimeter and burn the White House down, but if Trump wasn’t president at the time, they wouldn’t have had to do it. In fact, he made them do it. And they were just peaceful protests, anyway.

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This is so bad, it makes you fear for America. New York hates Trump.

• Trump Pays E jean Carroll $5m In Damages Over Sexual Abuse And Defamation (BBC)

US President Donald Trump has paid writer E Jean Carroll more than $5m (£3.7m) in damages three years after he was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming her in a civil case, her lawyers confirmed. “Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict,” Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, said in a short statement on Tuesday. Trump was pushing to delay the payment, in order to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision not to hear his appeal of the case. But last week, the judge overseeing the case ordered him to pay the damages.


A representative from Trump’s legal team declined to comment on the payment. A statement from Carroll’s legal team confirmed that she had been paid more than $5.62m – the $5m awarded in damages plus the interest accrued during the appeal. Carroll, a former magazine columnist who is now 82, accused Trump of attacking her in the mid-1990s in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan, and later defaming her on his Truth Social website in a 2022 post denying her allegations. In 2023, a New York jury unanimously awarded Carroll the damages over her claim. Trump denied the allegations.

Trump put the damages into a court-controlled account shortly after the verdict, and it was held there while the appeals process played out. Lawyers for Trump decried the judge’s ruling that he must pay, calling the case a “hoax” and “Witch Hunt” which they alleged had been funded by Democrats. Trump has repeatedly alleged that Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the civil trial, improperly admitted evidence that prejudiced the jury against him. A federal appeals court agreed with the jury’s verdict last year and said Kaplan did not make errors that would warrant a new trial.

The Supreme Court last month declined Trump’s request to consider the case, clearing the way for the money to be paid to Carroll.Carroll cheered the ruling at the time, writing on her Substack blog: “WE WON!” “THIS WIN IS FOR EVERY WOMAN IN THE WORLD!” Carroll wrote. Trump has also appealed against another jury’s decision in 2024 finding the president liable for defaming Carroll in a separate instance and awarding her nearly $84m. A panel of federal judges denied his appeal last year.

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Why do they keep her around?

• Kamala Harris’s Humiliating WNBA Speech Is Painful to Watch (Margolis)

Did you know that Former Vice President Kamala Harris is a fan of the WNBA? Okay, she probably couldn’t name more than a couple of teams if you quizzed her, even if she studied all night, but the takeaway here is that she went to a game on Sunday and was given the opportunity to speak to the Los Angeles Sparks (that’s one of the teams) after the game. And it was bad. Following the Sparks’ 102-87 win over the Chicago Sky, Kamala made her way to the team’s locker room to share a few words with the players. In her brief remarks, she praised the growth the WNBA has seen in recent years (though she didn’t thank Caitlin Clark) and congratulated the team, not just for the win, but for what she called the players’ broader impact.


“You are having an incredible impact. I travel our country; young girls, boys, people of every gender, background, race, watch the W and understand how inspiring it is,” Kamala said in her speech.Every gender? Good lord, how many different leagues will the NBA have to subsidize now? “So keep doing what you’re doing,” Kamala continued. “You guys are impacting people who you will never meet, people who may never know your name or mine, but they are aware of what you are doing. And it is giving them a sense of their value and their dignity and what they have a right to expect from this world. So, congratulations on this game, but congratulations, as much as anything else, for the path you guys are charting. It is extraordinary to watch.”

It’s a good thing she waited until after the final buzzer to say any of that. Imagine trying to run out for tip-off after hearing your “impact” summarized in a sentence that long. The Sparks might have lost by 30. To put it mildly, Kamala has never been known for her oratory skills or deep insight. She has a reputation for being a vacuous moron, and this speech (if you even want to call it that) did nothing to change it. She is about as exciting and uplifting as a can opener, and she still found a way to underperform even that. Emily Compagno tore into the speech Monday night on The Five, and she didn’t hold back.

“I feel like there should be a global policy against having her anywhere near a locker room pregame,” Compagno said on The Five. “Because I can think of nothing more deflating than listening to her and what she has to say. Sophie Cunningham did more for the WNBA in her two seconds of being a ring girl at the UFC fight, which was so explosive and awesome, than the vice president. I feel sorry for those women who are actually seeking any type of inspiration from her.” As Compagno went in, the Fox News chyron running at the bottom of the screen did some of the work for her. It read “Kamala Airballs Her WNBA Speech,” which is the kind of headline you can’t buy and definitely can’t spin.

“But we’re not surprised by this,” Compagno said. “And the unfortunate part to me is that she is still being enlisted as somehow a mouthpiece of the Democrat Party. She continues to flop in all of her speeches. I think fundraising continues to work, which surprises me. But I love this chyron so much, because she just whiffs every single time. I don’t understand why. The fact that her speeches — that lack substance, both in policy and actual ignition — continue to be spread throughout.”

“Whiffs” is generous. Kamala has had years, an entire presidential campaign, and a vice presidency to figure out how to talk to a room and inspire someone beyond her own ego.

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The Democratic Party is one big vacancy. Cue the likes of Ro.

• Ro Khanna Launches Bid as Class Warrior with Expanded Wealth Tax Pledge (Turley)

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) just moved to outbid his Democratic colleagues in the presidential auction. With the radical left sweeping away establishment figures in favor of socialists, various prospective presidential candidates are offering up key institutions in their effort to appease the mob. The Supreme Court has been the starting bid. Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and Josh Shapiro have yielded to the mob and embraced court packing. Khanna is not to be outdone. After his disastrous campaigning for Graham Platner, Khanna is returning to a sure winner: Class warfare.


Last week, Khanna confirmed that the “billionaire tax” is just the start and that they will go on to target the wealth of other citizens as an untapped resource of new revenue. For years, some of us have warned that the billionaire tax was a ruse. Sponsors like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Khanna were using billionaires as an easy political target, but they were unlikely to stop there. The challenge is to get the tax through the courts, which is why it is so essential to pack the court. Warren notably was an early advocate of both changes. I discuss the tax in my book “Rage and the Republic” as an example of the “eat-the-rich” politics used by demagogues from ancient Athens to the French Revolution.

Politicians seek to divide a population into “haves” and “have-nots” with the promise that citizens could have it all if only they are given back power. Warren tried to use the tax to restart her moribund 2020 presidential campaign. During one debate, she dramatically told the rich she was coming after “your Rembrandts, your stock portfolio, your diamonds and your yachts.” She thrilled the crowd by greedily rubbing her hands together after saying she would take some of the wealth of fellow candidate John Delaney, a self-made millionaire.

The problem is that a federal billionaire tax (which is distinct from California’s billionaire tax that will be on the upcoming state ballot) is, in my view, completely unconstitutional. The federal government secured the right to tax individuals in 1913, but the 16th Amendment only approved income taxes. As made clear by Warren, Democrats want to tax people for the things that they bought after paying their taxes from homes to art to boats. If they can pack the Court and greenlight a billionaire tax, there would be no limit to then moving the threshold wealth level downward. Once that Rubicon is crossed, Democrats would suddenly be able to tax trillions in the property and possessions of citizens.

That is precisely what Khanna finally admitted last week in a Substack post, arguing that “the tax should not stop at billionaires; it must reach centimillionaires. The tax has to reach all fortunes $50 million and up.” The wealth tax is the closest this country has come to an open redistribution-of-wealth effort, a core agenda item for the rising socialist movement. Other countries such as France tried wealth taxes with disastrous results. Not only did it fail to generate the expected revenue (the wealth left the country en masse), but it also had to be rescinded. In Norway, the government kept reducing the level of targeted assets to six-figure thresholds.

The national tax is meant to address the growing disaster in California, which has reportedly lost trillions as the wealthy flee the high-tax state. Khanna and other Democrats hope to give the wealth nowhere to flee by taking this “hunt-the-rich” effort national. In making this pitch, Khanna is trying to achieve the political stunt of the century. Khanna is reportedly worth roughly half a billion dollars thanks to his wife’s inheritance. He is not alone among the super wealthy Democrats declaring themselves the champions of the proletariat.

After all, there’s Illinois Gov. Jay Robert “JB” Pritzker, who also inherited his fortune. In a July interview with CNN, Pritzker virtually begged the mob that he is a different kind of billionaire, pointing at Trump billionaires as the rightful targets (not him with $4.3 billion). Others found themselves on the wrong side of the mob. Rep. Dan Goldman, who inherited a massive fortune of almost $300 million as a trust baby, unwisely promised to help subsidize his congressional reelection campaign from his family fortune. Goldman fell flat with the socialist and increasingly antisemitic base — and was crushed by over 30 points.

Khanna hopes to stay ahead of that mob by leading it to the homes of other wealthy citizens. As for California, the state is already showing how class warfare does not quite work if the upper classes simply leave with their wealth, businesses and jobs.

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“A Swedish MEP has filed criminal charges after a Danish colleague told her to “go home” in a social media post..”

• War of Words Turns Ugly After EU Migration Vote (RT)

A dispute over an immigration bill passed by the European Parliament has escalated into a criminal complaint, with a Swedish MEP accusing a Danish colleague of racist hate speech over a social media comment, The Guardian reported on Monday. A Swedish MEP of Iraqi descent, Abir Al-Sahlani, filed the complaint with Swedish police against Danish MEP Kristoffer Storm. He told her to “go home” in response to her post criticizing anti-immigration chants that followed the passage of a law aimed at speeding up the deportation of illegal migrants. She has also lodged a formal complaint with European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.


The dispute stems from last month’s approval of the Return Regulation, the toughest anti-immigration legislation passed by the EU in recent years. The measure allows member states to establish ‘return hubs’ outside the bloc to accelerate the deportation of illegal migrants. After the vote, chants of “send them back!” erupted in the chamber. In a speech condemning the outburst, Al-Sahlani called it “a new low level, even for the fascists on the far right.”

“I have never felt as unsafe in this parliament as after the voting about the Return Regulation, because the shouting of the far right was not against the political opponent… It was about ordinary people who did no other crime than looking for a better life in Europe,” she said. Storm rejected accusations that his response online was racist. Speaking to Politico, he said the phrase “go home” referred to leaving the parliamentary chamber, arguing that if Al-Sahlani found the democratic decision and lawmakers’ reactions so upsetting, “she would have been better off leaving the chamber.”

The clash comes amid growing tensions over migration across the EU. According to Eurostat, the bloc received more than 8.5 million immigrants from outside the bloc in 2023 and 2024, and immigration remains one of the most divisive issues in European politics. Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump claimed that European countries had deteriorated to the status of “Third World countries” because of their immigration policies.

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We can talk about it for years. Occupational therapy.

• US House To Vote On Bill Making Daylight Savings Time Permanent (JTN)

The U.S. House will vote this week on a bill making daylight savings time permanent, despite warnings from medical, education and safety organizations. The Sunshine Protection Act of 2025, which would end the nearly nationwide biannual clock changing and make daylight savings time permanent year-round, advanced out of committee Monday afternoon. States that use standard time year-round – currently only Arizona and Hawaii – before the law goes into effect wouldn’t have to change.


House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., testified in support of the bill, which Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., introduced. Pallone argued that changing the clocks every year is widely unpopular with Americans and that making daylight savings time permanent would boost the tourism industry. n“The real question is, why do we still change our clocks?,” Pallone said. “It’s getting harder and harder to justify.” Besides the U.S. tourism industry, retail and golfing industries have long lobbied Congress to permanently set the clocks an hour ahead.

“Our industry is uniquely tied to daylight, and the number of playable hours directly affects the number of rounds we can offer, the staff we employ, and the revenue we generate, especially in the late afternoon and early evening,” National Golf Course Owners Association CEO Jay Karen told lawmakers in 2025. bWe ask the Senate to consider the practical and economic consequences of losing evening daylight.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Retail Federation, National Association of Convenience Stores, the American Farm Bureau Federation and others have expressed support for making daylight savings time permanent.

But medical professionals, education advocates and safety professionals overwhelmingly support making standard time permanent instead. “By artificially shifting the clock time an hour forward, daylight saving time causes a misalignment between clock time and solar time, interfering with our circadian timing and resulting in a condition known as ‘social jet lag,’’ the American Academy of Sleep Medicine stated in its opposition to the bill. “This condition is associated with an increased risk of obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and depression. If daylight saving time becomes permanent, then Americans will be living with social jet lag year-round.”

The American Medical Association, American College of Occupational Medicine, National Sleep Foundation, American Federation of Teachers, National School Boards Association, National Safety Council, and dozens of other organizations have endorsed permanent standard time. Congress tried to implement permanent daylight savings time in the 1970s. The two-year trial lasted less than a year, however — in a 1974 speech on the Senate floor, the former U.S. senator for Kansas Bob Dole said the change “is a classic example of the Congress legislating blindfolded”

“It has caused great inconvenience and in some cases hazard. It appears to me that the better part of wisdom might be outright repeal,” Dole said. “After spending the first 3 weeks of winter daylight time in Kansas, I became more convinced than ever that its hardships, inconvenience, and real hazards are too great to justify its continuation.” If the Sunshine Protection Act does pass the House on Tuesday, its future in the Senate is uncertain as it will need at least 60 votes to pass.

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Birthright Citizenship is 150 or so years old. It’s old. Nobody else has it. There are no slaves anymore.

• Bill to End Birthright Citizenship by Following Kavanaugh Roadmap (JTN)

Indiana Republican Sen. Jim Banks introduced legislation Monday that seeks to end birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants by labeling them as children of “invaders” under federal law. The legislation was inspired by a roadmap suggested by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh last month following a ruling that determined President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting automatic citizenship for certain individuals born in the United States violated the 14th Amendment.


Kavanaugh wrote a separate concurring opinion that stated that although the president’s order had conflicted with federal birthright citizenship law, Congress could amend the statute to create new exceptions, according to Fox News. Banks’ legislation would codify Trump’s 2025 executive order declaring illegal migration across the southern border an “invasion,” and change the Immigration and Nationality Act to exclude children of such “invaders.” The senator’s “Citizenship Act” legislation reads: “Any person who enters the United States without authorization or for the purpose of engaging in birth tourism is considered an invader.”

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, Trump has not given up hope that his attempt to end birthright citizenship could pass and he has called for the high court to have a rehearing on the issue. Rehearings are not unprecedented but extremely rare. “The Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship decision was an unprecedented assault on American sovereignty, and we must do whatever it takes to save our country,” Banks told Fox News. “I’m leading the Citizenship Act to reverse the effects of this consequential ruling and ensure the millions of illegal aliens that invaded our country can’t continue to exploit our immigration system.”

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It’s about control, plain and simple.

• The Digital Euro: Control and the End of Financial Privacy (Daniel Lacalle)

European Union lawmakers in Strasbourg have now agreed on their position regarding the digital euro, approving it in a vote on the 8th of July 2026. With this position, the European Parliament can start talks with national governments on the details of the design and functioning of the digital euro.


The ECB argues that the digital euro is required to preserve the benefits of cash in a digital age and protect Europe’s monetary sovereignty, while offering a fast, secure, widely accepted public means of payment. However, it is not a neutral or purely technological upgrade to Europe’s payments infrastructure. It is a political and technological project that may embed surveillance, monetary control, and fiscal dominance into the very structure of the currency.

EU lawmakers are now debating the regulation that will define the legal status, privacy framework, and holding limits of the digital euro, with the ECB openly lobbying for strong legislation to support what it calls a collective step forward for Europe. This means the most significant features, including programmability, limits, data access, and the role of commercial banks, will be decided in Brussels and Strasbourg rather than by markets or citizen demand.

The ECB sells the digital euro on four main promises: more efficient payments, greater monetary sovereignty, financial inclusion, and higher privacy than current private electronic payment systems. Not one of those claims holds up once you look at them, even briefly.

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The article says the interviewer is annoyed. I see none of that. Jagger makes sense.

• Mick Jagger Defends Elon Musk (MN)

Mick Jagger just delivered a masterclass in cutting through media spin, leaving a leftist New York Times podcaster visibly rattled as he clarified that his “mad mogul” lyric about Elon Musk was actually a compliment. The Rolling Stones legend refused to play along with the expected narrative during the interview, pushing back firmly when the host, David Marchese, presumed the line was a diss. Instead, Jagger highlighted Musk’s real-world achievements in space, crediting him with stepping up where government agencies have fallen short.

In the exchange, Jagger explained the context behind the lyric from the new Rolling Stones album Foreign Tongues. He pointed to the rescue of the stranded NASA astronauts last year, noting that Musk’s SpaceXprovided the transportation NASA couldn’t. ]Jagger told the interviewer: “It’s not nagging, but people hear one word and they don’t really listen to the line. So it’s like, ‘Mick Jagger has a go at Elon Musk.’ You’re not listening to the line, you’re only listening to ‘Musk.’ … even though I do call him mad.”

Marchese’s expression totally changed from smiling to frowning in an instant when Jagger refused to confirm the interviewer’s gleeful expectation that the singer would criticise Musk. He continued: “When I wrote that, I was thinking that because of him, they were able to get those astronauts back that were stuck because he provided the transportation because NASA couldn’t provide the transportation…” “Who would you trust to get you into space?” Jagger continued, adding “Would you trust Boeing or would you trust NASA or would you trust mad mogul Mr. Musk? It’s really a side-winding compliment because he was the one I remembered was able to do that when the others couldn’t.”

Jagger exposed how Marchese had completely misinterpreted the lyrics of the song, making him look foolish.The podcaster pressed on, noting Musk was the only person named on the album, implying significance. Jagger stood his ground, adding that “mogul doesn’t always go down well, either,” and the host again showed how one dimensional he is by suggesting “No one likes a mogul.” Jagger was clearly exhausted with the exchange as Marchese simply refused to understand what the singer was getting at.

In another recent NYT interview, Jagger contrasted his approach to performing live with Bruce Springsteen’s rabid anti-Trump activism, emphasizing that his job is to give fans a great time, not sermonize. Jagger’s nuanced expression underscores a refreshing independence in an industry often dominated by predictable elite consensus, and his clarity cuts against the grain of performative outrage. Moments like this expose the disconnect between coastal media bubbles and ground-level realities.

The Rolling Stones continue to prove their enduring relevance not by chasing trends, but by staying true to a no-nonsense ethos that prioritizes delivery over dogma. Jagger’s unapologetic take serves as a subtle rebuke to those who weaponize art for division rather than unity through great music and honest reflection. Jagger gets it – focus on what works, entertain the audience, and let results speak louder than spin. In a free society, that kind of straight talk is exactly what keeps culture vibrant against efforts to enforce conformity. https://twitter.com/Jules31415/status/2076829239265956264?s=20

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https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2076778037752869318?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 11 2026

Jul 112026
 
 July 11, 2026  Posted by at 9:24 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  35 Responses »


William-Adolphe Bouguereau La naissance de Vénus 1879


• Trump Agrees To Renewed ‘Talks’ With Iran, but Says Ceasefire Still ‘Over’ (JTN)
• Trump Reveals His Plan for If Iran Succeeds in Assassinating Him (Margolis)
• Trump Won’t Sign Landmark Housing Bill In Protest Over Stalled SAVE Act ZH)
• Kiev Behind Monaco Attack Over Tycoon’s Plan To Expose Corruption (TASS)
• Ceasefire Worst-Case Scenario For Ukraine – Zelensky’s Favorite Arms Maker (RT)
• NATO Is Spending Itself Into Oblivion (Scott Ritter)
• Russia No Longer Believes West Wants Ukraine Peace Talks – Lavrov (RT)
• ‘We Are Not At War’ – Czech PM Questions Bloc’s Ukraine Strategy (RT)
• The Men Who Own the War Now Run It (Antiwar)
• A Rubio Summit That Saves the World? (Sarah Anderson)
• Rubio Deports Convicted Rapist Protected by Walz (Turley)
• Elon Foretold – The Man Who Sold the Moon (J.R. Dunn)
• Scenario (James Howard Kunstler)
• Germany’s Debt Crisis Crescendos (Thomas Kolbe)
• What’s Driving Europe’s Auto Industry Crisis? (RT)
• RFK Jr. Plans to Create a List of Injuries Caused by COVID-19 Vaccines (ET)

 


 

https://twitter.com/ToniLL22/status/2075181070593454200?s=20 https://twitter.com/warDaniel47/status/2075319010690818300?s=20

 


 


A rich tapestry today, if I say so myself.

• Trump Agrees To Renewed ‘Talks’ With Iran, but Says Ceasefire Still ‘Over’ (JTN)

President Donald Trump on Friday announced that Iran had sought to resume peace talks with the United States and that he had agreed to do so, but would not halt combat operations in the interim. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has asked us to continue ‘talks.’ We have agreed to do so, but the United States has stated to them, in no uncertain terms, that the Cease Fire is OVER! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” he posted on Truth Social.


Trump renewed strikes on Iran this week, declaring the ceasefire over and asserting that the Iranians had not negotiated in good faith. Last month, the U.S. and Iran signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that was meant to extend the ceasefire for 60 days. The war began in February, but was in a state of nominal ceasefire for months, despite intermittent flare ups. Active hostilities resumed on both sides this week.

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“I’ve been No. 1 [on Iran’s kill list] for a long time, and it’s the way life is, you know.”Then Trump quipped, “I hope you’ll miss me.”

“That’s the way they act, and that’s the way they’ve done it for 47 years..”

• Trump Reveals His Plan for If Iran Succeeds in Assassinating Him (Margolis)

President Donald Trump knows that Iran wants to see him dead. And if by chance it succeeds, he has plans in place for what should happen next. In an exclusive interview that The New York Post published Friday, Trump revealed he has left standing orders for the U.S. military to respond to his assassination with overwhelming, unprecedented force. “I’ve been on their list for a long time. That’s what we’re dealing with,” Trump told The Post. “The only thing is, I’ve left instructions — if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before.” No big deal, just the president calmly laying out his own contingency plan for revenge from beyond the grave.


Asked about reports that Israel recently flagged fresh intelligence on a plot to kill him, Trump waved it off as nothing new. Iran has wanted him dead since 2020, when he ordered the strike that killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, and nothing about that has changed. “No, no. Israel came up with nothing. No, no,” he said. “I’ve been No. 1 [on Iran’s kill list] for a long time, and it’s the way life is, you know.”Then Trump quipped, “I hope you’ll miss me.” What a very Trump thing to say, don’t you think?

As you know, authorities have foiled multiple assassination plots against Trump since the nearly successful attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13, 2024, including the most recent one at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting back in April. So this isn’t a one-time scare. It’s an ongoing campaign.

Iran hasn’t exactly hidden its intentions lately, either. Demonstrators at the funeral for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei this week unfurled banners openly calling for Trump’s killing. One eulogist told mourners, per Iranian media, “Why shouldn’t we kill the one who killed my imam and my leader? … Trump’s killing is our duty… Why is the most despicable man in the world still alive?” That message came at the funeral of Iran’s own supreme leader, broadcast for the world to see.

Meanwhile, Trump called off the US-Iran cease-fire and their nascent memorandum of understanding after Iran fired on three ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday and Tuesday. nIn response, the president removed the US waiver on Iranian oil sanctions and launched nearly 200 strikes across Iran on Tuesday and Wednesday. Trump’s frustration with the Iranians was on full display at the NATO summit in Ankara this week, calling them “evil” for unleashing attacks in the strait despite the cease-fire and an additional promise to ramp down tensions as they buried slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Despite his efforts to make a deal with Iran, Trump openly talked in Turkey that Iran was still out to kill him. “They had leaders, they’re gone. Then they had another set of leaders, they’re gone. Now they have another set of leaders — they may be gone, who knows?” Trump said at the summit. “And you know what? I may be gone too. Because I’m their No. 1 target — it’s out all over the place. Because they’re scum.” He made clear the pattern isn’t new. “That’s the way they act, and that’s the way they’ve done it for 47 years,” Trump added.

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“If he doesn’t, it’s still law,” Johnson said last week of the president’s refusal to sign.”

• Trump Won’t Sign Landmark Housing Bill In Protest Over Stalled SAVE Act ZH)

President Donald Trump declared Friday morning that he won’t sign the sweeping bipartisan housing bill awaiting action on his desk in protest of the Senate’s failure to pass his signature elections legislation. Unless the president issues an outright veto by midnight, however, the housing package will become law Saturday without his signature.In a Friday morning Truth Social post, Trump said he was withholding his signature “in PROTEST” over the Senate’s inability to pass the SAVE America Act, a comprehensive elections overhaul that would require photo identification to vote and proof of citizenship to register, and would bar most mail-in balloting, with exceptions for military service, disability, illness and travel.

The president asserted that the elections bill is “polling at 97% with the Republican Party” – a figure he offered without citing a source – and called its failure “a serious threat to any politician who votes against it.” He renewed his demand that Senate Republicans “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER,” warning that Democrats would abolish the 60-vote rule “in their very first hour” back in power. Rendering “Democrats” throughout with a derisive misspelling, Trump added that the “title of DUMB” would revert to Republicans if the party allowed the stalemate to stand.

A Deadline, Not A Veto This is of course performative unless Trump actually vetoes it. Under the Constitution, a bill becomes law automatically if the president neither signs nor vetoes it within 10 days, excluding Sundays, while Congress is in session. That clock on the housing measure – the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act – runs out at the end of Friday. Because Congress has remained formally in session through the window, the “pocket veto” that would let the bill die quietly is widely viewed as unavailable. That leaves Trump two choices: veto the legislation outright, or let it lapse into law. His post on Friday, notably, promised only not to sign it.

A veto would face long odds. The Senate approved the package 85-5 on June 22, and the House passed it 358-32 – margins far beyond the two-thirds needed in each chamber to override. Congressional observers caution, though, that override votes can scramble such numbers, as some members retreat rather than be seen defying the president. Lawmakers overrode a Trump veto of a defense bill once before, in the final weeks of his first term. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., a close Trump ally, has already conceded the likely endgame. “If he doesn’t, it’s still law,” Johnson said last week of the president’s refusal to sign.

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”Viktor Medvedchuk says the uncovering of the schemes “would have spelt a disaster for the Kiev regime ahead of the NATO summit”

• Kiev Behind Monaco Attack Over Tycoon’s Plan To Expose Corruption (TASS)

Last week’s bombing attack in Monaco was carried out by Vladimir Zelensky’s special services as Ukrainian oligarch Vadim Yermolayev was planning to expose Kiev’s corruption schemes, Viktor Medvedchuk, head of the Different Ukraine movement and former leader of the banned Opposition Platform – For Life party, told TASS. “Western media immediately saw the link between the attack on businessmen Yermolayev and the regime of Zelensky, who sought to keep him quiet. Yermolayev was planning to address the European Parliament and explose corruption schemes in Ukraine, a scenario that would have spelt a disaster for the Kiev regime ahead of the NATO summit,” the politician explained.


Namely, active officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) have been implicated in the attack, Medvedchuk said. “The detained suspects in the murder of Anastasia Berezovskaya, 39, the individual wanted by Interpol for the attempted assassination of businessman Vadim Yermolayev in Monaco, are Ukrainian security officers,” he said. One of them, according to Medvedchuk, is Vladislav Reut, 33, a native of Zhitomir, who has served with Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR). And the other detainee is Vitaly Zhikovich, 49, from Uman, who served for Kiev Region police until 2020. “We are talking about a special operation carried out by [Ukrainian] security officers and orchestrated by the criminal regime of Zelensky,” Medvedchuk stressed.

On June 29, an explosion occurred in the entrance of an apartment building in Monaco. According to BFMTV, one of the three injured was Yermolayev, a citizen of Cyprus, whom the media included on the list of the wealthiest Ukrainian businessmen. It was reported that he owned a network of fraudulent call centers in Ukraine. Yermolayev renounced his Ukrainian citizenship in 2019. In 2023, Kiev imposed sanctions against him.

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“Reaching a truce with Russia will prompt “all” Ukrainian men to flee the country, while the West will forget Kiev, the head of corruption scandal-plagued firm Fire Point has claimed..”

• Ceasefire Worst-Case Scenario For Ukraine – Zelensky’s Favorite Arms Maker (RT)

A ceasefire with Russia would be the “worst-case scenario” for Ukraine, threatening the country’s statehood, the head of Vladimir Zelensky’s favorite arms manufacturer, Fire Point, has said. Denis Shtilerman made the remarks in an interview with Ukrainian outlet LIGAnet published on Wednesday. The company, which has recently been embroiled in a number of corruption scandals, stands to profit from the conflict. Shtilerman argued that the fighting should continue regardless, insisting that a truce with Russia would leave Ukraine in an even worse position.


He also questioned whether Kiev’s Western backers would honor any security commitments made as part of a ceasefire. “Look, if a truce is reached, it would – most regrettably – be the worst-case scenario for our state. We must remember how the US and other countries treat their obligations,” Shtilerman said. “I am talking about international agreements in which they guarantee the territorial integrity and independence of other states. And what do we see? Nothing.” Shtilerman also said Kiev would be abandoned and forgotten by its backers if a ceasefire is reached – echoing Russian officials who have warned that Ukraine is only useful for the West as a tool against Russia.

“If there is any kind of truce, we will be forgotten very quickly. There will be no investment appeal – there will be no money here. The borders will open, and all the men will leave. After that, the Russians will come in and seize the country,” Shtilerman said. Fire Point, which originally operated as a film scouting agency owned by Zelensky’s associates, has emerged as a ‘miracle’ player in Ukraine’s defense sector, producing an array of long-range drones and missiles used to strike deep into Russia. The company has been actively promoted by the Ukrainian leader during his regular overseas trips and has reportedly secured contracts worth up to $1 billion in a matter of months.

The image of the company has been damaged by the corruption scandal related to Zelensky’s inner circle and his former close associate Timur Mindich, the central figure in an alleged $100 million corruption scheme in the energy sector. Surveillance recordings recently published in Ukrainian media suggest Mindich effectively controlled Fire Point while enjoying preferential treatment from then-Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.

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“If bloc members continue to ramp up their spending, they will eat themselves from the inside, and Russia won’t have to lift a finger ..”

• NATO Is Spending Itself Into Oblivion (Scott Ritter)

On the eve of this week’s NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye, the bloc released a report titled ‘Defense Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014-2025)’. On the surface, the report shows a staggering increase in the level of defense spending by several NATO members over the course of the previous decade, with Lithuania leading the way with an increase of some 777%. In aggregate, NATO members, in seeking to meet the 2% GDP threshold for defense spending set by the US a decade ago, has seen a $1.364 trillion increase in the money invested in the militaries of the respective members over the past decade. That’s a lot of money.


Two questions emerge from this data: First (and foremost), has this increase led to any qualitative or quantitative advantage on the part of NATO over Russia? And second, can NATO members sustain this kind of growth in defense expenditures over the course of the next decade? It must be understood that the NATO of 2014 was very much an empty shell when it came to meaningful projection of military power. Over-reliant upon the US for its core defense needs since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO had become a shadow of its former self, a far cry from the cutting-edge military organization that had been built up in the decade of the 1980s.

The reality is that despite the massive increase in defense spending, NATO’s military capabilities were not advanced in any meaningful fashion over the course of the past decade. This has become evident as NATO has, in the past few years, discussed the potential of deploying military forces on Ukrainian soil as part of any peacekeeping arrangement, should the Russia-Ukraine conflict reach a negotiated conclusion. It became obvious that the ‘big three’ European powers (France, the UK, and Germany) lacked any meaningful ability to project sustainable military power of any appreciable strength into Ukraine. This remains the assessment today.

Most of NATO defense expenditure has been in the form of sustaining an aging, decrepit system out of touch with the reality of modern conflict. And to the degree modernization has taken place, it has simply replaced an aging equipment set within a legacy system tied down in Cold War-era doctrine with a newer equipment set still hamstrung by tactics and operational theory ill-suited for the modern battlefield. Germany’s ill-fated decision to create a one-off fund of €100 billion ($114 billion) in 2022 to help revive a flagging Bundeswehr stands as a case in point regarding the efficacy of much of NATO’s defense spending over the course of the past decade – by 2025 the fund had run out, with little or nothing to show for it.

Russia. Ukraine has fielded the most capable non-Russian military in Europe today, and its forces are being bled white in the kind of war of attrition NATO forces could never survive. In short, the $1.34 trillion that NATO has spent in increased defense expenditures since 2014 has left the bloc treading water. NATO’s task is to build and sustain a modern military capable of fighting a modern enemy, such as Russia.

In this, NATO has failed. The next question is can NATO spend its way out of its current predicament? On paper, the answer is a heavily caveated ‘yes’. Anything is possible, in theory, if one is willing to throw enough money at the problem. But NATO’s problems are systemic in nature and tied to events it is not in control of. NATO has found itself engaged in a proxy war with Russia that compels it to divert valuable military resources – fiscal and material – to Ukraine, which has become a giant furnace which consumes all that is fed into it without advancing the problem favorably vis-à-vis Russia.

But money doesn’t grow on trees, and at the end of the day the NATO appetite for war will far outstrip the ability of its constituent membership to pay the bill. Military industrial capacity is lacking across the board, and the costs associated with fixing this deficit are prohibitively high. So, too, are the costs associated with the kind of massive military expansions being considered by nations such as Germany, which seeks to triple the size of its armed forces by 2029.

Even if the money were available for such an endeavor, the public appetite for supporting and sustaining this kind of expanded military infrastructure is lacking. The more Germany – and by extension, Western Europe – pours into defense, the more alienated society becomes, creating domestic political problems for those seeking massive increases in defense spending. In short, NATO is spending itself into oblivion.

While Russia cannot afford to remain stagnant in the face of increased NATO defense expenditures, especially when such increases are tied to increasingly bellicose statements about the potential for war between Russia and NATO in the coming years, the fact is the NATO defense expenditure phenomenon is a self-containing problem, meaning the bloc’s ability to continue defense expenditures at the present rate of growth will more than likely lead to the political and economic collapse of the individuals and political parties which currently advocate in support of such policies. All Russia really needs to do is keep the Ukrainian furnace burning, and NATO will consume itself.

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“Moscow’s goodwill toward Western-backed negotiations has been exhausted, the foreign minister says..”

• Russia No Longer Believes West Wants Ukraine Peace Talks – Lavrov (RT)

Moscow no longer believes the West is genuinely interested in negotiating an end to the Ukraine conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Speaking at a news conference with Mozambican Foreign Minister Maria Manuela Lucas in Maputo, Lavrov accused the West of “imitating a willingness to negotiate while openly issuing ultimatums to Russia.” He argued that although the West has been calling for talks, it has spent more than a decade undermining every attempt to reach a peaceful resolution between Russia and Ukraine.


“In 2022, Russia and Ukraine had already reached a negotiated settlement. It was undermined by the very same West, openly and publicly,” Lavrov said. “We will no longer believe the West when it claims to want negotiated solutions. Our reserve of goodwill and hope has been exhausted once and for all.” Russia insists that the conflict has its roots in the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev and subsequent attempts by the new Ukrainian government to suppress the rebellion in Donbass by force. Ukraine later failed to implement the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements, which were intended to reintegrate the breakaway regions into Ukraine by granting them broad autonomy through comprehensive political reform.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande, who mediated the Minsk talks in Belarus alongside Russia, later said that Kiev used the Minsk agreements to buy time to rebuild its military and economy. Lavrov argued that their remarks show the guarantees provided by France and Germany were “false.” According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, during peace talks in Istanbul in 2022, Ukrainian negotiators initially agreed to drop plans to join NATO in favor of neutrality and to limit the country’s armed forces, but later walked away from the negotiations under pressure from then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

While Johnson denied that he sabotaged the talks, he acknowledged in a 2024 interview with the Wall Street Journal that he had “thought that any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid.” Former US Undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland similarly said in 2024 that Washington advised Ukraine to not agree to Russia’s terms in Istanbul. US-mediated negotiations have also stalled in recent months as President Donald Trump has focused on the war with Iran. Russia has said it is ready to resume the talks at any time, provided that they are focused on addressing the “root causes” of the conflict, including Ukraine’s plans to join NATO.

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“Escalation against Russia does not guarantee a peaceful resolution, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis has warned..”

• ‘We Are Not At War’ – Czech PM Questions Bloc’s Ukraine Strategy (RT)

The Czech Republic remains skeptical about NATO’s strategy of continued military support for Ukraine, to which it does not contribute financially, Prime Minister Andrej Babis said as he left the bloc leaders’ summit in Ankara, Türkiye on Wednesday. Babis’ party won last year’s election on a nationalist platform that included reversing the Ukraine aid policy championed by his predecessor, Petr Fiala, and urging a diplomatic resolution of the conflict with Russia instead. The declaration approved by NATO leaders in Ankara this week highlighted a pledge of €70 billion ($80 billion) in military equipment, assistance and training for Ukraine in 2026, with a similar amount expected the following year.


Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis speaks to press ahead of a NATO summit in Ankara. July 8


The money is not a new package, but rather past commitments, including the European Union’s “loan” approved in April. The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia opted out of the mechanism.”We are not at war. Ukraine is at war,” Babis told reporters on Wednesday, when asked whether NATO’s increasing spending would pressure Moscow to negotiate, adding, “I don’t know, time will tell.” The prime minister said discussions during the summit focused on weapons rather than peace.Babis said the Czech Republic intended to reach the required NATO level of 2% of GDP level for military spending next year, but also needed money for healthcare, raising police salaries, and other domestic priorities.

Kremlin calls US backing of Ukrainian escalation delusional
Ukraine is seeking additional Western funding to ramp up long-range kamikaze drone attacks on Russian oil refineries, tankers and other targets. During a US-Ukrainian meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed the escalation “creates the space to negotiate the end of this war,” with President Donald Trump endorsing his reasoning. Commenting on the American remarks on Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the US leadership was basing its policy on “delusions that escalation and military pressure leads to a peaceful settlement track.” The a proach may prolong hostilities, but would also prompt Russia to “create a bigger buffer zone” with Ukraine, he warned.

Czech coalition strained by aid payment
The aid issue caused tensions in the Czech ruling coalition just before the summit, after Foreign Minister Petr Macinka announced the transfer of an unspecified sum to PURL, a NATO fund through which European members pay for American weapons intended for Kiev. Parliament speaker Tomio Okamura, a vocal critic of Ukraine, blasted the move for going against the coalition agreement, but Babis sided with Macinka, saying the money had been allocated by the Fiala government and could not be returned to the budget. The prime minister said the one-off small contribution to purchase interceptor drones was preferable to a direct transfer to the Ukrainian government.

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“The private-equity takeover of the Pentagon..”

• The Men Who Own the War Now Run It (Antiwar)

There was a time when the arms dealer waited in the corridor. He financed the campaign, endowed the think tank, took the general to dinner, and hoped the man inside the office would remember him when the contract came up. The wall between the money and the decision was thin, often corrupt, but it was there. Someone held the public trust, and someone else tried to buy it, and you could at least tell the two apart. That wall is gone. The financier no longer waits in the corridor. He holds the office. He signs the checks. He is the buyer and the seller, the regulator and the regulated, the public interest and the private portfolio, fused into a single man in a single suit, and the arrangement is entirely legal, which is the whole problem.


One of these men may already be familiar from a previous article. His name is Friedrich Merz.

The chancellor was the warm-up act
From 2016 to 2020, Merz chaired the supervisory board of BlackRock’s German arm, the local office of the largest pool of private capital on earth – a fact confirmed, without embarrassment, by his own party’s foundation. Then he climbed back into politics, and in March 2025, as chancellor-in-waiting, he drove through the outgoing Bundestag — deliberately before the newly elected parliament could convene – the constitutional amendment that exempted defense spending from Germany’s debt brake. The borrowing limit Germans had treated as sacred since 2009 was gone. German military spending rose 24 percent in a single year to $114 billion, the largest in NATO Europe, and BlackRock held stakes in the very contractors – Rheinmetall, Hensoldt – that the money would flow toward.

He broke no law. He simply spent four years learning, from the inside, how the machinery paid out, and then went and pulled the lever. The arrangement was a particular kind that no scandal quite captures, because nothing in it is hidden. It sits in plain view, in regulatory filings and procurement requests, and it works precisely because everyone involved can say, truthfully, that they broke no rule. It reads as a German problem only until you cross the Atlantic. There the same face turns up in an American suit, several of them, installed not adjacent to the war machine but at its controls.

The banker who became the Navy
Consider John Phelan, who until March 2025 had no connection to the military beyond a seat on a charity board. His career was money: he co-founded MSD Capital, the private investment firm that managed the personal fortune of Michael Dell, and later founded his own firm, Rugger Management. He gave Trump’s joint fundraising committee $834,600 in April 2024. Months later he was nominated to run the United States Navy, and in March he was confirmed, handed a $263.5 billion budget and command of nearly a million sailors and Marines.

Before his confirmation, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to him about the obvious. He had recently earned over $5 million in capital gains from Palantir, a defense-software contractor that took in $541 million from the Pentagon in fiscal 2024 alone, and whose relationships Phelan’s own acquisition vehicle had once advertised. She asked him to divest his defense holdings and to recuse himself, for four years, from matters touching his former clients and employers, noting that a dozen Biden appointees had voluntarily gone beyond what the ethics laws required. Phelan declined to make the stronger commitment. He was confirmed anyway, 62 to 30, with eleven Democrats joining every Republican in the room.

The man overseeing the Navy’s shipbuilding budget was, weeks earlier, a private investor with money in the companies the Navy buys from. Nobody hid it. It was printed in his disclosures and read aloud at his hearing, and it changed nothing.

The private-equity takeover of the Pentagon
Phelan is the modest case. The full expression of the thing sits one floor up, in the office of the deputy secretary of defense, where Stephen Feinberg runs the day-to-day of the entire department. Feinberg co-founded Cerberus Capital Management and led it for thirty-three years; in his own sworn testimony to the Senate he put the firm’s portfolio at over $65 billion. He was a major Trump donor, and by the time he was confirmed in March 2025 he was, at a listed minimum net worth of $2 billion, the wealthiest official in the administration. What he has built since is not influence over the Pentagon. It is ownership of its investment arm.

Feinberg has surrounded himself with a circle of advisers drawn from his old firm. The group includes former Cerberus managing director John Gallagher and a deal team led by Cerberus alumnus George Kollitides – who was, until 2015, chairman and chief executive of Remington, the gunmaker Cerberus owned. Industry executives nicknamed the squad “Deal Team Six,” a joke on the SEAL unit that killed bin Laden, and Kollitides told a Milken Institute audience he found the name both fun and fitting while explaining that economic warfare has been a part of all successful nations for thousands of years. A Stanford professor watching this described it plainly: private equity has just acquired its largest organization.

The organization it acquired writes checks the size of nations. Under Feinberg, the Pentagon stopped merely buying weapons and began buying companies. It took a $400 million preferred-equity stake in the rare-earth miner MP Materials, enough to make the United States government the firm’s largest single shareholder at roughly 15 percent – ahead, as it happens, of BlackRock. It put $1 billion into an L3Harris rocket-motor unit slated to go public in 2026. Stakes in Trilogy Metals, Vulcan Elements, and ReElement Technologies followed, a portfolio that a group of House members warned was locking federal policy to the fortunes of individual firms – picking winners, and by definition creating losers.

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“.. some European officials are questioning why they were even invited, as they don’t see left-wing terrorism as a threat to their countries..”

• A Rubio Summit That Saves the World? (Sarah Anderson)

I didn’t receive an invitation and most of you probably didn’t either, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invited the foreign ministers and other senior officials from over 60 countries to Washington, D.C. next week for a summit. The goal? To combat the “resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism,” according to Washington Post reporters who say they saw documents related to the matter. The documents make it “clear that the focus is on ‘far-left terrorists,’ who, the note says, are ‘increasingly turning to organized, deadly violence to advance their political objectives.'” As the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reports, “In recent years, the United States has seen an increase in the number of left-wing terrorism attacks and plots.” In 2025, far-left terrorist attacks outnumbered those from the far-right. Here’s more:


More contentious politics in the United States and the expansion of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement appear to have reenergized violent left-wing extremists. The left-wing movement as a whole has not returned to its violent heights of the 1960s and 1970s, but the number of terrorist incidents involving left-wing extremists so far this year puts 2025 on pace to be the left’s most violent year in more than three decades. Moreover, 2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber those from the far right.

Unlike the highly structured far-left groups of the past, modern far-left and anarchist extremism relies heavily on decentralized, cross-border networking that is often organized online. Both U.S. and European intelligence agencies have pointed to growing coordination between decentralized Antifa and Antifa-like networks and European autonomous groups, especially surrounding major global events. This often leads to riots, arson, attacks on law enforcement, attacks on infrastructure and symbols of capitalism, and destruction of public and private property. News of the summit comes after the Trump administration released its counterterrorism strategy in May of this year.

While the strategy prioritizes hemispheric threats, like cartels, gangs, and other designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations that operate in the Americas, as well as Islamic terrorist groups, our national counterterrorism activities will also “prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent. We will do the same with the state sponsors of such groups and those governments undertaking lethal plots on U.S. soil or against Americans anywhere.”

But it sounds like we’re not stopping here at home. This ministerial Rubio is hosting will help strengthen cooperation in intelligence-sharing and law enforcement between nations that want to eradicate crime. The countries included in the invitations were most of Europe, some of Asia, and many nations from the Western Hemisphere.

Of course, as with anything the Trump administration does, there is some blowback. According to the Washington Post, some European officials are questioning why they were even invited, as they don’t see left-wing terrorism as a threat to their countries. Domestically, there is some concern that expanding counterterrorism activities against these groups could create a slippery slope for dealing with political activists, as well as create an opportunity for the next Democrat who becomes president to go after conservatives, even though the Trump administration’s strategy specifically states, “our counterterrorism powers will not be used to target our fellow Americans who simply disagree with us.”

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said that far-left terrorism is “an old threat re-emerging with strong transnational links and new convergences,” according to the Post. He added, “Because this threat has not been adequately addressed in the past, each engagement, designation, or security assistance program creates a compounding effect supporting countermeasures at home and abroad.” Now, Trump and Rubio are attempting to adequately address it.

