Menu Icon

Debt Rattle April 22 2026

Apr 222026
 
 April 22, 2026  Posted by at 7:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  42 Responses »


Edward Hopper The Circle Theater, New York 1936


• Trump Blinks Again, Unilaterally Extends Iran Ceasefire (ZH)
• Schrödinger’s Strait (PA)
• Trump Says Iran Can ‘Expect’ Bombs (ZH)
• Iran Promises To ‘Reveal New Cards On The Battlefield’ (RT)
• Iran: US Must Retract ‘Maximalist’ Nuclear Demands for Talks to Proceed (ET)
• Are We Seeing the Makings of an Iranian Civil War? (Eric Florack)
• Perspective on Iran Conflict and Latest Intel Efforts to Disrupt Trump (CTH)
• It Is, After All, the Department of Justice (CTH)
• US Intel Secretly Flagged Major 2020 Election Vulnerabilities (JTN)
• Spygate, Russiagate, IC Impeachment, Jack Smith Targeting and Lawfare (CTH)
• US, Cuban Regime Confirm ‘Secret’ Talks in Havana (Sarah Anderson)
• The Space Launch Industry Is in Big Trouble… Except for You-Know-Who (Green)
• Hungary’s Magyar Warns Netanyahu of Arrest (RT)
• Europe EV Sales Jump 51% As Iran War Sends Gasoline Prices Soaring (Paraskova)

 


 

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2046308075947405581?s=20 https://twitter.com/Tironianae/status/2046175457201041457?s=20

 


 


No, Trump doesn’t blink. This is scripted.

• Trump Blinks Again, Unilaterally Extends Iran Ceasefire (ZH)

TACO Tuesday… Again: Ceasefire Extended in Trump TS Post. Can’t make this up… Trump unilaterally extends ceasefire, but says US Navy’s blockade of Iran’s ports will stay in place, after Islamabad talks collapse. Trump punts again… enjoy TACO Tuesday… we can say at least the bombing doesn’t look to resume, yet. To give more formality to it – or make it official, the White House also quickly put out Trump’s statement (and in a more presentable font) below. Initial reaction from Tehran:

IRAN NOT OFFICIALLY COMMENTING ON CEASEFIRE EXTENSION
IRAN’S POSITION WILL BE ANNOUNCED SUBSEQUENTLY


2nd Round Talks Collapse, Vance Not Traveling
Late afternoon headlines now confirm what was looking more and more inevitable as the hours passed but with no one side boarding planes to head to Islamabad: the Associated Press is reporting that Vice President Vance has called off the whole trip. This also as Tasnim is reporting Iran’s “final decision” to not be in Pakistan Wednesday – the same day the two-week ceasefire formally comes to a close. Pakistan sources are meanwhile reporting that key negotiating figures are absent on the ground, and officials are said to be urging the sides to join a second-round summit. And per Bloomberg: “Iran, for its part, told the mediators its delegation won’t leave Tehran before the blockade is lifted, according to officials familiar with the matter.”

US Delegation Trip for Talks ‘On Hold’
As VP Vance has been seen at the White House, clearly not en route to Pakistan for Iran talks, a hugely significant headline has sent oil up and stocks dumping more:

VP Vance’s Pakistan trip has been put on hold as Iran’s leadership remained divided over whether to participate in a new round of peace talks, via Axios
VANCE TRIP ON HOLD AS IRAN DIDN’T RESPOND TO US POSITIONS: NYT
VANCE TRIP TO PAKISTAN HAS NOT BEEN CANCLED: NYT
Newsquawk market reaction: Stocks see weakness, while oil and Dollar gain amid NYT reports that VP Vance’s diplomatic trip to Islamabad has been put on hold after Tehran failed to respond to American negotiating positions.

Read more …

“.. open and closed at the same time,.”

• Schrödinger’s Strait (PA)

Over the weekend, the Strait of Hormuz became Schrödinger’s Strait: open and closed at the same time, depending on which headline you were reading. On Friday, markets traded as if the Iran war was winding down cleanly. Iran said the Strait was open to commercial shipping during the ceasefire, Trump said he expected a deal with Iran “soon,” oil fell, and stocks rallied. By Sunday evening, Brent was back up sharply and stock futures were lower, after new friction around the U.S. blockade and Iran’s threats to respond. Reuters reported over the weekend that U.S. forces had turned back vessels under the blockade rules, that Iran warned the Gulf and Gulf of Oman would not be secure if its ports were threatened, and that the U.S. enforcement zone extends east into the Gulf of Oman. That sounds like chaos, but there’s a logic to it.