Does this sound ambitions? Yes. Is it necessary? Also, yes. It’s about time someone treats left-wing extremism and chaos as the transnational threat that it is. And if Rubio and Donald Trump’s Shield of the Americas summit in March was any indicator, this won’t be just some boring diplomatic meeting that’s all talk and no action. We’ve seen the Shield in action several times in just a few short months. It will be interesting to see exactly who shows up to this summit next week.

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“.. repeatedly raping a 10-year-old girl: “a cultural thing.” “It’s a Constitutional Thing”

Thanks Marco. Screw you, Walz.

• Rubio Deports Convicted Rapist Protected by Walz (Turley)

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has failed in his extraordinary effort to protect a Laotian rapist from deportation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has confirmed that he revoked Tue Lue Vang’s legal status and removed him from the United States. After repeatedly raping a 10-year-old girl between 2002 and 2004, Vang insisted it was “a cultural thing.” Well, this is a “constitutional thing” that the Secretary of State, not the Governor of Minnesota, determines who may remain in the United States after such a serious offense.


He was convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. A Department of Justice (DOJ) Immigration Judge issued Vang a final order of removal on October 31, 2006 after his conviction. Minnesota’s Board of Pardons, composed of Walz, state Attorney General Keith Ellison, and state Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, granted his clemency. (They noted that the victim wrote a letter on his behalf.) They also pardoned another Laotian criminal illegal alien — a convicted armed robber — before he could be deported. At the time, Walz wrongly referred to Vang as a “citizen”:

“I can find no reason how Minnesota will be safer or better if Mr. Vang is deported to a country he has not been to since he was a child.I do not see how it would serve his family, nor the economic interest where we have a taxpaying citizen who is creating job growth and living a life free from any criminal activity. Rubio told Fox News: “Just weeks ago, a foreign child rapist was freed to once again endanger America’s children after receiving a pardon from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Tue Lue Vang admitted to committing heinous crimes against a 10-year-old girl in Minnesota. He attempted to pay his victim for her silence and dismissed his acts of child abuse as a ‘minor thing.’

Just days before he was scheduled to be deported, the Minnesota Governor pardoned him, setting him free to endanger American families once again.” He added, “Americans should never have to live in fear that foreign sex predators — shielded from deportation by their own elected officials — could endanger them or their children.” Vang was convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He repeatedly raped the girl between 2002 and 2004, and told authorities after he was arrested that “it is a cultural thing…to marry and have sex with girls as young as 12.” Rubio told Fox News Digital, “Americans should never have to live in fear that foreign sex predators — shielded from deportation by their own elected officials — could endanger them or their children.”

Vang’s use of Laotian culture was notable for some of us who have spoken or written about “the cultural defense.” I have long drawn the line in the use of the cultural defense on such violent acts. However, troubling outliers remain in the cases. In January 1985, Japanese immigrant Fumiko Kimura tried to commit oyako-shinju (or parent-child suicide) after learning of her husband’s infidelity. She walked her infant daughter and 4-year-old son in the frigid ocean off Santa Monica. The children drowned, but she was rescued. While she had lived in the United States for some 14 years, she claimed the cultural defense (even though oyako-shinju is illegal in Japan). She was successful.

Kimura received just one year in jail and five years’ probation. She then reunited with her husband. There have been several cases involving “marriage by capture.” We have had some cases related to the custom of zij poj niam, particularly in relation to the Hmong culture, where a man abducts a woman he intends to marry and takes her to his family home. The woman is expected to resist as a sign of her virtue. In a prior case, Kong Moua, a Hmong tribesman, drove to the Fresno City College campus and kidnapped a young woman from her job in the student finance office. She took her to his cousin’s house, but the Hmong woman did not believe in the cultural practice and called police.

Charged with rape and kidnapping, the defense successfully claimed the cultural defense. It secured a lesser charge of false imprisonment, and then the judge sentenced Kong Moua to just 120 days in jail and fined him $1,000, with only $900 of that going to the victim as reparations. It is unclear whether Vang was making such a claim, but most judges would reject it. The effort by Walz to keep him in the United States was equally dubious as a constitutional matter.

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“How did a popular American writer of the 1940s come up with a novel that accurately portrayed the activities and historical role of Elon Musk as a pioneer in the exploitation of space?”

• Elon Foretold – The Man Who Sold the Moon (J.R. Dunn)

Nobody in the 1850s ever wrote a novel about a man who changes society by figuring out how to mass-produce horseless carriages. Similarly, nobody a century later wrote the story of the man who turns the world upside down by building miniature electronic brains in his garage. So how did a popular American writer of the 1940s come up with a novel that accurately portrayed the activities and historical role of Elon Musk as a pioneer in the exploitation of space? That man was Robert A. Heinlein, and his book, published in 1950, was titled The Man Who Sold the Moon.


Sci-fi has largely been a despised and dismissed genre, with some reason. It started out as pure pulp (at least in this country; in the UK, largely thanks to H.G. Wells, it was a serious and respected genre, with most writers producing a sci-fi novel at one time or another). The prose in U.S. sci-fi was subliterate. Characterization was nonexistent, consisting of types – the eccentric scientist, the stalwart space skipper, the evil space pirate, etc. Plots were minimal at best. The writers were either nerds or hacks. The editors were bottom of the barrel, and the readers didn’t care. (They still don’t.) The genre needed a serious shake-up, and at the beginning of the 1940s, that’s just what it got.

Robert A. Heinlein was a former naval officer, ex-mine owner, and ex-political operative forced into writing by illness. He was the farthest thing in the world from a hack. Internationally traveled, vastly erudite in a number of fields, and widely read, Heinlein was well aware of the stagnant status of sci-fi. John W. Campbell, editor of the unfortunately named Astounding Science Fiction, had long been on the watch for a writer capable of breaking up the logjam in the field. Heinlein filled that role and more. Within months, he was leading the genre. Within a couple of years, the primitives were gone, and those who remained were trying to match Heinlein.

As a writer, Heinlein was methodical – both in artistic and professional senses. He was devoted to realism, no easy trick when writing sci-fi. He dropped the generic space-opera settings of the 30s, instead compiling a chart of possible historical events involving the U.S. over the next two centuries to serve as a consistent background for his work. Heinlein later said that he simply extrapolated current trends into the future. All the same, the accuracy of some of the chart’s predictions is spooky. One prime example: the 1960s is labeled “The Crazy Years.”

The Man Who Sold the Moon was one of the keystone novels of the Future History sequence. It dealt with a 21st-century business magnate named Delos D. Harriman, who is convinced that exploitation of space is the next step and intends to put the U.S. on the moon in a big way. In this fictional world – so unlike our own – there is activity in space, but it’s limited strictly to Earth orbit. (I’m not sure that they have a space station that enables Democrat pols to take publicity trips.)

Harriman liquidates his holdings and obtains loans and contributions from other businessmen, using every possible goad and gimmick. (In one case, he shows up at the office of a commie-hating executive wearing a hammer-and-sickle button on his lapel: “From where you’re sitting, this is the exact size of the moon seen from earth.”) He oversees every aspect of the project from the design of the rocket to the training of the crew, overcoming obstacles, fighting lawsuits and government interference.

Harriman is up to his ears in debt, under fire over various scams he’s pulled along the way (One concerns USPO envelopes supposed to be canceled on the moon to be sold to collectors that may or may not have actually been on the ship. This will bring a smile of recognition to those who recall the Apollo 15 postage “scandal.”) At last, the rocket is ready. It lifts off, headed for the bright strand of Lune. …and it all goes perfectly. The ship lands, spends a short time on the surface, and returns to Earth, to the expected outcry from cranks claiming it was all a hoax. But Harriman pays no attention. He’s completing an even larger rocket, one that will set up an actual base on the lunar surface.

The book ends with Harriman watching that one lift off. He’d wanted to be aboard himself, but corporate board members, with so much investment money riding on the program’s success, wouldn’t allow it. Harriman was the key man, and if he was lost, everything else would go with him. There would be many other flights, and he would surely be aboard one of those…. But one of his associates, watching him, whispers, “He reminds me of Moses, gazing out over the promised land.” Moses, of course, never entered Israel himself, only resting his eyes on it from a distance.

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“Witness list expanding in multi -conspiracy probe out of Fort Pierce. . . .” Paul Sperry, Real Clear investigations.

• Scenario (James Howard Kunstler)

Seth Rich, when he was alive, at his leisure
The scene: February of 2027, a federal courtroom in Stuart (Martin County), Florida, the third day of trial in the RussiaGate matter. Defendants seated on the right (from the judge’s vantage) are so numerous they require two tables, including John Brennan, James Comey, James Clapper, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, Strzok & Page, Bruce Ohr, Lisa Monaco, Mary McCord, Christopher Wray, Marc Elias, and seven other former federal officials.


Former President Barack Obama and former Sec’y of State Hillary Clinton, named as “unindicted co-conspirators,” are not present in the courtroom for the sake of decorum. Former MI6 agent, the slippery Christopher Steele, purveyor of the infamous “dossier,” is on-the-lam, whereabouts unknown. The charges against the bunch are Seditious Conspiracy (18 U.S. Code § 2384), Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice (18 U.S.C. §§ 1503, 1512, 1519), Conspiracy Against Rights / Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law (18 U.S.C. §§ 241, 242), Perjury (18 U.S.C. § 1621), Concealment (18 U.S.C. § 1001).

At 10:00 a.m., a “surprise” witness is ushered into the room. Gasps erupt from all angles. The witness is immediately identified by his snow-white hair and beard. Everybody sees it is Julian Assange. He is a surprise witness for security reasons. He has been flown from Sydney to New Delhi to Frankfurt, and finally to Miami in a US government airplane, the lone passenger.

Recall: in June 2024, Assange reached a plea deal with the US DOJ: guilty on one count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defense information. He was sentenced to sixty-two months (time served), crediting the approximately five years he had already spent in Britain’s Belmarsh prison while fighting extradition — but not counting the six years and ten months he was holed-up before that in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. There was no additional jail time, supervision, or financial penalty.

Assange is sworn and seated, led through preliminary questions as to his identity, place of residence, his former occupation running the news service known as Wikileaks, blah blah. The prosecuting federal attorney will now turn to the subject of one Seth Rich — remember him? The twenty-seven-year-old was working for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2016 as Voter Expansion Data Director. At 4:00 a.m. July 10, 2016, Rich was found dead, shot twice in the back, on Flagler Place NW, in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in what police called “a botched robbery.”

Rather bizarrely from a police procedural standpoint, Rich’s wallet, stuffed with money, his watch, and his cell phone remained on his person. Only his laptop was taken in the “robbery.” It has been a “cold,” unsolved case all these years. Sometime before the murder, as early as Spring 2016, well before the Democratic party’s nominating convention, Assange’s Wikileaks received a large packet of information containing as many as 58,000 emails hacked out of the account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

The emails detailed many curious machinations inside the DNC that year, including sketchy efforts underway to derail Clinton’s rival, Bernie Sanders, excerpts from Clinton’s paid private Wall Street speeches (e.g., to Goldman Sachs), references to Clinton’s health problems, her private email server issue, various Clinton foundation dealings, and a lot of strange chatter about “pizza” and other mundane food items that would eventually spawn the “PizzaGate” story alluding to alleged child sex cult activities centered around John Podesta and his brother Tony. It was quite a juicy load. But Wikileaks sat on it until just before the election. That spring and summer, Hillary was already laboring under the scandal about the private email server she had set up in her suburban Chappaqua, NY, home.

She had apparently used it casually when she ran the State Department to conduct official government business, including classified information, instead of her official government email address. That itself was against the law, apart from what else the content of the Podesta email trove revealed. The FBI had been working the server case that spring, and just weeks before the convention, FBI Director Jim Comey made a big public show of exonerating Hillary, declaring incorrectly that he declined to prosecute — since it is not the FBI’s job to prosecute, only investigate, and for the DOJ to actually decide whether to prosecute. But he did add for the record that her doings had been “extremely careless.”

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“As Germany’s public debt expands, the dynamics of its sovereign bond market are beginning to change.”

• Germany’s Debt Crisis Crescendos (Thomas Kolbe)

As Germany’s public debt expands, the dynamics of its sovereign bond market are beginning to change. On Wednesday, the placement of new German government debt came close to failure for the first time. Only the intervention of Germany’s Finance Agency prevented a more serious outcome. Germany’s descent into the league of heavily indebted nations is unfolding at breathtaking speed. A brief chronology of recent events illustrates the trend. Last Friday, Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil presented the key parameters of the federal budget for 2027. Federal spending is set to increase by €30 billion to €555 billion, roughly six percent more than the previous year. Unsurprisingly, the country’s borrowing requirements are rising at a similar pace.


On Monday, the minister spoke at length about supposedly advanced fiscal consolidation efforts. Taken in its original meaning, fiscal consolidation implies placing meaningful constraints on excessive government spending and at least slowing the pace of fiscal deterioration. Wednesday’s events in the bond market demonstrated precisely the opposite. What happened around midday was close to unprecedented in modern German public finance. During the auction of new federal bonds, Germany came dangerously close to a failed issuance. Only the intervention of the German Finance Agency, the institution responsible for issuing federal debt, prevented a more severe market signal.

What happened? bSeeking additional liquidity, Germany attempted to issue €6 billion of ten-year federal bonds. Under normal circumstances, such auctions are routine affairs. Pension funds, insurers, banks and hedge funds require high-quality sovereign debt to manage their balance sheets and diversify portfolios.This auction proved very different. At a yield of 3.09 percent, bids totaled only €4.022 billion. Ultimately, merely €3.902 billion was actually allocated. Roughly €2.1 billion, around 35 percent of the intended issuance, remained unsold, forcing the Finance Agency itself to absorb the excess supply temporarily.

Had the auction failed outright, the consequences could have been considerably more severe. A failed sovereign auction sends a powerful shock signal through financial markets and can trigger broader bond sell-offs and sharp increases in borrowing costs. That this did not occur is largely thanks to institutions such as the German Finance Agency and the European Central Bank — the intervention fire brigade of European capital markets — which can temporarily mask unsustainable fiscal policies by absorbing excess sovereign debt.

The auction’s bid-to-cover ratio, measuring demand relative to supply, fell to a worrying 0.7. Nor was this the first problematic auction in July. Already on July 1, Germany’s issuance of seven-year federal bonds encountered similar difficulties. In that case as well, the Finance Agency intervened by retaining roughly one quarter of the offering instead of the customary ten percent normally withheld to provide liquidity in the secondary market. Primary Dealers, which constitute the first line of absorption for newly issued sovereign debt within the euro area’s financial architecture, were evidently unwilling to absorb the full volume.

Could this represent the first signs of growing market turbulence caused by Germany’s rapidly expanding debt burden? By the end of this year, Germany’s official debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to approach 70 percent. Including the government’s various off-budget special funds, the effective figure already moves toward 80 percent. Unfunded liabilities embedded in Germany’s social insurance systems — particularly the statutory pension system — amount to several multiples of annual GDP.

None of this is extraordinary in today’s world of highly indebted governments. The United States currently carries a debt ratio near 125 percent of GDP. However, the world’s largest economy possesses considerably greater economic resilience than Germany, whose competitiveness has been weakened by years of costly energy policies. Globally, average sovereign debt now stands around 95 percent of GDP, roughly comparable to the euro area.

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The final solution: “..the bloc plans to phase out new petrol and diesel cars by 2035..”

Europe had a great car industry for 100 years.

• What’s Driving Europe’s Auto Industry Crisis? (RT)

European carmakers are facing one of the toughest crises in their history. Plant closures, layoffs, and shrinking profits have become increasingly common as Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers continue to expand their global footprint. German luxury carmaker Porsche has become the latest victim. The company is expected to cut an additional 4,000 jobs, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported on Monday. In March, the sports car manufacturer reported a 93% drop in operating profits following a costly pivot away from its long-term EV strategy.


But these setbacks are only part of the story. Behind them lies a combination of soaring energy costs, mounting regulatory pressure, shifting supply chains, and intensifying international competition that is reshaping one of the region’s most important industries. Since the Covid-19 pandemic and the global semiconductor shortage, European carmakers have been battered by weakening consumer demand and persistently high production costs, largely driven by elevated energy prices. The slump is evident in sales. Across the EU, new car registrations in 2025 remained nearly 30% below 2019 levels, while the UK market also failed to recover to its pre-pandemic performance.

At the same time, expensive energy has left European manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage compared with many rivals in Asia and North America. The strain is already triggering deep restructuring across the industry. Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW have announced job cuts and cost-cutting measures; Stellantis has reduced output at several European plants, particularly in Italy; Renault is continuing its restructuring in France; and the UK has seen factory closures as manufacturers struggle to contain rising costs.

Which countries have been hardest hit?
The crisis is weighing most heavily on countries where the automotive industry is a major source of jobs and economic growth. In 2019, the sector supported around 13.8 million jobs – 6.1% of total EU employment – and accounted for more than 7% of the bloc’s GDP. Germany has been hit hardest, with the industry shedding around 125,000 jobs since 2019. In France, automotive employment has fallen by roughly a third since 2010, dropping from about 425,000 to fewer than 290,000 workers. In Italy, the wider manufacturing sector has lost more than 103,000 jobs since 2008, while a further 12,650 automotive positions are considered at risk.

Spain also remains heavily reliant on vehicle exports, while the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary are even more exposed, with much of their industrial output dependent on foreign-owned carmakers. As a result, even relatively small production cuts can have an outsized impact on jobs and regional economies. Outside the EU, the UK also remains vulnerable. Although its automotive sector is smaller, it still supports around 200,000 manufacturing jobs and some 800,000 positions across the wider industry.

How much of the problem stems from energy prices?
Energy costs have become one of the key structural pressures on Europe’s auto industry. After the disruption of traditional energy flows, the shift away from relatively cheap Russian pipeline gas has increased reliance on more expensive alternatives, including liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from the US. For an energy-intensive sector such as automotive production – where steel, aluminium, chemicals, and battery materials are essential inputs – this has raised costs across the entire value chain.

The impact extends beyond final assembly plants. Suppliers of metals, plastics, and battery cells have also faced higher input costs, feeding through into vehicle prices and squeezing manufacturers’ margins. This is particularly significant for electric vehicles, which depend on energy-intensive battery production and raw material processing. Combined with competition from regions with lower energy costs, this has eroded one of Europe’s traditional advantages: cheap and stable industrial energy. As a result, energy has shifted from a competitive strength to a persistent headwind for European automakers.

Why are European carmakers losing ground to China? Europe’s weakening position in the global auto market is increasingly linked to the rise of China as the leading EV powerhouse. Chinese manufacturers have scaled up production rapidly, supported by fully integrated domestic battery supply chains – from raw materials processing to cell manufacturing – giving them a structural cost advantage over European rivals.

A vast domestic market also allows Chinese firms to produce at far larger volumes, lowering unit costs and speeding up innovation. By contrast, Europe’s market is fragmented across multiple countries and regulatory systems. European automakers also face higher production costs, particularly for energy and labor, alongside heavier regulatory requirements linked to emissions targets and industrial policy. According to the International Energy Agency, China produced 12.4 million electric cars in 2024, compared with 2.4 million in the EU and around 80,000 in the UK – roughly five times the combined European output.

The green transition impact
Under EU climate policy, automakers must meet increasingly strict COC emissions targets, while the bloc plans to phase out new petrol and diesel cars by 2035. This has forced manufacturers to invest heavily in EV platforms, battery plants, software, and factory upgrades well before these investments generate returns. The UK is following a similar path through its Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate, requiring rising EV sales ahead of a 2030 ban on new internal combustion engine vehicles.

The pressure has been amplified by slower-than-expected EV adoption across Europe. As demand lags behind targets, automakers are caught between costly EV investments and continued reliance on petrol and diesel models to sustain profits. Several carmakers warn that both EU rules and the UK s ZEV targets risk moving faster than consumer demand. Critics say regulation has outpaced market readiness, while supporters argue that slowing the transition would leave Europe trailing in the global shift to clean mobility.

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Vague.

• RFK Jr. Plans to Create a List of Injuries Caused by COVID-19 Vaccines (ET)

Health officials are proposing a plan to clarify which COVID-19 vaccine side effects would be eligible for government financial compensation, according to a new notice. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and one of its divisions said in a description of a proposed rule released on July 1 that they plan to establish an injury table for COVID-19 vaccines through the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).


“The Table will list and explain injuries that, based on compelling, reliable, valid, medical, and scientific evidence, are presumed to be caused by covered COVID-19 countermeasures, and set forth the time periods in which the onset of these injuries must occur after the administration or use of these covered COVID-19 countermeasures,” a summary of the rule, which has not been made public, stated. COVID-19 vaccines fall under the CICP because previous health secretaries declared and extended emergency declarations for COVID-19, which opened up the option of emergency clearance of vaccines and other countermeasures under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who just announced that he was ending the emergency declaration, is authorized under the declarations to provide benefits to people injured by the vaccines under the act, HHS officials noted in the proposal summary. “Under the leadership of Secretary Kennedy, HHS is restoring transparency and accountability because the American people deserve clear, evidence-based information about both the benefits and the known risks associated with medical countermeasures,” an HHS spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email. The spokesperson said that more information will be available when the notice is published in the Federal Register.

Aaron Siri, Kennedy’s former lawyer, wrote to Kennedy in 2025, urging him to create a COVID-19 vaccine-injury table. He pointed to the readiness and preparedness law, which states that the health secretary “shall by regulation establish a table identifying covered injuries that shall be presumed to be directly caused by the administration or use of a covered countermeasure.” An injury table would help people injured by vaccines apply successfully to the congressionally created program, which requires “compelling, reliable, valid, medical, and scientific evidence” that an injury was a direct result of a countermeasure, Siri wrote on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, which advocates for government transparency and change.

“A well-constructed injury table is needed for the CICP,” Richard Hughes IV, a former Moderna executive who is representing health groups in litigation against the administration that has halted some of its changes to vaccine guidance, told The Epoch Times in an email. “The real question is whether this administration would promulgate such a table or weaponize it to further platform misinformation.” Dr. Joel Wallskog, who suffered the neurological disorder transverse myelitis and other issues from COVID-19 vaccination and has sued the government over the CICP, told The Epoch Times in an email that the HHS proposal “is more appearance than substance.”

“It appears to do little more than streamline the process for the relatively small number of individuals whose injuries—primarily anaphylaxis and myocarditis/pericarditis—are already recognized under the current system,” added Wallskog, also the co-chair of the React19 nonprofit, which offers support to people injured by COVID-19 vaccines. “For everyone else who has been denied, nothing changes.” Erica Samp, who says she was injured by a COVID-19 vaccine, said in a post on X that she supported the plan but that she’s watching to see what details are included, including the covered injuries.

The CICP is both administered and adjudicated by HHS officials. It has compensated some people who have said COVID-19 vaccination caused health issues, but rejected others, including people such as Wallskog, whom doctors diagnosed as being injured by COVID-19 vaccines, The Epoch Times previously reported.

The CICP has, through June, compensated 60 COVID-19 vaccine injury claims, nearly all for myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation. The average compensation has been $4,000, aside from a few large payments, and about 99 percent of applications have been rejected. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said in 2024 that COVID-19 vaccines definitely cause myocarditis and shoulder injuries, but that other possible harms could not be conclusively linked to the shots. Some outside organizations, such as React19, have said that the available evidence supports a link between the vaccines and additional problems.

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Debt Rattle June 28 2026

Jun 282026
 
 June 28, 2026  Posted by at 9:56 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  25 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn Belshazzar’s feast 1635-38


• The Shooting in the Strait Ain’t over, But… (Larry Johnson)
• Iran Launches Drone Attack Targeting Bahrain (JTN)
• Why is The Ukraine War Hardest to End? (CTH)
• Zelensky Telegraphs 40-Day Pressure Offensive On Russia (ZH)
• Ukraine Closes Week Of Drone Attacks On Russia By Hitting Weapons Plant (ZH)
• Democratic Establishment Accuses Socialists of Exploiting Ballot Access (JTN)
• One Democrat — and Only One — Has Had Enough of the Commies (Robert Spencer)
• The Obama Halo Is Starting to Flicker. Finally! (David Manney)
• When Extremists Run the Government (J.B. Shurk)
• Culture of Grievance- When Victimhood Becomes Social Currency (Brooks)
• Bookmark and Reference Point – June 2026 (CTH)
• Volkswagen To Slash 100,000 Jobs (RT)

 


 

https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2070611688009703759?s=20

 


 


Can Trump still avoid the war?

• The Shooting in the Strait Ain’t over, But… (Larry Johnson)

A little over a week since the US and Iran signed the MoU, some ships that had been trapped in the Persian rushed to travel through the corridor, with many trying to use an alternative route on the southern side of the Strait along the Omani coast. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) had coordinated this alternative routing with Oman – hugging the UAE and Musandam Peninsula coastline, avoiding the central passage that Iran had mined. This route was significant because it bypassed Iran’s designated corridor entirely, which ran closer to Iranian territorial waters.


However, Iran and Oman agreed on a new framework (joint working group) for the future administration of the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, June 24, 2026. The two countries agreed to establish a joint working group between their foreign ministries to discuss: Future navigation rules and administration of the strait. Services provided (e.g., safety, pilotage). Associated costs (in accordance with international standards). Both emphasized their sovereignty over their territorial waters in the strait.

The naval arm of the Revolutionary Guard issued a warning Thursday against using the new route. In a statement carried by Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency, naval officials said the route was established without notice or coordination with Iran, calling it “unacceptable and completely dangerous.” According to the IRGC: “The only authorized route for passing through the Strait of Hormuz is the one declared by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Vessel traffic outside these routes is extremely dangerous and prohibited. Violators will be dealt with.” The day before, the Guard had threatened one tanker over the radio, with a soldier warning “You are in range of my missiles and maybe (I) fire on you,” according to the private security firm Ambrey.

On Thursday the Ever Lovely, a Singapore-flagged ship operating in the fleet of Taiwan-based Evergreen Marine, attempted to transit the strait using a narrow channel near the coast of Oman in accordance with a route organized by the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) security monitor. The Ever Lovely was struck by a drone belonging to Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iran allegedly shot at least four drones at ships traveling through the Strait on Thursday. One of those hit the upper deck of the Ever Lovely. On Friday, the US attacked Iran in ‘response’ to strikes on the commercial vessel in Strait of Hormuz a day earlier:

Iran’s IRIB reported that an explosion was heard at 11:15 pm at the Taheroui pier in Sirik. A military source said the blasts were caused by a projectile hitting the pier area, adding that around five hours earlier, several warning shots had been fired from Sirik toward violating vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. Reports also indicated that two warning missiles were fired earlier from around Karpan toward the strait. US Central Command said its forces carried out strikes against Iran on 26 June in response to Iran’s attack the previous day on the Singapore-flagged cargo ship M/V Ever Lovely as it exited the Strait of Hormuz along the Omani coast. CENTCOM said US aircraft targeted Iranian missile and drone storage sites and coastal radar positions after the vessel was hit by a one-way attack drone.

Although CENTCOM presented this as a powerful strike on Iran, and the US media trumpeted it as an act of major retaliation, the US response inflicted little damage and could reasonably be interpreted as a symbolic gesture rather than a punishing attack. The IRGC Public Relations department issued the following statement: Following the Israeli regime’s violation of the ceasefire in southern Lebanon, the treaty-breaking US regime also violated its commitments once again. Under various pretexts, including the transit of a vessel accused of navigating through an unauthorized route in the Strait of Hormuz, the US launched an airstrike against the coasts of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In response to this aggression, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy struck positions where the US terrorist military is stationed in the region. Under Article 5 of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, responsibility for regulating navigation through the Strait of Hormuz rests with the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, the United States sought to violate this commitment by encouraging various parties to defy it. It received the necessary response, and the same will apply in the future. If the aggression is repeated, Iran’s response will be broader than this.

Instead of marking a return to war, this exchange of fire can best be categorize as military political theater. I believe that Iran, thanks to intel from the Russians or the Chinese, has learned that the US has issued orders that will initiate the return to CONUS of the aircraft, vehicles and troops that had been deployed to the region in preparation for the February 28 attack. Because of the limited damage inflicted by the US attack, I believe that Iran chose to respond in a limited fashion rather than escalate and run the risk of the US cancelling the redeployment order.

For now, Iran remains in control of the Strait of Hormuz and ships wanting to transit the Strait are adhering to Iran’s new policy.

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Iran makes it a teritorial war in/on its own territory.

• Iran Launches Drone Attack Targeting Bahrain (JTN)

Iranian drones attacked Bahrain after overnight airstrikes by the United States. The U.S. strikes followed an Iranian attack on a cargo ship on Thursday. A tanker was hit by a projectile in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, according to Britain’s maritime security agency. No one was injured and Iran hasn’t officially claimed responsibility for the attack. These attacks occurred despite Iran and the U.S. reaching an interim deal to end the war.
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Because the west can fight Russia in Ukraine. They don’t want it to stop.

• Why is The Ukraine War Hardest to End? (CTH)

Mike Steger from Promethean Action PAC argues the reason the Ukraine war is hardest to end is simply because Ukraine represents the proxy state of all the globalist stakeholders who need another large conflict in order to eliminate the problem of a moral-based Christian perspective within the ‘West.’ Essentially, without Russia as the enemy, the factional war they need to retain power is much harder to achieve. Promethean Action PAC YouTube: “Mike Steger explores the concept of “color revolutions” and argues that the same strategies used to influence governments abroad are now shaping politics across the West.


From Ukraine and the Arab Spring to Brazil, Europe, and the United States, Mike examines how non-governmental organizations, media networks, political activism, and government institutions have evolved into powerful geopolitical tools.The discussion also explores President Trump’s efforts to reshape U.S. foreign policy, dismantle longstanding government programs, push election reforms, and challenge what Mike describes as the political establishment ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.”

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Putin can’t let this go on forever.

• Zelensky Telegraphs 40-Day Pressure Offensive On Russia (ZH)

The Ukraine war is quite obviously escalating, especially regarding Ukrainian leaders seeking to “bring the war” to Russian soil, amid nightly drone attacks which have come in the hundreds and even thousands of late. President Volodymyr Zelensky is seeking to seize on the momentum of repeat drone hits on Russian refinery and energy infrastructure – a reality Russia has suffered over many months, leading to a current fuel crisis spanning dozens of cities and regions, and especially Crimea, which has temporarily halted fuel sales to common citizens altogether this week.


Ukrainian media is touting a new Zelensky plan to ramp up the pressure on Russia over the next 40 days, aimed at “pressuring Russia to end its war”. He has ordered Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) to launch a new 40-day operation, which also includes “plan for long-range sanctions, medium-range sanctions, and the results achieved by the SBU,” Zelensky said on X. He’s further calling it an “influence operation.” “For several months in a row, the SBU has demonstrated the highest performance in defending Ukraine’s positions on the front lines through the use of various types of drones,” Zelensky said on Thursday evening. According to more of the statement:

I approved a 40-day influence operation for the Service against the aggressor state aimed at compelling it to end the war. Importantly, for several months in a row, the SSU has demonstrated the highest performance in defending Ukraine’s positions on the front lines through the use of various types of drones. The Center of Special Operations “Alpha” leads in terms of the occupier’s personnel and equipment neutralized. Earlier, in mid-June, Ukrainian Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov proclaimed “Hell is beginning,” for Russia and its military. “Logistics are being cut off. Crimea is being isolated,” he said at the time.

Ukraine’s asymmetric warfare against Russia’s much-larger and better armed military machine is in a significantly better position than the status of a year or so ago. Russian forces still have the upper-hand on the front line in the east, but the pain clearly being inflicted on Russia’s economy can’t be ignored at this point.This sets up a potential slide into tit-for-tat escalation which could unleash a WW3 scenario. In the meantime this is an interesting-timed warning from Latvia and Poland:

Western intelligence agencies are increasingly concerned that Russia may be preparing a limited hybrid operation targeting NATO’s eastern flank, potentially involving the Baltic states or Poland. Such a move, officials believe, could be an attempt to test the alliance’s unity as the war in Ukraine enters a new phase.According to reporting by The Guardian, intelligence officials from two NATO countries have warned that Moscow is considering a “provocation” rather than a full-scale military attack.

At the moment inside Russia, many regions of Russia seem powerless to stop Ukraine’s inbound drone waves, given also that conventional air defenses are set up to defend primarily against larger, faster-moving projectiles like missiles or jets. President Trump has lately suggested that Ukraine is doing well in the war, or at least much better than it once was. Kiev now feels the pressure to keep this narrative going, also so it can attract more and more weapons and intelligence help. But at some point Russia will feel it necessary to strongly reassert its red lines. This could come in the form of another massive escalation, and against ‘decision-making centers’.

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Escalation.

• Ukraine Closes Week Of Drone Attacks On Russia By Hitting Weapons Plant (ZH)

Ukraine announced Saturday that it used its Flamingo cruise missiles overnight to strike Russia’s Titan-Barrikady weapons plant, which reportedly manufactures parts for its powerful Oreshnik missile. The military plant is in Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, which is a major industrial city in southwest Russia. Writing on X, President Zelensky described it as a “major industrial complex” where Russia “produces artillery systems and specialized military equipment, including components for missile launch systems.” “Every Russian defense facility involved in the war against Ukraine is a legitimate target for our long-range strikes,” he wrote.


The Associated Press reports, “Volgograd Gov. Andrei Bocharov confirmed an attack on a business in the region’s Krasnooktyabrsky district, saying 10 people had been wounded and taken to a hospital. He said production facilities at the site were damaged but did not identify the company.” Additionally, “Ukraine’s state security service said Saturday morning that Ukrainian forces also struck an oil pumping facility in Russia’s Vladimir region that supplies fuel to Moscow, for the second time this month.” But on the other side of the border, Ukrainian media reports that Russia was also busy with now nightly airstrikes:

Russian forces targeted production facilities belonging to the Naftogaz Group, Ukraine’s largest national oil and gas company, in the Poltava and Kharkiv regions. The barrage of attacks included 129 drones, of which 113 were destroyed or jammed by Ukrainian forces, Ukrainian media reported. The Russian overnight attacks on Ukraine killed two people and injuring more than 20, according to state officials. At a moment much of the globe’s attention remains fixated on Iran and the fate of energy shipping through the largely blocked Strait of Hormuz, the Ukraine war is rapidly escalating.

Ukrainian leadership has issued some astounding stats on the escalation on its side of the border: Russia attacked Ukraine with 1,400 drones and 1,500 guided bombs President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on Saturday, June 27, that Russian forces deployed approximately 1,400 attack drones, 1,500 guided aerial bombs, and 19 missiles of various types, including ballistic missiles, against Ukraine over the past week. In a statement published on Telegram, Zelensky noted that 15 Ukrainian regions were subjected to Russian attacks during the seven-day period. He highlighted that the cities of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Sumy faced near-daily bombardment.

But it also over the past week has sent projectiles into Russia in the thousands. Ukraine’s asymmetric warfare strategy against Russia’s much-larger and better armed military machine has put Kiev in significantly better position – in terms of potential negotiating leverage – than the status of a year or so ago. Russian forces still have the upper-hand on the front line in the east, but the pain clearly being inflicted on Russia’s economy can’t be ignored at this point. There are reports of fuel shortages across dozens of regions and especially in Crimea over the past several days.

President Trump has lately suggested that Ukraine is doing well in the war, or at least much better than it once was. Kiev now feels the pressure to keep this narrative going, also so it can attract more and more weapons and intelligence help. But at some point Russia will feel it necessary to strongly reassert its red lines. This could come in the form of another massive escalation, and against ‘decision-making centers’.

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The party has been taken over.

• Democratic Establishment Accuses Socialists of Exploiting Ballot Access (JTN)

The Democratic Socialists of America have adopted a strategy to exploit the Democratic Party’s ballot access to boost their own candidates at the expense of incumbents, a plan which achieved remarkable success in New York City this week. The victory of two DSA-backed candidates and one former member delivered a shock to the Democratic Party establishment, which has begun to call for better policing of the party’s primaries against candidates who are only seeking to exploit it, not join it. “I say this with no ill will or animosity: if you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination,” said Jaime Harrison, who served as the Democratic National Committee Chairman from 2021 to 2025.


“Don’t use our resources. Don’t rely on our volunteers. Don’t use our infrastructure. Don’t ask Democrats to invest their time, money, and energy in your campaign,” he added. “Focus on building the party you actually support.” The DSA – which calls for abandoning capitalism, defunding the police, and nationalizing key industrial sectors – has long publicly stated its intent to do just that. Ahead of the New York City primary elections on Tuesday, NYC DSA Co-Chair Gustavo Gordillo explained that his party is using the Democrats to access the ballot, but aims to achieve a fundamentally different agenda.

“We’re on the Democratic Party ballot line. We contest the primaries, and when they’re in the legislature, they’re part of the Democratic Party caucus, but we don’t agree with the way the Democratic Party establishment organizes or runs its party apparatus,” he told Spectrum News in an interview. Gordillo was rather open about taking advantage of Trump-hating Democrats. In a clip on X, he said:”We’re using the Democratic Party as a ballot-access vehicle, not because we share its goals […] We build our own organization, get elected under the Democratic label, caucus with Democrats when it’s useful, and push our own agenda from the inside.”

“I think in terms of the agenda, there’s a problem in the Democratic Party where they are funded by billionaire donors, and at the same time, they’re trying to represent the working class, and in our opinion, you have to choose between the billionaire class and the working class,” Gordillo said. “It’s just impossible to satisfy all of them.” The DSA is currently running a strategy known as the “dirty break”– “where DSA continues to run candidates on the Democratic Party’s ballot line, while building the infrastructure and base of supporters necessary to one day run our candidates independently,” as described by the party’s youth wing.

Various forms of the strategy have been referenced in party resolutions since 2019, when the party first defined it as a key goal: “to form an independent working-class party, but for now, this does not rule out DSA-endorsed candidates running tactically on the Democratic Party ballot line.” The party’s youth wing, the Young Democratic Socialists of America, identified the strategy by name in 2022, adopting a resolution at its convention that year. “Therefore, be it also resolved that YDSA is committed to, within DSA and on the left in general, a bold and transformative ‘dirty break’ approach to elections and electoralism,” according to convention documents.

The youth wing argues that the success of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who was elected as a Democrat in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District in 2018 (she now represents the 12th after redistricting), has proven that the “dirty break” strategy is a viable one. “Tlaib often acts as a tribune of the people, using her role in Congress to agitate around working-class issues rather than pass legislation,” reads one article on the YDSA’s website. Since Tlaib’s victory in 2018, the DSA’s power in Democratic strongholds appears to be growing.

Last year, DSA member Zohran Mamdani upset the Democratic political establishment and won election to the mayor’s office in New York City on a socialist platform. Earlier this week, he flexed his newfound political influence in the city to catapult three other socialist candidates to victory in Democratic primaries for the U.S. House of Representatives.

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The one true democrat is Fetterman.

• One Democrat — and Only One — Has Had Enough of the Commies (Robert Spencer)

The communist takeover of the Democrat Party is in full swing, and some might find that surprising, as the Democrats have looked like a communist party for many years now. But what was hidden ten or twenty years ago is all out in the open now, and as ever more avowed socialists are getting elected, one Democrat is sounding the alarm. But only one.


That’s telling. The Evil Party, as conservative pundit M. Stanton Evans indelibly dubbed the Democrats back in the 1970s (he called the Republicans the Stupid Party, which is just as apt) started on the path of socialism back in 1933 with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, and confirmed its commitment to the socialist path in the 1960s with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. What’s happening now is simply the open avowal of the trajectory the party has been on for nearly a century. And so it’s less surprising that only one Democrat is speaking out than it is that there is still one Democrat who believes in freedom.

And yeah, you guessed it: it’s Sen. John Fetterman (D-Common Sense). On Wednesday, Fetterman commented on X on a story about the Democrat primary victory of a Marxist convert to Islam who hates the United States and Western civilization, but is now heading to Congress anyway, Darializa Avila Chavalier. “Anti-Israel. Anti-America. Anti-Western Civilization,” Fetterman wrote. “Why am I the only Democrat in the U.S. Senate that refuses to excuse this or defend any of those self-identified communists? Because your party comrades, senator, are communists themselves, and/or cowards and opportunists. Fetterman, however, is none of those things. He declared: “I said months ago, I said the Democratic Party is becoming an orgy of socialism. These recent elections vindicate my description.”

Fetterman zeroed in on Avila Chevalier, noting that she “described America as a f*****g disgrace. She posted ‘f**k Kamala Harris’ and posted that she forgot napkins and wiped her hands on the American flag. She wants to abolish the border, abolish prisons. That is a deeply disturbed individual.” No, she isn’t actually disturbed at all. She is just a committed and consistent Marxist internationalist. Those who are arguably disturbed are the Democrat Party bosses who got behind her candidacy, and the voters who sent to Washington yet another exponent of the most catastrophically failed political and social system in the history of mankind.

Avila Chevalier won’t be alone in the nation’s capital. Referring to another Marxist, Maine senate candidate Graham Platner, by his street nickname, Fetterman quipped: “P-Hustle and Chevalier: the dirtbag left’s new power couple.” And they’re not just that. They’re also the new face of the Democrat Party, along with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other Washington-bound socialists. Will Fetterman therefore finally leave the party, as has been rumored as often as he has denied the rumors? This time, he seemed to leave the door open to such a switch ever so slightly.

“Even if I changed my party,” Fetterman declared, “my votes or views wouldn’t change. I address this very directly. That’s the truth.” Whatever he does next, Fetterman is without any doubt one of the strangest political figures in American history. During his campaign for the Senate, he never gave any indication of being anything but a doctrinaire, down-the-line leftist, and attention focused less on his policy positions than on the fact that, after suffering a stroke, he seemed barely able to formulate a coherent sentence.

After being hospitalized for depression, however, he emerged not only able to speak clearly and lucidly, but he also began to take a number of common-sense stands, which inevitably led him away from the left. And his analysis of what has gone wrong with the Democrats is more accurate and convincing than almost all the other post-mortems. This doesn’t mean that Fetterman sees everything clearly now, and he certainly hasn’t made a full break with the left. But it’s as rare as it is refreshing to hear from an honest man.

Read more …

‘Well, damn. I thought this was the big bad boogeyman telling us this guy’s a threat to democracy, which I believe he is, but still..’

• The Obama Halo Is Starting to Flicker. Finally! (David Manney)

Charlamagne tha God didn’t sound like he was asking permission. The Breakfast Club co-host heard former President Barack Hussein Obama mock President Donald Trump as tougher from a distance than face to face, then pushed the charge back across the table. From Fox News:


“So I just didn’t understand what he meant unless he was talking about the kiki they had at the [Jimmy] Carter funeral. But to me, that goes both ways. You kikiing in his face too, ’cause by the way, Trump has been saying wild stuff about you, bro, been saying wild stuff about you and your wife, but you was just right there kikiing with him at the President Carter funeral. So I can say it goes both ways. Don’t neither one of y’all be having that energy in each other’s face. At least from what we saw,” the radio host said.

Kikiing is an informal slang term for relaxing or gossiping. Charlamagne referred to Obama and Trump speaking to one another at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral, at times smiling and laughing with each other. Former first lady Michelle Obama did not attend. “So when I heard President Obama say that, I’m like, ‘Well, the same thing can be said for you.’ Don’t none of y’all be having that same image. Like we saw President Biden say, ‘Welcome home to Donald Trump.’ Like, so, it’s just like what are y’all? I didn’t understand that part. Like that just sounds like something slick to say on the podcast,” Charlamagne said.

“It sounds good on a podcast, OK? It goes viral. But when you really take a step back and look at it, don’t none of y’all be having that same energy for each other when you see each other. That’s what be confusing us because we be like, ‘Well, damn. I thought this was the big bad boogeyman telling us this guy’s a threat to democracy, which I believe he is, but still,'” he said. Obama, he argued, has often sounded different depending on the room, the crowd, and the moment. From a host whose platform has shaped political talk among younger black listeners, the jab carried more weight than another cable panel gripe.

Obama has spent years being treated less like a politician and more like a civic mood. To his admirers, he represented calm, cool, firsts, and finish. The new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park leans hard into that story. The center opened a week ago with four floors devoted to the Obama presidency, the 2008 campaign, the Oval Office, and the promise of democracy. Museum tickets are already sold out, with another block scheduled for July 8.

Fox News’ Jesse Waters sent a reporter to the Obama Center, which, as we were lectured, was built on stolen land — and I’m not talking about land pulled out from the public at Jackson Park — who asked visitors some difficult questions. A shrine can draw crowds and still invite questions. Stephen A. Smith, ESPN host and executive producer of First Take and host of Straight Shooter, questioned how Obama and former President Bill Clinton built large fortunes after careers in public office.

Smith’s larger point hit a sore nerve: elected leaders should prosper only when Americans are prospering too. Coming from a black broadcaster with his own huge audience, the criticism wasn’t easy to wave away as stale right-wing noise. From Fox News: The sports commentator and host of the “Straight Shooter” podcast weighed in on any profits President Donald Trump is making while serving in the nation’s highest office. “I don’t give a damn what money politicians slide into their own pockets from time to time,” Smith said on Wednesday’s episode of his podcast. “If the American people are prospering, get yours. It’s a capitalistic society.”

Smith went on to cast doubt on how former President Bill Clinton obtained his multi-million dollar net worth. “I’ll confess something to ya’ll,” Smith continued. “Clinton was a lawyer in Arkansas. Grew up poor, relatively broke. How the hell him and the Clinton Foundation is worth hundreds of millions of dollars beat me.” Smith also pointed to former President Barack Obama’s similar high net worth. “Barack Obama was a community organizer who became the president of the United States and, last time I checked, that salary ain’t over $450,000, if I remember correctly,” Smith said. “I got to double check that,” he added. “How the hell you depart from office worth over $200 million?”

According to an investigation conducted by Forbes, both Bill and Hillary Clinton have netted approximately $240 million since leaving office in 2021. Bill Clinton is reportedly responsible for the majority of the couple’s earnings, raking in $189 million by authoring books and $106 million in paid speeches. Obama owns real history; he won two national elections, became America’s first black president, and signed a health law that remade a large part of American life — and not in a good way.A legacy with weight can still carry vanity, scolding, and blind spots. The growing irritation around Obama isn’t about denying his place in history; it’s about asking why the man who preached unity so often left half the country feeling accused, condescended to, or dismissed.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2070307172634730759?s=20

The cracks didn’t appear only this week. Obama campaigned for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, including a pointed message to black men who weren’t sold on her candidacy. President Trump still won, and AP VoteCast found that he expanded his coalition with gains among younger voters and black and Hispanic men.

Democrats can pretend those voters misunderstood the assignment, but many voters may simply be tired of being assigned a role by a man with an ego larger than the sun.The left, who said the Obama years represented healing, sold us a bill of goods. Instead, the country got lectures on bitterness, guns, religion, race, police, and resentment. His defenders called it truth-telling, but many of us heard something colder: a gifted person who can read out loud quite well, who explained their very own country back to them with a raised eyebrow.

A man can have grace, talent, and historical importance while still leaving behind a politics that divided more than it inspired. Obama’s halo isn’t gone because too many institutions still polish it. The center in Chicago will attract crowds, glowing photos, and reverent tours. Yet the old automatic applause is much weaker.Charlamagne the God and Stephen A. Smith aren’t conservative backbenchers; they speak to audiences Obama once seemed able to reach by instinct. When voices like theirs start asking sharper questions, the problem is no longer Republican criticism.

The concern is that memory is catching up with the myth.

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“Two can certainly play the “extremist” game.”

• When Extremists Run the Government (J.B. Shurk)

Politicians, government bureaucrats, central bankers, spy agencies, and mainstream news outlets lie to us every day. For some people, the previous sentence is patently obvious. For others, that sentence represents “fringe” thinking. For certain law enforcement agencies in North America and Europe, that sentence reveals potentially dangerous “extremism.”


“Extremism” is such a morally squishy word. It means nothing. It suggests that the average beliefs of the average person in the average part of an average town are, on average, correct. Should a person’s beliefs move too far away from the “average,” then that person will eventually fall into the “extremist” abyss. Of course, the average person long believed that the sun and planets revolved around the Earth. The average person long believed that bloodletting cured disease. The average person long believed in magic. Relativity, microbiology, atomic physics, and quantum mechanics belonged to the “extremists.”

Defining “extremism” depends upon which populations are included when calculating an “average.” To the average American, Islamic terrorism is religious extremism. To the average jihadi in the Middle East, terrorism is part of the Islamic faith. One man’s “extremist” is another man’s “religious cleric.” Unsurprisingly, as more jihadists migrate to America, the more supportive of Islamic terrorism the Democrat Party becomes. We now have several Hamas-supporting members of Congress who define Americans opposed to Islamic conquest as “extremists.”

For a decade, Americans were told to be on the lookout for Islamic terrorism: “If you see something, say something.” Now, if you see something and say something, you will most likely be denounced as an “Islamophobic bigot.” If the definition of “extremism” can shift 180 degrees since the Islamic terror attacks on September 11, 2001, then “extremism” is a nebulous political label.

In the United States, citizens overwhelmingly support federal legislation that would require photo ID, proof of citizenship, and other safeguards to ensure that elections across the country are free, fair, lawful, constitutional, and secure. Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans in Congress prefer to maintain the current “on your honor” system that can be gamed to permit large-scale vote fraud and rigged elections. By any polling measure, Congress’s point of view is far from that of the average American. Members of Congress, in other words, are the extremists! If you listen to the extremists in Congress, however, our elections have never been more secure.

In fact, when you look at some of the most important policy issues today, it becomes quite clear that Congress is ground zero for extremism. Most Americans want Congress to stop spending more money than it receives in taxes; Congress has put us forty trillion dollars in debt. Most Americans want secure borders and an end to illegal immigration; Congress has enabled an evil human trafficking system to exist for over fifty years that rewards criminals and has flooded the country with somewhere between fifty and a hundred million (nobody knows for sure!) illegal aliens. Most Americans are concerned about lowering fuel and food prices;

Congress has wasted trillions of dollars on “Green New Deal” scams that raise the household costs for fuel and food. Most Americans believe that college admissions and job hiring should be based on a person’s merit, skill, character, knowledge, and hard work; Congress continues to divide Americans by the color of their skin and their sexual eccentricities. Most Americans believe that men and women are biologically distinct; Congress pretends that biological sex is an imaginary social construct. Most Americans believe that a dollar saved today should maintain the same value ten, fifty, or even a hundred years from now; Congress thinks printing and spending dollars, depreciating the U.S. currency, and artificially spiking the dollar-denominated valuation of stocks, homes, and other assets is the best way to fake a constantly “improving” economy.

Most Americans believe that we should refrain from military engagements overseas whenever possible; Congress can’t ever get enough of forever-wars. Most Americans want their representatives to work for American citizens; Congress believes it should work on behalf of non-Americans all over the world. Most Americans view their country as a nation; Congress views the United States as both a global empire and a home for every person on the planet. On the most important issues, Congress is filled to the brim with extremists. They should be put on official security lists and monitored whenever they travel more than fifty feet from their taxpayer-financed homes. Instead, in the United States and throughout the West, the extremists run things.

That would explain why Christians are targeted for their beliefs. That would explain why the governments of Europe and North America have flooded their countries with unassimilable malcontents from the third world. That would explain why men are allowed into women’s restrooms and why pedophiles are accorded more respect than heterosexual married couples. That would explain why Western governments have declared war on “climate change” when most people don’t care about elites’ obsession with the weather. That would explain why so many European and North American politicians are willing to risk a nuclear war with the Russian Federation, while ordinary citizens have never been less willing to fight for the defense of their respective countries.

Perhaps the more that ordinary Westerners realize that it is the people running their governments, universities, and bureaucratic institutions who are most extreme, the less willing they become to do what those extremists say. Six years ago, the extremists locked down the world because of COVID. They closed churches, bankrupted businesses, disrupted childhood education, prevented family members from being together, and killed a lot of people with fake “vaccines.” If public health extremists tried to pull another COVID today, would ordinary Westerners do what the politicians and bureaucrats say? Or would Western citizens conclude that extremist governments endanger both their lives and liberties?

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“The entrepreneur of outrage need not solve problems; indeed, solving problems may threaten his relevance.”

• Culture of Grievance- When Victimhood Becomes Social Currency (Brooks)

Every civilization develops a moral language—a set of virtues that it celebrates and vices that it condemns. For much of human history, societies lauded courage, resilience, self-sacrifice, duty, honor, and perseverance. The individual who overcame adversity was admired. The citizen who contributed more than he consumed was esteemed. To endure hardship without surrendering one’s dignity was considered noble. Increasingly, however, modern Western society appears to have inverted this hierarchy. Today, victimhood often functions as a form of social capital.


To claim injury is to acquire moral authority. To assert oppression is frequently to gain status. Public discourse, particularly within academia, media, politics, and social media, often rewards not those who demonstrate resilience, but those who can most persuasively locate themselves within narratives of historical or contemporary disadvantage. This is not to suggest that oppression does not exist. It plainly does. Human beings have always oppressed one another. History is replete with examples of slavery, discrimination, persecution, exploitation, and injustice. Serious societies acknowledge these realities honestly.

Yet acknowledging injustice and organizing one’s entire social order around grievance are two very different enterprises. The modern culture of grievance is distinguished not merely by its concern for injustice, but by its tendency to elevate grievance itself into an identity. In such a framework, suffering confers legitimacy. Personal agency is often deemphasized in favor of structural explanations. Individual responsibility, once considered indispensable to human flourishing, is increasingly treated as secondary to historical narratives of power and oppression. Why? Part of the answer lies in incentives.

Human beings respond to incentives whether they exist in economics, politics, or culture. If a society rewards certain forms of behavior with status, attention, influence, institutional support, or financial gain, those behaviors predictably proliferate. Social media has accelerated this process dramatically. Platforms built upon visibility and engagement naturally privilege outrage, conflict, and emotional intensity. Claims of victimization generate attention. Attention generates followers. Followers generate influence. Influence often generates money, prestige, and institutional power.= Grievance, in the digital age, has become monetizable.

The entrepreneur of outrage need not solve problems; indeed, solving problems may threaten his relevance. A permanent sense of crisis sustains audiences, donations, speaking engagements, media appearances, and political mobilization. The incentive, therefore, is often not reconciliation but perpetuation.= A grievance resolved is a constituency diminished. This dynamic extends beyond social media influencers. Entire political movements, activist organizations, and institutional bureaucracies can become dependent upon the continued existence—or perceived existence—of oppression. The maintenance of moral urgency becomes essential to organizational survival.

Consequently, there exists a temptation to expand definitions continually, to discover ever more subtle forms of harm, and to reinterpret ordinary human conflicts through increasingly elaborate frameworks of oppression.

Disagreement becomes violence.

Words become trauma.

Discomfort becomes harm.

Failure becomes victimization.

Ordinary interpersonal conflict becomes evidence of systemic injustice.

The danger is not merely conceptual confusion. The danger is cultural infantilization.

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In case 2027 and 2028 get confusing.

• Bookmark and Reference Point – June 2026 (CTH)

Events in 2027 and 2028 are likely to be very confusing. As a consequence, CTH needs to establish datapoints in real time that can later be referenced and reviewed to make sense of things when CTH starts to put the data into a very difficult to accept storyline. This process is similar to setting the 2012 election “splitter strategy” as a reference; that leads to the 2014 RNC winter meeting and rules changes; that led to the 2015 lineup of RNC candidates; that led to our ability to show how the ‘splitter strategy’ was being deployed for the 2016 GOP nomination. The defeat of Jeb didn’t happen in New Hampshire 2016; his defeat was an outcome of assembling years of previous datapoints which proved the illicit roadmap and made the RNC scheme very clear from the outset.


Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion ($54.20/share) [April through October ’22]. He sold Tesla shares, leveraged more and assembled a $25 billion investment group to cover the remainder. When the financing dust settled Musk controlled Twitter and investors were in for around $25 billion. Musk later created the ancillary company xAI and when the deadline terms of the Twitter investment were due, he essentially repaid the $25 billion debt by transferring the investors into $25 billion worth of xAI holdings. [Key Point – the originating $25 billion investment was not repaid, just modified]

In 2026, Musk then did an IPO on SpaceX. This culminated in stock sales, valuations and generating $100 billion in cash on hand. A few weeks later Musk then sold 7 tranches of SpaceX bonds worth $25 billion to generate liquidity. He then used the $25 billion offering as the financial mechanism to repay the $25 billion remaining in investor debt. Summary: Twitter’s $25 billion debt transferred to $25 billion xAI stock, then transferred to $25 billion in payout or bond holdings; the option is for the original Twitter investment group to take (cash out or hold SpaceX bond paying 5% annually). [Key point – the originating $25 billion to purchase Twitter is now inside the SpaceX bonds]

This was a smart financial gameplay over the past roughly 5 years. This is how it developed and this is the reality in June of 2026. The originating $25 billion borrowed to purchase Twitter is now either: (a) fully repaid, or (b) sitting in long term SpaceX bonds (depending on investor choice). Musk and his investment friends purchased Twitter for $52 per share. Current valuation is $12 to $15. Twitter investors, Musk’s friends and Musk himself, essentially lost 76% on the purchase (total loss -$33 billion). A loss isn’t a loss until it is realized. There was strong incentive to take each of the various repayment shifts. Twitter => xAI => SpaceX bonds.

[SIDENOTE: What’s the smartest way to get rid of a $33 billion loss without hurting the investors? ANSWER: Transfer the loss to someone else. How do you transfer a $33 billion loss? You IPO a larger holding, putting the depreciated asset in the hands of retail. SpaceX investors are now unwittingly carrying the loss.] In the next few years people will argue with me about this. That’s why writing this now is important. What is outlined above is factual. Most of the money borrowed from investors to purchase Twitter is now resting inside SpaceX bonds. People will deny this, because people have a short-term financial memory for things.

The biggest Twitter investment holdings belonged to Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Larry Ellison, Marc Andreessen and a host of investment funds including the sovereign state fund of Qatar.mWhen Elon Musk bought Twitter, he initially permitted sunlight into the background operation of the company. That sunlight was known as “The Twitter Files“.The files showed how the social media platform coordinated with various intelligence agencies within government on the approved information allowed to exist within the platform. Three journalists were allowed to ask the Twitter legal counsel to run search terms and review the responses (if approved by the legal counsel). That’s how the research worked.

The three journalists were Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger. Thanks to the Twitter Files and the public interest around them, Bari Weiss launched/expanded her online media network The Free Press. Bari Weiss was a Ron DeSantis supporter. Elon Musk was a Ron DeSantis supporter. Ron DeSantis 2024 campaign was launched on Twitter. The Twitter File research group was shut down by Elon Musk with no immediate public statement as to why.

Billionaire Larry Ellison (Oracle) retained his Twitter holdings as well as his relationship with Musk. When Twitter was under attack from Democrats (’22, ’23, ’24) Ellison was the financial backstop and stabilizing force. Larry Ellison then purchased the TikTok platform with Marc Andreeson. Larry and David Ellison then purchased CBS-Paramount. David Ellison then installed Bari Weiss as CBS News Editor in Chief and bought her company The Free Press. David Ellison, the technology heir son to Larry Ellison who controls Paramount, the owner of CBS, is poised to complete a $111 billion purchase of CNN’s parent company Warner Bros/Discovery as soon as July 2026.

Billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison now directly or indirectly controls and influences: Twitter, TikTok, CBS and CNN. As noted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September of 2025, control and influence of TikTok and Twitter was the #1 and #2 most important strategic geopolitical interests of the government of Israel. These were Prime Minister Netanyahu’s own words. Billionaire Larry Ellison is a very strong supporter of the Netanyahu government.

PREDICTION: If Marco Rubio stays out of the 2028 race [big ‘if’], then all of the Larry Ellison holdings will be used to promote or position Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over Vice-President JD Vance. The Israel -vs- Qatar narrative is based on an anti-Vance operation. Prepositioned politics. [My ‘out there’ suspicion is political narrative control is the entire reason Twitter was purchased]

Read more …

Now the rest..

• Volkswagen To Slash 100,000 Jobs (RT)

Volkswagen is considering closing four German factories and cutting up to 100,000 jobs, Reuters has reported. Amid soaring energy costs and competition from China, the company’s profits have plummeted in recent years. Should the cuts go ahead, Volkswagen will close factories in Hanover, Zwickau, and Emden, as well as an Audi plant in Neckarsulm, Reuters reported on Friday, citing sources within the company. These closures would result in the loss of 45,000 jobs, on top of the 50,000 layoffs agreed upon with trade unions in 2024.


Volkswagen executives will discuss the cuts at a meeting next month. According to a separate report by Germany’s Manager Magazin, the company is also weighing a 15% cut in investment over the next five years. A spokesperson for the world’s second-largest carmaker said that they would not comment on “confidential documents,” but admitted that “the entire group, including its brands and subsidiaries, must undergo far-reaching change.”

Volkswagen employs more than 667,000 people worldwide, almost half of them in Germany. However, the company has been forced to scale back production at home since 2022, when Berlin’s decision to abandon Russian gas imports in favor of renewables and expensive American liquified natural gas (LNG) left the industry reeling from higher energy costs.

The German economy has experienced two years of contraction followed by two years of sub-1% growth. Volkswagen already closed one automobile assembly plant, in Dresden, last December – the first time it had closed a factory in Germany in its nine-decade history. BASF, Bosch, Continental, and more than a dozen other German manufacturers have closed one or more facilities over the last four years.

With energy costs eating into Volkswagen’s profits, the company’s electric vehicles are no longer able to compete with offerings from its Chinese rivals. Once the dominant automaker in China, Volkswagen now sells fewer vehicles there than domestic brands BYD and Geely. In Europe, BYD and fellow Chinese brands Chery, SAIC, and Leapmotor have all doubled their market share over the last year. Back in Germany, Volkswagen’s internal union and the IG Metall metalworkers’ union have vowed to resist the job cuts. “Should such plans go ahead, we would do everything in our power to prevent them,” the organizations said in a joint statement on Friday.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2070544213326823464?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 22 2026

Jun 222026
 
 June 22, 2026  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  31 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Gypsy Camp near Arles 1888


• Trump Threatens US Will Charge Toll Fees In Strait of Hormuz (JTN)
• Trump Reminds Iran of ‘Harder’ Military Options On Table (ZH)
• Keir Starmer Moments Away from Resignation (CTH)
• Trump Says UK Prime Minister Starmer Is Resigning (Salgado)
• Starmer Accused Of Staging Russian Ship Raid To Boost Poll Numbers (Jung)
• Britain’s Greatest Betrayal: The Rape Gang Inquiry Report (AmG)
• Zelenskyy Wants To Develop U.S. Patriot Missiles in Ukraine (CTH)
• Poland’s ‘Pain Threshold’ Broke After Zelensky’s Tribute To Nazi Collaborators (RT)
• Zelensky ‘Acting Like Mr. Bean on Crack’ : Scott Bessent (RT)
• Trump Is Furious With Senate GOP, Puts Thune In His Crosshairs (ZH)
• Warsh’s First Fed Meeting Sends a Message (Martin Armstrong)
• Now We Know Why the Obama Center Is So Ugly (Margolis)
• This Is The Funniest Thing Ever… (MN)

 


 

https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/2068704022354067659?s=20 https://twitter.com/Tironianae/status/2068449809938194835?s=20 https://twitter.com/MrWhiplash_/status/2068647740922372484?s=20 https://twitter.com/juniorturner84/status/2068639874500960462?s=20

 


 


“..for services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East for purposes of both past, present, and future reimbursement of costs,..

• Trump Threatens US Will Charge Toll Fees In Strait of Hormuz (JTN)

President Donald Trump ratcheted up the pressure on Iran on Saturday, threatening that the United States could charge toll fees to ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz if Tehran doesn’t execute a peace deal within 60 days. “There will be NO TOLLS in the Hormuz Strait for 60 days during the Cease Fire Period, and there will be NO TOLLS after the 60 day period has expired, unless they are imposed by and for the United States of America, should the deal not be completed, for services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East for purposes of both past, present, and future reimbursement of costs,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.


Trump’s comments came as Vice President JD Vance departed the United States for direct and high-stakes talks with Iran in Switzerland. The Strait of Hormuz — one of the world’s most important transit points for oil cargo — has become a critical bargaining chip in the ceasefire negotiations as Iran’s tensions with the United States and Israel remain high.

Trump’s statement appeared to warn Tehran it won’t have the ability to charge ship tolls in any final deal with America. Iran and the United States have signed a memorandum of understanding that imposes a 60-day ceasefire to give more time to negotiate a formal peace treaty.

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They know he doesn’t want to.

• Trump Reminds Iran of ‘Harder’ Military Options On Table (ZH)

Update(10:00ET): With Vance and Witkoff in Switzerland, President Trump is still issuing some US redlines via Truth Social, and via apparent ‘official leaks’ – and quite quickly – through the press. Trump is warning the Iranians on the sticking points of Hormuz closure and the Lebanon crisis. He has newly threatened on Sunday to hit Iran again if it can’t constrain its proxies, namely Hezbollah, in Lebanon. In parallel, Tehran is demanding that Washington reign in Israel. A fresh Sunday Truth Social… brief but firm. And more on some fresh reported warnings and pressure coming from Trump.


As the American delegation continues the high-stakes negotiations in Switzerland aimed at de-escalating, the White House is projecting cautious optimism while simultaneously reminding Tehran that military options remain firmly on the table.

Speaking as talks entered a critical phase, Vice President JD Vance said Sunday from Switzerland Washington has “made great progress over the last few hours” and expects “additional progress in the coming hours,” describing the negotiations as an opportunity to “turn over a new leaf” in US-Iran relations. Vance emphasized that the administration’s preference is not to return to the cycle of confrontation, adding that the US is willing to fundamentally transform ties with Iran if Tehran permanently abandons its nuclear ambitions.

“The question is how much more we can achieve in the Middle East,” Vance said, while expressing confidence regarding the Lebanon front and signaling satisfaction with ongoing efforts to contain broader regional escalation.

Yet Trump has just delivered a stark reminder of the consequences should negotiations fail. According to Fox News, Trump warned Iranian officials that closing the Strait of Hormuz would be an existential mistake, reportedly telling Tehran that it “won’t have a country” if it attempts to choke off global energy flows, in the segment above. Trump also issued a personal warning to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, saying he “better watch his mouth,” while reports indicated the president used unusually blunt language during discussions with Iranian intermediaries over the strategic waterway

Perhaps most notably, Trump reiterated that he retains a “60-day option” and can “do whatever” he deems necessary after that period expires, a statement widely interpreted as preserving the possibility of renewed military action. The president also reportedly threatened additional strikes against Iran should Tehran’s regional proxies in Lebanon resume attacks or undermine the emerging diplomatic framework.

The result is a familiar carrot-and-stick approach as talks are unfolding under the shadow of explicit US military threats and a rapidly approaching deadline that could determine whether the region moves toward détente or another round of escalation. But Iran has also made known that it is ready of a long war, but will Trump be willing to risk enduring the political and economic fallout?.

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Spent his whole life dreaming of the job. and POOF!

• Keir Starmer Moments Away from Resignation (CTH)

Take more than a few thoughts to appreciate the moment. The gift within modern technology is our ability to witness and absorb inflection points as they arise – in real time. Europe has been collapsing. Slowly at first; then, suddenly all at once. Political capital has been depreciating at an unsustainable scale. Across Europe, President Trump has reset relationships, forcefully delivering an exacting pressure – not by forward influence, but more by creating an excruciating void they must fill themselves. The result: weak economic growth, rising defense expenditures, a collective state assembly that can no longer deliver positive individual outcomes.


European leaders are all facing the same pressures. Look around and witness history repeating. The British Empire in chaos, the U.K Prime Minister on the point of resignation. The German industrial economy now feeling the full weight of its own short-sighted energy policy, while being stripped slowly by Chinese parasites. As the body of the system begins to shrink rapidly, they look urgently toward Rome for moral support; they need to believe in their superiority. But Giorgia Meloni cannot get beyond her vanity. President Trump exploits it. It works.

At the exact moment when nationalistic defenses are needed most, the Spanish people find themselves facing the sunlight upon corruption within their socialist body politick. The timing is almost too perfect. A loving God then provides massive ironies for the world to witness. The biggest cultural sporting event in the EU; the distraction beloved by all Europeans as an expression of pride from village to metropolis, takes place in the United States. The EU tech devices are filled with fellow countrymen telling grand tales of this incredible American land. The timing is not something governmental policy could ever control. This is not strategy.

This is much bigger than a roadmap the hand or mind of man could draw or imagine. No, these specific moments are -like all historic reference points- being driven the one universal enterprise who controls all of it. This is amazing to witness. It does not stand invisible to those who watch prayerfully, to see the most Christian of the individual European states stand in the strongest position. The dark and foreboding landscape of corrupt Ukraine has sucked the physical and financial blood out of the European collective, and even now, at this moment of greatest weakness the malevolent destroyer of flesh and spirit demands even more.

It is all connected, yet the self-appointed elites cling to diminishing influence with bread and circuses; it is all they have. Europe is in a state of collapse. Rome is too morally and spiritually weak, fraught with the sin of pride, and into this incredible moment of consequence – where does Canada align? You cannot make this stuff up. The timing is too divinely inspired to ignore. Pretenses are dropping. Absorb it all folks, we are witnessing a righteous and historical reset unfolding in real time.

VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS – […] Business Secretary Peter Kyle said Sunday that Starmer is “making time to reflect on the political realities, challenges and opportunities that he finds himself in.” “I know he is a prime minister who always puts his country first,” Kyle told the BBC, though he said reports that Starmer will resign are “speculation.” Starmer is spending the weekend at Chequers, the country mansion used by British prime ministers, with his family. He gave no public hint about his decision, but sent a Father’s Day message on social media. “Being a dad is my greatest joy. Today, I’m thinking about my dad, and the father I am to my children because of him,” he wrote on X. If Starmer quits, he will be the sixth prime minister to leave office in the past 10 years, an extraordinary rate of churn for the United Kingdom.

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Trump knew first?

• Trump Says UK Prime Minister Starmer Is Resigning (Salgado)

President Donald Trump apparently confirmed the rumors that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is resigning, amid wide unpopularity in the UK and controversy within his own leftist Labour Party.mIt is important to note, however, that Downing Street has not confirmed Starmer’s resignation as of Sunday morning, indicating to the BBC that the prime minister might try to hold onto his office after all. Cabinet minister Peter Kyle also told the outlet that Starmer is currently assessing “political realities” and what that means for his future as head of the Labour Party and prime minister. It therefore appears that there is a high possibility that Starmer will resign, but that if he does so, it will be under intense pressure rather than out of his own voluntary choice.


The report about Starmer’s resignation also follows on the release of the rape gangs report detailing how overwhelmingly Muslim migrants sexually abused 250,000 young women and kids. Trump’s message seemed to indicate some inside knowledge on June 21, although he did not, in fact, say whether he received the information about the resignation from Starmer himself or from one of the outlets that posted rumors this week. “Keir Starmer will resign as Prime Minister of The United Kingdom. He failed badly on two very important subjects- IMMIGRATION AND ENERGY (OPEN NORTH SEA OIL!). I wish him well!” the president posted on TruthSocial.

Speculation has been rife for weeks over Starmer‘s possible resignation, but it would seem very irresponsible if Trump posted the speculation without having some confirmation of it from the UK government. Given the fact that Labour still has such clout in the government, Starmer’s resignation does not necessarily mean that a better and more patriotic prime minister opposed to mass migration would be taking over. Unfortunately, it will likely be someone who agrees with Starmer and disagrees with patriotic Brits on major issues. Member of Parliament Nigel Farage, who is also the leader of Reform UK, responded to Donald Trump‘s post about Starmer, and also expressed his own pessimism about the likely replacement for Starmer in the role of prime minister.

So long as Labour is in power, the mass migration will not stop:

Mass migration, particularly from predominantly Muslim countries, is in the UK spotlight once again after MP Rupert Lowe released the rape gangs inquiry results, which I referenced above. Below Lowe reads excerpts of testimonies and evidence from the report. Be warned, the stories are often extremely graphic:

https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/2067232174869279151?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2067232174869279151%7Ctwgr%5E63aa14687b738cb65c3da14e2338286a569a6504%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fcatherinesalgado%2F2026%2F06%2F21%2Ftrump-says-uk-prime-minister-starmer-is-resigning-n4954206

Starmer is complicit in denying and covering up the crime spikes due to Muslim migration.

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The sort of tricks British politicians play.

• Starmer Accused Of Staging Russian Ship Raid To Boost Poll Numbers (Jung)

The British government’s recent boarding of the tanker Smyrtos has sparked controversy, with critics accusing embattled Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government of carefully staging a military operation to display strength for political gain, according to the UK’s The Daily Mail and The Spectator. Royal Marines, supported by British security and naval forces, boarded the vessel on June 14 after authorities linked it to Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet,” ships accused of helping Moscow evade sanctions and continue exporting oil. The government said officials had planned the raid over several weeks and launched it as part of Britain’s effort to enforce sanctions against Russia.


Critics, however, question the timing and presentation of the operation. The raid occurred shortly before the G7 summit and the arrival of President Donald Trump, when Starmer faced pressure to project a tougher international image. Opponents argue that officials turned the release of dramatic footage showing commandos boarding the vessel into a political spectacle designed to strengthen Starmer’s sinking reputation. Starmer’s government has been reeling from embarrassing political fallout following the resignation of Defense Secretary John Healey and a recent by-election loss.

Meanwhile, as Restore Britain’s leader Rupert Lowe read his final report on the rape gang inquiry in Parliament, the Starmer-aligned BBC ignored public outrage over the revelations and focused on Russia. The police did not even confirm the report. Defense commentators have also questioned how quickly cameras captured key moments of the operation. Tim Ripley, a defense analyst from the Defence Eye website, said the footage raised “a lot of eyebrows” and argued that the placement of camera operators suggested officials carefully planned the visuals.

A defense source quoted by The Daily Mail claimed Downing Street’s communications team “clearly orchestrated” the raid’s presentation, alleging that officials positioned cameras to capture commandos moving through the ship and created imagery intended to boost Starmer’s “strong man” image. British commandos faced no actual opposition when they first boarded the civilian vessel and there were never any Russian forces onboard. Defense sources told The Daily Mail that since March, when British forces were given permission to intercept the Russian shadow fleet passing through British waters, 184 UK sanctioned vessels have made 238 entries, but none were challenged or boarded until last week.

The government rejected claims that officials staged the operation, saying military planners conducted a legitimate enforcement mission based on intelligence and maritime security concerns and that the raid was planned weeks in advance. Officials said they released the footage to show transparency and deter vessels involved in sanctions violations. A government spokesman told The Daily Mail, “The PM set out in March that we would interdict shadow fleet vessels at a time and place of our choosing, and that is exactly what we have done, alongside our allies.” The prime minister’s critics argue the central issue involves not whether the raid happened, but how his government used the event afterward.

They point to the timing, the dramatic imagery, and the political circumstances surrounding the G7 summit as evidence that officials shaped the operation into a carefully managed public-relations campaign.The controversy shows how embattled governments increasingly combine security operations with media strategy. Military actions now often carry political messaging, and critics say that the Smyrtos raid demonstrates how leaders can use force, imagery, and timing to influence public perception. For Starmer’s opponents, the debate goes beyond the tanker itself. They argue the government transformed a real enforcement action into a carefully produced show of strength at a politically convenient moment.

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I find this very hard to believe. becuase of the level of absurdity.

[..] .. the first recorded case of a specifically Pakistani rape gang back to 1955 in Bradford

• Britain’s Greatest Betrayal: The Rape Gang Inquiry Report (AmG)

Rupert Lowe’s Rape Gang Inquiry Report opens with two quotations before a single piece of evidence is presented. The first is Albert Einstein’s observation: “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”


Human history has always contained violent and predatory men, every society has had to confront them, punish them, and do its best to protect the innocent from them. That is a perennial feature of the human condition. Yet the significance of Einstein’s quote is that it shifts our attention away from the perpetrators alone and towards those who witnessed wrongdoing and failed to stop it. This report is so horrific because it illustrates how people who were supposed to protect vulnerable children failed to act. The report argues that those crimes became possible on such a scale because too many others looked away.

The second quotation is from Friedrich Nietzsche: “Man is the cruelest animal.” Nietzsche explains the existence of the perpetrators, Einstein explains the existence of the scandal. Throughout the report, readers encounter testimony describing acts so degrading and sadistic that they transcend ordinary criminality. This article will start with one such story.

At 12 years of age, a girl identified in official records only as Chloe was abducted by an adult male who drove her to a secluded, darkened graveyard. Once there, he supplied the child with an entire bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey. He then forced himself upon her, pinning her down in the darkness and raping her. Withdrawing just before ejaculation, the man picked up the emptied glass whiskey bottle and violently forced it up inside the 12-year-old child’s body until it shattered.

When Chloe eventually arrived at a local Accident and Emergency department, bleeding and in a state of unfathomable physical and psychological shock, the medical staff attended to the immediate anatomical emergency. They placed her on a table, removed the shards of shattered glass from deep inside her body, and then, according to the official records, they simply discharged her. No probing questions were asked, no police officers were summoned to the hospital ward to take a statement, no urgent safeguarding referrals were initiated to remove her from harm. A child had presented with injuries unmistakably consistent with extreme, sadistic sexual torture, and the institution specifically tasked with her care patched her up and sent her back out into the night.

Elsewhere in the country, a young victim named Michelle endured a reality of comparable horror. Michelle was subjected to an industrial scale of violence, repeatedly gang-raped in local bin sheds and threatened into terrified submission with a knife and forced into sex with multiple men waiting in cars. She was drugged, beaten, burned with cigarettes, locked in rooms, and passed between men. Of her abusers, she states: “98 percent of them were Pakistani Muslim. If not, they were Iraqi Muslim or Kurdish.” One of the most chilling details of Michelle’s ordeal occurred inside a police station. When the authorities finally became involved, the system failed her with such spectacular absurdity that police officers permitted one of the very men who had been violently abusing her to sit beside her during proceedings, officially accepting her rapist as her designated “appropriate adult,” a legal role exclusively designed to protect the welfare of vulnerable minors.

What Actually Happened
The history of group-based child sexual exploitation in the United Kingdom stretches back generations. While Alexis Jay, the independent chair of the Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection, previously identified the 1970s as the era when immigrant rape gangs first began operating in Britain, the Inquiry traces the first recorded case of a specifically Pakistani rape gang back to 1955 in Bradford, shortly after the British Nationality Act of 1948 altered the nation’s demographic makeup. However, the report highlights that the scale of these crimes expanded exponentially from the late 1990s onward, mutating from isolated local incidents into an industrialized, nationwide criminal enterprise.

What emerges from the Inquiry’s findings is the standardization of the abuse. The report confirms that these networks operate, or have operated, in at least 149 local authority districts, representing nearly 40 percent of all such districts across the United Kingdom. Britain quite literally faced a single, cohesive national model of modern-day child sex slavery.

The Victims
Reading the Rape Gang Inquiry Report is to descend into an abyss of human suffering. The abstract statistics of 250,000 victims, 149 districts, decades of cover-ups cannot adequately convey the reality of the crimes. The emotional and moral heart of the report is truly in the testimonies of the survivors, who detailed the complete annihilation of their childhoods and the lifelong shadows cast by their exploitation.

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“Zelenskyy Demands President Trump Authorize Licenses for Ukraine to Begin Development of U.S. Patriot Missiles in Ukraine:

• Zelenskyy Wants To Develop U.S. Patriot Missiles in Ukraine (CTH)

This is the third step in what I believe is a transparent operation conducted by Ukraine and the U.K (NATO group).Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now demanding the U.S. give license approval to military contractors in order to build U.S. Patriot Missile systems in Ukraine and throughout Europe. I am almost certain this was the intent of the previous operation carried out by Ukraine upon their own religious and cultural centers in Kiev. It fits a long-established pattern of operation which we have watched unfold in real time over the past few years. Again, for emphasis, I cannot prove this – but deeply suspect it is accurate.


Breaking down what Zelenskyy outlines below. This is what it looked like in real time as the events described below unfolded. (1) Following the pattern of visible and political diminishment of Christianity within Ukraine, the Nazi side of Ukraine carried out a false flag attack on their own cathedral and cultural sites as the set up to their plan. This was staged and timed to happen just before the G7 assembly in France. (2) Using #1 as the pretense and justification, Ukraine then pulled the trigger on 600 simultaneous drones targeting Moscow in Russia – the drones were pre-staged and set to attack during the G7. This was planned prior to the events in France.

(3) Using #1 and #2 as the central backdrop, internal G7 pressure was then directed toward the U.S. delegation, while holding home turf on the ground of the ‘coalition of the willing.’ Zelenskyy, Starmer and Macron had this set up in advance. That’s the outlook when you drop the pretenses. That’s the nature of this Ukraine. That’s also why we continue to call this operation World War Reddit! Here’s Zelenskyy’s demand:

Volodymyr Zelenskyy – “During the summit, all members of the G7 were aware of our operation in the Moscow region, had already seen the results, and supported Ukraine’s entirely just and appropriate responses. In my view, this was the first time the G7 had unanimously supported Ukraine and said that we needed to return to a stronger sanctions policy against Russia. This came after the massive attack on Kyiv, during which it was not only our Christian holy site that was damaged. I showed them photographs of the Lavra and other sites. Everyone saw the Dormition Cathedral burning. They knew about the casualties.

After the G7 meeting, the U.S. President, Secretary Rubio, and I stayed to discuss all the additional issues. Many things, from reimposing sanctions to licenses for air defense production. This time, it became quite public that the U.S. team had responded positively to the issue of licenses for the first time. Everyone agrees that we now have all the technical capabilities needed to begin producing missiles for Patriot systems. This requires licenses from the United States. What is needed now is President Trump’s personal approval. President Trump plans to ask U.S. defense companies to establish licensed production of air defense missiles in Europe and Ukraine.” (SOURCE Via X)

Keep in mind, all of the NATO ‘coalition of the willing’ met in London approximately 2 weeks before the G7 assembly. Starmer, Merz, Macron and Zelenskyy all met in London.During that trip Zelenskyy met with King Charles (pictured below) who pledged his support toward the renewed efforts to be highlighted from the meeting at #10 Downing Street. Overlay the state of the political situation in Great Britain, France, Germany and Europe overall. Then consider the visible weakness within the NATO alliance exactly at the moment when Trump is openly positioning a U.S. exit from the self-centered North American alliance.

Europe needs a crisis in order to recover from their current economic collapse. Brussels and London need a war against Russia.You cannot convince me the timing of the events described above is coincidental. I do not support the geopolitical end game of Russia; however, I also find it impossible to dispute Putin’s description of the Zelenskyy regime in Ukraine as “Nazis.” These people have some twisted control mechanisms in synapses wired by evil and sin.

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“The UPA brutally and savagely massacred at least 100,000 Polish civilians in what is now western Ukraine during World War II.. “

• Poland’s ‘Pain Threshold’ Broke After Zelensky’s Tribute To Nazi Collaborators (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky broke Poland’s “pain threshold” when he named a commando unit after a Ukrainian nationalist group implicated in the World War II killings of tens of thousands of Poles, Polish President Karol Nawrocki said on Saturday. The decision sparked outrage in Poland, where the massacres remain an open wound. Despite pressure from Warsaw to rename the unit, the Ukrainian leader has refused. “We are a proud Polish nation and we have our threshold of pain in matters that concern us and our allies. And that pain threshold has been crossed,” the Polish president said at a rally in northeastern Poland on Saturday. He added that this was why he stripped Zelensky of Poland’s highest state honor, the Order of the White Eagle, on Friday.


The revocation followed escalating tensions between Warsaw and Kiev after Zelensky in late May signed a decree granting a special operations unit the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA.” The name refers to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which have been lionized in Ukraine since the bloody 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev. The UPA brutally and savagely massacred at least 100,000 Polish civilians in what is now western Ukraine during World War II, with the crimes being recognized as genocide by Warsaw, Nawrocki recalled on Friday.

Zelensky has responded by posting a photograph of the award along with a completed mailing form for shipment to Warsaw. Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has renounced his own Order of the White Eagle, which he received in 1997, to protest Warsaw’s decision, his press secretary has announced. Russian presidential investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev reacted to Warsaw’s move with dark irony. “Poland finally discovers Nazi sympathizers in Ukraine,” he wrote on X on Friday. Moscow has long warned that Kiev’s glorification of Nazis and Nazi collaborators is an open secret and has cited denazification of the country as one of its key goals in the conflict.

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“I’ve dealt with this little fucker..” “He’s tricky. He’s like the special-needs child for the Europeans. And he’s acting like Mr. Bean on crack.”

• Zelensky ‘Acting Like Mr. Bean on Crack’ : Scott Bessent (RT)

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who had negotiated a much-touted rare earth minerals deal with Kiev, was reportedly worried that “little f**ker” Vladimir Zelensky would mess up the signing ceremony in the Oval Office, according to a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. The infamous confrontation last year took place as the Ukrainian leader sat down with President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance to finalize a deal granting the US access to Ukraine’s mineral resources.


The televised press conference took a nasty turn when Zelensky criticized Trump’s efforts to mediate a settlement with Moscow rather than increase military support for Kiev. “I’ve dealt with this little fucker,” Bessent, who was present in the room, told his associates, according to excerpts published by the Guardian. “He’s tricky. He’s like the special-needs child for the Europeans. And he’s acting like Mr. Bean on crack.”The Treasury secretary had spent weeks preparing the deal and had traveled to Kiev, where he allegedly engaged in his own shouting match with Zelensky over the “awful” Ukrainian draft, at one point telling him: “What the f**k do you want to do?”

Several other Trump aides had also been worried about a potential Oval Office scandal, with then-National Security Adviser Mike Waltz desperately urging Zelensky to at least “come wearing a suit.” Zelensky was eventually “asked to leave” the White House, while the deal was signed without much fanfare two months later. Zelensky, who has since held several meetings with Trump to mend ties and even started wearing a custom all-black, military-style suit jacket, remains “somewhat traumatized by his train crash” almost a year later, according to Politico.

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“On the Senate math itself, Kennedy was characteristically blunt with the Journal: “I mean, I want a Porsche for my birthday. I’m not going to get it.”

• Trump Is Furious With Senate GOP, Puts Thune In His Crosshairs (ZH)

Donald Trump does not like the word “no.” He likes it even less when it comes from John Thune, the Senate majority leader whose job description apparently does not include telling the president what he wants to hear. That dynamic has now spilled into public view, and the fallout says as much about the state of the Republican Party as it does about any single piece of legislation. The flashpoint is the SAVE America Act. The House passed it back in February, but it remains stalled in the Senate due to the Democrats’ filibuster. The SAVE America Act would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, mandate voter ID at polling places, and sharply curtail mail-in voting.


For Trump and a sizable chunk of the conservative base, this is common-sense election integrity; polls show tremendous bipartisan support for it. Trump has grown tired of waiting. Last week, he tied the SAVE America Act to FISA Section 702 reauthorization, the surveillance authority that lets intelligence agencies monitor foreign nationals without a warrant. Congress let that authority lapse for the first time since 2008, and Trump made clear he intends to use it as leverage. “I will not approve FISA without THE SAVE AMERICA ACT going along with it,” he posted on Truth Social. That is not a man asking nicely.

Thune was unmoved. “The president has his own mind, makes his own decisions,” he said. “So do we.” Read that as you like, but it does not sound like a man rushing to fall in line. According to a person close to Trump who spoke with The Wall Street Journal, the president’s frustration stems from being told “no” rather than “no, let me try.” A Thune ally pushed back on the Journal’s reporting, arguing the majority leader is not the real obstacle here. Trump simply does not have the votes. That is a fair point, and it gets at something deeper than personal chemistry: the SAVE America Act faces a math problem before it faces a Thune problem.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told the Journal that Thune is “telling the president the truth” and that “the problem is the president doesn’t like hearing that when it frustrates what he wants to do.” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) offered a gentler diagnosis, describing the clash as one of temperament rather than substance. Trump’s “skill set is to vocalize everything,” she said, while Thune’s is “more quietly engaging.” She added, “I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive.” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) never one to pass up a colorful comparison, likened Trump to the ruthless sales trainer from Glengarry Glen Ross during a closed-door GOP lunch, according to Punchbowl News. On the Senate math itself, Kennedy was characteristically blunt with the Journal: “I mean, I want a Porsche for my birthday. I’m not going to get it.”

Trump has not limited himself to public jabs, either. He summoned House Speaker Mike Johnson to the White House to discuss personnel disputes and the lapsed FISA law, conspicuously leaving Thune out of the conversation. He has also been quietly polling Republican senators on their views of Thune’s leadership, a clear signal that his patience with the majority leader is running thin.

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Less Fed would be nice.

• Warsh’s First Fed Meeting Sends a Message (Martin Armstrong)

Everyone expected Kevin Warsh to come into his first Federal Reserve meeting and immediately begin cutting rates because Trump put him in the chair. That was never going to happen. Markets have once again demonstrated they do not understand how interest rates actually function. The Federal Reserve left rates unchanged at 3.50% to 3.75%, but what mattered was not the decision itself. What mattered was the complete shift in tone.


The Fed removed language suggesting future easing and, for the first time this year, officials openly moved toward discussing potential rate hikes rather than cuts. Inflation is moving higher again, energy prices have surged amid Middle East tensions, and the bond market immediately understood what many economists still refuse to accept. What I found far more interesting was Warsh’s attack on the institution itself. He announced five separate task forces to review how the Federal Reserve operates, how it communicates, how it measures inflation, how it uses economic data, how it manages its balance sheet, and how productivity and employment are evolving in a rapidly changing economy.

Warsh is openly signaling that he believes the Fed has become bloated, overly academic, and detached from reality. For years I have argued that governments and central banks are operating on outdated models that no longer reflect the world economy. Warsh appears to recognize the same problem. The irony is that Warsh was selected largely because many believed he would be more dovish than Powell. Instead, his first meeting produced one of the most hawkish shifts we have seen this year. Officials now see inflation remaining elevated and several policymakers are looking toward possible rate increases before year-end. Bond yields jumped, the dollar strengthened, and equities sold off because traders suddenly realized the era of guaranteed rate cuts may be over.

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Ugly? It’s just a 13 in a dozen building.

• Now We Know Why the Obama Center Is So Ugly (Margolis)

The Obama Presidential Center finally opened to the public on Friday (not that you care), and the verdict from the internet was swift and brutal. People are calling it a “monstrous insult to architecture,” a “concrete nightmare,” and simply a “monstrosity.” Social media has spent the week comparing the thing to a trash can and a dystopian movie set, which, having seen the photos, feels generous. It’s hideous.


Naturally, the man who helped design the building’s most mocked feature has a different take. Chris Bird, the Washington structural engineer who designed the upper portion of the center’s towering centerpiece, sat down with Fox News Digital just before the doors opened and insisted the design is not a monstrosity at all. It’s a “grand gesture.” A “bold statement.” Something with “no architectural precedent.”“The architects knew with the client that they wanted to do something bold at the top of the tower, and the vision of the speech came to life,” Bird told Fox News Digital. I’d blame Obama, too.

I was in architecture for years before I started writing for PJ Media. At no point in the design process, based on the publicly available renderings, did this ever look great. I like bold architecture myself. I can be somewhat of a traditionalist, but I’m also a fan of Frank Gehry. You don’t get much bolder than that. The Obama Center doesn’t come across as bold; it comes across as dystopian and authoritarian. Which, actually, is appropriate for anything connected to Obama, but not really what they wanted to project, I’m sure.

The tower features 91 words pulled from Obama’s speeches, wrapped around a corner of the building in 433 individual letters, each about five feet tall. Curiously, “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it” is not on there. Bird described the process of working with the architects and graphic designers to “shape and move a speech, splice it and put it on a building” as “really unprecedented.”

Bird insists the criticism is overblown. He claimed that the building “anchors” its South Side neighborhood, that it blends nicely with the surrounding 19.3-acre campus, and that visitors have had an emotional reaction to the place. “It’s nothing but smiles and some tears sometimes,” he said.

Can you hear my eyes rolling?

“I think everyone finds a bit of themselves that they knew or didn’t know they needed here, which is really special.” Hilariously, Fox News Digital spoke with more than a dozen attendees who used words like “phenomenal,” “breathtaking,” and “futuristic” to describe it. I’m guessing these are the same people who cheered when Obama blew his nose during a campaign rally in 2008. These aren’t serious people with an ability to be objective; they’ll praise anything with Obama’s name on it because that’s what they’re supposed to.

But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s ugly. In fact, last year, locals were blasting the “monstrosity” going up in their neighborhood and complaining that it caused rents and property taxes to skyrocket. Between that and how Obama made health care more expensive, I can’t help but wonder what all the Obama nostalgia is all about. Adding insult to injury, while locals are paying more in rent and taxes because of the project, the Obama Foundation acquired the property through a corrupt land deal that only costs $10 a year to lease from the city. Ten dollars. For 19 acres in one of the most valuable cities in the country.

The left’s devotion to Obama has never been about substance. It’s a cult of personality, and all these years later, it’s still going strong.

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Europe turns against globalism. But so much damage has already been done.

• This Is The Funniest Thing Ever… (MN)

Leftists in the EU who spent years blocking real border enforcement are now whining about a victory party after conservatives pushed through a motion to create powerful tools to remove illegal migrants. The chamber could not stop laughing. A ‘Renew Europe’ MEP aligned with French President Emmanuel Macron stood up and demanded punishment for conservative MEPs who gathered on the European Parliament roof, drank heavily, and celebrated the passage of the bloc’s toughest-ever deportation reforms. The presiding officer brushed it off and The room roared with amusement.


This outburst came days after the European Parliament voted 418 to 218, with 30 abstentions, to approve the new Return Regulation. Conservative and sovereignist MEPs from the EPP, ECR, Patriots for Europe, and Europe of Sovereign Nations groups supplied the decisive majority. The measure updates the hopelessly outdated 2008 rules and gives member states real power to enforce removals.

In our earlier video we highlighted the immediate leftist reaction inside the chamber: chants of ‘Shame on you’ from leftists with chants of ‘Send them back’ in response from conservatives.Now they are complaining about a rooftop toast. The contrast could not be clearer. One side delivers results for citizens who have endured years of unchecked arrivals, crime, and welfare strain. The other side throws procedural tantrums and pretends a private celebration violates parliamentary decorum.

https://twitter.com/EuropaAdAstra/status/2068023461809692934?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2068023461809692934%7Ctwgr%5Ea8a72085cf1e37abaf382a95b81936b4aae31798%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmodernity.news%2F2026%2F06%2F20%2Fthis-is-the-funniest-thing-ever%2F

The regulation makes deportation orders issued in one member state valid across the entire EU. It extends maximum detention periods for those who refuse to leave, removes automatic suspensive effect on appeals in many cases, doubles entry bans to ten years (lifetime for security threats), and allows member states to conclude agreements with third countries for ‘return hubs’ where rejected migrants can be processed and removed without remaining inside EU territory. Non-cooperating origin countries face visa restrictions, aid cuts, and trade measures – the same leverage the Trump administration successfully deployed.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni welcomed the outcome as validation of the model she pioneered with Albania. “We promised Italians we would change Europe, and we did it, with courage, patience, and determination,’ she said. Meloni added, ‘This innovative solution has been resisted at every turn by the Italian and European left, but thanks to this government, it has now become a tool available to the whole of Europe.’ MEP Marieke Ehlers of the Patriots for Europe group stated ‘This regulation puts the obligation exactly where it belongs: on the illegal migrant… The days of pampering are over. You have no right to stay, which means you have one simple obligation: pack your bags and leave our territory.’

She added that the text hands real power back to national capitals: ‘We are taking back control… Almost all provisions give Member States the freedom to go further.’French EPP negotiator François-Xavier Bellamy called it the end of decades of failure. ‘After decades of failure and years of deadlock, Europe is ending its powerlessness in the face of illegal immigration. No one can claim any longer that Europe has no tools to act. The rules are now in place. The responsibility lies with governments to use them.’

https://twitter.com/ScaryEurope/status/2068288272166769011?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2068288272166769011%7Ctwgr%5Ea8a72085cf1e37abaf382a95b81936b4aae31798%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmodernity.news%2F2026%2F06%2F20%2Fthis-is-the-funniest-thing-ever%2F

French President Emmanuel Macron quickly distanced himself at the EU summit in Brussels. He declared that France would neither participate in nor fund third-country return hubs, calling the approach ineffective and contrary to French principles.

The same Macron who lectures others on European values now refuses to use the very instruments his own parliament helped create. The gap between rhetoric and reality on migration has never been wider. Globalist pushback has already been initiated as the United Nations voiced concerns that the new return hubs could violate human rights standards. Critics on the left and in international organisations frame any effective removal policy as inherently cruel, even as European cities continue to absorb the costs of failed integration and repeated criminal acts by rejected or illegal migrants.

For years globalist voices insisted that mass low-skilled migration was inevitable, economically necessary, and morally superior.They dismantled internal borders, expanded asylum loopholes, and attacked any leader who tried to enforce existing law. Return rates stayed dismal. Criminal networks thrived. Public trust collapsed. Conservative MEPs simply used their growing numbers to force an update that reflects what citizens have demanded for a decade. The left’s response – procedural complaints, accusations of misconduct over a private celebration, and renewed warnings from the UN – reveals the same refusal to accept democratic outcomes that has defined the migration debate from the start.

The laughter in the chamber was not just amusement at a thin-skinned complaint. It was recognition that the excuses have run out. Europe now possesses the legal tools to remove those with no right to remain. Whether national governments use them remains to be seen, but the parliamentary majority has shifted decisively toward enforcement. The same forces that once sneered at ‘Send them back’ as fringe bigotry are watching their own colleagues chant it on the floor. The Overton window did not shift incidentally. It moved because voters across the continent grew tired of policies that prioritised arrivals over safety and sovereignty.

Europe’s conservative MEPs just proved that when they coordinate, they can deliver. The left can keep filing ethics complaints about rooftop drinks. The rest of the continent is focused on results.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/P0eMPieDinges/status/2068441460903391728?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 18 2026

Jun 182026
 
 June 18, 2026  Posted by at 9:17 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  15 Responses »


Priest and scribe Ka-aper ca. 2465-2323 BC


• Trump And Iran Sign MOU Deal Ahead Of Schedule (ZH)
• Read The 14-Point US-Iran Draft Deal Set For Friday Signing (ZH)
• Trump Shifting Focus Back To Ukraine: Where Do Peace Talks Stand? (RT)
• Trump Calls Out ‘Dumocrat’ Double-Cross,” Keeps Pulte As Acting DNI (ZH)
• 5 Arrested in Plot to Attack UFC Event at White House (ET)
• How Deep Are the Newsoms In It? THIS Deep. (Stephen Green)
• Kamala’s Anti-Trump Meltdown in Austria a Masterclass in Projection (Margolis)
• Ease In Our Time (Every)
• Nigel Farage’s ‘White Britain’: A Long-Overdue Step (von Hoffmeister)
• Nigel Farage’s ‘White Britain’ is a Fantasy (Graham Hryce)
• A Social Media Ban for Minors Requires Data From Everyone (ET)
• Canada is Next Up (CTH)
• The World Is Re-Discovering America In the World Cup — and Loving It (Moran)
• Russia’s New Warning Shot From Space (Martin Armstrong)

 


 

https://twitter.com/JesseBWatters/status/2067048468552536132?s=20 https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2067182879038406656?s=20

 


 


“If [the Iran deal] works out, I’m going to take the credit; if it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming [Vance].”

• Trump And Iran Sign MOU Deal Ahead Of Schedule (ZH)

Trump Signs Iran Deal Remotely Ahead Of Schedule. Confirming earlier speculation, Axios reports that the U.S. and Iran have remotely signed their memorandum of understanding to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz, and the agreement is now in effect. The signing – which took place electronically between Trump, Vance and Ghalibaf – reportedly took place at dinner in France alongside President Emmanuel Macron. The signing was supposed to happen in Switzerland on Friday, but a diplomat from a mediating country and a second source familiar told Axios earlier on Wednesday that there had been discussions about signing and implementing it earlier


The diplomatic source said the discussions around accelerating the timetable were intended to open the strait sooner than Friday, as both parties were in agreement on that issue. Another factor may have been the political pressure on the White House to release the text of the MOU, which it sitll hasn’t done officially. The source familiar with the discussions claimed it was Iran that demanded the text not be published until the formal signing, and denied the White House was responding to political pressure. The only “public release” so far consisted of a senior administration official reading the agreement to reporters in a briefing call on Wednesday, after days of confusion about what was in it.

Ahead of the signing, Iran’s foreign ministry said the sides had agreed that the MOU should be signed electronically by both presidents. For Iran, the signing represents a major victory as it now stands to receive billions in unfrozen (and other) funds from the US and Gulf sources. While it’s now just a formality, the meeting between the U.S. and Iranian delegations headed by Vice President Vance and Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf is still expected to take place as planned on Friday in Switzerland. They are expected to discuss the launching of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.

The signing took place after this remarkable press conference earlier in the day in which Trump tried to justify conceding to Iran’s terms: As BBC’s Siavash Ardalan writes, Trump’s responses to the reporters’ questions to justify the agreement with Iran were bizarre and unprecedented in their own way: They asked him how he could allow $300 billion in investment in Iran. He said, “We’ve already inflicted $2 trillion in damage on Iran; $300 billion is nothing in comparison.” They asked why he’s giving Iran tens of billions of dollars. He said, “If we don’t return their own money to them, other countries will be afraid to put their money in our banks, and then the dollar’s position will weaken.”

They asked why the missile issue isn’t in the agreement. He said, “We’ve already destroyed 85% of their missiles anyway; the rest are buried underground, and besides, we sell air defense systems to the countries in the region so they won’t worry about Iran’s missiles.” They asked if he’s not worried that Iran will say, “We’re only producing nuclear energy for civilian purposes.” He said, “You can’t tell everyone else to produce electricity with nuclear power while only Iran can’t.” Finally, he said, “If we continue sanctioning Iran, 91 million Iranians will die of hunger—what’s the point of that, really?” Oh, and he joked that “If [the Iran deal] works out, I’m going to take the credit; if it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming [Vance].”

Read more …

They should talk until about August 20. As the date approaches, Iran will say they need more time.

• Read The 14-Point US-Iran Draft Deal Set For Friday Signing (ZH)

With US and Iranian officials preparing to formally sign a memorandum of understanding in Switzerland on Friday, the conflict is entering the much-needed diplomatic phase to avert a potentially disastrous energy cliff. The MoU would open a 60-day negotiating window aimed at ending the war, restoring maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and hammering out the future of Iran’s nuclear program.


Bloomberg published the text of the 14-point draft MoU, offering the clearest look yet at the proposed trade: de-escalation and sanctions relief for Iran, in exchange for a ceasefire across all fronts, commitments on shipping access, and a broader nuclear deal to be finalized by the end of summer. But Iran’s Tasnim news agency cited an unnamed official earlier today, saying some of the MoU published by Bloomberg is inaccurate. The report did not specify the discrepancies. Bloomberg noted that some of the wording could be different between the English and Persian versions. Below is the text of the 14-point draft MoU:

  1. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States, together with their allies in the current war, declare upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and undertake that from now on they will not launch any hostile action against each other, and will refrain from the threat or use of force against each other. The final agreement will confirm the provisions of this Article and the remaining Articles
  2. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States undertake to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs
  3. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States undertake to negotiate and reach a final agreement within a maximum period of 60 days, extendable by mutual consent
  4. Immediately upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, the United States Lift the naval blockade and prevent any interference or obstruction against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and restore traffic within a maximum of 30 days to its full capacity; the traffic of ships shall be proportional to the pre-war volume of traffic on the part of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States also undertakes to withdraw its forces from the surrounding areas within 30 days after the final agreement
  5. Upon signing this Memorandum of Understanding, the Islamic Republic of Iran will immediately take steps to ensure that the movement of merchant ships from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa is resumed within 30 days to the pre-war volume, taking into account the need for the removal of technical obstacles and the neutralization of mines by Iran.
  6. The United States undertakes, together with its regional partners, to create a comprehensive plan agreed upon by both parties for the rehabilitation and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran, While ensuring financing of at least $300 billion. The implementation mechanism of this plan, as part of the final agreement, will be formulated within 60 days.
  7. The United States commits to ending, on a schedule to be agreed upon as part of the final agreement, all types of sanctions currently facing the Islamic Republic of Iran, including resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and all unilateral U.S. sanctions, both primary and secondary.
  8. The Islamic Republic of Iran reiterates that it will never produce nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States have agreed that the fate of enriched material and the fate of all other mutually agreed nuclear-related issues, including Iran’s nuclear needs, will be adequately addressed in a final agreement; the final agreement will confirm the provisions of this Article.
  9. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States agree that, pending a final agreement, they will maintain the status quo: Iran will maintain the status quo on its nuclear program, and the United States will not impose new sanctions on Iran or strengthen its forces in the region.
  10. The United States undertakes that immediately after the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, and until the date of the lifting of sanctions, the United States Treasury Department will issue waivers for exports of Iranian crude oil, petrochemical products and their derivatives, and all related services, including banking, insurance, transportation, and the like.
  11. The United States undertakes that, in light of the progress of negotiations towards a final agreement, frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran will be released and made fully available. These funds, whether held in the master account or transferred, will be used for any final beneficiary payment determined by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran and will be fully available for use. The United States undertakes to issue all necessary permits and licenses on this basis.
  12. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States agree that an implementation mechanism will be established to oversee the successful implementation of and future commitment to the Final Agreement.
  13. Following the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, and upon receipt of assurances regarding the commencement of implementation of Articles 4, 5, 10, and 11 of this Memorandum of Understanding, and the continued implementation of these steps, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States will enter into negotiations for a Final Agreement solely with respect to the remaining Articles.
  14. The final agreement will be approved through a binding resolution of the UN Security Council

Based on the text above, the first take of the MoU appears to be front-loaded economic relief for Tehran in exchange for a ceasefire, a nuclear freeze, and commitments to negotiate hard topics, such as the nuclear program, at a later date.

Who Stands To Benefit:
Tehran benefits most directly because it gets economic oxygen, oil waivers, frozen funds, sanctions relief language, and reduced US military pressure in the region. Hezbollah and Iran-aligned actors also benefit if “all fronts, including Lebanon” locks in a ceasefire that constrains Israeli operations. And, of course, the global economy because global shippers benefit if Hormuz reopens and war risk premiums in crude oil collapse. The Gulf states benefit if the conflict ends because energy exports through the Strait of Hormuz will resume. A report on Tuesday said that QatarEnergy was planning to ramp up LNG production in the coming months.

Where is Leverage Lost:
The US loses some coercive leverage once the Hormuz blockade ends, oil waivers are granted, and asset-release mechanisms begin. Israel loses freedom of action if the agreement binds the Lebanon front and limits further strikes. Sanctions and hawks lose leverage because the draft moves quickly toward broad sanctions dismantlement. The urgency behind the MoU and locking in peace talks for 60 days, with a formal signing event at the Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland on Friday, stems mainly from the world being headed for an energy cliff, as SPRs globally were being drained to offset the loss of Gulf production with the Hormuz chokepoint shuttered. Brent crude futures edged down overnight, trading around $79 a barrel on Wednesday morning.

One of the biggest uncertainties remains the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump stated that the critical waterway will reopen permanently and be toll-free, but the MoU suggests the toll-free arrangement may only last through the 60-day negotiation period. Another major uncertainty is Tehran’s compliance.

Read more …

Zelensky represents a bunch of deeply corrupt neo-nazis. Trump knows this. For Europeans and US Democrats, Ukraine is a money whitewash vehicle. What is it for Trump?

• Trump Shifting Focus Back To Ukraine: Where Do Peace Talks Stand? (RT)

Where do the talks stand?
After Washington resumed direct contacts with Moscow following years of diplomatic freeze under Joe Biden, Russia, Ukraine and the US held three rounds of talks aimed at reaching a settlement. The negotiations yielded several tangible results, including major prisoner exchanges, the repatriation of fallen soldiers, and the exchange of peace memorandums. However, they failed to secure a peace deal, with key disagreements persisting, particularly over Moscow’s demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from Donbass.A fourth round of talks, expected in March, was postponed after Washington shifted its focus to the Iran war. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has since described the process as being in a “situational pause” pending renewed US engagement.

What settlements have been proposed?
Following the Alaska summit, where Moscow and Washington stressed the need for a lasting settlement rather than the ceasefire sought by Kiev and its European backers, Trump unveiled a 28-point peace roadmap. According to leaked drafts, it called for Ukraine to abandon its NATO ambitions, drop territorial claims, and cap its military at 600,000 personnel. Moscow welcomed the proposal as a potential basis for peace. However, under pressure from the EU and UK, several key provisions were later removed or revised.

The updated 20-point plan reportedly included demilitarized zones, Western security guarantees for Kiev, an 800,000-strong peacetime Ukrainian military, a reconstruction fund for Ukraine, and a path toward EU membership. Russia confirmed receiving the revised proposal but declined to discuss its contents, accusing the Europeans of reshaping the framework and undermining peace efforts.

What are the next steps?
On Tuesday, Trump discussed Ukraine with Zelensky and other leaders during a closed-door G7 session and later held a separate meeting with the Ukrainian leader. While details were not disclosed, Zelensky said afterward that it was important to “coordinate positions.” Meanwhile, Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to resume contacts with Moscow after shifting their focus to the Iran war. Putin aide Yury Ushakov said preparations are under way following Sunday’s call between the Russian and US presidents. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later said no dates have been set and that the issue will likely be revisited after Washington signs its memorandum with Tehran.

Europeans split
European countries remain divided between those favoring engagement with Moscow and those seeking to maintain pressure on Russia. Hungary and Slovakia have urged direct dialogue with Moscow and criticized policies they say prolong the conflict. Those seeking to maintain pressure, which includes Poland, the Baltic states and much of the EU leadership, argues that political, economic and military pressure must continue. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reiterated that stance on Monday, calling support for Ukraine a top G7 priority.

France and Germany occupy a middle ground, backing continued aid to Kiev while acknowledging that any lasting settlement will require negotiations with Russia. That approach was tested last week when French, British, and German envoys met Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin in Moscow. According to Russia, however, they merely repeated calls for a ceasefire and security guarantees for Ukraine, prompting Moscow to argue that the countries arming Kiev cannot act as neutral mediators.

Trump’s position
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed he could end the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours through direct diplomacy, though he later acknowledged that a settlement would be harder to achieve. Since returning to office, he has criticized both Moscow and Kiev at various times, accusing each side of hindering peace efforts, while consistently arguing that the conflict should be resolved through negotiations rather than prolonged fighting.

https://twitter.com/e3z9b_qI1ytkw/status/2066683484358242763?s=20

After speaking with Putin and Zelensky on Sunday, Trump described both conversations as “very good” and said both leaders were “very open” to peace. According to Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov, he also told Putin he was prepared to “influence” Kiev and its European backers toward a settlement. Speaking at the G7, Trump said he would “look” at what could be done regarding Ukraine, while suggesting the conflict was of limited importance to the US, adding that “it has no impact on us other than we sell weapons.”

Zelensky’s demands
Amid mounting battlefield pressure, Zelensky has insisted on securing a temporary ceasefire and continued Western support, while maintaining that Ukraine will not formally recognize Moscow’s sovereignty over territories that joined Russia through referendums. He has also opposed any settlement negotiated directly between Moscow and Washington without Kiev’s participation, insisting that Ukraine’s European backers be included in the process.

Read more …

“No FISA Without SAVE Act:”

• Trump Calls Out ‘Dumocrat’ Double-Cross,” Keeps Pulte As Acting DNI (ZH)

Just two years after Donald Trump urged Congress to kill Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act while on the campaign trail, he’s now livid that Democrats won’t help Republicans pass it. Trump took to Truth Social early Wednesday morning with a lengthy post accusing ‘Dumocrats’ of breaking a bipartisan deal on FISA reauthorization – and announced a series of moves that throw a wrench into Senate plans for both intelligence leadership and surveillance powers.


According to Trump, Republicans played themselves – after agreeing with Democrats to accelerate the removal of Acting DNI William Pulte (by fast-tracking Jay Clayton’s confirmation) in exchange for Democratic support on renewing FISA Section 702 surveillance powers. Now, however Democrats are threatening to vote against FISA anyway.

“The Republicans wound up having fulfilled their commitment, but Dumocrats broke the Deal.” As a result, Trump said he is canceling today’s Senate hearing for Jay Clayton as permanent DNI. He will not move Clayton out of his current role as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York until Jamie McDonald (a Sullivan & Cromwell partner and Trump’s former personal lawyer, recently nominated to replace him at SDNY) is confirmed – including clearing the “blue slip” process.

In the meantime, Bill Pulte will remain as Acting Director of National Intelligence – who Trump picked to replace Tulsi Gabbard after she said in May she was leaving the administration in June to spend time with her husband following his cancer diagnosis. Pulte has been a controversial pick over his lack of intelligence experience – which led to Trump nominating U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton to be the next DNI. nTrump explicitly linked his approval of FISA renewal to passage of the SAVE America Act – his priority legislation requiring photo ID, proof of citizenship for voter registration, and strict limits on mail-in ballots.


“Therefore, to add a slight bit of intrigue but, for the Good of the Nation, and the People of our Country, I will not approve FISA without THE SAVE AMERICA ACT going along with it. Not complicated, actually, the Republicans fell into a trap.” The SAVE America Act – which requires Americans to show proof of citizenship to register to vote and a valid ID to cast a ballot, has stalled in the Senate after the House passed the legislation in February.

Read more …

What amazed me was the scale.

“.. the aim of the attack [..] was to create chaos and overthrow the U.S. government.

• 5 Arrested in Plot to Attack UFC Event at White House (ET)

Five men have been arrested for allegedly plotting to attack the mixed martial arts event that was held at the White House on June 14. The charges include conspiracy to murder. The men were planning to set off explosives at the event and force people there to flee a certain way, according to court documents. Snipers would be positioned to take out high-level targets, including President Donald Trump, according to the charging papers. One of the men, Tycen Proper, 19, told law enforcement that the attack would “jumpstart” a revolution in the United States, according to the FBI. Proper’s mother called the police on June 10. Officers arrived and learned that Proper had met people online and had been planning “recons” and “missions” with them, according to prosecutors.


He had also spent $3,000 on guns, ammunition, ballistic plates, and other items, and planned to leave during the upcoming weekend to meet with the people, his father said. Proper was admitted to a local hospital because of “homicidal ideations,” the FBI said. Proper later spoke to investigators and shared with them images and messages from accounts he was using, including accounts on TikTok and Signal. Proper said that the group with which he was involved believed the United States was headed in the wrong direction, and needed to be “torn down so that it could be rebuilt,” according to the FBI. He said the plan was for people to leave their homes on June 12 or 13 and meet in Fredericksburg, Virginia. They would stage a demonstration near the White House.

During the demonstration, the group would fly drones laden with explosive devices and set them off in a specific area, forcing the crowd to evacuate in view of waiting snipers, who would shoot people as they fled. Targets included Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and Rep. Carol Miller (R-W.Va). Through the information Proper provided, law enforcement identified four other men involved with the attack plan, according to officials. One of the men, Abraham Hermosillo Alvarez, 31, discussed the targets during the attack. “As many and as deadly as we can get,” he allegedly wrote. Another man, Daniel Eskridge, 32, wrote that the plan required five teams of three people each, and that the teams would each consist of a sniper, a drone operator, and a look-out.

The other two men allegedly involved in the plot are Bryan Omar Roa, 24, and Michael Alan Thomas, 32. Roa told the FBI during an interview that he had planned to protest at the UFC event but “his vehicle malfunctioned and he had to return home.” His relatives told law enforcement that he had planned to go to Washington and appeared ready to carry out an act of violence, and he discussed how a person could hypothetically use drones armed with explosives to bomb buildings near the White House, according to charging documents. Thomas told the FBI that he was a planner and adviser for the group, the FBI said. Thomas allegedly said the aim of the attack, and subsequent planned attacks, was to create chaos and overthrow the U.S. government.

“This is still an active, ongoing investigation,” U.S. Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday. “There are still suspects at large, and we’re going to work it until everyone’s been identified.” Quinn also said that the event on Sunday was “never at risk. Period.” A public defender appointed to represent Alvarez declined to comment. Lawyers representing Proper and Eskridge did not respond to requests for comment by time of publication. It was not clear whether Roa and Thomas had retained legal counsel.

FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement that “thanks to the rapid action of this FBI, our partners, and the Department of Justice in a multi-state operation, multiple individuals are now in custody and allegedly planned attacks were stopped cold.” He added, “I want to thank our great agents and partners, this work remains ongoing and we will continue to update the public as permitted.”

Read more …

It is sad to look at the potential Democrat candidates.

• How Deep Are the Newsoms In It? THIS Deep. (Stephen Green)

It seems impossible — or just too revolting — to keep up with the financial hanky-panky of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and First Partner (gag) Jennifer Siebel Newsom. But thanks to a couple of investigative reporters with stronger stomachs than I have, let’s see if I can’t put everything you need to know into one easily digestible column. I love it when other people do my dirty work for me, so let’s get started. “Today, my wife & I joined Donald Trump’s hit list,” Newsom practically boasted on Monday. “He has directed his Department of Justice to investigate us. They have not found a crime — they are simply trying to find one.”


Well, let’s see what Fox Business anchor Liz MacDonald and my old friend and Red State colleague Jen Van Laar have to say about that. MacDonald said Tuesday that the DOJ probe “is about California Democrats’ modern-day machine politics,” which she described as a “feedback loop of Sacramento-corporate lobbyists-governor/wife nonprofit-behested nonprofit donations-lucrative state contracts-Sacramento.” Don’t bother writing all this down — there won’t be a quiz at the end of today’s column. You’re welcome.

“The modern Sacramento machine trades corporate compliance and nonprofit funding/donations for policy access and state business,” MacDonald added, and then explained how that grift (allegedly!) worked for the Newsoms: According to IRS Form 990 disclosures, her nonprofit frequently buys from Siebel Newsom’s for-profit film company—Girls Club Entertainment LLC—writer, producer and director services and the licensing and production rights for her documentaries. Then it sells the docs to the state and public schools.

IRS records show that her nonprofit has paid her Girls Club Entertainment LLC roughly $1.64 million for these production and licensing rights since 2012, which includes a steady annual contracting fee of $150,000 since 2018. TL;DR: Siebel Newsom produced unwatchable propaganda videos for children, for which Democrat-dominated schools then paid her handsomely. Or as MacDonald summed it up, “Over the past decade, Siebel Newsom has collected over $3.7 million in combined personal salary and LLC payouts funded by the nonprofit.”

Then there are behested payments, which MacDonald explained are “a unique mechanism in California politics where an elected official asks a corporation, labor union, or wealthy individual to donate money to a specific charity, nonprofit, or government program.” Unlike campaign donations, there are no caps. As governor, Newsom requested a record $226 million in behested payments in one year. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars went to the California Partners Project,” MacDonald wrote, “a nonprofit founded by his wife.” “Many of the biggest donors were corporate giants (like health insurers and utility companies) actively bidding for lucrative state contracts or fighting state regulations.”

One hand washes the other with filthy lucre, if you’ll allow me to mix metaphors. Which brings us to Jen Van Laar, and her hip-deep-in-the-muck wade through the Newsoms’ finances, going back years. Way back in 2021, Jen asked, “Somebody Paid $3.7 Million Cash for CA Gov Newsom’s Estate – But Who?” But couldn’t come up with any satisfactory answers. That’s because the Newsoms alternately claimed that “the Newsoms’ cash was used to purchase the home but was done through an LLC managed by his first cousin,” or that “Newsoms obtained a loan… to purchase the home because the sale happened so quickly that they didn’t have time to obtain a mortgage.”

Then, California’s First Couple played similar LLC games, buying a second home for $9.1 million in ritzy Marin County. “Based on my examination of 15+ yrs of Newsom’s financial disclosures, tax returns, and real estate transactions,” Jenn explained in March, “they absolutely did not have $9.1M in cash.” Clearly, somebody did. The shenanigans were so egregious that — no matter what TDS nonsense Newsom’s social media team posts on X — the DOJ investigation began under the Biden administration. As I quipped on Instapundit this week, maybe Newsom needs to take a break from social media and lawyer up.

Then there are the real-world effects, the fallout from personal corruption and statewide, one-party rule. On Tuesday, Victor Davis Hanson wondered if California is “reaching critical mass,” thanks to one-party rule creating a “neo-feudal society” that is “hardly democratic.” The most egregious example was the fate of 2014’s Proposition 1, a $7.12 billion water bond “designed to solve the state’s chronic water storage deficit.” Even though Prop 1 is an actual constitutional amendment, including “$2.7 billion specifically designated for new reservoirs,” an alliance of bureaucracies, elected officials, and green activists still managed to block any new reservoir construction.

“Adding insult to injury,” Hanson continued, “Governor Gavin Newsom instead used $250 million from the Proposition 1 fund to blow up four dams on the Klamath River.” Californians voted for more water infrastructure. Newsom’s party blocked them, and Newsom himself had four dams destroyed that had “once provided storage, electrical generation, recreation, and flood control.” Tell me again about Muh Democracy™. All of which is my long-winded way of concluding that, as corrupt as the Newsoms appear to be, they are merely a symptom of the progressive disease killing our once-greatest state.

Read more …

As long as she’s around, how can you take that party even a little bit serious?

• Kamala’s Anti-Trump Meltdown in Austria a Masterclass in Projection (Margolis)

Kamala Harris took the stage at the Austrian World Summit on Tuesday and delivered the most shameless masterclass in projection I have ever seen. The moderator, Elex Michaelson, asked Harris about the news that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) is now under investigation by the Department of Justice.


It was a loaded question, of course, and, as you might expect, she responded with a classic Kamala word salad. “So I am not surprised that he may be using the Department of Justice to go after a political enemy in the current governor of California,” she said, “and this is why I do believe this, upon many other examples of what is, essentially — you’re gonna ask me questions about the current president, I’m gonna be candid — what is essentially the most callous, corrupt, and incompetent presidential administration America’s ever experienced, and for that reason, I have no question or doubt that we will win the midterms, and it will be a result of people of every background and political association who will contribute to that outcome.”

She claimed that President Donald Trump told everyone he’d weaponize the DOJ against his enemies, and now he’s doing it. It’s an absolute joke that anyone connected with the Biden-Harris administration would even attempt to play that card, because they didn’t just talk about using government power against political opponents. They did it, repeatedly, and boy, did they do it with gusto.

They jailed nonviolent January 6th protesters and denied them due process. They prosecuted pro-life demonstrators for praying outside abortion clinics. The Biden-Harris DOJ targeted Catholic churches. The FBI labeled parents who showed up at school board meetings as domestic terrorists for the crime of caring about their kids’ education. And, of course, the Biden-Harris administration literally sent the FBI to raid the home of President Trump in a blatant scheme to put him in prison so he couldn’t return to the White House.

Sorry, but Kamala Harris has no business accusing the Trump administration of weaponizing the Department of Justice, especially while citing the Newsom case, which, as PJ Media previously reported, actually began under the Biden-Harris administration.

While I’m here, we might as well address Kamala’s accusations of incompetence, too. This is the vice president who watched Afghanistan collapse into the hands of the Taliban, abandoned American allies to their fate, and presided over a withdrawal that got 13 U.S. troops killed. That’s before we even get to the border crisis her administration refused to control, the unchecked inflation that gutted American paychecks the administration claimed would be transitory, the bungled response to the East Palestine train derailment, the confused handling of the Chinese spy balloon, the disastrous and ultimately abandoned Gaza pier project, the sluggish response to the Maui wildfires, and the failure to deter Russia from invading Ukraine in the first place. And that’s just a few examples off the top of my head.

And don’t get me started on corruption. Between the Biden Crime Family and the whole cover-up of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, the last thing Kamala should want is for anyone to go there — not that Michaelson would call her out on any of those things.

So when Kamala stands on a stage in Austria and calls the Trump administration the most callous, corrupt, and incompetent in American history, conservatives can be forgiven for laughing. She’s not describing Trump. She’s describing the administration she was a part of for four years.

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“.. maqluba (a deal, flipping the rice) or muqlaba (no deal, flipping the peace)..”

• Ease In Our Time (Every)

Yesterday saw the BOJ hike rates to 1%, the highest level since 1995, and the RBA hold at 4.35%, with some chatter of the next move being down, not up, despite inflation running way above 2%. Today it’s the turn of new Fed Chair Warsh who, like the other central banks, has to deal with a geopolitical backdrop which may or may not allow for any monetary policy easing.


There, the text of the 14-point US-Iran MoU has been leaked ahead of its Swiss signing ceremony on Friday: ironically, it says “Ease in our time.” It allows Iran to immediately sell oil again, including the waiver of all banking and transport sanctions (though US legislation may prove an obstacle re: IRGC terror designation). It also includes the private sector $300bn investment fund for Iran, which Reuters claims has already been half committed.

What does this imply? It’s either a giant TACO that markets look past the full implications of to embrace; or a can-kick until the midterms (after which what?); or the Middle Eastern dish maqluba –not muqlaba (‘confrontation’)– layers of rice, veggies, and meat prepared one way up, then flipped when served. In other words, a behind-the-scenes-and-rhetoric normalisation from Iran. Ultimately, the proof of that dish is in the eating, and there are still many points to choke on.

NBC reports Iran has continued to fire multiple drones toward ships in Hormuz since the MoU was agreed, with the US shooting them down. The US Navy underlines the Strait still holds “substantial” risk. Insurers therefore remain wary, and as noted yesterday, maritime traffic is more likely to flood out than back in ahead.

Iran is demanding an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, which Israel states it will not and just struck Hezbollah again, with Iran now threatening to respond if Israel continues. Trump yesterday suggested Syria, with a history of looking at Lebanon as its own, should take care of Hezbollah (which the Lebanese government wants to disarm, but is unable to), not Israel. Given Syrian president Al-Sharaa’s Al Qaeda background and links to Turkey, with its history of looking at Syria as part of the Ottoman Empire, this does not seem the panacea some might hope for.

The MoU text is vague on uranium: it “will be adequately addressed in a final agreement.” Again, is it maqluba (a deal, flipping the rice) or muqlaba (no deal, flipping the peace)? China is warning the next phase of US-Iran talks will be “more difficult,” which is very clear.

The US is also weighing boosting ties with the Palestinian Authority as it seeks to advance its Gaza Board of Peace and an expanded Abraham Accords, while Israeli PM Netanyahu is said to be dropping election campaign posters showing him alongside Trump, as his opponents are all as hawkish as him re: Hezbollah and Iran, if not on the Palestinian issue.

In short, there are so many layers of rice, veggies, and meat here that’s not clear if anyone can flip the dish without spilling the food: and that’s just the Middle East, which is a current pivot point within a larger global negotiation.

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RT has a pro- as well as a counter article.

• Nigel Farage’s ‘White Britain’: A Long-Overdue Step (von Hoffmeister)

Nigel Farage’s recent Substack post lays bare the reality of Britain’s “two-tier” system, where native white Britons face systemic disadvantages in policing, housing, employment, and justice while ethnic minorities receive preferential treatment under the guise of “equality.”


This is not an aberration or a policy glitch. It is the predictable outcome of attempting to impose liberal democracy on a multiracial society. Different ethnic groups possess distinct collective interests rooted in both biology and culture. Where those interests diverge, genuine democracy, meaning rule by the people for the common good, becomes impossible. Only one outcome prevails: the slow disenfranchisement of the historical white majority.

Human beings are not blank slates. Evolution and genetic similarity theory demonstrate that people favor their own ethnic group. This is not “racism”; it is kin selection, an adaptive strategy honed over millennia. Studies of in-group preference, crime statistics, voting patterns, and nepotistic networks across the globe confirm it: most non-white groups operate tribally as a matter of course. Middle Eastern clans, African kinship networks, South Asian extended families, East Asian ethnic solidarity, and Latin American mestizo patronage systems all prioritize “our people” first. This is normal human behavior.

Whites are the glaring exception. Through Christianity’s universalism, Enlightenment individualism, and post-World War II indoctrination via education, media, and elite institutions, Europeans have been brainwashed into viewing themselves solely as atomized individuals. “Race doesn’t matter,” “we’re all the same,” and “diversity is our strength” are articles of faith, not empirical observations. Whites extended this universalism outward – abolishing slavery, spreading human rights, and building institutions based on merit and fair play – only to then have it weaponized against them. Other groups never adopted it; they simply exploited white openness. The result is asymmetric competition: cohesive ethnic blocs practice nepotism, bloc voting, and resource extraction, while whites compete as isolated individuals, handicapped by their own self-imposed scruples.

In a heterogeneous society, this cannot produce a fair democracy. Democracy assumes a shared conception of the public interest. When ethnic groups have irreconcilable preferences – on crime and policing, welfare redistribution, immigration, family structure, time horizons, and cultural dominance – majoritarianism becomes ethnic spoils. Non-White groups act for their tribe’s advantage. Whites, crippled by individualism, appeal to abstract principles that no one else honors. Nepotism always defeats naive individualism in the long run. Look at any Western city with significant demographic change: ethnic enclaves, parallel societies, demands for Sharia accommodations, affirmative action, and reparations. The social whole dissolves.

The West invented the highest expressions of universalism: rule of law applied equally, individual rights, and merit-based advancement. These are noble achievements responsible for unparalleled prosperity and innovation. Yet in a world of group differences, they function as unilateral disarmament. Non-whites import their tribal strategies into open societies while whites cling to universal rules that prevent collective self-defense. Elites, often insulated by wealth, celebrate this as ‘moral progress.’ The autochthonous population pays the price: suppressed wages, strained welfare systems, skyrocketing crime in ‘diverse’ areas, cultural displacement, and two-tier justice.

[..] Whites must rediscover their own ethnic consciousness, not out of supremacy but survival and reciprocity. Rejecting universalist suicide does not require hating others; it requires realism. Other groups pursue their interests unapologetically. Only when whites do the same can stable, high-trust arrangements emerge. Farage’s critique of a two-tier Britain is a starting point. The deeper truth is that without halting demographic replacement and rethinking governance along lines of peoplehood, democracy itself becomes a fiction masking tribal conquest.

This is the hard reality many conservative thinkers have warned about for decades. Pretending otherwise accelerates decline.

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“The Reform UK leader’s manifesto attacks DEI and immigration, but beneath the outrage lies a thin program built on grievance and biology..”

• Nigel Farage’s ‘White Britain’ is a Fantasy (Graham Hryce)

Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, has published a lengthy personal manifesto on his Substack this week. Farage is not noted for making detailed policy pronouncements, and his long-winded writeup provides an interesting insight into Reform’s policy agenda – revealing, as it does, both its intellectual and political shortcomings. Farage’s manifesto is titled “Britain is a two-tier state – against white people” and it was clearly triggered by the recent Henry Nowak and Stephen Ogilvie cases, in which white British citizens were brutally attacked (and in Nowak’s case, killed) by a Sikh and a Sudanese respectively, neither of whom were illegal immigrants. Farage sets out in detail the circumstances surrounding the Nowak case, and his strident criticisms of the police are entirely valid.


Farage’s central contention is that white people in Britain are treated much less fairly than other ethnic groups, and that the mainstream political parties – he calls them “the establishment parties” – are unwilling to acknowledge the fact that “anti-White racism is embedded into the heart of the state” – because they created this state of affairs and are ideologically committed to maintaining it. Farage sees the “ideology of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)” and the Equality Act, passed by Labour in 2010 and subsequently strengthened by the Conservatives, as being the main culprits here, and argues that “every section of the state… has been ideologically compromised” by these “toxic ideologies.” According to Farage, this has created a less harmonious and less fair Britain.

Farage claims that this “two-tier state” has created a “two-tier market” in employment, social housing, education, the military, policing, and healthcare – which discriminates against white people, especially the young. Ominously, according to Farage, the situation can only get worse in the future – because while “White Brits” are a sizable majority at present, they “will become a minority in this country before the end of the century.” Notwithstanding this bleak state of affairs, Farage nevertheless maintains that “there is reason for hope” because Reform “has the will and the ability to ensure that no young White person ever has to grow up feeling ashamed of who they are again.”

How precisely does Reform propose to bring about this miraculous social transformation? Farage sets out a number of specific policy proposals that Reform proposes to implement if the party wins government, including the following:
• abolish the Equality Act and prohibit national and local government bodies from implementing DEI policies;
• prevent foreign nationals from having access to welfare benefits;
• ensure that students receive a “balanced and patriotic education” and compel every school to “fly the Union flag” and prominently display a picture of the King;
• restore pride to Britain’s armed forces.

The flimsiness of these policies is obvious, and even if they were implemented, they would do little or nothing to alleviate the serious and longstanding problems that bedevil contemporary Britain – including a declining economy, the cost-of-living crisis, a ballooning public debt, and rising crime rates. Liberal commentators have long been critical of the Equality Act and illiberal ideologies like DEI – and Farage is correct to condemn them and point out how destructive they are of social cohesion. But, even here, Farage underestimates how difficult it will be to abolish them. Britain is still bound by the EU Human Rights Act and a raft of other EU laws, and the UK Supreme Court will fight tooth and nail to retain the status quo.

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And the people pushing these laws know that very well.

They push “safety for kids” only to get -legal- access to -grown-up- you.

• A Social Media Ban for Minors Requires Data From Everyone (ET)

In debating a social media ban for minors, it appears we face a choice between two perceived harms. One is the reported damage that social media is doing to the mental health of children and adolescents. The other is the normalization of mass age verification systems—most likely involving biometrics—that would apply to everyone, not just minors. This carries real risks of privacy invasion, data breaches, and future mission creep.


There is little dispute that many Western countries have experienced a rise in youth mental health problems beginning around 2010–2012 (when Smartphones and social media exploded). Anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide rates among adolescents, particularly girls, have increased dramatically since this period. There is disagreement, however, not over whether these spikes exist, but whether they can be attributed specifically to social media. The lingering effects of the pandemic and lockdowns, and family breakdown are just some of the other factors that could be in play.

Data debates aside, most Canadians with common sense and personal experience using social media for prolonged periods of time would admit that doing so is harmful for their mental health, no matter their age. So, what should we do? Whatever steps we take, resorting to broad government-mandated bans and mass surveillance should not be one of them.

Australia offers the clearest real-world test of such a policy. Since its under-16 social media ban took effect on Dec. 10, 2025, platforms operating in the country, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, and Kick, have been required to take “reasonable steps” to prevent users under 16 from creating or maintaining accounts. Platforms guilty of breaching this new law can reach up to AU$49.5 million.

Australia’s legislation “specifically prohibits platforms from compelling Australians to provide a government-issued ID or use an Australian Government accredited digital ID service to prove their age.” To comply with the law, platforms have implemented widespread use of behavioural analysis, device signals, and facial age estimation scans. By mid-December 2025, platforms had already removed access to approximately 4.7 million suspected under-16 accounts.

But large numbers of teenagers quickly found workarounds. Surveys conducted in early 2026 show that more than 60 percent of under-16s who had accounts before the ban continue to access at least one restricted platform. Common methods include using borrowed phones or parents’ ID, fake age declarations, VPNs, and printed mesh masks to fool facial recognition. Without robust age verification systems, therefore, a meaningful ban doesn’t exist. It might initially remove under 16s, but millions of ineligible minors will find a way to return to these platforms, as has taken place in Australia.

This begs an important question: What is the point of an age verification system that is only half effective? This would create a new set of problems including the loss of privacy rights for everyone, without actually solving the underlying problem the legalization is reportedly designed to fix.= Canada is aware of this conundrum. What would Canada do, then, to both kick minors off the platforms and keep them off the platforms? There is no reason to think that parental oversight or enforcement will be any different here than across the Pacific.

One possibility is social media users must submit verification of identity every time they log in to the platform. The most obvious way to do this would be a government-mediated login system. This would essentially grant government an immense amount of metadata about who logs in to what, how often, etc.

Another possibility would be for social media platforms themselves to monitors users’ data, either by periodically scanning faces and matching it to submitted photo ID, or by evaluating user behaviour (i.e., what content is being accessed and predicting the age of users). This would give an immense amount of data to social media companies that, if retained, could lead to significant privacy violations. Imagine a camera monitoring you every time you use Instagram or Facebook. Think about the fact that biometric technology can already be used to predict age based on wrinkles, skin texture and elasticity, facial proportions, eye shape, hairline, and bone structure. Researchers have even found statistical correlations between typing speed, error patterns, touch pressure, and age.

In this latter possibility, Canadians would be handing highly sensitive biometric data (faces, fingerprints, typing style, etc.) to foreign corporations that are subject to foreign laws (U.S. CLOUD Act, Chinese national intelligence law, etc.). These companies can be compelled by their own governments to hand over your personal and identifiable data. This type of data is also permanent. If it gets hacked, leaked, or demanded by a foreign government, you cannot change it like a password.

Finally, a mandatory social media ban for minors under 16 would significantly restrict their ability to access information about the world. Freedom of expression under the Charter section 2(b) includes not only the right to speak, but also the right to receive information. Canadian courts have recognized this in several cases. Social media platforms have become one of the primary ways many young people receive news, public debates, educational content, and diverse viewpoints.

One doesn’t have to be an absolutist to value freedom and privacy, but the fact of the matter is we have not tried alternative strategies that would minimally impair this fundamental freedom of privacy for everyone, and freedom of speech for minors. Yes, facial recognition is already used voluntarily on some platforms (such as dating apps). And a driver’s licence is often required from gambling sites to ensure compliance with the law. But there is a profound difference between choosing to use one of these sites and being required by law to submit biometric data to participate in modern public discourse. The scale is also vastly different.

We should pursue less invasive strategies instead of choosing between an ineffective ban or a robust and draconian one. Aggressive cultural campaigns against early smartphone use, phone-free schools until at least Grade 9 or 10, and better parental control tools have all shown meaningful results for youth mental health in multiple studies. Stronger platform liability for addictive design specifically aimed at children could also be pursued. At the end of the day, parents are responsible for their children’s social media use with or without a law that requires everyone share their digital data. In other words, even if a robust law existed, parents would still be responsible to ensure their children avoid workarounds.

The instinct to protect children is good, but we cannot protect them by quietly dismantling the privacy and freedom of the entire society. The cure must not be worse than the disease.

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5 eyes.

• Canada is Next Up (CTH)

It is not coincidental that we have seen Australia, New Zealand, the U.K, and now Canada trigger online ‘age verification’ laws; simultaneous with a political push inside the USA to maintain FISA (702) legislation. Separating the USA for a moment. The intelligence services of Australia, New Zealand, U.K and Canada make up four of the intelligence services 5-eyes. In essence, the British Commonwealth is the IC commonality. [Yes, there is some validity to the Lyndon LaRouche perspective (Promethean Action PAC)] Additionally, I would also posit a reminder of the international assembly who structured the originating financial sanctions against Russia; again, a commonality.


Focusing on the most recent political creation in Canada, there are three bills currently being rushed through the Canadian House of Parliament, C-34: keep kids safe on social media; C-36: stronger privacy rules, and C-22: modern tools for police. Not surprisingly, it is difficult to find non-govt-approved information about this legislative construct online. Canadian media must remain compliant with approved government narratives in order to maintain their business model. However, putting together some various information found on non-controlled information sources, it is possible to begin discussion of the situation. The two issues that merge with the greatest impact are Bill C-22: The Surveillance Bill, and Bill C-34: The Children’s Safety Bill.

Bill C-22 requires that all information transmission providers, every telecom and internet company, retain metadata on all Canadian users for up to one year. This is electronic metadata which we all know encompasses a lot more than just content. Signal app, NordVPN, Windscribe, DuckDuckGo, Apple, and Meta have all formally opposed it. Signal app has threatened to leave Canada entirely rather than comply. This is a government mandated metadata storage library on all electronic communication and activity by Canadian users. Then there’s Bill C-34: The Children’s Safety Bill, as noted by Lucy Hargreaves, a bill that ‘Applies to Everyone’, not just kids.

“The government’s social media ban for under-16s is genuinely popular, with 75% of Canadians supporting it in polling. The problem is what it requires in practice. To stop anyone under 16 from creating an account, platforms need to know how old everyone is. There is no way to identify who is under 16 without identifying everyone who isn’t. This means every Canadian adult would need to submit government ID or a face scan to a third-party verification company before posting a photo, using cloud storage, or playing an online game. The bill also creates a new Digital Safety Commission with sweeping powers to set the rules, decide which platforms must comply, and approve or deny exemptions — with almost no criteria written into the law itself.”

“Australia introduced the same social media ban in December 2025. Six months later, the eSafety Commissioner told Parliament she was “not really keen” on it from the start and called it a “blunt force approach” drafted too quickly. 70% of young Australians reported the ban had little effect on their social media use. It didn’t reduce cyberbullying. What it did produce was a surge in VPN use… pushing young people to darker, less-monitored platforms.

The UK implemented age verification under its Online Safety Act in mid-2025. Within one month, VPN downloads hit over two million — the highest ever recorded — and monthly downloads stayed above one million for a year as users raced to bypass the requirement. The EU considered its own version of mandatory message scanning (dubbed “Chat Control”) and its own Parliament voted it down in March 2026, with the EU’s legal service concluding that indiscriminate scanning of private communications is incompatible with fundamental rights.

The government’s core justification for C-22 is that Canada is the “only Five Eyes country” without a lawful access framework. But the United States has no federal mandatory metadata retention law. The EU’s highest court has struck down blanket retention twice as incompatible with human rights. When the Public Safety Minister claimed Canada’s provisions would be “in line with U.S. counterparts,” he was forced to walk back the statement within hours.”

Think about what all the critics (correctly) point out as the bigger issue behind the “age id” social media stuff. What is the unspoken goal of Australia, New Zealand, the U.K and Canada? Ultimately control. Govt online surveillance, correct? Some form of legal, legislated, govt authorized data surveillance that permits law enforcement to have actionable mechanisms, right? If that is indeed the goal, then in the USA we overlay FISA (702). NZ, AU, UK and CA get digital IDs. The USA gets 702. It’s the same basic premise; the same govt motive; the same underpinning reasoning. Just different and nuanced approaches.

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One more admirer. Part of this story is that the US economy erupted since 2008, while Europe just about stood still. Today, the US looks like paradise to Europeans (no, not the food).

• The World Is Re-Discovering America In the World Cup — and Loving It (Moran)

About 250 years ago, America cast a spell on Europe and the rest of the world. That magic compelled 15-18 million people to uproot themselves and escape war, poverty, crop failures, and political instability to start all over again in the new nation between 1800 and 1900. More than 15 million immigrants arrived in the first 15 years of the 20th century, mostly from Eastern Europe and Russia. Funny how America’s critics gloss over that astonishing fact. Whenever they bother to mention it, they point to the industrial revolution, which created an insatiable demand for labor, as capitalism “enslaved” these unsuspecting workers.


Still, people kept coming. As bad as the left believes America is, people of all races, all religions, and from every nation ignored the portrayal of the United States as a racist, sexist country of white supremacists and came anyway. This is something America’s most vicious critics can’t get around. The people of the world voted with their feet, and while many of us may not like it, the promise America holds for a better life is irresistible. For the next month, more than 1.7 million foreigners will come to America to watch a soccer tournament. It hardly matters why they’re coming. They come with their preconceived notions about the U.S being a horrible place. Their own governments tell them so. American leftists amplify that message.

But once these soccer fans get here, an amazing transformation happens to many of them. They fall in love with the U.S. Perhaps they have relatives who left the old country to come here and have heard about America all their lives. Whatever their preconceptions about the U.S., nothing prepared them for how completely different it is from what they’ve been told or what they imagined. PJ Media editor Chris Queen wrote about this phenomenon last week, chronicling a German tourist’s travels through the South. Many other visitors in the U.S. for soccer find themselves delighted with what they’ve found.

New York Post: “Bright red fire trucks. Walmart’s cathedral of abundance. The miracle of free refills.” These are just a few of the American wonders World Cup tourists are encountering during their travels through the heartland — and they can’t seem to get enough of them. Visitors from all over the world are documenting their journeys across the United States on social media, much to the delight of every American who doesn’t think patriotism is a dirty word.“A place like this could ONLY exist in America and I LOVE it,” posted Sean from Scotland as he toured a Texas Buc-ees in abject astonishment.

“The vibes are insane!” exclaimed Freddy from Germany while road-tripping through Louisiana to New Orleans. Elsa from Sweden is demanding of X, “Why did no one tell me ranch sauce is like crack?” It seems that Gen X and Y had no idea of the “real” America. “One thing I love about the European World Cup tourists right now is that they’re not just being dropped off in the middle of Los Angeles or New York City or some overhyped metropolitan hub that most Americans like myself don’t even like,” X user @realmikolson observed. “They’re being dropped right in the middle of the heart of middle America.”

Fox News: “Olson said international tourists driving nine hours across Texas and experiencing Auburn University fraternity houses are witnessing “overwhelming American kindness.” “A lot of the locals in these areas have no idea who these people are or why they’re even there,” he said, adding that there’s been very little World Cup news or marketing, particularly in small towns.

Nevertheless, he’s heard of instances of restaurant owners driving World Cup fans to games because they can’t find an Uber. A deli owner gave British tourists free lunch “just because they came all this way,” he said. Some Alabama firefighters reportedly gave foreign visitors a tour of their fire department and free merchandise. Of course, there are many Americans who wish the foreigners would just go home and leave us alone. But there are enough Americans still imbued with small-town values and principles that make coming to America an incredibly rich and rewarding experience.

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Blocking GPS would have a paralyzing effect.

• Russia’s New Warning Shot From Space (Martin Armstrong)

For years, politicians have been obsessed with tanks, artillery, missiles, and troop counts while the real battlefield has quietly moved into space. The latest reports suggesting that Russian satellites may be capable of disrupting GPS signals on a continental scale should be sending shockwaves through military circles. If these findings prove accurate, then we are looking at a capability that extends far beyond simply making a driver’s navigation system malfunction. GPS is embedded in aviation, shipping, banking, telecommunications, emergency services, power grids, financial transactions, military operations, and virtually every aspect of modern infrastructure.


According to researchers, dozens of GPS interference events detected across Europe since 2019 may have originated from Russia’s EKS satellite constellation. These satellites were originally designed as part of Russia’s missile early-warning system, but testing suggests they may also possess the ability to transmit powerful signals capable of disrupting GPS reception across vast regions. The significance is not whether a disruption lasts a few seconds or a few minutes. The significance is proving the concept works. Once a nation demonstrates it can interfere with navigation systems from orbit, the entire strategic equation changes.

What many fail to appreciate is how dependent modern warfare has become on satellite navigation. Precision-guided weapons rely on GPS. Drones rely on GPS. Aircraft, ships, logistics networks, battlefield communications, and intelligence systems all depend on accurate positioning data. Remove that capability and armies suddenly find themselves operating under conditions that resemble an entirely different century. During the Ukraine conflict, both sides have aggressively pursued electronic warfare, jamming systems, and signal disruption technologies. What appears to be emerging now is the possibility of extending those capabilities far beyond localized battlefields and into continental-scale operations.

Financial markets depend on precise timing synchronization. Cellular networks require timing signals to coordinate traffic. Shipping companies use satellite navigation to move trillions of dollars worth of goods annually. Airlines depend on navigation systems to safely manage thousands of flights every day. Even modern agriculture relies heavily on GPS-guided equipment. The public views GPS as a convenience. Governments and corporations know it has become a critical piece of economic infrastructure.

This development also highlights something I have warned about repeatedly. The next major conflict will not resemble the wars of the twentieth century. Future wars will target infrastructure before populations even realize an attack has occurred. A cyberattack can disable communications. A satellite disruption can interfere with transportation networks. Financial systems can be disrupted electronically. Power grids can be targeted remotely. The battlefield increasingly consists of networks, satellites, data centers, and communications systems rather than simply soldiers crossing borders.

The timing is noteworthy. We are entering the most dangerous phase of the geopolitical cycle. The 2026 Panic Cycle year has already begun exposing vulnerabilities across the global system. Relations between Russia and NATO remain strained. The United States and China are engaged in a rapidly escalating technological competition. Military spending is rising globally. Governments everywhere are preparing for contingencies that most citizens never consider. Space is no longer a peaceful frontier. It has become a strategic domain where the major powers are competing for dominance.

What should concern policymakers is not merely that Russia may possess this capability. The real question is how many nations are developing similar systems. The United States, China, Russia, and other powers have invested heavily in electronic warfare, anti-satellite technology, cyberwarfare, and space-based military assets. Every major power understands that controlling information, communications, and navigation systems may prove more decisive than controlling territory itself.

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Debt Rattle June 16 2026

Jun 162026
 
 June 16, 2026  Posted by at 9:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  25 Responses »


El Greco St. Paul and St. Peter 1595


• US and Iran Agree On Peace Roadmap, Israel Rejects All Terms (RT)
• Trump Details Iran Deal At G7: No Nukes, Conditional Sanctions Relief (ZH)
• Trump Scores Once-Elusive Peace Deal With Iran, Easing Oil Prices (Ben Whedon)
• President Trump Attends G7 in France – This One Will Be Ridiculous (CTH)
• So, What Do We Know? (Rabobank)
• Yes, Trump’s Iran Deal Is So Much Better Than Obama’s (Margolis)
• SpaceX Erupts In After Hours Trading, Hits $3 Trillion Market Cap (ZH)
• Why Did the Smartest AI in the World Just Go Dark? (Stephen Green)
• Anthropic Races To Defuse Trump’s Fable 5 U.S. Export Curbs (ZH)
• Monsters Far and Near (James Howard Kunstler)
• No Friends for Comey; Judge Rules No Amicus Briefs (Alan Wooten)
• Ukrainian Military Hooked on Drugs – Deutsche Welle (RT)
• Starmer to Ban Under-16s From 10 Social Media Apps Including X (DS)
• Starmer Announces Social Media Control System to Protect “Children” (CTH)
• Newspaper Dailies Killing Their Editorial Pages (Tim O’Brien)
• You Don’t Know What You’ve Got ‘Til It’s Gone: The Tragedy of John Cleese (PJM)

 


 

https://twitter.com/BarronTNews_/status/2066184316133032022?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2066287378201706966?s=20

 


 


“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly rejected the deal terms that pertain to his country’s invasion of Lebanon..”

• US and Iran Agree On Peace Roadmap, Israel Rejects All Terms (RT)

The US and Iran said they have agreed on a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the conflict, which began on February 28 with a joint US-Israeli bombing campaign and prompted Tehran to close the Strait of Hormuz to most shipping. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told US President Donald Trump that Israel does not consider itself bound by the Lebanon-related provisions of the agreement with Iran and will not withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon, according to Ynet. The US-Iran agreement will reportedly be formally signed on Friday in Geneva, Switzerland.


Iran has said the document would focus on ending the war and reopening the strait, while the two sides would have 60 days to negotiate the future of Iran’s nuclear program. Trump wrote on Truth Social that he ordered “the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz” and the end of the US naval blockade of Iranian ports. “Let the oil flow!” he added. Trump later clarified that the waterway, which carries around a quarter of global seaborne oil and LNG shipments, would reopen after the agreement is signed.

The talks were repeatedly stalled and delayed, with both sides accusing each other of making unacceptable demands and citing a lack of trust. Most recently, Iran threatened to suspend the negotiations over Israel’s continuing strikes in Lebanon. In an effort to prevent the talks from collapsing, Trump reportedly demanded that Israel halt the attacks during several heated phone calls with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Here are the latest developments:
• Iran will reportedly reopen the Strait of Hormuz, halt uranium enrichment, and renounce nuclear weapons in exchange for the release of $25 billion in frozen assets, sanctions relief, an end to the US naval blockade, and a $300 billion reconstruction package.
• Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has called for an end to Israeli military actions in Lebanon, saying during separate phone calls with his Turkish, Iraqi, and Egyptian counterparts that all hostilities must cease.
• Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has said the IDF will not withdraw from southern Lebanon despite the reported terms of the agreement, warning that it will respond “with full force” if Iran attacks over its operations against Hezbollah.
• The EU has welcomed the reported deal, with foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas saying it could create “much-needed space.”
• Oil prices fell sharply on the news, with US WTI crude dropping 4.7% to $80.83 a barrel and Brent crude falling around 4% to $83.77, the lowest levels since March 4, shortly after the US-Israeli operation against Iran began.

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Los of people saying this is not a real deal. Guys, this is Trump, who became a billionaire trading in a cutthroat market.

• Trump Details Iran Deal At G7: No Nukes, Conditional Sanctions Relief (ZH)

CNBC is reporting that a deal between the US and Iran has been electronically signed by Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. According to an unnamed US official, the US-Iran MOU provides for the ‘immediate’ reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, however – while President Trump said earlier that ships were beginning to move, the US official then said that reopening the strait would ‘take time’ due to mines, and that we can expect an increase in strait traffic over the next 1-2 weeks.


Trump addressed reporters and allies at the G7 summit in France on Monday, just hours after a major interim agreement with Iran that includes a 60-day ceasefire, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and strict limits on Tehran’s nuclear program. Speaking alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, he repeatedly underscored that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was the central achievement of the deal. “The main thing is that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “They fully agreed to that with strong policing powers.”

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2066554436361625702?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2066554436361625702%7Ctwgr%5Ed07c7ee8629e2f04914139007d93a8e708c22577%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Firan-offers-60-day-toll-free-hormuz-transit-100s-ships-await-reopening

He then compared it to the Obama-era JCPOA, calling the earlier agreement “a horrible deal for the United States” that had put Iran on “a road to a nuclear weapon” while sending billions of dollars to Tehran. Trump was also sharply critical of past U.S. cash payments to Iran, describing the $1.7 billion withdrawal from banks plus tens of billions in additional spending as a failed attempt to “bribe them to make a deal that didn’t work.” On the current arrangement, Trump stressed that any sanctions relief would be strictly behavioral and tied to compliance rather than granted simply for signing. He noted improved relations with Iran’s current leadership and reported that the Strait of Hormuz is already partially open, with mines being cleared and commercial shipping set to resume fully by Friday.

Markets reacted immediately, with stocks surging and oil prices posting their biggest drop in some time. Trump also called for an end to fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, saying the long-running conflict “should NOT be tough” to address and that “we have to have a little talk with them.” Less than 24 hours after the Iran developments, he revealed he had already spoken with both President Zelensky and President Putin, describing the conversations as “very good” and expressing optimism that progress could be made to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine, where he noted roughly 25,000 people are dying each month.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2066554967377227989?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2066554967377227989%7Ctwgr%5Ed07c7ee8629e2f04914139007d93a8e708c22577%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Firan-offers-60-day-toll-free-hormuz-transit-100s-ships-await-reopening

Details of the MOU will be released over the next 24-48 hours, though one US official said that the MOU contains ‘possible’ $300 billion in reconstruction funding.

Ghalibaf notably came into public view for the first time in weeks in April to lead the Iranian delegation in talks in Islamabad with US Vice President DJ Vance – marking the highest-level contact between the two foes since before the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Trump
President Trump on Monday claimed on Truth Social that commercial ships loaded with oil are transiting the Strait of Hormuz followinmg an announced deal to end hostilities with Iran. “Ships are starting to move, many loaded up with Oil, out of the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote. “They are going along the Southern ‘Highway,’ which is totally safe, secure, and pristine. There are other areas of travel, also!!!”

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“The terms of the agreement were unavailable as of Sunday night, but a top Pakistan mediator said both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of all military operations.”

• Trump Scores Once-Elusive Peace Deal With Iran, Easing Oil Prices (Ben Whedon)

President Donald Trump has unveiled a deal to end 47 years of hostilities with Iran, bringing months of U.S.military operations to an end and opening the Strait of Hormuz in a one-two punch certain to ease oil prices ahead of the midterm elections.”Let the oil flow!” Trump declared Sunday on social media after completing the deal on his 80th birthday and the day the U.S. began its 250th anniversary celebration with an historic UFC Freedom 250 mixed martial arts fight on the White House South Lawn. A signed ceremony was set for Friday in Switzerland.


“The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Congratulations to all! I hereby fully authorize the toll-free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade. Ships of the World, start your engines.” Trump said the U.S. Navy would immediately end the blockade of the strait, which it maintained for several weeks in response to Iranian interdiction of oil tankers. Other details about the deal were not available as of Sunday evening including those on a key sticking point – whether Iran will wind down its nuclear enrichment program.

However, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a top negotiator in the peace negotiations, said the sides have declared an immediate and permanent end to military operations including those in Lebanon. Prior to Sunday, Trump claimed nearly 40 times since the start of the war on Feb. 28 to be close to a deal with Iran or to have reached some measure of consensus with the Iranian government, according to CNN. The war began with joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Speculation abounded throughout the conflict that the Iranian regime might succumb to internal pressure or face an incursion from Kurdish forces, though it appears to have emerged with the core of its government intact.

Trump has said he started the war to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon, after negotiations on that matter failed. Other objectives, he said, were to destroy Iran’s missile capabilities and navy and to ensure the Iranian regime could no longer fund or direct “terrorist armies” outside its borders. Sharif also said Sunday that a signing ceremony would occur on Friday. Pakistan was a critical mediator in negotiating the original ceasefire agreement, which managed to hold despite intermittent bouts of live-fire attacks by nearly every combatant faction. “With the agreement now in place, mediators will facilitate a series of meetings this week,” he also said.

“These pre-implementation discussions will lay the foundation for the technical talks and the official signing ceremony.” The deal and the Friday signing ceremony already represent something of a moved goal post, considering Trump previously stated that the signing ceremony would take place Sunday and insisted upon that timetable until early Sunday afternoon.Plenty of time remains between Friday and the present, however, and if prior alleged deals are any indication, any number of potential developments could upend the agreement. On Sunday alone, Trump fumed over Israel launching strikes on Lebanon in response to an attack by Hezbollah, asserting that the Israeli response jeopardized a peace agreement.

Fighting in Lebanon was a sticking point for the Iranians, who repeatedly insisted that the original ceasefire was meant to include Lebanon. Trump repeatedly pressed Israel to abandon continued conflict in the country against Hezbollah, leading to considerable tensions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. How Israel, considered the United States’ longest and most loyal Middle East ally, will respond to the agreement announced Sunday is also a factor to consider going into Friday. Public opinion has been decidedly opposed to the war throughout the conflict and opinions of Israel have soured dramatically. The disruption to oil sales has also led to higher gas prices, which in turn, contributed to dropping approval numbers for the Trump administration.

But the news of an agreement is likely to soothe markets, especially if maritime commerce fully resumes through the strait, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply passes. Such a development could conceivably result in falling gas prices and potentially higher approval ratings for the administration. The war will apparently end without a complete, so-called “regime change,” for which war hawks repeatedly advocated. Iranians staged large public demonstrations against the regime weeks before the start of the war that resulted in thousands of reported deaths. However, public opinion still was not in support of the U.S. overthrowing the Iranian government.

At one point, Trump stated that the U.S. had attempted to arm anti-regime dissidents in Iran by supplying them with weapons through Kurdish factions, though he said the Kurdish groups merely kept the weapons for themselves. The long-term implications of the war for the U.S.’s presence in the Middle East remain somewhat unclear. Numerous Gulf State allies expressed frustration with the U.S. during the conflict over its limited ability to supply interceptors for their own defense as the Americans struggled to intercept Iranian strikes on Israel, U.S. bases, and allied nations. Iranian forces, for their part, repeatedly stressed to neighboring nations that aiding U.S. operations against them made those nations valid targets for Iranian counter-operations.

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For Trump, the G7 is like Gulliver among the lilliputters.

• President Trump Attends G7 in France – This One Will Be Ridiculous (CTH)

The G7 was originally constructed as an assembly for the U.S, Japan, Canada, Germany, Italy, France and the U.K. However, in the past several years it is abandoned it’s limited economic purpose and agenda and morphed into an assembly of nations far beyond the original intent.


Now we watch the ridiculous assemblies of dozens of nations who come under the guise of the G7 to discuss everything from cow-farting mitigation to the best weapons and techniques to fight the Russians. The economic focus of the G7 is entirely lost. This will never be more evident than the current apex assembly of leaders brought together at the invitation of Emmanuel Macron in France. Watch and you’ll see how geopolitically ridiculous this has become.

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A bankers’ view of war?!

• So, What Do We Know? (Rabobank)

A deal is struck and the parties are reportedly set to sign on Friday of this week. Markets are jubilant after an agreement was confirmed by US, Iranian and Pakistani sources, but not without first being threatened by Israeli strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon which prompted a telling-off by Donald Trump on Truth Social where he told everyone “don’t blow it”. Brent crude is down more than 4% this morning to be dealing around $83.72 at time of writing and a rally in bonds late last week has carried over to this morning with Aussie and Kiwi sovereign curves both seeing notable bull steepening.


US equity futures portend the printing of a healthy green candle when markets open later today, but there’s still a lingering sense that we’re not out of the woods yet. Aside from the Israeli strikes on Hezbollah over the weekend, and the lesson of experience that the IRGC doesn’t need much convincing to return to fighting, we learned this morning that despite Donald Trump’s declaration that the strait is now open the strait will actually remain closed until the official signing occurs on Friday – ostensibly to provide time for mine clearing operations. Needless to say, a week is a long time in Middle East geopolitics.

Nevertheless, markets are rallying on the vibe right now but what is actually in the deal will be the critical points – and there is still plenty of fog of war surrounding terms. So, what do we know? Firstly, the agreement is not really a ‘deal’ at all, or even a deal to have a deal, but rather a memorandum of understanding staking out a framework to discuss a deal over the next 60 days.

War is supposed to cease on all fronts – including Lebanon, Hormuz is supposed to open and the US blockade lifted within 30 days in a kind of oil-for-oil exchange that we have flagged here many times. Iranian sources are claiming that Hormuz transits will occur under Iranian auspices, whereas the US side is still saying no tolls. Axios reports comments from US sources that sanctions relief will follow the re-opening of Hormuz, but there seems to be disagreement over the release of frozen funds and Iranian sources are claiming reparations of some form up to $300bn in value would be payable. If true, that really would be the full enchilada of TACOs and would see the US agreeing to a set of terms that had it restart bombing only a few weeks ago.

On the other hand, it could be the case that the terms are actually much more favorable to the US and that the Iranians are simply trying to save face. Crucially, there appear to be no guarantees on the nuclear issues aside from a promise from Iran not to seek a nuclear weapon and to engage in talks over the next 60 days. Given that the nuclear program was the entire casus belli in the first place, we still see plenty of scope for this to all fall in a heap. The US midterm elections are 81 days after the expiry of the 60 day negotiating period. Could we see a few more can-kick extensions over that time? Announcing the conclusion of the deal, Donald Trump posted to Truth Social “Ships of the world, start your engines. Let the oil flow!”

Start your engines indeed, because the race is now on to restock the global energy supply chain while we can. So, at the risk of being a party pooper, could this be one of those instances of buy the rumor sell the fact? Perhaps there is no greater bear indicator than the fact that the New York Knicks just won the NBA playoffs. The last time they did that was in *checks notes* 1973, just before the Yom Kippur oil embargoes became the biggest energy shock in history up to that point. The Knicks basically top-ticked the market back then with one of the deepest bear markets of modern history (down more than 40% peak to trough) following their victory.

That brings us to SpaceX, where the largest IPO in history just raised $75 billion at a hefty valuation last week and minted another $2trillion market cap company after the stock rallied almost 20% in its first day of trading. His 42% ownership stake combined with other holdings now makes Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, a financial milestone event that feels a bit like the topping out of the Sears Tower as the world’s tallest building in – ahem – 1973.

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I don’t think Obama ever really protested Iran having nukes. Their delay tactics worked great on him. Plus he sent planes full of cash.

• Yes, Trump’s Iran Deal Is So Much Better Than Obama’s (Margolis)

President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the United States has reached a peace deal with Iran, and the contrast with what Barack Obama handed the world in 2015 could not be starker. “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,” Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday. “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” The naval blockade on Iranian ports has already lifted. The Strait of Hormuz is open. And for the first time in a long time, there’s an actual framework that puts nuclear weapons permanently off the table. Results are happening. Oil prices have dropped, and the market is up.


The deal, currently structured as a Memorandum of Understanding, extends a ceasefire for 60 days while both sides work toward a comprehensive permanent agreement. A formal signing ceremony is set for June 19 in Switzerland. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi confirmed from Tehran that a halt to military operations, including in Lebanon, took effect Sunday. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also confirmed the agreement, saying it followed “intensive talks.”

Now let’s talk about why this matters, because the media is going to spend the next week trying to muddy the waters. But make no mistake about it: this is clearly a better deal than Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). That was the official name of the deal that the left told us was a historic diplomatic achievement. Under that agreement, Iran kept its advanced centrifuges and retained the right to keep enriching uranium.

Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst broke down exactly why that was so dangerous. “During the Obama administration, it allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium,” Yingst explained. The enrichment process takes uranium ore through a series of chemical conversions until it becomes hexafluoride gas, which is then spun in high-speed centrifuges. Do that process enough times and you move from low-enriched uranium to 20%, then 60%, then 90%, which is weapons grade, a process, he explained, could take weeks or even just days.

“And so allowing the Iranians to keep advanced centrifuges and then enrich uranium eventually closer to weapons-grade material, set them on a path toward a weapon, because that is a process that is needed to create a nuclear weapon, even if they weren’t doing it at that moment,” Yingst continued. “This agreement does not allow the Iranians, according to this senior administration official, to keep any of their enriched material.”

The inspection regime under Obama was a joke, too. Under Obama’s nuclear deal, Iran could delay inspections of suspicious undeclared sites for up to 24 days through a multi-step dispute process, giving critics reason to worry that evidence could be concealed before inspectors arrived. That concern was amplified by Iran’s long history of exploiting diplomatic delays while advancing its nuclear program.

Obama’s crappy deal relied on the expectation that Iran would comply in exchange for sanctions relief and other benefits. Trump’s framework assumes Iran will seek opportunities to cheat and ties any rewards to verified compliance. And, of course, there will be consequences for violations. Obviously, the next 60 days will tell us a lot. But right now, the Strait of Hormuz is open, a naval blockade is lifted, and global oil is flowing.

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“.. retail investors have now bought almost as much SPCX over the last two sessions as they bought across the entire US stock market last week.”

• SpaceX Erupts In After Hours Trading, Hits $3 Trillion Market Cap (ZH)

Update (9:00pm): just a few minutes after the initial post, the squeeze is accelerating and SPCX hit just shy of $230, or $3 trillion in market cap, surpassing MSFT in value. And what is even crazier, tomorrow SPCX options start trading, which means one good, solid gamma squeeze could send this stock to $400, surpassing NVDA as the world’s biggest company in the process.


Earlier: After a relatively calm first day of trading, the gamma squeeze crew has finally sniffed out that SpaceX’s float makes it a perfect candidate for an OTM-call option driven meltup, and the stock soared ~20% today, adding over $400 billion in market in the regular session. Commenting on the move, Vanda Track earlier noted that SpaceX topped the leaderboard as the most bought stock by retail investors for a second consecutive session, with net buying potentially set to clear $100mn for the second day in a row.

On a net basis, retail investors have now bought almost as much SPCX over the last two sessions as they bought across the entire US stock market last week. In fact, today’s $93.8mn of net buying in SpaceX accounts for roughly 73% of all retail net buying across single stocks so far today.

The one notable development today according to Vanda, is that we’re seeing some appetite return to semiconductor stocks. Names such as MRVL, MU, SNDK and AVGO have all seen some modest buying today amid the rebound. However, retail flows remain selective rather than broad-based, with leveraged bearish ETFs such as SQQQ and SOXS also among today’s most bought securities by retail investors. Vanda’s conclusion is that “the broader message remains unchanged: SpaceX has not sparked a retail buying frenzy across the market. Instead, retail investors continue to direct capital into this one name, while maintaining a relatively cautious stance elsewhere.”

And since momentum elsewhere is fading, retail has decided to double down on the very illiquid SPCX after hours, where its low float has made it a great squeeze candidate by the retail crew, and the stock is now exploding higher, and at last check was trading just over $210, meaning the stock has added $250 billion in market cap after the close – or a total of $650 billion today alone…

… which translates into a market cap of $2.75 trillion or more than Apple’s $2.65 trillion, and just behind MSFT’s $2.97 trillion.

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They’re slowly finding out AI aystems are nigh impossible to keep secret.

• Why Did the Smartest AI in the World Just Go Dark? (Stephen Green)

Two of the most powerful large language models in the world just got yanked from service, starting with a national security directive from the United States government during the Friday night news dump. “The U.S. government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees,” Anthropic said in a statement. “The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance.” Double emphasis in the original — and, I’d have to add, some claim not all their customers. But stick a pin in that thought for just a moment.


Although the administration failed to give any specific details, Anthropic says it believes the government became aware of a method of “jailbreaking” Fable 5, potentially unleashing the AI from its built-in guardrails against use in developing cyber exploits, deadly chemical synthesis, and other sensitive topics. That’s a big deal. The “Fives” are the latest version of Claude, Anthropic’s enterprise- and government-centric LLM. Fable is the “safe” version available to the public, while you might think of Mythos as the weapons-grade version. Because it is. What separates Fable from Mythos are the guardrails that, as Anthropic put it, are supposed to “greatly reduce the likelihood that Fable is misused for tasks related to cybersecurity (among others).” “

To date, the government has only given us verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak, which essentially consists of asking the model to read a specific codebase and fix any software flaws,” the company continued. “Our understanding is that one potential jailbreak was shared with the government.” Since “that perfect jailbreak resistance does not appear to be possible today, Anthropic adopted a defense in depth strategy” by shutting down both “Fives” until further notice. Again, the emphasis is in the original, but let’s come back now to “all their customers.”

Social media is awash in rumors that Fable 5’s underlying code wasn’t just stolen, but it’s out in the wild — successfully uploaded to Pirate’s Bay for anyone to run locally. Provided, of course, they’re in possession of a powerful enough system. While I can slowly run some stripped-down models on the M4 Pro Mac mini right here on my desk, I assure you I couldn’t run Claude. But don’t believe the rumors. Near as I can tell, they’re based on this prank posted to X on Friday.

https://twitter.com/PtrPomorski/status/2065743732792512621?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2065743732792512621%7Ctwgr%5E37d8ae1ea8e93e55a24707b6e741389460344816%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fvodkapundit%2F2026%2F06%2F15%2Fwhy-did-the-smartest-ai-in-the-world-just-go-dark-n4953976

The attached Community Note reads: “A Pirate Bay search for ‘fable’ returns no relevant results, and further, there is no ‘Other / Models’ category as claimed in the screenshot.”I asked Grok for any other examples, and it came back with this: “Pliny the Liberator extracted and dumped the full ~120k-character system prompt on GitHub shortly after launch. People are using it to emulate Fable-like behavior on Opus 4.8 or other models… but it’s instructions, not the model itself. Useful for prompting, not a full clone.” Good to know.

“The sudden regulatory intervention serves as a stark warning to the enterprise sector: centralized, cloud-based frontier models exist at the absolute mercy of government oversight and vendor compliance,” is how Venture Beat put it, but I’m not entirely sure that’s a bad thing. I don’t doubt that someday, something like Mythos 5 will escape into the wild, potentially setting up a situation like Frank Herbert’s The White Plague. In his 1982 novel, the Dune author postulated what might happen as genetic engineering becomes inexpensive and accessible enough for a deranged individual to create a plague capable of wiping out humanity.

The book’s distraught villain, John Roe O’Neil, nearly succeeds in doing just that. We have extremely powerful tools in LLMs like Fable, and as you know, tools are easy to refashion into weapons.

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Is the US still ahead of China?

• Anthropic Races To Defuse Trump’s Fable 5 U.S. Export Curbs (ZH)

Anthropic’s Fable/Mythos 5 ranks number one in the world for model intelligence, widening the US-China gap. The gap may widen further because of “anti-distillation” features, and the models are now under US export control, which has shuttered access to the advanced models.


Late Friday, the US government banned foreign governments, companies, and individuals from using Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models after researchers at Amazon demonstrated to the Trump administration that some safeguards on Fable could be circumvented. People familiar with what’s happening inside the Trump administration told The Wall Street Journal that Anthropic sent top officials to the White House and held calls to resolve software vulnerabilities, including the alleged ability to ‘jailbreak’ the model.

Anthropic’s top security staff, including Nicholas Carlini, Logan Graham, and Dave Orr, were sent to Washington on Saturday to speak with senior US officials, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The move by the frontier AI lab aims to resolve vulnerabilities exposed by Amazon researchers. More color from WSJ: “People close to the company and the administration said both parties are interested in resolving the issue and restoring access to the cutting-edge models, but it isn’t clear what a solution would entail. Anthropic technical experts and government security researchers coming together was seen by some administration officials as a key step toward a compromise.”

The weekend discussions continue months of tension between the administration and one of America’s leading AI labs over how new, cutting-edge technologies are used and regulated. The Trump administration has recently taken more steps to control the fast-evolving industry.

A Sunday letter by cybersecurity experts urged the Trump administration to lift the restrictions on the models, warning that such a move could hurt U.S. cyber defenses, create market uncertainty, and weaken America’s AI leadership. However, Jefferies analysts said quite the opposite, noting that “anti-distillation” features and US export control, “which could make it harder for open-source (Chinese) models to catch up.” “US models are improving at a faster pace likely due to compute advantage, but anti- distillation and US export control are new negatives for China AI,” the analysts said.

More from Jefferies: “Open-source models (mostly Chinese) may find it harder to improve given new anti- distillation features and US export control. More importantly, Anthropic introduced anti- distillation features on Fable 5. If Fable 5 detects suspicious distillation activities, it would downgrade the model to Opus 4.8 and notify users. While this seems to be targeting Chinese AI development, we believe this would set back open source progress if all closed-source model developers follow suit.

“Moreover, the US has imposed emergency export control on Fable 5, barring foreigners from using them (including foreign employees of US companies), given loopholes in the cybersecurity safeguards. However, since Anthropic has no tools to limit the use to US nationals only (ie, ID checks?), it has suspended both Fable 5 and Mythos 5 globally until it could come up with a way to enforce that export control.”

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“We used to say that we don’t know what 2050 will look like. Now it’s more like we don’t know what 2030 will look like.” —Jesus Enrique Rosas

• Monsters Far and Near (James Howard Kunstler)

You must be thinking that reality is pushing its luck with the president bringing this Iran business — a war, actually, let’s face it — to a favorable conclusion around dinner time Sunday evening (yawn) and then Mr. DJT sliding directly into his seat on the White House lawn to enjoy the special 80th birthday edition of Testosterone Gone Wild, that is, a full card of tattoo-bedizend savages beating the crap out of each other UFC style, like it was a Hooters parking lot on wife-swap night. . . why, it just doesn’t get more surreal than that.


Imagine what Victoria Nuland, Robert Reich, George Stephanopoulis, Elizabeth Warren, and other good folks of that ilk must be thinking. The. . . (Sputter sputter) indelicacy of it all! A freaking peace deal, and now this low-rent spectacle of ultra-violence! Like their whole world had turned out to be the meanest, lowest, most sordid backwater of the Marvel Comics universe where no one has ever heard of chardonney. The ape-men slugging, kicking, gouging, and head-butting each other half to death is one thing. . . but to let the slip the opportunity to continue the Iran War with its downstream emoluments for another nineteen years. . . well, now that is an affront to all that is holy in the sub-basements of Foggy Bottom and the broom closets of Langley.

As you read this on Monday morning the cries for impeachment will be ringing across the District of Columbia like calls to prayer in Mamdani’s Caliphate on the Hudson. Surely, you’ll get more details on the Iran deal as Monday spins out, but the terms look not bad at all for Western Civ in the news media’s early shorthand reports: Teheran pledges no nukes, ever, no how, no way. They will allow their cache of super-enriched uranium to be destroyed. The Strait of Hormuz will reopen promptly, free to international shipping, no tolls, no piratical monkey-business. No more Iran funding terrorist proxy groups. That means you Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and sundry cadres of jihadi maniacs ‘out there’ in the world’s hotspots.

Speaking of which, Mr. Netanyahu felt the president’s wrath earlier on Sunday (once again) when he replied to a Hezbollah rocket salvo out of Lebanon with air strikes. But, hey, everybody knows that Israel always and ever answers every attack against it no matter what, because Never Again. Even Mr. Trump knows that, so the whole flap was a sort of mummery. Obviously, Hezbollah must be anxious to wreck the peace deal, since without Iran’s ongoing largess they will not know where their next meal is coming from, not to mention their next shipment of missiles. If Iran actually complies with the deal, Hezbollah can have no more support. There may soon be no more Hezbollah. (Boo-hoo.)

Which raises the next obvious concern, namely, Iran is not known for keeping its word with The Great Satan (us). There is every reason to believe that the vaunted deal is just another sorry episode of them stringing the USA along, playing us. But Mr. Trump has made it clear he reserves the option to rev up the bombers and “do a number on” the Islamic Republic if they pull a fast one on this.

For its part, Iran is crowing in its own state-controlled press that it has won the war. Iran can say whatever it wants to — world opinion will probably not be fooled — if it makes the people running the joint feel good about themselves losing a war. It’ll be Iran’s actions that matter. There’s a chance, perhaps a low-percentage chance, but a chance nonetheless, that Iran has been persuaded to stop being insane.

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“He is facing two federal counts of threats against the president.”

86 47.

• No Friends for Comey; Judge Rules No Amicus Briefs (Alan Wooten)

No friend of the court briefs will be allowed in America’s attempted prosecution against its former FBI Director James Comey in a North Carolina federal courtroom. In the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Judge Louise Flanagan on Friday gave a one-page order explaining the discretion available to the court and the route she’s chosen. Comey, facing charges tied to his posting of an image of seashells spelling out 86 47 on the Outer Banks, is scheduled for arraignment on Sept. 30 in New Bern and trial Oct. 21. He is facing two federal counts of threats against the president.


“No federal rule of criminal procedure or local criminal rule provides for the filing of amicus briefs before this court,” Flanagan wrote. “It is a matter of this court’s discretion whether to allow. “Defendant and the government are ably represented by competent counsel.” The case is formally known as United States of America v. James Brien Comey Jr. Her order concluded, “Acting within its discretion, the court provides this notice that no amicus brief will be considered. Accordingly, any future motion requesting permission to file summarily will be denied.”

In May 2025, prosecutors say, Comey – a resident of Virginia – posted to social media seashells on the Outer Banks arranged to spell out 86 47 – a commonly interpreted reference for eliminating something (86) and the numerical count (47) of presidents. Comey was FBI director in the administration of former two-term Democratic President Barack Obama, serving from July 29, 2013, to May 9, 2017, when Trump fired him. His Senate confirmation was 93-1.

Comey was infamously investigating Trump ties to the Russian government when he was let go. Comey was deputy attorney general to John Ashcroft during the administration of former two-term Republican President George W. Bush. His career outside of politics includes law professor at Columbia, and time with Lockheed Martin and Bridgewater Associates.

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You betcha. They’re experimenting with new drugs as we speak.

• Ukrainian Military Hooked on Drugs – Deutsche Welle (RT)

Drug addiction is emerging as a growing problem among Ukrainian troops as the conflict with Russia enters the fifth year, according to doctors and specialized organizations cited by Deutsche Welle. The report also cites the experience of a former Ukrainian Marine Corps officer who said he became addicted to drugs. Experts reportedly attribute the problem to combat injuries and psychological exhaustion, with many servicemen spending months on the front line without adequate rest or prospects for demobilization.


While narcotics are officially banned in the military, heavy losses, the lack of rotation, and acute manpower shortages forcing wounded troops back to the front before fully recovering are reportedly fueling the problem. According to the report published last week, more than half of Ukrainian soldiers serving on the front line have experience with the use of drugs, alcohol, or a combination of both. “No army in modern history has fought for four years without rotation,” psychotherapist Igor Alferov told Deutsche Welle. He added that when commanders refuse to grant leave, and “there is no one else to do the fighting,” the troops increasingly feel a sense of injustice.

Alferov also cited family problems as a factor, noting that many soldiers have relatives living abroad, causing spouses to drift apart. “She plans to stay in Europe because she sees prospects there for the children, while he remains at war in Ukraine, where every day carries the risk of death,” he said. A former Ukrainian serviceman and patient at a rehabilitation clinic told DW that drug addiction cost him his military career. “I had more than 200 men under my command and took part in a number of successful operations,” he said, adding that his condition deteriorated after being discharged from the hospital and that he eventually “lost control of everything.”

Earlier this year, a local resident rescued from Krasnoarmeysk in the Donetsk People’s Republic, which was liberated by Russian forces in late 2025, told TASS that most Ukrainian troops stationed in the city used drugs delivered by drones in the form of candies wrapped in camouflage packaging. He claimed that intoxicated soldiers often clashed with civilians, with some incidents ending in gunfire. The Guardian reported that many Ukrainian servicemen developed drug addiction, the scale of which is hard to assess due to limited official data, linking it in part to post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety from prolonged combat exposure.

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Social media ban for kids is information control, pure and simple.

• Starmer to Ban Under-16s From 10 Social Media Apps Including X (DS)

Sir Keir Starmer is set to announce sweeping reforms tomorrow banning under-16s from 10 major social media platforms, including X, but not the Left-wing platform Bluesky. In addition, he will introduce daily curfews for 16 and 17 year-olds, going further than Australia’s restrictions. The Times has the story: Teenagers will be banned from certain social media platforms and have their daily usage curbed under sweeping reforms to be announced by Sir Keir Starmer on Sunday.


The ban will go further than the one imposed by Australia in December by targeting technology deemed harmful to children, including chatbots and certain features on gaming apps. Under-16s in Australia have been banned from using ten platforms: TikTok, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Twitch and Kick. It is understood that the UK will follow suit by raising the minimum age on social media to 16, from the average of 13, for the same ten sites. Curfews for older teenagers will be introduced. Daily social media use will be restricted for 16 and 17 year-olds in a move designed to curb unhealthy late-night scrolling habits.

A Government source said: “Keir has been clear we need a game-changer to keep our children — and future generations — safe online.” The reforms, which come two weeks after a public consultation on potential restrictions closed, will stop short of banning the messaging platform WhatsApp and apps considered to have educational value. However, the government will go further than Australia and introduce restrictions on romantic or sexual chatbots after several legal cases involving the AI agents mimicking relationships and encouraging children to take their own lives.

Kanishka Narayan, the online safety minister, has said the government — which will also give 16 and 17 year-olds the right to vote — could block conversations between children and strangers on gaming platforms. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, which was passed in April, gave ministers the ability to introduce measures to restrict harmful features on online services without needing to pass new laws. It is not clear when the ban will come into force or how effectively the government will be able to enforce it.

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Social media ban for kids equals social media control for everyone.

Whatever your age, you have to prove it. How do you show you’re not 12? By proving you’re 48.

“..you now have to prove your age by proving your identity. It is obvious to the non-pretenders that proving your identity is the objective; the ruse to force the mandate is to prove your age.”

• Starmer Announces Social Media Control System to Protect “Children” (CTH)

Leftist British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has lost support among the majority of voters within the United Kingdom as evidenced by the shellacking his party took in the recent election. However, as the embattled leader clings to power by telling law enforcement to crackdown on anti-government voices, he extends the control mechanisms under the guise of “protecting children.” If you are a social media user or internet user in the U.K, you now have to prove your age by proving your identity. It is obvious to the non-pretenders that proving your identity is the objective; the ruse to force the mandate is to prove your age. This is the way a grand lie is deployed in order to achieve an objective. ‘All your information are belong to us.’


UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers a press conference with the announcement from 10 Downing Street. He announces a sweeping ban on social media for children under 16, describing it as a “big step” to protect young people from online harm. Starmer defends the policy as necessary to tackle “addictive algorithms, cyberbullying, and mental health risks.” Britain will follow Australia’s example in raising the minimum age to 16 for sites such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube, and Snapchat.

BIG PICTURE: Australia, New Zealand and Canada all have social media control systems in place. Now, the U.K joins with them. What does Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.K have on common? They are all part of the 5-Eyes intelligence network. This is an IC operation. Don’t lose sight of it. This is a freedom battle against aligned interests that have historically used the intelligence community as their main strategy. From the western globalist perspective, you must always accept their #1 priority is information control. It doesn’t matter what the tool or technique of the day being discussed it, the #1 issue -for them- is to control information.

Look at everything, including and importantly the current AI discussions and debate, through the prism of information control. COVID-19 taught you the lesson. Information control is the objective. Social media restrictions, internet restrictions, the terms ‘mis-dis-mal-information’ etc., the AI race, election systems they can manage, demonetizing or deboosting, CISA, NED, USAID, the payment to “influencers”, media bans, all of it, the sum of every effort, tool and technique is about controlling information.

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“The Dirty Little Secret Behind ..”

“It died because its commitment to wokeness superseded popular attitudes and the business discipline it takes to serve a marketplace.:”

“.. the powers that be at America’s dailies have demonstrated they would rather drive their papers into the ground than betray a core leftist editorial philosophy.”

• Newspaper Dailies Killing Their Editorial Pages (Tim O’Brien)

Back in January I chronicled the death of a local newspaper daily, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which at the time was slated to close for good in May. I listed the many reasons for the newspaper’s demise and how it served as a great example of why so many American daily newspapers have expired. The newspaper industry would have you believe that the massive decline in America’s dailies was driven only by changes to news delivery technologies, but it’s much more than that, and yet they are related. Yes, the internet has made the need for an actual paper newspaper unnecessary, but that doesn’t explain why so many of these news organizations continued to decline even as they embraced the internet, social media, podcasting, and so many more on-trend platforms.


My contention in January, as now, is that news consumers get their news from sources they trust. This is common knowledge in the media and communications fields. People pick the source; the source no longer picks them. And we tend to pick sources that agree with our worldview. That’s why you are here on PJ Media, and you’re not right now listening to Barack Obama’s groupies over at Pod Save America. We live in ”media silos” which ensure that no regular listener of Pod Save America ever hears what we’re talking about here, and we never hear what they are saying there, unless of course they say something that ends up going viral on the X platform. More often than not, however, an algorithm looks at what you seem to really like, and it gives you more of that.

In my January eulogy for the Post-Gazette being declared dead by its long-time owner, Block Communications, I wrote: “It died because its commitment to wokeness superseded popular attitudes and the business discipline it takes to serve a marketplace. In short, leadership and staff put their own ideologies first, and they made their product irrelevant to the town they served. And they still have no idea. They openly ridiculed MAGA and the populist movement that put Trump in power in 2016. They did it again in 2020. And they did it again in 2024. Time and again, in big and small ways, they just couldn’t see the formula for success and adapt.”

In the TV world, if Fox News, the major conservative cable news network, is wiping the floor with the lib networks, wouldn’t it make sense to shift a little to the right? The same is true across all media. There is a demand for conservative content. But the powers that be at America’s dailies have demonstrated they would rather drive their papers into the ground than betray a core leftist editorial philosophy. Since January, the Post-Gazette was saved, if that’s what you want to call it. A Baltimore-based nonprofit news outlet called the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism bought the Pittsburgh “daily” at a bargain-basement price.

When making the announcement, Venetoulis pointed to its track record in salvaging local news organizations, and it said it had no plans to cut back on the newspaper’s editorial or distribution schedule. When the purchase was announced, most reports alluded to the likelihood that Venetoulis would be cutting personnel and making other changes. A moral win for the 240-year-old newspaper, but none of this changes the challenges the Post-Gazette faces. People still get their news elsewhere in growing numbers. So, unless Venetoulis makes changes to the product that the marketplace wants, the Post-Gazette will continue to fade in influence.

Speaking of changes, one of the most significant content changes the nonprofit newspaper made was the elimination of its editorial section. In an editorial on May 3, 2026, the newspaper announced it would no longer “support or oppose public policies or candidates for public office.” Hmmm.

Okay, so I get they won’t endorse candidates. Let’s face it, they haven’t had a great track record with endorsements of late (as with almost all other dailies in America), but the obvious reason is this: If a newspaper endorses only Democrats, who lose at the national level a lot, it’s going to lose credibility and alienate the conservatives it needs to attract to its pages. Yet if it endorses a Republican, it will lose newspaper staff, leadership won’t get invited to World Cup watch parties, or may get shunned on Parent-Teacher Night at the private schools where their kids attend. They may even lose their seat on the board of the local opera or symphony.

But why decide not to “support or oppose public policies”? I would think that’s why newspapers exist in the first place. Imagine Ben Franklin’s The Pennsylvania Gazette deciding in the 1770s not to take a position on public policies like the Stamp Act. What good would that have done? Of course, there will be no shortage of opinion in the newspaper. Surely, you’ll find it in the bias that permeates stories presented as “straight news.” You’ll also find actual columns from columnists from time to time, but those will be carefully curated, of course. This will be in keeping with the inherent ideologies at play in the nonprofit management of a legacy newspaper.

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Like so many people who were once liberal and then met woke.

• You Don’t Know What You’ve Got ‘Til It’s Gone: The Tragedy of John Cleese (PJM)

Over at Instapundit, Ed Driscoll notes a piece by S.D.Wickett, whom I presume to be a British writer. The article is around four years old, but the commentary is still valid. Indeed, the passage of time has moved us closer to the end the author is concerned about. I’d like to draw your attention to an anonymous post on the forum website 4chan, which forms the basis for what I have titled the Tragedy of John Cleese. It goes: “He was a Progressive, Liberal degenerate in 1960s uber-white uber-polite Britain. He could take the p*** out of the people he saw as uptight and repressed while enjoying the clean, safe streets and quiet little hamlets full of those same uptight, repressed, polite-to-a-fault, helpful, white Christian Englishmen.


“The best part was that those same British conservative Anglos were generally pretty humorous about themselves. So, when you made fun of them, they laughed along with you and shook their heads saying ‘Ha! You know, Margie, he’s got a point!’ It was heaven on earth for him, to be a popular counter-culture icon loved by conservatives and liberals alike for being hilarious, but also enjoy the benefits of a strong, stable and homogeneous culture. I’ve been a Python fan for a long time. But even back in the ’70s when they first burst onto the scene, I noticed they almost invariably targeted traditional conservatives — or at least members of the cultural majority. The one exception I can think of appears in the 1979 film, The Life of Brian:

That’s about as prophetic as the Pythons in general, and Cleese in particular, ever got. Since then, that small crack of light has widened, and thereby revealed to the remaining Pythons a lot they’d not faced before. Wickett continues: Now, he’s an old man, staring at a desolate wasteland where in London, Britons are now in the minority. Everyone is suspicious, the hamlets and villages are economic dead-zones. Every week, there’s a new group you’re not allowed to make fun of, no one has a sense of humour anymore. Little girls are being sold as sex slaves, women are harassed in the street and the men are suspicious and surly over their lowered living standards. The sinking realization that the world he made fun of, but loved more than anything, is gone forever and will never come back.


The horrifying conclusion that his own counter-cultural irreverence may have helped to kill it. So, he impotently gripes on Twitter and wonders where the laughter went, when did the jokes stop? Where are those wonderful, repressed and uptight conservatives So now, apparently, Cleese is making a documentary titled Cancel Me on the cancel culture phenomenon that my PJ Media colleagues and I have written about often enough. One really must wonder if he can see signs, however dimly, suggesting he himself has long been part of the problem. Wickett seems to wonder about that as well: “I want to bring the various reasonings right out in the open so that people can be clearer in their minds what they agree with, what they don’t agree with, and what they still can’t make their mind up about.”

He mentions political correctness as if it were new. Something that emerged out of a campus vacuum in the mid 2010s. Yet, its true origin is something far closer to home. John Cleese cut his teeth in the 1960s. As I’ve previously stated, it was a time of revolution, a springboard into hyper-modernity, hyper-liberalism. It was the death of the suit, the family, the stigmatic removal of undesirable and unbecoming behaviour. The normalisation of sex, drugs, and psychedelia. A time of free expression without limits, restraints, or shame. Hedonism without consequences. Pregnant? Just have an abortion. Bored at a party? Here, take this. ‘Only God can judge me, except he doesn’t exist.’

The last fifty years of evidence have finally handed us the bill, and it’s steeper than anyone, including Cleese, wanted to admit back when the dreaming was seen as being without cost. I’ve long maintained that Britain is the canary in this particular coal mine, and that we colonials are only a few stumbles behind them.

Buried inside the 1960s counterculture was the cheerful slogan “God is dead” — lifted, naturally, from Nietzsche’s Parable of the Madman, by people who couldn’t be bothered to read past the bumper-sticker version. Had they done so, they’d have found a warning, not a guide. Nietzsche wasn’t celebrating the death of God; he was outright terrified of it. His point? Without a moral and cultural framework, the foundation under everything crumbles. The social left grabbed that warning, mistook it for a manifesto, and promptly set about proving him correct, both in terms of the Judeo-Christian ethic and the culture that sprang from it.

The cultural rot and the cancel culture springing from it that has Cleese wringing his hands today is exactly what Nietzsche was describing. Shakespeare’s Miranda squealed with delight at her brave new world, blissfully ignorant of what lurked beneath the surface. Cleese and his fellow progressive cheerleaders spent decades doing the same, pompoms and all. Now they stand slack-jawed while Huxley’s ghost is joined by Rush Limbaugh and other cultural conservatives in saying, “See? I told you so.”

Turns out the architects of that brave new world built precisely what we were warned they would. Cleese is getting a masterclass in a very specific flavor of irony: you never know what you treasure until the revolution you spent your career championing shows up to confiscate and burn it. Or as another leftist icon, Joni Mitchel so famously put it, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?” Cleese has a history with the left in the UK, the Labour Party, the Social Democrats, and the Liberal Democrats, but he has changed in recent years. Just this last February, he joined the Restore Britain party, which the Brit pass has laughably tagged as a “far right group.”

The really sad part? He will likely be called out by the far left for finally noting these things and for being open-minded enough to recognize the damage done by the positions he once championed. Did he cause all of this? Of course not. (No single raindrop, however fat and self-important, floods a valley alone). However, he makes a perfect starting point for diagnosing what led us to this pass. Will he ever own his role in it? Please. Red pills don’t get easier to choke down when you get older — they get harder. So, John Cleese, I’ll borrow from Bruce Willis here: “Welcome to the party, Pal.”

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https://twitter.com/SidneyPowell1/status/2066373154633662892?s=20 https://twitter.com/WellsJorda89710/status/2066376688447950964?s=20

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 9 2026

Jun 092026
 
 June 9, 2026  Posted by at 10:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  25 Responses »


Pieter Brueghel the Younger Construction of the Tower of Babel 1595


• Netanyahu Confirms Israel ‘Holding Fire…For Now’ (ZH)
• Score Two More Big Wins for Israel Vs. Iran… Maybe (Stephen Green)
• Trump’s Secret Weapon Against Iran: The Power of Antisemitism! (Scott Pinsker)
• Trump Suffers Rare Court Setbacks Amid Broader Record of Legal Success (JTN)
• On the Kavanaugh Anniversary, Democratic Leaders Swap Me Too for Maine (Turley)
• The Jungle Drums Speak! (James Howard Kunstler)
• Trump Plans To Buy Chagos Islands, Home To Diego Garcia Military Base (ZH)
• OpenAI Files Confidentially For IPO, Joining SpaceX and Anthropic (ZH)
• EU Coalition of the Willing: Five Terms for Direct Ukraine-Russia Talks (CTH)
• German Lawmakers Want Answers From Baerbock After UN Humiliation – Bild (RT)
• A “Godzilla El Niño” (Michael Snyder)
• In the Land of Thucydides (John J. Mearsheimer)

 


 

https://twitter.com/TheCalvinCooli1/status/2063671748378137040?s=20 https://twitter.com/barontrump47/status/2063754461261058407?s=20

 


 

Both sides paused overnight last night.

• Netanyahu Confirms Israel ‘Holding Fire…For Now’ (ZH)

Israel Halts Iran Attacks ‘For Now’
“After Iran attacked Israel, I instructed the IDF to strike military and economic targets throughout Iran,” Netanyahu said in a fresh Monday statement. “For now, the fire has been contained, because after we struck the terrorist regime in Tehran, it ceased attacking us. If the terrorist regime in Iran makes the mistake of attacking us again, we will respond with force.” The key lines from Netanyahu: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel had stopped its attacks on both Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, after the Iranian military announced it was halting operations.


In a brief statement Monday, Netanyahu said “Iran and Hezbollah are weaker than ever, and we are stronger than ever – but our struggle with them is not over yet.” Having bombarded both adversaries, he added, “right now, the fire has been halted.” Iran’s military headquarters responds: “Should aggression and hostile actions continue—including in southern Lebanon—far more severe and forceful measures than before will follow,” it said, according to Iranian state media. And in a clear sign of the exchange of strikes having ceased: Iran says flight restrictions have been lifted with airspace returning to normal conditions: state media

Israel Pauses Iran Strikes At Trump’s Request
Israel’s N12 News is reporting that Israel is halting strike on Iran at President Trump’s request. There are widespread initial reports that Israeli forces are indeed pausing the attacks, which persisted overnight through Monday morning, and included attack on a major petrochemical complex. However, the latest Israeli messaging has included a warning on the Lebanon front, per Bloomberg: Senior Israeli official says Israel is stopping strikes in Iran at Donald Trump’s request, but confirms operations in southern Lebanon will continue at full intensity in the coming days. The official also warns that Dahieh in Beirut could be targeted if attacks on Israeli settlements and civilians continue.

There are also emerging reports (via CBS) that Trump did not order any US defensive efforts to protect Israel from the latest Iranian ballistic missile attacks – which were the first against Israel since the early April ceasefire. Meanwhile, in a fresh message from Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei, Iran says “Without a doubt … the actions of the Zionist regime in the region cannot be separated from U.S. policies.” Tehran is rejecting the attempts of the Trump administration to distance the US from Israeli actions: “No one believes that the Zionist regime would carry out any action without prior coordination and cooperation with the United States,” Baqaei added.

Trump: ‘Stop Shooting’
A big question remains is if this flare-up in major fighting, which has featured the first direct attacks between Iran and Israel since the April ceasefire took effect, will be short-lived or whether it will endure and escalate into sustained war. So far the situation is showing signs it could be short-lived, after early Monday morning President Trump urged Israel and Iran to immediately stop “shooting” in a Truth Social post. He also expressed that this musts be done “quickly” and is still talking up a “final” peace deal – which at this moment looks as distant as ever. Iran is signaling it is ready to get back to ceasefire, but Israel is again threatening the Beirut suburbs.

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“..that missile fire toward Israel was most likely carried out under pre-established military protocols, without coordination with the office of Supreme Leader.”

• Score Two More Big Wins for Israel Vs. Iran… Maybe (Stephen Green)

It started so simply, as these things do, with a barrage of Iran’s patented Totally Ceasefire Missiles™ that Israel knocked out of the sky. It ended, if that’s the right word, with Israeli airstrikes taking out Iran’s top two leaders. That’s a big win, even if one of them was already mostly dead. The fun began on Sunday, when “Iran launched missiles into Israel, not just in the north by the Galilee, but all the way down to Caesarea,” as reported by PJ Media’s own Rabbi Michael Barclay. In all, Tehran launched a total of about 30 missiles in several waves. They were all either shot down by IDF antimissile systems like Iron Dome, or caused no notable damage.


Israel responded with two air attacks that PJ Media’s own Catherine Salgado reported on at Zero Dark Thirty last night, but only now are we learning just how effective those strikes really were. Several outlets report today that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Ahmad Vahidi is among those dead in yesterday’s Israeli Air Force (IAF) strikes.Vahidi’s death isn’t confirmed yet, but fingers crossed. He’s only been IRGC chief since March 1, when his predecessor was taken out in similar fashion.

Considered a hardliner — which is a nice way of saying, “lying genocidal thug” — reports of Vahidi’s death please me very much. I keep trying to get the message through to the White House that if the current Iranian leadership is too hardline to negotiate in good faith, then keep killing them until more pliable leadership emerges. And maybe bomb them, too, just to be sure. Thankfully, the IAF was kind enough to take the next step for us.

Just as pleasing, if perhaps not quite as consequential, is the reported death of the regime’s so-called Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei — son and heir of the previous Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. The elder Khamenei, you’ll recall with no small measure of schadenfreude, was killed in a similar IAF strike in the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury. The younger Khamenei — long rumored to be homosexual and also believed to have been severely wounded during the air campaign — is (or was) at best a figurehead. He hasn’t been seen or heard in public since before Ali’s death, lending credence to the reports that he is (or was) barely alive. Or living it up on Fire Island. Accounts differ.

At the very least, Israel Hayom reported today that their opposition source believes “that missile fire toward Israel was most likely carried out under pre-established military protocols, without coordination with the office of Supreme Leader.” Notice the source indicated Khamenei’s office, not the man himself. “Israel and Iran… are looking to do an immediate CEASEFIRE! Final negotiations on ‘Peace’ are proceeding, subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way,” President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social in response to Sunday’s exchange of fires. But I’m inclined to agree with PJ’s Rick Moran, when he wrote on Sunday that “The war has shattered the Iranian leadership structure, making an agreement next to impossible.” And that was before Khamenei and Vahidi hopefully woke up this morning in Hell.

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“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion “

• Trump’s Secret Weapon Against Iran: The Power of Antisemitism! (Scott Pinsker)

Sometimes, antisemitism is hilarious. Don’t believe me? Here’s a historic example: “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a 1902 Russian hoax that claimed to document a late-19th century meeting of Jewish leaders, where those evil, untrustworthy Jews discussed their secret plans for world domination. Some consider it “the most influential work of antisemitism ever written.” Throughout vast swathes of Nazi Germany, it was mandatory reading for schoolchildren. In Russia and Western Europe, it was a runaway best-seller. It even gained a following in the United States, where it was republished and serialized 91 times in Henry Ford’s newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. (Ford later published the series in book form as The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem.)


Sadly, in countries shaped by Judeo-Christian traditions, this hoax greatly inflamed tensions between Jews and Christians. Hitler cited it to justify the Nazi’s institutional antisemitism — which, of course, led directly to the Holocaust. From the United States Holocaust Museum: “Hitler referred to the Protocols in some of his earliest political speeches in the 1920s. He also wrote about the book in his autobiography Mein Kampf (1925). Hitler claimed that the Protocols “reveal the nature and activity of Jewish people and expose…their ultimate final aims.” He also predicted that what he called the “Jewish menace” would be “broken” after the Protocols became more widely known.”

Sounds pretty bleak for the Jews. You could draw a straight line between its publishing, the rise of antisemitism, and the genocidal horror of the Holocaust. Yet there was one country that got its hands on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and reached the exact opposite conclusion: “Whoa! You mean there’s a secret group of Jews who control the entire world? And they magically make money wherever they go? HOW AWESOME! Let’s party with those guys!” And that country was… Japan.

Because, after all, Judeo-Christian traditions didn’t shape Japan’s history, culture, and values. So instead of interpreting The Protocols through the lens of European history, the Jewish diaspora, and its (many) antisemitic dog whistles, Japanese readers accepted everything at face value: Somehow, these magical, mysterious Jews figured out how to become global puppet-masters. They controlled the media, the banks, foreign governments, international trade — and more! Apparently, nobody can stop them. Not even the mighty governments of Europe! So imagine what a wonderful ally they’d be to imperial Japan!

It led to a Japanese program called the Fugu Plan to import up to 600,000 Jews. Japan even planned a PR mission to the United States, where Japanese officials would show American rabbis the similarities (?) between Judaism and Shintoism and then invite them to visit Japan. From All That’s Interesting: From the moment it was conceived, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was viciously anti-Semitic, packed with false charges of a Jewish conspiracy to conquer the world. But for a time, a powerful faction in Japanese military and political circles came to believe that this infamous piece of hateful propaganda was completely accurate.

To them, the book — purportedly notes from a meeting of a Jewish shadow government — was not only true, but it was an indication that, rather than attack the Jews, they should befriend them and use them to their own advantage. The result was later called the Fugu Plan, an effort to encourage Jewish immigration to Japanese territory before and during World War II in order to bolster the country’s economic prosperity. Because of imperial Japan’s wartime partnership with Nazi Germany, it eventually abandoned the Fugu Plan. (As you could imagine, Der Führer wasn’t such a big fan.) But it deserves to be remembered, for it illustrates an undeniable truth: People stupid enough to buy into antisemitic conspiracy theories aren’t smart enough to differentiate between facts and fiction.

This brings us to President Donald Trump, Iran, and the never-ending negotiations to bring peace to the Middle East. Spoiler alert: It ain’t been going so swimmingly.And the American people are quickly losing confidence that a peace deal is even reachable. That’s because President Trump has been hinting since March 30 that a great deal was “probably” right around the corner. On May 23, a deal was “largely negotiated.” Then, as recently as May 29, he told us he was making the “final determination” on signing an agreement. Yet it’s now June 8, and not only is there no peace deal, but over the weekend, Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israeli civilian targets.

Politicians pay a political price when they overpromise and underdeliver. President Trump is no exception: The hawks are mad because Iran is still standing (and giving America the finger); the doves are mad because we went to war; Joe Six-Pack is mad because gas prices are too damn high. Everyone is unhappy! We’ve gone from demanding Iran’s “unconditional surrender” to endless negotiations that aren’t going anywhere. The whole thing is a mess.

As we discussed last week, it certainly seems that stringing U.S. diplomats along — promising great things behind closed doors, agreeing to 99% of demands, but perpetually keeping the final 1% from ever reaching a conclusion — is now Iran’s strategy. From the mullah’s point of view, it’s their best available option because: With a ceasefire already in place (at least in name), the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign has stopped. No more mullahs have been killed. As long as the ceasefire continues, Iran has a free hand to rebuild its military — which it seems to be doing. By linking a peace deal to Hezbollah’s survival, Iran has gotten President Trump to order Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to stop attacking its terrorist proxies in Lebanon. But once a peace deal is signed, Iran would lose that leverage.

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For years, they were always neglecting the Kennedy Center. No more. Trump made his point. He threatened to put his name on it.

The Anti-Weaponization Fund is not worked out, just a try-out. Everybody knows how they will react. More soon.

• Trump Suffers Rare Court Setbacks Amid Broader Record of Legal Success (JTN)

The first recent loss came on May 29, when U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered that Trump’s name be stripped from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. President Donald Trump has enjoyed considerable success in the courts during his second term. Federal judges and the Supreme Court have allowed key parts of his immigration agenda to proceed, upheld major personnel actions across the executive branch and endorsed an expansive view of presidential authority in several high-profile disputes. But over the past two weeks, the administration suffered two notable legal setbacks: one involving the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and another concerning a controversial compensation fund created through a settlement with the Internal Revenue Service.


Kennedy Center Ruling Reverses Renaming Effort
The first loss came on May 29, when U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered that Trump’s name be stripped from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. D.C. Cooper, an Obama appointee, also temporarily blocked the administration’s plan to shut the landmark Washington, D.C. venue for two years of renovations, which had been scheduled to begin on July 6.The backstory starts in December 2025, when a board stacked with Trump’s handpicked allies voted to rebrand the arts complex as the “Trump-Kennedy Center,” and signage bearing the new name went up on the building. Ticket sales declined sharply in the months that followed, and artists began canceling performances in protest. In February 2026, Trump announced the center would be closed for a sweeping overhaul.

Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who had been a member of the center’s board before her voting rights were stripped, filed suit to stop both moves. Judge Cooper’s ruling was sweeping and pointed. In a 94-page opinion issued on what happened to be President Kennedy’s birthday, he wrote that “the Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

On the closure question, Cooper found that the board had not properly weighed its legal obligations to the institution before voting to shutter it, though he left open the possibility that a future board vote could still authorize renovations. Trump reacted with characteristic directness. In a post on Truth Social, he blasted Cooper and suggested Congress should take the whole institution back: “We are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it.”

Court Halts Anti-Weaponization Fund
A Justice Department spokesperson said in the statement that the agency “will continue to defend President Trump’s ability to restore the Center to its former glory as the finest performing arts center in the country – if not the world.” For now, Trump’s name is coming off the building. The second setback involved a program that drew criticism from an unusual source: members of Trump’s own party. In mid-May, the Justice Department announced the creation of the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” a nearly $1.8 billion pool of taxpayer money intended to compensate individuals who claimed they had been unfairly targeted or persecuted by previous administrations.

The fund was established not by Congress, but through a settlement agreement in a lawsuit Trump himself had filed against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. Under the settlement’s terms, Trump and his family received a formal apology but no cash. The money in the new fund, however, would be available to a broad universe of other claimants. Critics immediately pointed out that this project was an extraordinary arrangement: a fund of public money, created without congressional authorization, through a lawsuit in which the president was simultaneously the plaintiff and the head of the executive branch overseeing the defendant agency.

A group of 35 former federal judges—appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents—filed a motion arguing that the entire legal vehicle was, in their words, “a fraud on the court.” On May 29, the same day as the Kennedy Center ruling, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, in the Eastern District of Virginia, issued a temporary order halting all operations of the fund while she considered its legality. Challengers had argued that money could flow out the door and become impossible to recover before the court could act, and the judge agreed that the risk was serious enough to require a pause.

The political fallout was fast. Democrats called the fund a giveaway to Trump allies. Crucially, even some Republicans in Congress balked, and reports emerged that the fund was throwing the president’s legislative agenda into turmoil. By June 1, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made it official: the Anti-Weaponization Fund was dead. DOJ’s said in a statement on X that it “disagrees strongly” with Brinkema’s ruling but would comply. Trump later told ABC News he accepted the outcome, saying: “We are subject to the courts. At this moment, that’s what it is.”

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Connected to TDS.

• On the Kavanaugh Anniversary, Democratic Leaders Swap Me Too for Maine (Turley)

“It’s clear the fix is in.” Those words from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). came with her vote against confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Warren was outraged that her fellow senators refused to believe a woman who came forward with a decades-old allegation against Kavanaugh that lacked any corroboration. It now appears that Kavanaugh’s former accusers are making the case that he was treated unjustly at their hands. At least they are now willing to swap “Me Too” for Maine. Warren’s words were part of a mantra from Democratic members that either you believe women about sexual harassment and assault, or you are enabling abusers.


It was almost exactly eight years ago, in July 2018, that President Trump nominated Kavanaugh to fill the seat of retiring Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kavanaugh, who was at first a very uncontroversial nominee, suddenly became the target of a well-financed, well-orchestrated campaign that would continue to resonate in that fall’s election campaigns. At the time, your failure to accept the word of Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh had assaulted her in high school was just proof that you and the system were sexist.

Long after the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh, the left continued to claim that his presence on the Supreme Court “rests on a mountain of misogyny.” In Ms. Magazine, actress Kathleen Turner reminded people that not believing women was furthering misogyny: “Survivors who come forward break the rules of silence a sexist society demands, and society expects them to pay a price.” If you recall, the lack of evidence led to the Senate Judiciary Committee combing through Kavanaugh’s personal calendars. Denials that such a thing had ever happened, coming from childhood friends, were treated as still more evidence of sexism.

There was Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who grilled Kavanaugh about using the term “boofing” (apparently referring to passing gas) with a high school friend as if it were a confession to a rape. His inquisitorial barrage was something straight out of the McCarthy period. Whitehouse expressed disgust that some would not take Ford’s word for it, declaring, “Today I stand with women who are brave enough to come forward with their stories of abuse and mistreatment. They deserve to be heard and credible allegations must be investigated. We must believe survivors, not bully them.”

Whitehouse is now a major donor and supporter of Graham Platner, the leading Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Maine. He dismisses the New York Times accounts from women of Platner’s physically and mentally abusive behavior. Instead of believing these women, he reportedly attacked Lyndsey Fifield, who “bravely” came forward publicly with her story at the request of Times reporters. Whitehouse is quoted as saying that he was “unimpressed” by the allegations and the multiple women coming forward “seems like a lot of nothing.” He suggested that he is not prepared to believe a woman if she is a conservative. “I mean, the only one who had anything to say that seemed ‘unsettling’ was a woman who works for right-wing political operations,” he said.

That attack was picked up by others like writer Krystal Ball. She too had denounced those who did not believe Ford in the Kavanaugh controversy. In the past, she claimed at that time, “women just didn’t come forward. They knew they wouldn’t be believed. ”Now she cannot imagine why anyone would believe these women, particularly Fifield. “NYT published uncorroborated accusations against [Platner] of ‘unsettling’ and ‘toxic’ behavior that came from a Heritage staffer who previously worked for a conservative org that backs Collins,” she posted online.

Fifield, after sharing stories with the Times of Platner’s alleged abusive behavior, went public to complain that the newspaper had failed to include the corroboration she had provided. She posted that the paper not only failed to include that she has supported Democrats for office, but also asked, “Why does it say ‘nobody could corroborate’ when I offered them sources that COULD corroborate?”

She added, “The Times also failed to include any mention that I DID confide in multiple friends through the years that Graham had been abusive — long before he was running for office. Those friends confirm they told the Times so.” If true, that is a strikingly different approach from the one taken by the media in reporting on the Kavanaugh allegations.

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“Love that the crack heads on Skid Row are up on the issues, know the candidates, and are able to Make Their Voices Heard in between hits of meth.” —Peachy Keenan on X

“.., transformed itself in a decade or so into an out-and-out racketeering operation, that is, to a criminal enterprise dedicated to the misappropriation of taxpayer money among its rank and file, many of whom are not citizens.”

• The Jungle Drums Speak! (James Howard Kunstler)

Whaddaya know? Looks like the charismatic Nithya Raman has overtaken maverick candidate Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayoral “jungle” primary because. . . jungle reasons. That is, the denizens of LA’s vast homeless encampments — once known as “hobo jungles” — apparently voted overwhelmingly by mail for the Harvard-credentialed champion of street-junkies in the Silver Lake, Echo Park, Los Feliz, Atwater, and Hollywood neighborhoods (SELAH) she represents on the LA City Council.


So, it will be a November runoff between the super-duper “progressive” incumbent Karen Bass, and merely super-progressive Ms. Ramen. Better reserve your U-Haul trailer ASAP, as the City of Angels completes its transformation to the City of Zombies. And no complaining, please. This is what you voted for.

By the way, what does “progressive” actually mean these days? Progress towards. . . what? The culminating disintegration of a civil polity? The concerted failure to govern a large, urban organism? Unconditional surrender to the forces of entropy? One might suspect a soupçon of racial animus in the mix, too, something of a middle-finger to this thing called white supremacy we hear so much about. It must be rooted out at all costs, including the cost of a place that a productive population once loved — the very people renting all those U-Hauls, dispersing out into the USA gloaming.

Of course, this “progressive” Democratic Party has transformed itself in a decade or so into an out-and-out racketeering operation, that is, to a criminal enterprise dedicated to the misappropriation of taxpayer money among its rank and file, many of whom are not citizens. The model is not unlike more primitive early versions, such as Boss Tweed’s ring in 19th century New York, or the gang under mayor James Curley, the “Rascal King” of Boston. The system was known as “patronage.” Voters were the party’s patrons, and the patrons were on the payroll. Some had actual party jobs. Some just got free stuff in exchange for their votes. They called it a “machine” because its operations became automatic, self-fulfilling.

There was one big difference, though: these earlier Democratic Party grifters, for all their moneygrubbing shenanigans, were American patriots. They celebrated a country so ostentatiously “free,” so fervently dedicated to upward mobility, that it made room for their garish political corruption. The Democratic machine of Los Angeles today is quite the opposite: It’s a faction that loathes and detests the American system and seeks sedulously to destroy it, even while grabbing as much loot as it can in the process.

Mayor Karen Bass was trained for that mission in Cuba. Beginning at age 19, in 1973, Ms. Bass made eight trips there with the Venceremos Brigade (founded in 1969 by the Lefty-left SDS) to “show solidarity with the Cuban revolution,” which, you might remember, was a straight-up communist revolution. One might infer, then, that Mayor Bass is a straight-up communist, with ambitions to destroy the capitalist city of Los Angeles, so as to replace it with a communist utopia — where all production (if there is any) is owned and controlled by the government, which then dispenses the fruits-of-production to the people, according to their needs, as officers of the government see fit.

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“US officials have prepared proposals to bypass Britain and negotiate directly for control of Diego Garcia ..”

• Trump Plans To Buy Chagos Islands, Home To Diego Garcia Military Base (ZH)

The White House is actively considering a plan to purchase the Chagos Islands, potentially undermining the UK’s agreement to transfer sovereignty of the strategically vital territory to Mauritius, according to reports. US officials have prepared proposals to bypass Britain and negotiate directly for control of Diego Garcia, the key Indian Ocean atoll that hosts a major joint US-UK military base. The idea forms part of broader options being developed by the Trump administration as alternatives to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plan to cede the islands to Mauritius, which has close ties to China and Iran.


Strategic Importance
Diego Garcia’s location makes it critical for long-range operations. It enables round-the-clock bomber missions, including potential strikes on Iran using B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, and places key areas within striking range. Amid ongoing conflicts involving Iran and China’s expanding naval presence, US and UK officials stress the need to maintain a robust chain of global military bases.


Senior Trump administration officials worry that transferring control to Mauritius could expose the base to espionage or interference. One former adviser to UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Ben Judah, told the Telegraph that the base has “super secret, super sensitive facilities” that are vital to British and allied capabilities, noting they would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.

Background on the UK-Mauritius Deal
The UK had agreed to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius while securing a long-term lease for the military base, reportedly involving around £35 billion ($46.7 billion) over 99 years. However, the deal requires US consent due to longstanding agreements governing the base, and Britain has since placed it on hold. President Trump initially appeared open to the arrangement but later strongly opposed it, particularly after the UK reportedly declined to allow strikes on Iran from Diego Garcia in the early stages of the Iran war. He publicly denounced the deal as “great stupidity” and criticized Starmer for weakening the special relationship, calling him “no Winston Churchill.”

US Position and Ongoing Talks
A US official told Reuters: “President Trump has been consistent in his position that the United Kingdom should not give away the British Indian Ocean Territory, which includes our joint U.S.-UK military facility on the Diego Garcia atoll. Diego Garcia’s strategic location in the Indian Ocean makes it a vital and indispensable military installation of significant importance to the national security of the United States.” The US continues regular discussions with Britain to preserve the base’s viability.

Purchasing the islands outright would likely involve waiting for the UK-Mauritius sovereignty transfer before negotiating with Mauritius. No specific price has been discussed, according to sources. In February, Trump said that he had retained the right to “militarily secure” the Diego Garcia air base after calling the UK’s decision an “act of total weakness.” A UK government spokesperson defended the original agreement, stating it was necessary to protect long-term interests and prevent adversaries from gaining a foothold:

“Diego Garcia is a key strategic military asset for both the UK and the US, which has protected our shared security for nearly 60 years. Maintaining long-term operational control and security of Diego Garcia is the entire basis for the UK-Mauritius agreement.” In May, UK minister Hamish Falconer stated there was “no scenario” in which Washington could purchase the islands, reaffirming commitment to the deal. Downing Street has not commented on the latest US proposals.

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I get the feeling they’re all after the same pot of money. There’ll be $200 billion (or however much it is, maybe a trillion), but not 5 or 6 times that. ~And there’s never enougn money, or energy, for any single one of them.

For now, it’s a feeding frenzy, however. Everyone’s just afraid to miss out.

• OpenAI Files Confidentially For IPO, Joining SpaceX and Anthropic (ZH)

The rush by AI companies to go public before the window closes (i.e., “market conditions” emerge) entered its final lap late on Monday, when OpenAI joined its two mega peers in filing for a blockbuster IPO that could value the ChatGPT creator at more than $1tn as it races rival Anthropic to list its shares publicly, following an imminent offering by SpaceX.


OpenAI said it had confidentially submitted a draft IPO prospectus to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, formally kicking off the process for one of the year’s most hotly anticipated debuts. The company is also planning to launch a tender sale of its shares to provide liquidity to employees in the coming weeks, before the company goes public, Bloomberg reported. Why employees would want to sell shares ahead of an IPO is not exactly clear, unless they fear the market reaction to the public offering would disappoint.

OpenAI’s listing announcement comes days before SpaceX is set to IPO in a deal that could raise a record $86bn and value Elon Musk’s rockets-to-AI conglomerate at $1.78tn. Anthropic, the startup behind the chatbot Claude, said last week that it had filed confidentially for an IPO of its own. The company soared to a $965 billion valuation in its latest private funding round – above OpenAI’s for the first time – as its revenue surged. The three Wall Street listings comes at a time of unbridled euphoria among investors over AI, which has helped propel US stocks to a series of record highs but also prompted worries that markets are overheating.

Last week, Goldman published a note seeking to preempt the big question: “Can Markets Absorb Massive Stock Supply From Coming Mega IPOs Without A Crash:” While Goldman did not express concerns about the coming flood of stock supply (its argument is that demand will more than offset the flood of new shares), the bank which is also a lead underwriter for both SpaceX and Anthropic calculated that recent and upcoming IPOs will result in roughly $500 billion of additional unlocked shares available to sell in 2026 and likely a larger quantity in 2027 as insiders sell and distribute their stakes to public (mostly retail) shareholders. The bank expects the majority of potential equity supply from the current pipeline of IPOs will become free float in 2027.

OpenAI’s IPO – which also comes at a time when CEO Sam Altman has floated handing out shares to US taxpayers ostensibly in hopes that such an action would lead to a government backstop and/or bailout if and when the AI cycle turns – will mark a test of investors’ appetite for a company posting booming revenue growth but also staggering losses that are forecast to continue for many years as the company spends vast sums on data centres and other infrastructure: its funding commitments to hyperscalar companies are well north of $1 trillion and unless the company manages to dramatically boost its revenue growth it will find itself woefully undercapitalized in coming years. Hence the IPO, as well as a bevy of private credit deals which mask the company’s true debt exposure.

OpenAI has been investing heavily in AI research to compete with rivals including Google and Anthropic, as well as to expand the computing capacity needed to serve ChatGPT’s 900mn users. In February, the company told investors it was planning to spend about $600 billion on AI infrastructure by 2030. It said in a statement on Monday that it had not “decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company”. “But it’s a complicated set of trade-offs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best,” it added.

A public debut in 2026 would also pit Altman squarely against Elon Musk on a different plane than the failed lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO. SpaceX, Musk’s rocket, satellite and AI firm, is targeting an IPO at a valuation of roughly $1.8 trillion on Thursday, which would immediately make it one of the world’s most valuable public companies. As an indication of the staggering demand for AI exposure, OpenAI has already dwarfed even SpaceX’s IPO in a single funding round. The company completed a deal to raise $122 billion from investors at an $852 billion valuation.

The ChatGPT maker also planned to launch an employee share sale ahead of going public at its current $852bn price tag, according to people familiar with the matter. One said OpenAI’s decision to announce its confidential filing was intended to give employees who were considering selling shares “transparency” about the upcoming IPO. US tech groups often file IPO paperwork privately, keeping their financial figures out of the public eye while the SEC reviews documents. That allows start-ups to gauge investor demand, make revisions and sometimes scrap IPO plans without broader scrutiny.

The San Francisco-based company’s move to progress its listing plans received a boost after a California court last month threw out Musk’s legal case against OpenAI and its chief Sam Altman. A public debut in 2026 would also pit Altman squarely against Elon Musk on a different plane than the failed lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO. SpaceX, Musk’s rocket, satellite and AI firm, is targeting an IPO at a valuation of roughly $1.8 trillion on Thursday, which would immediately make it one of the world’s most valuable public companies.

OpenAI had been working with bankers at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and lawyers at Cooley for the past few months, people familiar with its preparations previously told the FT. Monday’s filing sets OpenAI on a path to start trading as early as the autumn, they said. It is already one of the world’s most valuable private companies, after closing a record funding round of up to $122bn in March. As part of that deal it raised $3bn from retail investors, who will be given a wider opportunity to invest in the start-up when it becomes publicly traded.

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“Ukraine is not an EU member state, and Ukraine is not a NATO member. Why would the EU put themselves into the conflict resolution when Ukraine is not in the EU.”

“Putin knows the people of Europe do not want the corrupt nation of Ukraine as part of their wealth draining operation.”

“Hey, at least the ‘coalition of the willing’ is now begging for an audience with Putin.”

• EU Coalition of the Willing: Five Terms for Direct Ukraine-Russia Talks (CTH)

Politico is reporting that Germany is going to replace the United States as the direct contact for negotiations with Russia; that’s according to a spokesperson for Merz. However, if you read the actual printout from their collective agreement there is nothing of the sort mentioned. Instead, what actually exists within the statement are five terms they have agreed upon in order to start direct discussions between Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. At least two of the terms are non-starters for Russia: […] Conditions that would need to be in place for a just and lasting peace.

  • First, a stop to the fighting. They called on President Putin to agree to an immediate and complete ceasefire.
  • Second, the current line of contact should be the starting point for negotiations. International borders must not be changed by force, and Ukraine’s sovereign right to choose its own security arrangements and alliances must be fully respected.
  • Third, Ukraine must have robust and legally binding security guarantees in place once a ceasefire enters into force, building on commitments made in Berlin in December 2025 and Paris in January 2026. This includes the deployment of the Multinational Force – Ukraine.
  • Fourth, Russian assets will remain immobilised until Russia ceases its war of aggression and compensates Ukraine for the damage caused by the war.
  • Fifth, that European security interests must be safeguarded in any deal. Elements of any negotiation related to the EU and NATO would need the consent of the EU and its Member States and NATO Allies respectively.

The #3, #4 and #5 points are not going to go anywhere.

Germany, France, the U.K and/or EU participants are not going to put troops on the ground in Ukraine without United States security guarantees. President Trump has already rejected that proposal on three occasions. The Russian sovereign fund that was seized by the EU is not the property of Vladimir Putin; it is wealth belonging to the Russian people and President Putin will not accept that term. Additionally, two-thirds of the world has been against that seizure bolstering Russia’s position.

The fifth point is laughable. The EU collective in Brussels is going to be required to give consent to any peace agreement? Highly doubtful Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin would even entertain that condition. Ukraine is not an EU member state, and Ukraine is not a NATO member. Why would the EU put themselves into the conflict resolution when Ukraine is not in the EU. From a brutally obvious and pragmatic Russian position, this makes no sense. However, I would look for Putin to do something funny with this, like force the EU to adopt Ukraine first as a ‘put up – or shut up‘ type challenge.

Putin knows the people of Europe do not want the corrupt nation of Ukraine as part of their wealth draining operation. Hey, at least the ‘coalition of the willing’ is now begging for an audience with Putin.

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“The gaffe-prone former foreign minister has been blamed for Berlin’s failure to win a rotating seat on the UN Security Council..” …a rotating seat on the UN Security Council that Germany wants to be a permanent one?!

• German Lawmakers Want Answers From Baerbock After UN Humiliation – Bild (RT)

German lawmakers want former Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock questioned over Berlin’s failure to secure a seat on the UN Security Council, Bild reports. According to the outlet, the ruling CDU/CSU alliance blames the former top diplomat for the setback and wants her summoned before the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Germany failed to win a non-permanent seat on the UNSC – the UN’s most powerful body, with authority to adopt legally binding resolutions and sanctions – for the first time in modern history on Wednesday, losing out to Portugal and Austria. Germany won all six previous contests it entered since 1977, but this time received only 104 votes, well short of the required two-thirds majority.


German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul described the result as a “bitter defeat,” but insisted he “did not personally blame himself,” arguing that Germany entered the race too late. According to Bild, lawmakers are placing the blame on Wadephul’s predecessor, Baerbock, who served from 2021-25. “We must thoroughly investigate the causes of this embarrassing electoral defeat,” Stephan Mayer, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told the outlet. “[It is] absolutely essential that Annalena Baerbock answer questions before the Bundestag [to explain] how, when, and what exactly her ministry did to mobilize support for Germany’s bid.”

Hesse’s Minister for International Affairs, Manfred Pentz, also pointed the finger at Baerbock. “You cannot blame [Chancellor] Friedrich Merz and Johann Wadephul for this electoral defeat. Annalena Baerbock messed it up during her time as foreign minister,” he stated. Baerbock’s tenure as Germany’s top diplomat drew frequent criticism for a lack of diplomatic pragmatism, an inconsistent agenda, and high-profile verbal blunders.During her time in office, she said she would support Ukraine “irrespective of what my voters think,” declared the EU to be “fighting a war against Russia,” and described Israeli strikes on Palestinian schools as “self-defense.” She also made several awkward historical, geographical, and mathematical slip-ups, including promising a “360-degree foreign policy.”

Despite the gaffes, Baerbock was appointed president of the UN General Assembly after leaving the Foreign Ministry – a largely ceremonial but prestigious UN post. Munich Security Conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger suggested that Germany’s defeat this week may have partly been retaliation for how Baerbock “snatched” the role, which he told WELT TV had “not exactly generated new sympathy for Germany” among UN ambassadors.

A diplomatic source told Bild that Baerbock is widely unpopular in the General Assembly for being “too focused on Germany… selfies and herself.” Botswana’s former president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, also told the outlet that Germany could have secured more support from African countries in the Security Council vote had Baerbock not treated African partners in a “condescending and disrespectful” manner. He cited diplomatic disputes over infrastructure projects during her tenure as foreign minister.

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Michael Snyder is the boy who cried wolf. Amusing at times.

• A “Godzilla El Niño” (Michael Snyder)

The waters of the Pacific Ocean are getting extremely warm, and that could provide fuel for an immensely destructive climate event that is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Even the United Nations has issued an ominous warning about the El Niño event that is in the long-term forecast, because it will have a dramatic impact on every man, woman, and child on the entire planet. We are being told that there is more than an 80 percent chance that El Niño conditions will arrive by the end of next month due to rapidly warming equatorial waters in the Pacific. Meanwhile, an unprecedented “9,000-mile marine heatwave” has developed in the North Pacific. Many experts are concerned that the confluence of those two factors could produce a “Godzilla El Niño”…


The chance of an El Niño event emerging by July is now over 80 percent, which will likely make 2026 one of the hottest years on record. At the same time, an exceptionally large 9,000-mile marine heatwave has been forming in the North Pacific since the end of 2025. These extreme warming events are now evolving together across the Pacific. Scientists are increasingly concerned that the warm water will fuel a “super” or “Godzilla” El Niño, potentially prolonging marine heatwaves, disrupting fisheries and ecosystems, and intensifying global climate impacts well into 2027. The “9,000-mile marine heatwave” in the North Pacific is absolutely astounding climate scientists.

At the same time, the warming in the equatorial waters where El Niño events normally develop is at a level that we haven’t seen since at least 1877… The temperature of the ocean in the equatorial waters where these El Niños form was predicted to be 3 degrees Celsius above average. Experts are saying that this is a level of heat in the Pacific Ocean that hasn’t been recorded since 1877. I have written about the “Super El Niño” that started in 1877 before. That “Super El Niño” was one of the primary reasons why 50 million people starved during the Great Famine that stretched from 1876 to 1878…

This El Niño, they say, could rival the intense event of the late 19th century that triggered “the Great Famine” on a global scale, killing millions of people. And its scythe sliced through southern Africa. “The 1876-78 Great Famine impacted multiple regions across the globe, including parts of Asia, Nordeste [Northeast] Brazil, and northern and southern Africa, with total human fatalities exceeding 50 million people, arguably the worst environmental disaster to befall humanity,” a team of scientists said a decade ago in a ground-breaking paper presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

3 percent of the entire population of the world starved to death during those years. Today, 3 percent of the entire population of the world would be 240,000,000 people. In 1982 and 1983, we experienced the most severe “Super El Niño” of the 20th century… In 1982-83, the most intense El Niño of the 20th century caused extreme weather events throughout the world, including floods in the American Pacific and in the southern United States, and droughts in north-eastern Brazil and Indonesia. It also caused a very mild winter in the mid-latitudes of Europe, Asia and North America. That “Super El Niño” sparked a horrific famine in eastern Africa that wiped out a very large proportion of the population…

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“..the first great realist thinker…”

• In the Land of Thucydides (John J. Mearsheimer)

I gave a lecture in Athens on 2 June 2026 that was hosted by two prestigious Greek organizations: the Council for International Relations and the Institute of International Relations. I was asked to speak about why I think Realism explains contemporary geopolitical developments better than any other theory. I was fully aware that I was speaking in the home of Thucydides, the first great realist thinker.
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Debt Rattle June 8 2026

Jun 082026
 
 June 8, 2026  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  39 Responses »


Claude Monet Le Grand Canal et Santa Maria della Salute 1908


• Israel Bombs Iranian Regime After Terrorist Strikes (Catherine Salgado)
• Israel Strikes Military Targets Inside Iran, Ignoring Trump’s Pleas (ZH)
• More Evidence Iran Is Rapidly Restoring Its Missile Tunnels (ZH)
• Iran FM Blames US “Contradictions” On Stalled Peace Talks (ZH)
• ‘I Could’ve Kept It That Way’: Trump Admits The Inflation Is His Choice (ZH)
• Trump Storms Out of ‘Meet the Press’ Interview (Matt Margolis)
• President Trump Walks Out of Combative NBC Interview with Kirsten Welker (CTH)
• Britain Is Erasing White Heroes From Its Money (Margolis)
• A Serious Country Doesn’t Swap Its Greatest Leader For Little Animals (MN)
• Europe 2.0, Beyond Brussels: The End Of The European Union As We Know It (AmG)
• California US Attorney Office Feigns Ignorance of Voter Fraud (CTH)
• UK Cop Fired For Questioning Islam In ‘Safe Space’ (MN)
• They Threw Everything at Him. He’s Still Standing. (Eric Florack)
• A Surprisingly Simple Way To Create Powerful Quantum States (SD)

 


 

 


 


Very pro-Bibi. Well, that’s a view…

• Israel Bombs Iranian Regime After Terrorist Strikes (Catherine Salgado)

Israeli forces will not allow terrorists to fire missiles at their civilians without a response. And God bless them for it — the Iranian regime and its proxies have terrorized the world too long. Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, has been perpetually firing on Israelis, and an Arab terrorist murdered Master Sergeant (Res.) Haim Kalomiti and injured multiple others in a jihad attack Sunday in Tzur Natan, one of over a thousand attempted terror attacks on Israelis just since March.


Then Hezbollah’s Tehran paymasters began bombarding Israel. There has never been a ceasefire. Both Hezbollah and Iran’s regime never stopped shooting at civilians, not for a single day. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) posted late on June 7, “The Israeli Air Force struck military targets belonging to the Iranian terror regime in western and central Iran a short while ago.”

You can see below how many missiles Iran’s regime fired at civilian targets in Israel (note on the map: the “West Bank” is an inaccurate Palestinian propaganda term for Judea and Samaria):

Unfortunately, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi is getting cockier by the day. I wish to heaven Donald Trump would bomb him to hell instead of pretending we’ll get a deal with Tehran, which will never, ever, ever materialize:

Ambassador Yechiel Leiter released a statement to emphasize to Americans why the strikes on Iranian and Lebanese terrorists were necessary. “Iran fired 11 ballistic missiles at Israel today. Each one of those missiles can level an entire neighborhood and kill hundreds. No self-respecting country in the world would tolerate such an attack, and neither will Israel,” Leiter said.

The ambassador continued, “Israel is now targeting Iranian surface-to-surface missile launch sites, as well as infrastructure facilities unrelated to the energy sector. The people of Lebanon have rejected Iran’s proxy, Hizballah, and have told Iran to get out of their country. If Hizballah fires at Israel, its command centers in the Dahiya will be hit hard.” That is the way to fight a war. Leiter truly observed: “Everyone has had enough of this maniacal Iranian regime.”

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Are they playing PR games?

• Israel Strikes Military Targets Inside Iran, Ignoring Trump’s Pleas (ZH)

President Trump said on Sunday he would tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike back after Iran fired a salvo of missiles at Israeli targets in retaliation for an attack on the outskirts of Beirut, news outlet Axios reported. Iran has long said any peace deal with the U.S. would depend on a ceasefire also holding in Lebanon, which Israel invaded in March in pursuit of Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters who fired rockets and drones across the border in solidarity with Tehran. But Israel earlier on Sunday launched strikes in the Beirut area for the first time since the U.S. announced a truce plan for Lebanon last week.


The Israeli military later said it had identified missiles launched from Iran and that its defense systems had intercepted them. Details on whether Israel suffered any damage were not yet available. Trump, who was spending the weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, had been briefed about the escalation between Iran and Israel, a U.S. official told Reuters. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “It’s certainly not going to help negotiations,” Trump told Fox News after the Iranian missile launches. “What I would suggest to Iran: You’ve shot your missiles, that’s enough, get back to the table and make a deal.”

Asked about the earlier Israeli strike on Beirut, he said: “I’m not happy about it.” Trump ]also told Axios he would call Netanyahu and press him not to retaliate. Iran’s chief peace negotiator, parliamentary speaker Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, said U.S. bases and Israeli assets are legitimate targets because of hostile acts including the “violation of agreements over Lebanon.” “They showed that they only understand the language of power,” he wrote on X. Ebrahim Rezaei, an influential hardline lawmaker who serves as spokesperson for the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, posted on X that Iran would deliver a “decisive and painful response” to Sunday’s Israeli strikes on Lebanon.

Iran has not targeted Israel directly since a ceasefire in the wider war in April, although Hezbollah has done so. In turn, an Israeli official, responding to the apparent threat, told Reuters that Israel would retaliate against any attacks on its territory from Iran, and consider it “an opportunity to renew the campaign”. Washington and Tehran have shown little progress in reaching a deal to end the war that Trump launched in February with a campaign of air strikes alongside Israel against Iran. Trump has repeatedly threatened to restart the strikes unless there is an agreement soon.

“We’re very close to a deal, or I’m going to blow the hell out of them,” Trump told NBC News in an interview, broadcast to mark 100 days of the conflict. The comments were recorded on Friday and broadcast on Sunday as Trump visited his New Jersey golf course. Trump has said a similar version of the same news for much of the past month.

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Just a small part, says Trump.

• More Evidence Iran Is Rapidly Restoring Its Missile Tunnels (ZH)

President Trump has newly estimated that Iran has 21%-22% of its missiles remaining. Trump said in an interview with NBC: “They have some missiles and drones, percentage-wise maybe 21%-22% of the missiles. That’s a lot, but it’s not what it was before the war.” He and top White House officials had previously mused that the Iranians are working hard to reconstitute their defenses after the opening US-Israeli heavy bombing campaign of Operation Epic Fury.


The fresh statement comes on the heels of a Washington Post story last month which cited CIA estimates saying Iran still holds about 70% of its missiles and 75% of missile launchers it had before the war. So there’s a likelihood that Iran still has significantly more than just 20% of its arsenal. There’s also some anecdotal evidence, and statements from the Iranians themselves, such as in the following… Watch:

The Iranians have been utilizing basic construction equipment to dig out several missile launchers and reopen subterranean tunnels tied to its missile program. = n “Iran has repaired other parts of the bases as well, including roads that the US and Israel bombed to prevent missile launchers from using them,” CNN wrote last week. “Satellite images show almost all these craters have now been filled, and at two sites, even repaved.” Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, the same outlet late last month that “There’s nothing to prevent the launchers from being armed with the ample stockpile of missiles that the Iranians still have.”

He sought to highlight the limits of American firepower, in terms of damage, and given that it hasn’t been sustained: “The US military is good at delivering tactical successes, and entombing and suppressing the Iranian missile force is a great example of that,” said Lair. “However, if that isn’t accompanied by a set of reasonable strategic war aims and an achievable theory of victory, it can end up being a strategic failure.” President Trump has been touting the near annihilation of Iran’s arsenal, and has lately said the rest of its launch sites could be taken out in a day if he gave the order.

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Does Iran get their $1.5 million to $2 million per vessel?

• Iran FM Blames US “Contradictions” On Stalled Peace Talks (ZH)

The U.S. and Iran remain stuck in preliminary talks to end the war, with the main obstacle being Tehran’s demand for access to billions of dollars in frozen assets and the Trump administration’s refusal to provide upfront cash or broader sanctions relief. Tehran is seeking about $12 billion upfront and $24 billion during a proposed 60-day negotiation window. “Twenty-four billion dollars is not much for America if he wants to reach an agreement with Iran,” Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, a senior adviser to Iran’s top official, told CNN on Friday. “This is our own, not America’s money.”


For the Trump administration, releasing frozen funds for Tehran is optically displeasing because the president spent years blasting the Obama administration over the $1.7 billion Iran payment tied to the 2015 nuclear deal, and later criticized the Biden administration’s move to allow Iran access to $6 billion in assets during a prisoner swap. The U.S. government estimates that Tehran has $100 billion in inaccessible assets, mostly oil revenue trapped abroad, including funds in China, Qatar, Oman, and Iraq. On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei spoke with CNN’s senior international correspondent Frederik Pleitgen about the ongoing negotiations with the U.S.

Baghaei stated, “The main problem of negotiating with this administration is that you have to face so many changing positions, moving the goal posts, different statements, contradictory remarks by different officials, so it makes the whole process very cumbersome.” He outlined one of the main problems is that “the Americans must understand that they have to recognize Iran’s rights,” including its right to peaceful nuclear enrichment under the international non-proliferation treaty. “At the same time, when they are talking about our blocked assets, they’re not going to give us any concession,” he said.

CNN reported earlier on Sunday that c, according to a source close to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Baghaei added that the US must “simply stop their sanctions” and “need to let Iranian assets be released and be available for the Iranians.” Beyond US-Iran talks, IRGC-linked Fars News reports that Iran has been collecting $1.5 million to $2 million per vessel passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Fars said the payments are deposited into Iran’s treasury under the budget law and directed toward designated spending areas. Some payments are reportedly settled not in cash but in USDT/Tether or through barter arrangements.

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“”There’s no reason to raise interest rates … What they do is when they raise interest rates, they try and kill success. I don’t want to kill success. We should actually lower interest rates.”

• ‘I Could’ve Kept It That Way’: Trump Admits The Inflation Is His Choice (ZH)

In a wide-ranging interview in which he touted record stock prices and rebranded weapons-grade uranium as “nuclear dust” (and then stormed out), President Donald Trump said the quiet part out loud: the prices Americans are paying at the pump are not an accident. This was all his decision. “I could’ve kept it that way,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker in an interview taped in a rain-battered Wisconsin barn before he was set to appear at a farming industry roundtable discussion – describing the cheap gasoline everyone enjoyed during his first few months back in office. “But I said, I have to take a little bit of a turn … We’re going to have higher gasoline. We’re going to have a little higher fertilizer, et cetera, et cetera. But I’m going to get rid of a nuclear weapon in the hands of very dangerous people.”


“The farmers love me”
Asked about farmers who can no longer afford fertilizer – seventy percent of them, by Welker’s count – Trump didn’t push back, but instead changed the subject to loyalty. “I had a choice to make. I could keep it going. The farmers were doing great. Fertilizer was very cheap. Everything was cheap. Gasoline was very low. Everything was very low. I could’ve kept it that way. But I said, I have to take a little bit of a turn. The farmers are going to understand it better than anybody.”v

Trump leaned on his heavy support in the heartland. “I love the farmers, and the farmers love me. The farmers trust me,” he said, pointing to the $28 billion in trade-war bailouts he cut growers in his first term. So – the economic cost of the US-Israeli war on Iran is something that Americans should be willing to eat for him. And again, promises of utopia: “And when we have a completion, you will see things like you’ve never seen. The oil will go down.” “It’s all coming down as soon as the war’s over,” he promised of gas and diesel. When Welker pressed for a timeline, he bristled – “No, but you keep talking about speed” – and reached again for Vietnam.

The public is less patient: an Economist/YouGov survey this week found sixty-eight percent of adults want a deal to end the war as fast as possible, including fifty-five percent of his own 2024 voters. They are being asked to finance a known cost today against a promised windfall on an unscheduled tomorrow, on the word of a president whose case rests on never having to name the day. That is not an economic argument. It is a leap of faith with a fuel surcharge.

Blame The Fed
And of course, it’s the Fed’s fault for not aligning with Trump’s agenda. Given whispers that the institution is actually considering hiking rates in response to a strong jobs report, Trump preemptively branded the move as a crime against prosperity. “There’s no reason to raise interest rates … What they do is when they raise interest rates, they try and kill success. I don’t want to kill success. We should actually lower interest rates.”

And then – in what should give any bondholder pause: “Growth is the greatest thing you can have, and growth does not cause inflation.” No, apparently it takes braking a core campaign promise to personally engineer higher prices. Meanwhile, new Fed chair Kevin Warsh gavels his first meeting later this month, and Trump was careful to say he would not “have a big influence on him” – except, he clearly spelled out his expectations. “I would like to see rates get lower,” he said, “because we could build this into the greatest machine that the world has ever seen, but you can’t do that when everybody immediately raises interest rates.”

Meanwhile, Trump insists Iran can be starved into surrender… “They tried a blockade, and now we blockaded them,” he said of Iran. “And, as you know, they’re losing $400-500 million a day. It’s not sustainable for them. They have an economy that’s shot, in addition to everything else.” The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil; and the valve Trump is twisting shut to strangle Tehran is the same valve lifting fuel costs in Des Moines. The blockade he is celebrating and the inflation he admitted choosing are directly linked. Asked what happens if the talks fail, Trump did not hedge: “Either way, we win.”

Asked about the highly enriched uranium still buried in Iran, he offered a branding note. “The official name is highly enriched uranium. And I call it nuclear dust because it seemed to be nice, and everyone understands it better, and it’s sort of cute, and people picked it up.”He assured Welker the sites are under constant watch from orbit: “If anybody walked there, if you walked over there, I would be able to read your first name on your lapel. And these are cameras up in space. It’s pretty amazing technology. Space Force.” He claimed, in passing and without elaboration, that the United States “took over Venezuela in a matter of minutes.” He put Iran’s surviving arsenal at “maybe 21-22% of their missiles … It’s a lot of missiles, but it’s not what it was when we first attacked.”

 

 

Doing The World A Service
At the end of the day, Trump had no choice: “I had to stop a country, very powerful, very dangerous country, from having a nuclear weapon because they’d use it. They’d blow up the world. They’d blow up the Middle East. They’d blow up Israel. They’d come here. They’d blow up Europe. They’re nuts, okay? They’re crazy people. I deal with them. And very high-strung people. Little crazy. And – I get along with them. I like them. But you don’t want to let them have a nuclear weapon. And I’m doing the world a service, but I’m doing our country a service. You know, it’s America first. I’m doing our country a service. Nice rain.”

Indeed…

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“A country can never be great with a dishonest press.”

• Trump Storms Out of ‘Meet the Press’ Interview (Matt Margolis)

President Donald Trump sat down with NBC’s Kristen Welker for a Meet the Press interview, but things went sideways fast. The exchange started to unravel when the topic of election integrity came up. Trump made clear that he views the media’s handling of these stories as part of a larger systemic problem, one that the press has deliberately chosen to ignore. He told Welker that her network actively works against him and that he had the receipts to back it up. “You play right into their hands with this stuff,” Trump said.


“You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they’re rigged. Do you know that I won an election in a landslide and I got 94% bad press.” Welker tried to redirect the conversation toward acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, but Trump wasn’t having it. Every time she jumped in, he pushed through it. He insisted the evidence of problems with election integrity runs deep: “You have more evidence, there’s more evidence than ever presented.” “Your elections in this country — we’re like a third world country,” he said. “Your elections are crooked and you’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked.”

He didn’t stop there. “And so is ABC and CBS and CNN,” Trump continued. “You’re a one-sided crooked network.” That’s when he made his move. “Sorry. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough,” Trump said. “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.” Welker scrambled to keep him in his seat, reminding him of the effort it took to set up the interview. “Mr. President, let’s — please, I traveled all the way to Wisconsin,” she said. That didn’t move Trump at all. “I sat in the rain with you for an hour,” he told her. “On and off in the rain, and I’ve given you enough time.”

Then he turned it into something bigger. “You ought to straighten out your press,” he said, “because you know what? A country can never be great with a dishonest press.” Welker kept pushing, repeating that she flew to Wisconsin specifically for the interview. Trump’s mind was made up, and he was done. I don’t doubt that the liberal media will frame this as Trump dodging tough questions or losing his composure. That’s the predictable take from a press corps that circles the wagons whenever one of its own gets called out. But watch the clip and form your own opinion.

Trump previously told the New York Post’s Miranda Devine that accountability for the 2020 election may still be coming, saying his administration has uncovered information that wasn’t previously available and now knows “who rigged the election.” He argued that evidence gathered since returning to office has only reinforced his belief that the election was stolen. Trump maintains that Joe Biden did not legitimately win in 2020 and claimed Biden actually lost “in a landslide.”

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Do watch part of it.

• President Trump Walks Out of Combative NBC Interview with Kirsten Welker (CTH)

President Trump abruptly ended and walked out of a combative interview with NBC’s Kirsten Welker, who will now receive the praise and adulation that Margaret Brennan so emphatically wanted. Kirsten Welker is now the leading Democrat Presidential Candidate for 2028. During an NBC interview, Welker continually interrupted President Trump and challenged his assertion of government weaponization against J6 protest attendees and voter fraud. President Trump was making the case that the current California vote counting of mail-in ballots, still taking place 5-days after election day, was representative of voter fraud within the U.S. election system.


Welker demanded President Trump provide the evidence. President Trump emphasized the evidence is in the process that is taking place in front of your eyes. Welker again demanded President Trump provide the evidence. Eventually Trump gave up in frustration. The Video and Transcript is Below:

[TRANSCRIPT] – KRISTEN WELKER: This $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund that’s going to compensate people who say the federal government weaponized the legal system against them. It’s been blocked by the courts, met with opposition from Republicans .

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: And Democrats.

KRISTEN WELKER: – in Congress, and Democrats.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Most, excuse me, mostly Democrats.

KRISTEN WELKER: Mostly Democrats and some Republicans.

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Some. Very few Republicans.

KRISTEN WELKER: Just to be very clear, are you backing off the fund completely as your acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has said, or are you looking for another avenue to revive the fund?

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: So let — let me explain what the fund is. People have been hurt so badly by radical left lunatics that worked for the Biden administration and Sleepy Joe. They’re vicious. They’re violent, what they did to people. And of course they went after me more than anybody else. They raided Mar-a-Lago and all the other things. But people have been badly hurt. They’ve committed suicide. They’ve lost their jobs. They’re lost their families. They’ve lost their wives. They’ve lost everything. They’ve lost everything over a fake weaponization of government. Now, let me just tell you –

KRISTEN WELKER: So are you looking for a way to revive it?

PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Well, look. If it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve. People have been destroyed. Lives have been destroyed. Many suicides, think of it. People have committed suicide because a bunch of thugs went after them.

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Duck! 😉

• Britain Is Erasing White Heroes From Its Money (Margolis)

The Bank of England has decided that Winston Churchill, Alan Turing, and Jane Austen are too controversial to appear on British banknotes. So they’re replacing them with frogs. I’m not kidding. Frogs. And foxes. And dolphins. And puffins. The Bank announced it would phase out portraits of historical figures in favor of native wildlife imagery on its next banknote series. The official explanation was “security,” but we all know better than to believe that. Writing in The Telegraph earlier this week, Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, said: “The Bank’s foremost objective is the security of our banknotes, which includes tackling the threat from counterfeiting.”


However, the Savanta research, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, will raise questions about whether the decision was also motivated by concerns that featuring Britain’s former wartime prime minister and other national heroes would upset some sections of the public. The researchers concluded that Churchill, Turing, and Austen were “contentious and not representative of the UK’s cultural and natural diversity.” Officials received advice to scrap historical figures entirely because they represented “a backward-looking vision of the UK that carries too great a risk of division and controversy.”

Translation: too many white people on the money. One hundred nineteen focus group participants called the existing banknote figures “potentially divisive, elitist and disconnected from their own experiences.” One participant actually described Alan Turing, the man who helped crack the Nazi Enigma code and helped bring an end to World War II, as “imperialistic,” complaining about a “‘we’re the ones who won the Second World War and saved the world’ feeling” to the notes. I guess they missed the memo that Turing was a gay man persecuted by his own government. Apparently, none of that matters if the woke mob has decided he’s problematic.

It gets worse. Savanta advised against depicting Georgian and Victorian architecture, flagging those buildings as high risk “due to potential links to colonialism/slavery.” The researchers also warned against showing the White Cliffs of Dover because of their “association with the UK border.” One focus group participant from Northern Ireland said some British buildings were “erected on the back of slave trade money.” Another said the White Cliffs “could be seen by some people to be a political statement, particularly at the moment around immigration and small boats. “Is there anything these woke focus group members aren’t offended by? Seriously, iconic landmarks are out. Celebrated intellectuals are out. War heroes are out. The puffin, however, made the cut.

The Bank claims the Savanta report had nothing to do with its final decision. They point to a public consultation in which 44,000 people participated, with 60% choosing nature imagery and 38% preferring historical figures. Don’t buy it. The Bank commissioned focus groups specifically to assess whether historical figures were too divisive, so it was likely rigged from the start to justify what they wanted to do in the first place. “Without great and courageous figures like Churchill and Turing, we may have swastikas on our banknotes today,” Retired British Army Colonel Richard Kemp said. “We owe them so much and it is right that we should be reminded of our debt to them daily on our banknotes.”

Kemp added, “The woke desire to erase Britain’s proud and remarkable culture has now even infiltrated the Bank of England. This decision is shameful and should be reversed.” Robert Jenrick of Reform UK added, “If it wasn’t for the likes of Churchill and Turing, we’d be living under a government that really was divisive and imperialistic. The Bank of England should stop wasting time and money on this and focus instead on keeping prices down.”

Why should this matter to those of us in the United States? Well, this same nonsense is coming here, and you all know it. The movement to scrub historical figures from public life has already targeted building names and statues, and there have been efforts to update American currency with more diverse figures as well. I’ve long believed that it is inevitable that Democrats will one day push to put Barack Obama on our money. Give it time, and the demand will be that American money features only figures the far left approves of. Dead white men need not apply.

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Q: Since when was Alan Turing on the money? Banned forever because he was gay.

Wasn’t putting him there a great victory? For gay rights?

Who wins that one now? Gays lose again, right?

• A Serious Country Doesn’t Swap Its Greatest Leader For Little Animals (MN)

The Bank of England has now admitted the quiet part out loud. Historical figures including Winston Churchill were removed from future banknotes after researchers told officials they were “elitist and divisive.”


The move replaces British legends with wildlife in a calculated step to sideline national heroes and accelerate cultural replacement. This is not a neutral design update. It is institutional capture in action, where the man who rallied Britain against Nazi tyranny gets sidelined because focus groups and consultants found him too problematic for modern sensitivities and would prefer to look at a Fox or a hedgehog instead.

The revelation aligns precisely with plans first laid out months earlier. Back in March, the Bank announced it would phase out portraits of Churchill on the £5 note, Jane Austen on the £10, JMW Turner on the £20, and Alan Turing on the £50. In their place would come native British wildlife, plants, and landscapes. King Charles III would remain on the front of the notes. Officials claimed the shift followed a public consultation with over 44,000 responses, where around 60 percent supposedly favored nature themes for security reasons and to celebrate the environment.

Critics at the time called the idea absurd and bonkers. They warned it represented a war on history and showed the Bank had been captured by progressive ideology. One former business minister said notes should honor the historical giants who shaped the nation rather than fuzzy animals. Another asked what came next – squirrels running the economy. Observers noted it fit a wider pattern of erasing or downplaying Britain’s past under the banner of progress and diversity.

That pattern includes London museums draping portraits to “reclaim Caribbean history,” the removal of Shakespeare, Thatcher, and Churchill artworks from 10 Downing Street in favor of pieces by artists with Caribbean ties, Cambridge panels labeling Churchill a white supremacist whose empire was supposedly worse than the Nazis, and a London primary school renaming “Churchill House” after Marcus Rashford to promote diversity. Statues of Churchill have faced vandalism and calls for removal, including during pro-Palestine protests earlier this year. Each step chips away at the symbols that once unified national memory.

Now the June reporting makes the motive unmistakable. Research commissioned by the Bank concluded that figures such as Churchill, Alan Turing, and Jane Austen were “contentious and not representative of the UK’s cultural and natural diversity.” Officials received advice to replace the portraits with nature images because historical figures represented “a backward-looking vision of the UK that carries too great a risk of division and controversy.”

The Bank has insisted the decision was not driven by that specific research but by an earlier poll showing public preference for nature. Yet the Freedom of Information details tell a different story about how the process unfolded behind closed doors A public consultation is currently running on the wildlife shortlist. Proposed replacements include an owl, hedgehog, badger, or common frog. One commentator summed up the national mood: “We are not a serious country anymore.”

https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/2062610790683984267?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2062610790683984267%7Ctwgr%5Ea67b9ad8e4437d980d63a6c9204f63f3cf1e7678%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fserious-country-does-not-swap-its-greatest-leader-banknotes-little-animals

Some of the animals under consideration are not even native to Britain. That detail alone exposes the move as more than harmless environmental appreciation. It functions as a psyop to further erode British culture – stripping away recognizable national symbols and replacing them with generic or imported imagery that weakens any sense of rooted identity.

This fits the same ideological framework that has infected other institutions. DEI priorities and critical race theory obsessions treat any strong assertion of British heritage as inherently suspect. The man who helped defeat fascism is recast as “divisive” while the focus shifts to animals that supposedly better reflect “cultural and natural diversity.” The result is a currency that no longer celebrates the people who built and defended the country. It celebrates detachment instead.

The broader assault continues without pause. Schools, museums, government buildings, and now the Bank of England itself participate in softening, diluting, and apologizing for the past. Historical giants are judged not by their achievements but by whether they pass modern committee tests on representation. When they fail, they are quietly retired in favor of whatever the latest advisory group deems safe and inclusive.

Britain’s wartime leader did not save the nation so that unelected researchers and captured bureaucracies could later declare him unfit for the money supply. Yet that is exactly what has happened. The same institutions that owe their continued existence to Churchill’s stand now treat his image as a liability.

A country that systematically removes its heroes from public view is not evolving. It is forgetting how to value itself. The Bank of England’s choice to prioritize “non-divisive” wildlife over the figures who actually shaped the United Kingdom sends a clear message: national pride is now considered too risky for everyday transactions.

Britons who still believe their history is worth defending have every reason to push back. This is not about banknote design. It is about whether the nation retains the confidence to honour the people and events that made it possible. Replacing Churchill with a hedgehog is not progress. It is surrender dressed up as sensitivity.

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EU wants far too much. They want French soldiers obeying German commanders.

• Europe 2.0, Beyond Brussels: The End Of The European Union As We Know It (AmG)

Europe has reached the end of an era. Not the end of its history, but the end of its false form. For decades, the European Union served as the great substitute project of a continent that no longer dared to think politically. It promised peace without power, order without a people, unity without roots, and prosperity without cost. That was its founding lie, and it was a lie from the very beginning.


Political order does not grow out of procedural routines, commission papers, or moral self-incantation. It grows out of peoples, interests, borders, loyalties, and the willingness to defend what is one’s own. Legitimate authority rests on a people and its consent, not on an apparatus and its expertise. That older idea—that government draws its life from the governed rather than from the competence of its administrators—is precisely what Brussels has spent two generations trying to administer away.

That is why today’s EU is not the high point of European history but its bureaucratic state of exhaustion. It is too centralized to be free and too artificial to be binding. It commands an immense body of rules and possesses no sustaining political soul. It has institutions, but not the kind of historically grown legitimacy that holds a community together across generations. And so it answers every crisis with the same reflex: more centralization, more redistribution, more standardization, more discipline. What is sold as the solution is only the problem enlarged.

Europe is not failing because there is too little Brussels. Europe is failing because there is too much Brussels. It is failing because of a political class that no longer sees the continent as a historical space but as an object of administration. It is failing because of an ideology that treats every organically grown difference as a defect and therefore regards peoples, traditions, and national particularities as raw material to be processed. And it is failing because of a functional elite that has learned to disguise power as morality and to pass off its own interests as universal values.

There is a name for this kind of governance: the administrative state—the permanent, unelected layer that survives every election, answers to no voter, and grows whether the public wants it to or not. Brussels is that layer raised to the continental power and freed from even the inconvenience of a national electorate. There is no European demos to vote the managers out. That is not a flaw in the design. It is the design.

The real scandal of Europe today is not even its material mismanagement but its intellectual arrogance. The Union behaves as though it could suspend history—as though cultures could be harmonized like technical standards, as though political loyalty could be decreed the way one issues a packaging regulation. As though a continent of radically different historical experiences, economic structures, demographic trajectories, and security realities could be pressed into one standardized form without damage. Yet the damage is already visible. The EU is not unifying Europe. It is wearing it down.

To see why, it helps to return to a text that saw the whole thing coming. In 2011, long before today’s disruptions, the German social scientist Gunnar Heinsohn published an essay whose title I have borrowed and broadened here: “Europa 2.0: Neuzuschnitt der Alten Welt” (Europe 2.0: Recutting the Old World). It was written in the first panic of the euro rescues, and it has aged with uncomfortable precision.

Heinsohn’s argument was not, in the first place, a complaint about Brussels. It was an argument about arithmetic. He began with the chain of liabilities that the productive European middle class—the net taxpayers, the people who put in more than they take out—had quietly been made to guarantee. First, the bank rescues of 2008. Then the Greek bailout and the great euro backstops of 2010, which shielded bondholders and the comfortable classes of the periphery at the expense of taxpayers who were never asked. Then the implicit guarantees extended to the aging, shrinking states of the European East. And beneath all of it, an ever-growing domestic population to be supported for life. The decisive point was simple and merciless: when all these promises—upward, downward, and outward—come due at once, no one will be left to bail out the people who were made to do the bailing.

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Tricks.

• California US Attorney Office Feigns Ignorance of Voter Fraud (CTH)

California ballot counting will continue until the key republicans in each race are pushed into 3rd place. That’s when ballot counting will conclude. At a certain point, the pretending gets ridiculous. This X message from the First Asst U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of California is a case study in pretending not to know things.


Former Attorney General Eric Holder was hired by California govt to advise on the election changes created by linking DMV database to Secretary of State database. The tech team that wrote the code to link the DMV and SOS were given specific instructions. The affirmative flag, the checkbox in the DMV system that says the applicant is legally eligible to vote, was neutralized. Meaning, if the checkbox is left blank, the computer system accepts the application from the DMV as affirmative. The DL applicant data is transferred to the SoS office, and the applicant is registered to vote.

Illegal Aliens, unlawful migrants, were allowed to get California Driver’s Licenses and State IDs. The Motor-Voter process now registers those drivers and ID recipients as legal voters and ballots are created. Those illegal ballots form the core of the voter fraud in California and were first used in the November 2018 midterm election as the beta test for national rollout.Not a single person in Sacramento politics doesn’t know this. They are all aware. All the USAO has to do is go check and they will see. The fraud is impossible to prosecute. The fraud is built into the system. Go look. Everyone knows.

We originally outlined this activity a decade ago. Nothing has been done to stop it. JAN 2017 – California officials have instructed DMV data programmers to remove the internal coding flags for the drivers’ licenses of illegal aliens in California. As you might be aware, California passed a law known as AB60 authorizing illegal aliens to receive drivers’ licenses throughout the state. Within the administrative functions of the state DMV database a designation code known as “AB60 code” was created to flag those specific licenses as containing “Federal Limits Apply”.

We have confirmation from a top-level IT source, state officials instructed programmers to immediately remove AB60 administrative coding. The removed code in question is an administrative function for identifying the registered DL holder as an “undocumented person” or illegal alien holder within the DMV database. The established computer flag allows an administrator or DMV or State official to filter the massive database of California Driver’s License holders and identify just those who are ‘undocumented’. The removal of the “flag” via deletion of the program code, means the database cannot be easily filtered to show only illegals who received those Drivers licenses, and/or generate a list of those license recipients.


According to the IT source the motive for the code/flag removal appears to be an effort hide data and curtail any tool useful in any voter fraud investigation. Several additional aspects lead to this conclusion including California hiring former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to lead the fight against the Trump administration. Additionally, the State Driver’s License process via the State DMV has an on-line link to the Secretary of State office in order for California residents to register to vote. As a specific function of the programming code within the SoS system, and as a direct outcome of previous instructions, all voter registrations proceed through the registration process, even if the user “forgets” to check the box that says they are a citizen.

The internal database coding established by the Secretary of State IT department which synergizes with the State Department of Motor Vehicles, allows and approves voter registration when the designation box “U.S. Citizen” is left blank. It is the combination of this specific programming structure, the events and instructions of the past 48 hours, in combination with the outcome of the U.S. election and new Trump administration saying they will launch a voter fraud investigation, which leads the IT source to the conclusion there is an effort underway within California to hide the evidence of “Illegal Voting” via the use of “State Issued Drivers Licenses” and the willful blindness from the Secretary of State.

No alternate explanation from within the California DMV Headquarters has been offered for why they are instructing IT data programmers to remove the AB60 coding from the Driver’s License system.

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Englan’ is a bitch.

• UK Cop Fired For Questioning Islam In ‘Safe Space’ (MN)

A Christian police community support officer lost his career after asking a Muslim colleague about jihad and Hamas atrocities during a diversity session that promised open discussion. At the same time, training drilled “white privilege” into police ranks. Luke Salmons, a 46-year-old Christian father of two and respected PCSO with North Yorkshire Police, relates how he attended a mandatory training day on race, religion and culture. Trainers spent several minutes marching up and down the room chanting “Islam is a religion of peace” repeatedly.


A Muslim sergeant then spoke about his faith and invited questions in what was presented as a “safe space” where “there was no such thing as a bad question.” Salmons asked what the sergeant, as a peaceful Muslim, thought about the situation in Gaza and atrocities carried out by Hamas and other groups in the name of Islam. He also asked what jihad meant to him. The discussion was civil. The sergeant later invited Salmons for coffee to continue the conversation privately.

Salmons brought a book on the topic to work. Colleagues photographed it in his locker and reported him as a risk. An inspector then suspended him, declaring “I don’t like your beliefs.” Salmons noted the obvious double standard: no inspector would ever say that to a Muslim officer.He was suspended on full pay for months, resigned under pressure in April 2025, and faced gross misconduct proceedings. Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, he appealed. Chief Constable Tim Forber overturned the dismissal before Salmons had even finished presenting his case. There was no apology and the episode devastated his family.

“I loved my job and I was good at it. I was well respected as a PCSO and my colleagues said they loved working with me and couldn’t understand what was happening. But an overzealous inspector took against me and that was the end of my career, even though I had done nothing wrong,” he related. “It devastated me and my family. For months we lived in total uncertainty, with my reputation being shredded in secret. I resigned not because I had done anything wrong, but because the silence, the delay and the pressure became unbearable for my wife and daughters,” Salmons added.

This is the new reality inside parts of British policing: open discussion of uncomfortable facts about Islamist ideology is treated as career-ending wrongthink, while entire days are devoted to chanting slogans and centring one faith above others. The same ideological pressures are visible in operational failures. In the Henry Nowak case, an 18-year-old white British student was stabbed five times. He told responding officers he had been stabbed and could not breathe. Instead of treating him as a medical emergency, officers handcuffed him after his attacker falsely claimed racism. The attacker was allowed to walk away. An inquest is examining whether the handcuffing contributed to Nowak’s death.

The police watchdog investigated itself and declared no wrongdoing. Serving and former Hampshire officers later admitted the mandatory DEI training played a role. They told former Home Secretary Suella Braverman they had “it drummed into us about our white privilege and unconscious bias.” One described the outsourced trainer as “deeply hateful of white people and our culture.”v

Meanwhile, shocking street interviews and bodycam footage show officers across forces admitting they will arrest people for speech that causes offence if an allegation is made – including phrases such as “send them all home.” In one Birmingham incident, officers restrained a light-skinned suspect while a crowd of young men from ethnic minority backgrounds kicked and struck him; the police did not intervene to protect the suspect.

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Good to reiterate from time to time.

• They Threw Everything at Him. He’s Still Standing. (Eric Florack)

We’re getting pretty close to the midterm elections. I’d like you to consider, as you contemplate your vote, what we’ve been seeing for a solid decade now. The full weight of the media establishment, the Democrat Party, and the socialist left — all of whom drain your tax dollars to fund their operations — has waged the most expensive, coordinated, and (thanks be to Heaven) catastrophically unsuccessful demolition project in recorded history. The target? One man. I’ll let you guess who.


Think on that for a moment: four criminal indictments, 91 charges (and I may have missed a few). Investigations that went nowhere, like a compass in a magnet factory. They spent billions. They squeezed hundreds of journalists shoulder-to-shoulder into the same putrid trough, all filing the same bogus story, all reaching the same pre-approved conclusions without evidence, all somehow surprised when nothing stuck to the man. Every major network. Every newspaper of record. Every drive-time radio voice with a thesaurus and a grudge.

The late-night TV hosts — propped up on expensive, ratings-free life support, their audience consisting exclusively of insomniacs and the unfortunate souls stranded at airport gate C-17 — dutifully swung away, night after night, year after year. When the losses mounted too high and those late-night “stars” collected their pink slips, the establishment — the very people who’d been attacking this man — turned around and blamed him for their firing. Never mind the millions they cost the networks. The word “unsustainable” leaps to mind, unbidden.

Hollywood crawled out of its gated compounds to weigh in. Every blue-checkmark, every celebrity whose last project you cannot name, every platform with a “trust and safety” team — all of it, fully deployed. All for naught. Meanwhile, medical research watches from the parking lot, never seeing anything approaching that kind of coordinated effort. Even after all that, it didn’t work. Let’s be honest about what this was, and is. This wasn’t political opposition. Opposition, per se, is normal. Opposition is healthy. That’s democracy (small d).

This was anything but democracy. This was a systematic campaign to destroy a man’s family, dismantle his businesses, strip away his freedom, and physically erase his name from ballots. The goal was never to beat him. It was to eliminate him. Consider the parallel: Eric Swalwell got caught cozying up to a Chinese intelligence operative, and the story disappeared in 48 hours. This man absorbed a decade-long siege with unlimited ammunition — and he’s still standing. The reason? There was nothing to what they threw at Trump. In all this time, not a bit of it has stuck. Don’t you think if they actually had anything, it would have tipped the scales by now?

When all those efforts failed, they even tried to kill him — what, ten times now, going back to 2016? I’ve lost count. Butler, of course. West Palm. Mar-a-Lago. The Correspondents’ Dinner. And those are just the attempts that made the headlines because they got close enough to finish the job. That asymmetry should tell you everything you need to know. And a quick look at what’s happening in California right now offers another indicator of how desperate these people have become. That story may give us a hint — if we’re honest — about how “Creepy Uncle Joe” claimed 81 million votes after campaigning from his basement.

Here’s the thing about coordinated fury at that scale and duration: it is never about the target. It’s about what the target represents — and what his continued existence threatens. Seventy million Americans heard something from this man they hadn’t heard in a long time: the truth. That the system has been deliberately rigged against them. That someone is outright stealing their tax dollars and laundering still more into causes explicitly hostile to their interests. That the credentialed experts and the legacy press have been lying — casually, continuously — and expected nobody to notice. That Americans — as Americans — do not require permission from Davos, from party establishments, from media gatekeepers, or from anyone else to trust what their own eyes are showing them.

That is not a Republican message. That is not a Democrat message. That is a freedom message. And seventy million people didn’t just hear it — they recognized it, voted accordingly, and to this day continue to support him, much to the chagrin of the destroyers who clearly still don’t understand what they’re up against. That’s what the machine is actually fighting: not a man, but a message. Because if that message spreads — if people fully internalize that the managers have been manipulating them, manufacturing confusion, and deliberately stoking fear — those managers lose everything.

The fury isn’t evidence that he’s dangerous. It’s evidence of exactly what he told you: that they are.

Read more …

Does it work only on a quantum scale?

• A Surprisingly Simple Way To Create Powerful Quantum States (SD)

Many of the most promising quantum technologies, including advanced sensors and future quantum computers, depend on a phenomenon known as entanglement, where particles become deeply connected and influence one another in ways that cannot be explained by classical physics. Creating the complex entangled states needed for these technologies has traditionally required sophisticated equipment and carefully designed experimental systems.


Researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering have now proposed a much simpler approach. Their new theoretical method can generate and control a wide range of entangled quantum states using tools that are already common in many quantum physics laboratories. The work, published in Physical Review X, could help advance ultra precise quantum sensing and open new opportunities for exploring fundamental physics.

“We wanted to take simple ingredients that you find in a lot of physical platforms and put these together in a minimal way to get something interesting, complex and powerful,” said Aashish Clerk, professor of molecular engineering at UChicago PME and senior author of the new study. The research was supported by Q-NEXT, a U.S. Department of Energy National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory.

Rethinking Cavity QED Systems
The team’s approach is based on cavity quantum electrodynamics, commonly known as cavity QED. In these experiments, atoms or other particles are placed inside an optical cavity, which consists of two mirrors that trap light between them. The particles then interact with the confined light inside the cavity. A limitation of many cavity QED systems is that all of the atoms interact with the light in exactly the same way. Because the atoms are effectively indistinguishable, the range of quantum states that can be produced is restricted.

“The challenge has always been that these systems have too much symmetry. All the atoms are talking to light in the same way,” Clerk said. “That really restricts what kind of entangled states you get.” In a typical cavity QED setup, each atom has a ground state and an excited state separated by a specific energy difference. The researchers found a straightforward way to reduce the system’s symmetry. While all atoms continue to be driven by the same laser, additional lasers or magnetic fields are used to shift the excited state energies of different groups of atoms. The atoms are arranged so that each one is paired with another atom that has an equal but opposite energy offset.

This simple modification allows atoms to behave differently from one another while preserving enough structure for the system to remain controllable and predictable. By changing which atoms receive particular energy shifts, scientists can tune the system to produce a variety of entangled states without altering the physical hardware. “You turn these lasers on and wait, and at some point the system stabilizes into an interesting, highly entangled quantum state,” said Anjun Chu, a postdoctoral researcher in the Clerk group and first author of the new work. “By simply adjusting the lasers, we can access kinds of entangled states that no one had thought about before.”

Building Better Quantum Sensors
One of the most promising uses for the new approach is quantum sensing. In theory, entangled quantum states can detect extremely small differences in magnetic fields or gravitational fields between separate locations. However, developing states that are both highly sensitive and resistant to noise has remained a major challenge. The researchers demonstrated that a version of their proposed system containing two groups of atoms could be used to measure field gradients. When the two atomic ensembles are placed in different locations, the resulting quantum state reflects the difference between the local magnetic or gravitational fields. At the same time, it naturally rejects background noise that affects both locations equally.

“You’re able to do two things that are normally not compatible with one another: Use entanglement to build an exquisitely sensitive sensor but also have robustness to arbitrarily large amounts of noise,” Clerk said. “Normally, entanglement is very fragile. This approach has some amazing resilience.” Another advantage is that the information stored in these quantum states can be extracted using standard Ramsey measurement techniques, eliminating the need for specialized or exotic measurement methods.

Applications Beyond Sensing
The researchers also showed that the same platform can generate unusual quantum states that have long attracted interest from physicists. One example is the AKLT state, a well known many body entangled state first introduced in the 1980s to describe unusual magnetic materials. The team found that their relatively simple setup can stabilize this state. In addition to helping scientists study complex magnetic systems, the AKLT state may also have applications in quantum computing.

Next Steps For The Research
The work remains theoretical for now, but the researchers are already discussing possible experimental tests with other groups. They are also investigating more sophisticated ways to arrange atoms within the system and exploring the full range of quantum states that their method may be capable of producing.

“The fact that such simple ingredients can generate such complex and useful quantum states gives us hope that even before we reach the dream of a general all-purpose quantum computer, we can already generate quantum states that let us do things we couldn’t do in a purely classical world,” Clerk said. This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science National Quantum Information Science Research Centers as part of the Q-NEXT center.

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Debt Rattle June 4 2026

Jun 042026
 
 June 4, 2026  Posted by at 9:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  27 Responses »


Herbert James Draper A Deep Sea Idyll 1902(?!)


• Trump Says He’d Like To Meet Iran’s New Supreme Leader (ZH)
• Iran’s War Math Still Doesn’t Add Up (David Manney)
• IRGC Says Trump Ongoing Talks Narrative ‘Not Reality (ZH)
• “Next Month, Next Quarter, Next Year” (Schwartz)
• Tulsi Gabbard Gives Us a Heartfelt Update on Her Husband’s Health (Anderson)
• Day 2: Rubio Enters a Hostile Clown Show (Sarah Anderson)
• Marco Rubio Went to Capitol Hill Today, and the Smackdown Was Brutal (Anderson)
• Marco Rubio Testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee (CTH)
• Supreme Court AGAIN Rules in Favor of Alabama’s Pro-GOP Map (Salgado)
• Just How Crazy Mamdani’s Housing Scheme Really Is (Spencer)
• Why Is Ukraine So Eager To Start A New War? (Vitaly Ryumshin)
• SpaceX Reportedly Targets $135 IPO Price (ZH)
• Is This a Sign a Supreme Court Vacancy Is Coming Soon? (Margolis)
• COVID-19 Was Spread Intentionally on Multiple Continents (Korsgaard)

 


 

https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2062163095334654319?s=20 https://twitter.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/2061952291469693079?s=20

 


 


“After three days their military was virtually wiped out. And then if you read the New York Times you think they‘re doing fantastically.”

“It’s good if they‘re confused, and the Iranians are confused..”

• Trump Says He’d Like To Meet Iran’s New Supreme Leader (ZH)

After US-Israeli strikes assassinated the last longtime Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, President Trump says he would like to meet the new one. Trump said he “would like to meet” Iran’s Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, in an interview published Wednesday. In surprising remarks, Trump told the New York Post’s Pod Force One: “I would like to meet him, and we probably will meet at some point, depending on how it all works out.” Trump reasoned that “They’ve already agreed they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon” – suggesting this could be the basis for new direct diplomatic engagement.


And yet the Iranians have already for years consistently stated they were never intent on achieving a nuclear bomb. All recent high level US intelligence community assessments have tended to support the claim that Iran was not seeking a nuke before the attacks of June as well as March into April, under Operation Epic Fury. But Trump has also dismissed the intelligence, insisting that Iran was ‘very close’ before the US-Israeli interventions. While Trump is now expressing openness to meeting the Ayatollah – who is said to be in hiding and only having limited, low-tech communications with his officials, for fear of being tracked by the CIA or Mossad – the Supreme Leader himself has not voiced a desire for such a meeting.

Tehran at this moment doesn’t appear in the mood for ‘talking’ – and has lately said it is ready to let its military retaliation and response do the ‘negotiating’. The US President once again made claims about the text of the possible agreement. He claimed that “Iran has agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons.” –Bloomberg This seems another element of confused messaging from the White House, which has many times denounced the Ayatollah and his regime as ‘murderous’ and ‘evil’ and a ‘tyrant’ – and yet now Trump apparently wants to sit down with him for tea time or something.

Trump in the NY Post interview actually addressed the general atmosphere of confusion and contradictions from his administration, and from him personally. “It’s good if they‘re confused, and the Iranians are confused,” Trump stated. He added: “But no, it‘s just the way I am. It changes. I could leave here, I could give you an answer, and then in 20 minutes go into the Oval Office and I’ll realize my answer is now incorrect. Facts change and things change quickly.” In this context, he went on to defend the controversial decision to go to war in the first place, saying it could not have been delayed as Iran was on the brink of having a nuclear weapon.

“I couldn‘t, I know because this is too important. If I did that, they would have had a nuclear weapon. They would have had a nuclear weapon two weeks after the B-2 bomber struck. So if I did that, they would have had a nuclear weapon.” Trump: “He’s missing a lot of different parts.” He again in the interview called it a necessary “excursion” – saying, “They‘re not going to have a nuclear weapon, lots of other good things are going to happen.” From the interview, on the question of boots on the ground in Iran… “You don‘t need boots on the ground right now. We wiped out much of their military with just bombing.

After three days their military was virtually wiped out. And then if you read the New York Times you think they‘re doing fantastically.” Trump elsewhere addressed the controversial Axios report which said Trump ‘steamrolled’ Israeli PM Netanyahu in a phone call. Per Bloomberg, “Trump said he swore at Benjamin Netanyahu in a call this week as the president tried to deescalate fighting in Lebanon and keep peace talks with Iran on track.” “I did,” Trump said, acknowledging he chastised his ally. “I wouldn\t say angry. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon, ` you know.”

Read more …

“Tehran tried to create a spectacle, while Washington created a result.”

• Iran’s War Math Still Doesn’t Add Up (David Manney)

Reckless, stupid, crazy, or crazy like a fox. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps managed to check the first three boxes Tuesday night, but it never came close to checking the fourth.Iran fired ballistic missiles toward Kuwait and Bahrain, where American forces and regional partners help hold the line in a region Tehran keeps trying to bully. U.S. Central Command said two missiles fired toward Kuwait fell short or broke apart in flight, while U.S. and Bahraini forces intercepted three missiles aimed at Bahrain.American forces also knocked down Iranian drones threatening civilian shipping and struck an Iranian military ground-control station on Qeshm Island near the Strait of Hormuz. From the South China Morning Post:


Two Iranian missiles shot at Kuwait fell short or broke apart in-flight, several ballistic missiles aimed at regional targets failed and three missiles heading for Bahrain were intercepted, US Central Command said. Since the conflict began in late February, Iran has repeatedly attacked targets in Bahrain and Kuwait, where US military bases are located. Central Command said US forces also downed Iranian drones targeting civilian shipping in regional waters and carried out strikes on Qeshm Island near the Strait of Hormuz in response to the attempted attacks by Iran.

In a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency, the Revolutionary Guards claimed they had struck the US military installations in response to the strike on Qeshm Island. Give Tehran credit for one thing: it found a way to turn a missile attack into a regional safety demonstration. Kuwait and Bahrain got sirens, nervous families, air defenses, and another reminder that Iran doesn’t only threaten Americans when it lashes out; it threatens every neighbor forced to live near its tantrums. President Donald Trump has kept pressure on Iran while leaving room for talks, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers sanctions relief would require Iran to give up its nuclear activity.

Iran, meanwhile, keeps acting as if leverage means firing expensive hardware into the sky and hoping nobody notices when gravity, air defenses, and American readiness ruin their show. The latest episode followed claims from Iranian sources that Tehran had stopped communicating with mediators about extending a ceasefire. President Trump disputed those claims and said talks continued. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has tried to wrap Tehran’s demands in diplomatic language, but missiles aimed toward Gulf neighbors speak more clearly than any prepared statement. Any regime that pauses diplomacy to launch weapons tells the world which tools it trusts the most.

Iran’s leaders seem trapped in the same old loop; they provoke, threaten, launch, miss, deny, and then announce some grand moral victory to whoever still has the patience to listen. The missiles and drones fail, the bases remain, and the regime still expects applause from its propaganda machine. Somewhere in Tehran, somebody probably stamped the operation a success because the printer still had ink. Behind the noise sits a colder reality; Iran’s economy keeps bleeding. Its people keep paying for the ambition of clerics and commanders who confuse defiance with competence.

It’s been rough for the regime’s people; Iran’s Central Bank put year-over-year inflation at 77.2% in May, with daily and general needs up 113.8% from the year before. One would think that leaders with any semblance of sanity and common sense might want fewer missiles and more bread, but Tehran has never shown much talent for learning from the pain it causes its own people.American restraint also deserves notice. U.S. forces answered direct threats without turning the Gulf into a free-fire zone. They destroyed incoming threats, protected American troops, helped partners, guarded shipping, and hit the control node tied to Iran’s aggression.

Tehran tried to create a spectacle, while Washington created a result. Iran’s latest missile show revealed rage, not genius. The IRGC wanted fear and delivered embarrassment, also wanting leverage, and handed Gulf partners another reason to tighten ranks with the United States. It wanted to prove strength and instead proved that American defenses, allied coordination, and steady nerves still carry weight.Crazy like a fox requires cunning. Iran brought fireworks, failure, and the same old appetite for humiliation. It’s past time for the U.S. to put the regime out of its misery and help the Iranian people.

Read more …

IRGC tries to lead the conversation.

• IRGC Says Trump Ongoing Talks Narrative ‘Not Reality (ZH)

State media statement on Wednesday: IRGC-linked Tasnim claims Tehran has frozen all back-channel communication with Washington over Israeli operations in Lebanon, directly contradicting Trump’s assertion that messages are arriving daily from Iran. Tasnim: “Trump’s claim that Iran is confirming the issue is completely different from reality.” Iran’s Foreign Minister is meanwhile articulating that Iran will lay down some new red lines via military strikes, which he has dubbed ‘self-defense’ in nature…


President Donald Trump is still trying to present some bright spots, telling NY Post he believes the situation in the Strait of Hormuz will “resolve itself fairly quickly” and went so far to say he expects to meet with Iran’s supreme leader “at some point.”

Major Attack on Kuwait International Airport: One Dead, 63 Injured
Kuwait International Airport has come under Iranian missile and drone attack on Wednesday, in a significant strike that killed one person and left 63 people injured – according to the country’s health ministry, with several of the victims being seriously wounded. A passenger terminal was directly struck, damaging facilities including diplomatic missions at the airport, Kuwaiti authorities have said. Area hospitals conducted seven major emergency surgeries following the incident, underscoring that it was a mass casualty event.

Kuwaiti defense ministry spokesperson Brig Gen Saud Abdulaziz Al-Atwan described the attack as “criminal Iranian aggression which resulted in significant material damage to the building and injuries.” It confirmed engaging 13 missiles and 17 drones total which were fired from Iran. Civil aviation authorities immediately suspended traffic and transferred arriving flights to separate unaffected airports after “terminal one came under Iranian attacks causing casualties and damage.” The cross-border airport attack came after violent exchanges of fire between the US and Iran, which at first looked like limited one-off incidents, but then became an extended tit-for-tat.

The Overnight Catalyst: US-Iran Exchange Fire in Hormuz
Overnight, the US military deployed a Hellfire missile to disable a tanker attempting to bypass the American blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. Following the intercept, American forces engaged in a wider kinetic exchange, stating they repelled subsequent Iranian reprisal strikes across the region and launched retaliatory attacks against military sites on Iran’s Qeshm Island.

In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) claimed it launched a missile and drone barrage targeting the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain – an assertion that Central Command (CENTCOM) has explicitly denied. The IRGC had also sent several missiles on two US bases in Kuwait, which were said to have been intercepted.

GCC Blasts ‘Cowardly Attacks’
Serous damage and chaos at Kuwait International Airport: The Gulf Cooperation Council has in response slammed Iran for their “ongoing aggression” against member states Bahrain and Kuwait, denouncing the “cowardly attacks on civilian objects” which mark a “dangerous and unprecedented escalation.” But Tehran is not backing down and is instead issuing further hardline warnings and threats, per Al Jazeera citing state media:

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says retaliatory strikes “should serve as a lesson” for the United States after it fired a barrage of missiles and drones at Kuwait and Bahrain. While Iran’s foreign ministry is warning that the overnight US assault on Qeshm Island continues a severe breach of the ceasefire, President Trump is saying that “conversations between us have been going on continuously” – in reference to the Iranians.

Read more …

By Molly Schwartz, cross-asset macro strategist at Rabobank

• “Next Month, Next Quarter, Next Year” (Schwartz)

In a tense Congressional Hearing before the foreign relations committee, Marco Rubio defended the Trump Administration’s war in Iran, praising the success of US military operations destroying Iranian military and nuclear facilities. He also said that a deal with Iran could happen “today, tomorrow, or next week.” However, the recent military escalations between the US and Iran, the refusal of Israel and Hezbollah to cooperate, and reports of Pezeshkian’s resignation — leaving Iran in the hands of the IRGC — mean that a deal seems to lie more on the horizon of next month, next quarter, or maybe even next year.


Our base case that we see passage through the Strait disrupted for at least three more months still stands as we have yet to see any tangible headlines to suggest an accelerated timeline. The negotiations currently lie in Iran’s hands, as Bloomberg reports Iran’s Mehr news saying that “officials in Tehran are discussing their ‘final text’ to send to the US.” One might be hesitant to truly deem this text as “final” (if it even exists), as it may be more of a “final_v3.doc”, or a “final_FINAL_v6.doc”, or even a “final_FINAL_totallyforrealthistime.doc”.

The most promising resolution right now is that the IRGC remains in power, but enriched uranium is handed over to an executor, like China, though we have yet to see any confirmed updates that this is a feasible solution that Iran would actually agree to at this juncture. The extended 60-day ceasefire is still ongoing, while both the US and Iran are dedicated to keeping the Strait closed and exchanging fire. CENTCOM posted on X today to show off the USS Abraham Lincoln enforcing the US blockade, which has apparently redirected 122 vessels to “ensure compliance.”

Yesterday, Trump slammed Vulcan’s Hammer on the AI industry, signing an executive order, “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security.” The executive order lauds how the administration has “unleashed tremendous technological growth and economic investment in AI by slashing the bureaucratic constraints that the prior administration placed on America’s AI developers and researchers, and by instead encouraging AI innovation and accelerating responsible AI adoption across government and industry.”

Part of the executive order is intended to support the AI industry, seeking to utilize AI in federal cybersecurity programs, and utilize AI models (potentially Mythos?) to pinpoint vulnerabilities. However, the order also seeks to impose new restrictions, likely in response to the emergency meeting triggered by Mythos a few months ago. This includes lots of classified processes and frameworks to make sure that an evil AI model, the likes of that in a Philip K. Dick novel, doesn’t usurp the American government as the presiding force leading the world’s global hegemon (or more likely, making sure these models can’t be used to hack into sensitive government websites).

The process is referred to as a “voluntary framework” so that AI developers can submit their new models to the government 30 days before release to the public. Though the order also clarifies that “nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize the creation of a mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement for the development, publication, release, or distribution of new AI models, including frontier models.”

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“Both Tulsi and Abraham are in our prayers.”:

• Tulsi Gabbard Gives Us a Heartfelt Update on Her Husband’s Health (Anderson)

On Tuesday morning, outgoing Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard posted a video on social media to let her followers know that her husband, Abraham Williams, was having surgery. She appears to be standing outside the hospital.


“Good morning. We’re getting ready to head into the hospital now for Abraham’s surgery,” Gabbard says. “And I just wanted to take a moment to say ‘thank you’ with all of our hearts to all of you who have shared such beautiful messages and prayers and well wishes for Abraham. We’re truly humbled and so grateful to be surrounded by so much aloha from all of you during this tough time. Aloha.”

Here’s the video:

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/2061788108727705658?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2061788108727705658%7Ctwgr%5E5949055dbcd121e1d76cc6b15d37bb92257dad88%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F02%2Ftulsi-gabbard-gives-us-a-heartfelt-update-on-her-husbands-health-n4953508

While Gabbard hasn’t posted an update since, her father, Mike Gabbard, who is a state senator in Hawaii, did post on X on Tuesday afternoon to let followers know that “Abraham is out of surgery and all went well.” He included a beautiful picture of the couple.

If you’ll recall, back in May, Gabbard announced that she was resigning from her position as DNI to spend more time with her husband who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. “Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” she said after thanking the president for the opportunity. “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer. He faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months. At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/2057876821421527476?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2057876821421527476%7Ctwgr%5E5949055dbcd121e1d76cc6b15d37bb92257dad88%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F02%2Ftulsi-gabbard-gives-us-a-heartfelt-update-on-her-husbands-health-n4953508

Williams, who keeps a fairly low profile, is actually a cinematographer, photographer, and filmmaker, and the two met in 2012 when he did some work for her congressional campaign. Both are avid surfers, and he eventually proposed to her on a surfboard. They were married in April 2015 in Hawaii.

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1910168836550303992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1910168836550303992%7Ctwgr%5E5949055dbcd121e1d76cc6b15d37bb92257dad88%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F02%2Ftulsi-gabbard-gives-us-a-heartfelt-update-on-her-husbands-health-n4953508

He’s been by her side through her time in Congress, multiple political campaigns, and her time spent in the Donald Trump administration. She calls him her “rock” and best friend.

“Abraham has been my rock throughout our eleven years of marriage — standing steadfast through my deployment to East Africa on a Joint Special Operations mission, multiple political campaigns and now my service in this role,” she wrote in her resignation letter last month. “His strength and love have sustained me through every challenge. I cannot in good conscience ask him to face this fight alone while I continue in this demanding and time-consuming position.”

Personally, I have to add that I’ve been a big Tulsi fan for years — she won me over in 2019 when she owned Kamala Harris during a primary debate when they were both running for president. I hate that we are losing her as a public servant for now, but I am glad she is able to take the time to support her husband as he fights this battle. Both Tulsi and Abraham are in our prayers.

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Not his first clown rodeo…

• Day 2: Rubio Enters a Hostile Clown Show (Sarah Anderson)

“Is this the Foreign Affairs Committee, or is this a circus?” That quote from Secretary of State Marco Rubio pretty much sums up what happened on Wednesday morning when he testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the FY27 Department of State Budget Request. In case you missed it, this is Rubio’s second day of hearings on Capitol Hill, and what he’s had to deal with so far today makes yesterday look tame. These Congress critters aren’t serious people. On Tuesday, I joked that it’s more like “Democrats, who were supposed to be asking questions, talked at Rubio and complained about everything Donald Trump does without giving the secretary a chance to respond.”


Wednesday was more of that — this isn’t even a hearing, Rubio said — but the “questioning” went beyond foreign policy, whether it was the lady criticizing the secretary’s shoes or the guy playing video upon video of Donald Trump’s so-called “cognitive decline.” I’ve never seen anything like it. Again, I’m just going to have to let the video clips speak for themselves because I don’t even know how to explain it anymore than saying “Congress is a clown show.”

Where to even start? Here’s Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.) getting mad that Rubio didn’t mention Ukraine in his opening remarks and talking to the secretary like he’s a toddler. For what it’s worth, Keating was one of the first to speak, and I guess this set the tone for the entire “circus.” This is only a short clip, but there was a lot of yelling.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2062191973604204700?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2062191973604204700%7Ctwgr%5E546fb9583372a698ed9c56b512c81b898bcb8bcf%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F03%2Frubio-enters-the-clown-show-aka-congress-and-you-just-have-to-see-this-n4953535

Next, I’ll go with the most ludicrous of interactions: Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) spending his entire five minutes playing videos of Trump “sleeping” during his “North Korea-style” Cabinet meetings and proof of his “cognitive decline,” and Rubio’s rightfully incredulous response. The secretary joked that Lieu fancies himself a medical expert and went on to explain how the president has more energy than people much younger than him and how he calls him at all hours of the night. Pop your popcorn. This one’s good:

https://twitter.com/OffThePress1/status/2062206241951105050?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2062206241951105050%7Ctwgr%5E546fb9583372a698ed9c56b512c81b898bcb8bcf%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F03%2Frubio-enters-the-clown-show-aka-congress-and-you-just-have-to-see-this-n4953535

Then there was Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) who felt the need to use her time talking about who won the 2020 election and… Rubio’s shoes. Seriously.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2062198413140136178?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2062198413140136178%7Ctwgr%5E546fb9583372a698ed9c56b512c81b898bcb8bcf%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F03%2Frubio-enters-the-clown-show-aka-congress-and-you-just-have-to-see-this-n4953535

One congresswoman said her bit, which included calling Rubio the “overlord” of Venezuela, and then she simply got up and left before he could respond. Here’s his response:

As I’m writing this, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Penn.) is calling Rubio a “comedy show” because he’s trying to answer her questions. This is giving me a headache — I can only imagine how the secretary feels. I’d share some of the actual substance that was discussed, but, well, there wasn’t much. With few exceptions, the only time Rubio actually got to answer any questions was when the Republican members of the House allowed him some of their time to do so. It was pretty shameful.

The hearing is actually still going on, and there’s another one on Wednesday afternoon — I’ll take one for the team and watch that too and bring you any noteworthy sound bites — but I think this gives you an idea of how things have gone. I’ll end on a fun note. Rubio continued his run of using rap lyrics during his public appearances. Today, it was a line from Kanye West’s “Stronger.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t take my previous advice and use “Mo Money, Mo Problems,” but I was still amused.

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Much more coming.,.

• Marco Rubio Went to Capitol Hill Today, and the Smackdown Was Brutal (Anderson)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio made his way back to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs on the FY27 Department of State Budget Request. It went as these things usually do: Democrats, who were supposed to be asking questions, talked at Rubio and complained about everything Donald Trump does without giving the secretary a chance to respond. And he, as he usually does, handled it with intelligence, wit, and… actual information with context.


Honestly, it’s almost boring at this point — I believe Rubio thinks so too. After finishing his opening remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he ended with, “So anyways, I look forward to your questions. At least that’s what it says here. I’m not sure if I really look forward to your questions. I look forward to probably half your questions.” A couple of things I noted: The Democrats must have gotten together and decided they’d all coordinate when talking about Iran. Nearly every single one referred to it as “Donald Trump’s illegal war in Iran.” (You can’t see me, but I’m rolling my eyes.)

I also noted that these Democrats love to talk about how many people have allegedly died due to the end of USAID and the restructuring of how we handle humanitarian aid around the world — for what it’s worth, their numbers are false — but they seem to turn a blind eye to the people who die at the hands of the regimes in countries like Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba, as well as at the hands of narco-terrorists, cartels, and criminal groups around the globe, and get mad that the United States is intervening to stop this. You can’t have it both ways, but I digress. Let’s get to a few highlights from the hearings.

The biggest smackdown of the day was when Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) decided to accuse Rubio of partying the night away while JD Vance was working on negotiations with Iran. She kept talking about him being at some “party” with President Trump. Rubio asked her what party she was referring to, but she couldn’t quite come up with an answer and continued with her accusations, asserting that while he was at this party, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff — two people who were never confirmed for this by the U.S. Congress, she says — were doing his job. The secretary did not take that sitting down.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about! I know your staff wrote up this cute statement for TikTok, but it’s not true. And it’s not real. That’s not what happened,” Rubio said. He explained that he was not at a party; he was on the phone constantly with all parties involved and “co-located with the president in the midst of a high stakes negotiation so that I could immediately inform him about events occurring halfway around the world.”

For what it’s worth, I believe she’s referring to the UFC fight in Miami. Trump made an appearance, and Rubio was there with some of his children, but it was widely reported that the secretary spent most of the night on the phone and keeping the president updated on what was going on in the Middle East. Here’s the video. This exchange is a must-watch:

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2061849591780135052?s=20

I’m not going to get too deep into everything the Congress critters talked about, but I do want to highlight a few more important exchanges, like this one in which Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) made up a bunch of stuff about Iran that was giving me Kamala Harris word salad vibes.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2061841598649180172?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2061841598649180172%7Ctwgr%5E4be138b21dd4974e9e0dfe8e5ca1c9c6589b0409%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F02%2Fmarco-rubio-went-to-capitol-hill-today-and-the-smackdown-was-brutal-n4953499

And then there was Sen. Chris “Margaritas in El Salvador” Van Hollen, who seemed oddly nervous during the entire thing — possibly because he remembers how Rubio owned him last time they did this. If you’ll recall, he told Rubio he regretted voting for him, and Rubio replied, “Your regret voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job.” Van Hollen started out by saying that Trump’s entire foreign policy was a “dumpster fire” and then went on to spew a bunch of leftists lies about, well, pretty much everything. Anyway, here are a couple of their exchanges for your viewing pleasure.

https://twitter.com/StephenGardnerX/status/2061850629187031273?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2061850629187031273%7Ctwgr%5E4be138b21dd4974e9e0dfe8e5ca1c9c6589b0409%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F06%2F02%2Fmarco-rubio-went-to-capitol-hill-today-and-the-smackdown-was-brutal-n4953499

Something else Rubio tried to hammer home to these people during these hearings is that the State Department is doing what’s in the United States’ best interests. It’s all common sense, but as we know, many Democrats lack that. I’ll leave you with a few of those videos.

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” Just like Q-Anon advocate Mike Flynn recently taking a job that pays him $100,000/month to lobby for the Republic of Srpska (aka ‘Serb Republic’..”

• Marco Rubio Testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee (CTH)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The U.S. Senate as a whole and members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee specifically, have lost millions of dollars wealth for themselves and their families as a result of Rubio eliminating USAID. As a consequence, while they cannot publicly showcase that specific motive for opposition, the committee as a whole is not happy about losing a substantial portion of their stakeholder interests.


The families of all the senate committee members exist inside the think tanks, NGOs, political orgs, PACs and lobbyist companies for various foreign governments. Just like Q-Anon advocate Mike Flynn recently taking a job that pays him $100,000/month to lobby for the Republic of Srpska (aka ‘Serb Republic’, for advice, counsel and introductions), so too all the family members of the senate leverage their DC connections to foreign governments for personal gain.

Thus, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now being questioned by the very Senators he has defunded. Yes, Michael Flynn signed an agreement within the Trump administration not to lobby for foreign governments; but that was only a paper promise. That’s one of the reasons why it is more than a little silly for people to mention Flynn’s name as a potential DNI nomination.

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“.. we can’t be sure the activist District Court won’t try again and waste more time and money.”

• Supreme Court AGAIN Rules in Favor of Alabama’s Pro-GOP Map (Salgado)

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 2 intervened again to confirm its previous ruling that will allow Alabama to move forward with a map eliminating racial gerrymandering. In Allen v. Milligan, SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that Alabama is right to redraw its congressional map to eliminate race-based districts, just as it ruled in Louisiana v. Callais and Allen v. Caster. The Voting Rights Act does not allow race-based gerrymandering, the Court previously ruled, and that still holds true in spite of an activist District Court.


The reality is that judicial activists are mad because the map is likely to favor Republicans once it is drawn constitutionally and not based on voters’ skin color. Democrats have spent decades convincing many black Americans that Republicans are racist (when the opposite is more true), and now Dems are seeing that effort backfire in more than one state. This is a purely partisan fight. SCOTUS cited Callais in its Allen v. Milligan ruling, as that was the original decision this year clarifying how to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Below are excerpts from the majority ruling:

After Callais, we vacated District Court injunctions that prevented the State of Alabama from using a congressional map that it enacted in 2023. See Allen v. Caster, 608 U. S. ___ (2026). The District Court had held that the State’s map violated §2 because it had only one district in which black voters were a majority and did not include an additional ‘[b]lack-opportunity’ district… Two weeks after we vacated its injunction, the District Court entered another injunction on largely the same grounds…

The District Court also failed to follow our instruction in Callais that the mere fact that voters of different races vote for different parties is not relevant to proving racially polarized voting patterns… The State has also made a strong showing of irreparable harm and that the equities and public interest favor it. We have repeatedly cautioned that lower federal courts should not ‘alter the election rules on the eve of an election.’ So this was all a waste of taxpayer money again to make the Supreme Court reiterate what it already ruled.

To be honest, if Republicans would simply comply with the law instead of bowing to every idiotic, anti-law ruling from activist judges, it would save vast amounts of time and money. The reason judges have been issuing outrageous rulings thick and fast recently is that they know Republicans will even ignore the Constitution itself to comply with the court rulings. The GOP keeps assuring Americans they have to act thus or they’ll “set a bad precent” for Democrats, but after two centuries of Democrats violating every law and court ruling they wish, that’s not a convincing argument.

In Alabama’s case, the Supreme Court had already ruled for the new map — so why on earth would the contrary decision of a District Court matter? Fortunately, the Supreme Court rightly intervened again, but we can’t be sure the activist District Court won’t try again and waste more time and money.

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If there’s one place that can claim the title Capital of Capitalism, it’s New York City.

So of course it draws in the opposite too, becaue opposites attract. But they do not match.

• Just How Crazy Mamdani’s Housing Scheme Really Is (Spencer)

They voted for him, and so they have him, but that doesn’t mean that even New Yorkers are thrilled to see the systematic destruction of what was once the greatest city in the world. More of them voted for the young, handsome, dynamic candidate than for the sleazy retread corruptocrat Andrew Cuomo or the clownish Curtis Sliwa, but that doesn’t mean that New Yorkers are collectively ready to don Mao jackets and start singing the praises of the five-year plan. Mamdani’s audacious scheme to socialize New York City housing is already coming in for severe criticism.


One sign that some New Yorkers are aware of what Mamdani is really all about was an unsigned editorial in the New York Post on Monday. The Post Editorial Board wrote that Mamdani’s “‘Block by Block’ plan to build 200,000 subsidized apartments entails a lot of handwaving, magical thinking and reliance on ‘responsible stewards’ . . who have been failing to manage the real-estate portfolios they already have.” Mamdani promises that “if ‘community land trusts, nonprofits or even the tenants themselves’ control the city’s housing stock, these miracle-workers will ‘expand New Yorkers’ access to safe, stable, and affordable homes.’”

However, the Post points out that “programs that do all this are so old and tired that Mamdani’s Gen Z policy experts appear never to have heard of them, maybe because the experiments had already failed when they were building fantasy housing projects out of Legos.”

Indeed. If socialists learned from experience, there would be no more socialists. There is system on the planet that has been tried so many times and failed just as many times, and yet constantly gains new young adherents who don’t know how bad socialist regimes really have been, or would care if they did know, because in their youthful arrogance, they’re sure they’re going to do right this time what their elders kept doing wrong. Mamdani is going to be the world’s first socialist to build a society. Sure, and he is also going to sprout wings and fly to Mars.

Mamdani announced, of course, that he planned to seize rental properties from landlords who have not maintained them properly — in the judgment of none other than Mamdani and his cronies. He then intends to hand over ownership of those properties to “community land trusts” and “non-profits.”

Oh yeah, that’ll fix everything. As foredoomed as this idea is as any sort of real solution to New York’s housing problems, it has long been high on Mamdani’s to-do list. Intifada on the Hudson: The Selling of Zohran Mamdani shows how he has made socialized housing schemes a centerpiece of his program ever since he entered politics. “People often ask,” Mamdani wrote on Dec. 3, 2020, “what socialists mean when we say we want to ‘decommodify’ housing. Basically, we want to move away from a situation where most people access housing by purchasing it on the market & toward a situation where the state guarantees high-quality housing to all.”

One of Mamdani’s leading critics, New York City Council member Vickie Paladino, explains what’s really going on here: “The properties will then be turned over to nonprofits. This is no small detail. This is in fact the whole point. The idea here is to build up Zohran’s DSA-connected nonprofits with a multibillion-dollar portfolio of hard assets — New York City real estate. This portfolio could theoretically reach into the hundreds of billions or even the trillions, depending on how aggressive they get. Now these highly political nonprofits would become the new land barons of New York, complete with all the political clout, leverage, and reach that goes along with it. It would be a true nightmare scenario.”

Mamdani’s housing scheme would thus be a great leap forward for securing socialist control of New York City for the indefinite future. Also, once his Marxist comrades control New York City’s housing market, who will actually get the housing? Not political undesirables, i.e., patriots. Instead, the lucky recipients will be Muslim migrants, including an unknowable number of criminals and jihadis, and others who will help the leftist/Islamic alliance stay in power.

It will all work wonderfully — until, that is, Mamdani and his friends run out of other people’s money. The Post points out that “Community Development Corporations, non-profit groups that own and manage ‘deeply affordable’ apartments, have been around for decades, and are barely managing to keep themselves afloat as it is. CDCs operate more than 200,000 subsidized city housing units, and face the same problems as private landlords: rising costs (especially insurance), unsustainable debt, deferred maintenance and nonpaying tenants. Turns out that removing the ‘profit’ line from a balance sheet by getting rid of private ownership doesn’t repeal the laws of math when costs run higher than income.”

It isn’t going to be any different this time around. New Yorkers who have already caught on to Mamdani can only hope that enough of their fellow city residents will catch on to tbe truth about this smooth socialist before he does too much damage.

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“Why Kiev is reviving fears of a northern front despite little evidence of military preparations..”

Ukraine has become a money making casino. First for Zelensky and his gang, but now for politicians from everywhere.

They need one thing for sure: war. So they can order weapons, real or not

• Why Is Ukraine So Eager To Start A New War? (Vitaly Ryumshin)

For the first time in a long while, Belarus has again found itself at the center of the Ukraine conflict. For more than a month, Vladimir Zelensky has been warning Ukrainians about a supposed threat from the north. Minsk, he claims, is preparing to enter the war and he’s even threatened Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko with either a pre-emptive strike or a kidnapping in the style of Nicolas Maduro. The rhetoric has now reached the point where Zelensky has ordered preparations for the circular defense of cities in Ukraine’s northern regions, including Kiev itself. Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron has called Lukashenko for the first time since 2022, apparently to persuade him not to enter the conflict.


The problem is that nothing visible is happening on the Belarusian side of the border. There’s no mobilization and no unusual concentration of Belarusian forces and no redeployment of Russian units. The only recent event that could be stretched into a military signal was last week’s Russian-Belarusian nuclear exercise. But even that took place in the Osipovichi district, in the center of Belarus, and was more about strategic deterrence than any ground operation against Ukraine. The more obvious question is why Lukashenko would want to join the military operation at all. Such a move would be wholly out of character for him and would run against the geopolitical role he has tried to carve out for Belarus.

Lukashenko has always sought to preserve room for maneuver and he kept doing so after 2020, when he became de facto persona non grata in the West, and even after the conflict escalated in 2022. In the Ukrainian crisis, Belarus has remained largely a passive observer and that arrangement has suited Moscow. For Russia, he’s a valuable diplomatic asset, not a military one. Of course, a repeat of the February 2022 thrust towards Kiev may sound tempting in theory. But with all due respect to Belarus, its army is not suited to the role of battering ram, especially in conditions of modern warfare dominated by drones and constant surveillance. Could the reverse be true? Perhaps Zelensky is preparing to strike Belarus first, overthrow Lukashenko and open a second front against Russia.

His pointed invitation to the fugitive opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya gives this theory a certain surface logic, but the military reality makes it deeply implausible. The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ last major offensive operation was the incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region. To mount it, Kiev gathered around 30,000 troops, weakening its positions in Donbass and losing large areas there as a result. Even then, the operation failed to produce a decisive strategic outcome. A serious attack on Belarus would require far more resources. Since then, Ukraine’s army has weakened further and its present ceiling is local counter-attacks in Donbass, so it’s in no position to open a major new front.

Nor would it make strategic sense. Any escalation with Belarus would risk creating another 1,000-kilometer front stretching across Ukraine’s northern flank, with direct threats to Kiev. However odious the Kiev regime may be, it can’t fail to understand this. That’s why the current escalation around the ‘Belarusian question’ should be understood politically, not militarily.

The timing is telling. Zelensky began to raise the alarm just as relations between Minsk and Washington showed signs of thawing. In March, the US eased sanctions on Belarus and Washington spoke of reopening its embassy. There was even talk of a possible Lukashenko visit to America and a meeting with Donald Trump. For Kiev, this is dangerous because Zelensky may fear that the eloquent Belarusian leader could charm Trump and persuade him to increase pressure on Ukraine to bring the conflict to an end. Lukashenko might also secure further sanctions relief, potentially turning Belarus into a hub for the transit of American goods to Russia.

From Kiev’s point of view, that scenario must be prevented. Hence the effort to present Minsk as an imminent threat, because if Belarus can be cast once again as Russia’s military accomplice rather than as a possible diplomatic channel, any US-Belarusian rapprochement becomes far harder to sustain.

Domestic politics may also be driving Zelensky’s rhetoric. Since late April, the noose of a corruption scandal has been tightening around his circle and the latest revelations from the ‘Mindich tapes’ have led to formal charges against Zelensky’s closest aide, Andrey Yermak. For the first time, the name ‘Vova’ has appeared in case materials, alongside the mysterious ‘R1’, the anonymous owner of one of the mansions in the ‘Dynasty’ housing cooperative, where, by a happy coincidence, Zelensky’s closest friends had planned to live. I

n such conditions, inflating a new military threat is politically useful as it allows Zelensky to tell Ukrainians that the gravest crisis is still ahead, and that he remains the horse that cannot be changed midstream. But the old ‘Russian card’ is wearing thin in the fifth year of hostilities. Ukrainians are tired, mobilized society is fraying, and endless emergency politics no longer works as it once did. So now Kiev is reaching for the ‘Belarus card’. Will it work? Probably not. At most, it may buy Zelensky a little time, a little fear, and a little more room to maneuver, but as a strategy, it’s thin gruel. Or to put it more appropriately, it is worthy only of a carrot, and a dry one at that.

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“..As Morningstar says valuation should be halved..”

• SpaceX Reportedly Targets $135 IPO Price (ZH)

Last week, Elon Musk called Bloomberg’s “SpaceX Said to Cut IPO Value” story “false,” marking the latest clash between Musk and the MSM over coverage of his companies. Reuters has released a new report, which, based on sources, says SpaceX is planning an IPO at a price of $135 per share, aiming to raise a record $75 billion by selling about 555.6 million shares at an estimated $1.75 trillion valuation. SpaceX’s roadshow is expected to begin Thursday, with a potential Nasdaq debut under the ticker SPCX on June 12. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA, Citigroup, and JPMorgan are leading the deal.


Sources said the IPO is “structured as an all-primary offering,” which means the proceeds will go to SpaceX rather than existing shareholders. Musk will reportedly be subject to a 366-day lock-up period. At a $1.75 trillion valuation and projected 2025 booking revenue of $18.67 billion, SpaceX would trade at roughly 94 times trailing sales. The company also reported a $4.94 billion net loss in 2025, compared with a prior-year profit, with Starlink internet as the major profit engine.

Beyond Reuters’ reporting, there was a separate report from Morningstar analysts stating that SpaceX’s valuation should be less than half of the $1.75 trillion figure, and closer to $780 billion. Morningstar equity analyst Nicolas Owens wrote in a note that his team “doesn’t see Grok as one of the leading AI labs today,” adding: “We think the company has been significantly overvalued and investors will have opportunities to buy the stock at more attractive levels after the IPO.” Polymarket odds for “SpaceX IPO closing market cap above ___ ?” currently stand at 89% for a market cap above $1.8 trillion.

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“..when a growing cohort of conservative judges is crafting opinions designed to get attention, it tells me they sense something is in the air ..”

• Is This a Sign a Supreme Court Vacancy Is Coming Soon? (Margolis)

Speculation about a Supreme Court vacancy has been running hot pretty much since Trump returned to office. With midterm elections this fall potentially reshaping President Donald Trump’s grip on the judiciary, much of the chatter has centered on Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. However, sources close to both say neither has plans to retire this year. Allegedly.


Here’s the thing: Supreme Court justices rarely telegraph a retirement months in advance. When a justice decides to step down, the announcement tends to arrive quietly and suddenly, usually in late spring or early summer as the Court’s term winds down. Denials at this point aren’t proof. Here’s what might tell you considerably more: Conservative appellate judges across the country are behaving as though a vacancy is imminent.

A growing number of federal appeals court judges are issuing high-profile opinions that legal observers describe openly as auditions for the Supreme Court. The tactics are calculated and unmistakable. Some judges are using sharp language, adopting rhetoric designed to catch President Trump’s attention. Others are recording video dissents, a media-savvy move that ensures their opinions travel well beyond the courthouse and into conservative legal circles, including the White House orbit.

Legal scholars watching this pattern say the strategy is deliberate. According to them, these judges understand that Trump values a combative style and public loyalty, and they are writing to reflect those priorities, in hopes of getting noticed by Trump and those advising him before the next vacancy materializes. If an announcement happens, it will be near the close of the current SCOTUS term, which concludes in roughly one month. Inside conservative legal circles, the working assumption is that Trump would move quickly. He reshaped the federal judiciary at a historic rate during his first term and shows no sign of slowing down.

The judges who are positioning themselves for that moment know the terrain. Their opinions zero in on subjects that resonate with Trump’s base, like immigration and cultural disputes, where the federal courts have become a central battleground. Every emphasis in these rulings carries intent. Conservative legal organizations that helped vet Trump’s earlier nominees are tracking this body of work and refining informal shortlists for the next opening. None of this means that a vacancy will happen, but it sure seems like judges are expecting it. Perhaps they know more than we do? It’s very possible.

And, should a vacancy take place this year, there’s very little that Democrats can do to stop it. The elimination of the judicial filibuster removed any real pressure on a Trump nominee to appeal to senators across the aisle. Republican presidents can now prioritize ideological conviction over bipartisan palatability, and judges angling for a nomination understand that calculus perfectly. As for the midterms, while it seems likely that Republicans will hold the Senate, it’s still very much a coin flip at this point. Hopefully, Trump will get the opportunity to secure at least one more seat on the Supreme Court while he still can.

Losing Alito or Thomas will be difficult, but securing a conservative majority for another generation is critical. I have no idea what will happen, but when a growing cohort of conservative judges is crafting opinions designed to get attention, it tells me they sense something is in the air. I’m starting to think that Trump’s next Supreme Court pick may come sooner than most people expect, because the competition for that spot is already well underway.

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Anyone seen Fauci lately?

• COVID-19 Was Spread Intentionally on Multiple Continents (Korsgaard)

The COVID-19 pandemic is long over. The headlines have shifted to a relentless cycle of bloody invasions and political scandals. It is very tempting to file the years of lockdowns, vaccine tyranny, and assaults on freedom into a folder of “unfortunate history” and never open it again. Most have. But the victims and a few researchers continue to ask questions and demand answers.


How many victims were there? Using U.N. population data, I have calculated that the pandemic years were associated with 20.5 million excess deaths. However, the total “growth loss” was a staggering 32 million people, as fewer babies were born than projected. This makes the pandemic comparable to World War I, which incurred a cost of 15 to 22 million deaths. But while historians have meticulously documented every bullet and bayonet of the Great War, the origin of the pandemic still remains a mystery.

First, we were fed a narrative about the novel coronavirus having a natural origin. For good reasons, many suspected that this was a limited hangout. Then came the second story: catastrophic incompetence—careless Chinese scientists allowed the virus to escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the rest is history. Unlike the narrative of a natural origin, there was some circumstantial evidence supporting the incompetence hypothesis, and many accepted it and moved on.

In my new book, The New September 11th: Solving the COVID-19 Pandemic, I present evidence that the virus was indeed made in a lab, but it did not leak by accident. Instead, suppressed genomic and epidemiological evidence strongly suggests that the virus was released on different continents within months of one another.

What is some of that evidence? In the book, I rigorously analyze all the data and systematically dismantle the false narratives, misdirections, and cover-ups by both Beijing and Washington. To provide the full context in an article is impossible, which is why I wrote the book. However, I will now explain the most important evidence in simple terms and in as few words as possible.

In late December 2019, molecular biologists identified and sequenced the coronavirus for the first time in Wuhan. The strain was young—meaning that it had only circulated for a few weeks [1]. Whether a lab leak or a spillover event at the wet market gave rise to the virus, they are both single-point origin hypotheses: the idea that the virus emerged in one location before spreading across the globe [..]

If the single-point origin holds water, every variant found across the globe is a direct descendant of the original parental strain in Wuhan. But this is not the case. Independent research groups from Italy, Brazil, Morocco, Angola, France, and others have conducted their own investigations into archived biological samples, identifying old strains of the virus long before it had even emerged in Wuhan. This is evidence of multiple viral introductions, a scenario that I have named the Parallel Release in Multiple Environments (P.R.I.M.E.) hypothesis. Here is a brief summary of one of the studies:

While the pandemic was well underway, researchers at the University of Milan began a retrospective search for the virus within their archives [2]. They were prompted by previous studies that had identified the virus before the official timeline and a mysterious increase in a rash now recognized as a COVID-19 symptom. Knowing that pre-pandemic research is a highly controversial matter, the researchers took extreme precautions to avoid cross-contamination and false positives. They, for instance, used 183 control samples (which never turned positive) and performed every stage of the study in physically separate laboratories in a facility that was free from the coronavirus.

Shockingly, multiple pre-pandemic samples were positive for RNA and/or antibodies. The earliest case dated back to September 12, 2019—an eight-month-old boy from Milan whose urine and serum samples were positive for the spike protein and two types of antibodies. This is long before the virus emerged in Wuhan. The researchers also sequenced the genetic material and confirmed that nine of their patients had indeed been infected with the novel coronavirus in 2019. Most shockingly, the strains were old, not young as they were in Wuhan months later. A technique called molecular clock analysis showed that the virus present in Italy had been circulating since mid-summer 2019.

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https://twitter.com/cryptogoos/status/2062056663709004178?s=20 https://twitter.com/CharlesMullins2/status/2062041643679989874?s=20

 

 

 

 

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