Reflexivity With Warships
What Trump appears to be doing here—whether consciously or not—is something that looks a lot like George Soros’s principle of reflexivity. Soros’s basic idea was that markets don’t just passively reflect reality; they can also change it. Prices move, expectations shift, financing conditions tighten or loosen, and those moves feed back into the real economy and even into political decisions. That’s especially relevant in a war centered on oil flows, shipping lanes, and financial pressure.

Iran’s Lever
Iran’s preferred lever has been obvious for weeks: threaten the Strait of Hormuz, raise oil prices, spook global markets, and put pressure on Washington through the U.S. economy. Higher crude means higher gasoline prices, and higher gasoline prices are one of the fastest ways to create political pain for an American president.

That leverage is real, because oil is globally priced and higher crude still means higher gasoline prices for American consumers. But it is also less direct than it would be for countries more dependent on Gulf barrels. The U.S. imports about 30%-35% of its crude oil demand, but 60%-62% of those imports come from Canada. That doesn’t make Washington immune, but it does mean Tehran’s strongest market weapon is still blunter against the United States than against much of the rest of the world. That is Tehran’s most obvious form of reflexive pressure. It doesn’t need to destroy a U.S. carrier group to hurt Washington. It just needs to make markets believe supply is at risk.

Trump’s Lever
Trump’s pressure campaign has been different. Much more of it has been in the physical world. First, there’s the blockade itself. It’s not a general closure of the Strait. It’s a targeted effort to stop Iranian oil sales, block Iranian maritime commerce, and deny Tehran both export earnings and imports flowing through the Gulf. U.S. enforcement boundaries extend east into the Gulf of Oman, which means Washington can exert pressure without having to crowd all its ships into the narrow and dangerous Strait itself. Second, there’s the pressure that builds as time passes. A blockade doesn’t just reduce cash inflow. It also creates storage problems for a producer.

As Miad Maleki put it in an X post over the weekend, “the oil and gasoline clocks don’t negotiate.”

He wrote that Iran entered the blockade with about 15 million barrels in Kharg storage, roughly 51% full. At a flat production fill rate of 1.9 million barrels per day, that storage would max out in about 8 days. Even with aggressive upstream throttling, he said, the ceiling would still be hit in about 20 days. After that, wells may have to be shut in, risking permanent reservoir damage. nThat’s the point. As time passes, Tehran has to think not just about lost revenue, but about storage, field management, and what happens if production has to be curtailed under pressure.

The Market As Battlefield
And that’s where reflexivity comes in. If Iran can push oil high enough, long enough, it can create pressure on Trump through markets and through consumer prices. But if Trump can keep oil from rising too much—through his own rhetoric, through repeated hints of imminent talks, through confidence that the conflict will end soon—then he can blunt Iran’s pressure on the U.S. economy while continuing to squeeze Iran physically through the blockade.

In other words, the market itself becomes part of the battlefield. If crude stays lower than Tehran wants, Trump buys time. Lower oil prices mean less pressure from American drivers, less political pressure on the White House, and more room to keep the blockade in place. If crude spikes, the reverse happens: Tehran’s leverage rises, not because it has sunk the U.S. Navy, but because it has raised the domestic economic cost of continuing the campaign.

Read more …

Iran will delay wherever they can. They’ve done it for 50 years. It’s worked for 50 years. Trump will break that. But it will take some time.

• Trump Says Iran Can ‘Expect’ Bombs (ZH)

President Trump on Tuesday said he expects a strong outcome from negotiations with Iran, telling CNBC that “they will end up with a great deal.” He added that “Iran has no choice, it is regime change no matter what you want to call it,” and emphasized that the US is in “a strong negotiating position.” He said the naval blockade “has been successful” and that US forces are “in control of the Strait.” Trump also stated he does not want to extend the ceasefire, saying “there is not that much time” – but added that “Iran can get itself onto good footing with a deal.”


He also acknowledged that Iran has likely continued to do missile restocking in the ceasefire interim period, and also moving its remaining missile arsenal around. But Trump also claimed the US is “much more powerful than it was a few weeks again” and that CENTCOM used the ceasefire to restock as well. Importantly he also said the US is “ready to go militarily” and that the world should “expect” bombing – in the instance there’s no Pakistan deal reached. And an interesting China reference:

Caught an Iranian ship with gifts from China, thought he had an understanding with China’s Xi, says “that’s alright”. Pakistan Talks: Timeline Still Up in the Air Who will fly to Islamabad first? Al Jazeera comments on the emerging diplomatic standoff before actual diplomacy even gets started, amid the continued tit-for-tat threats of potential escalation on the battlefield: Pakistan is ready to host the talks. They are planning for them to take place on Wednesday at the highest level. But the White House has been very tight-lipped about when JD Vance will be leaving Washington.

What appears to be going on is the US trying to protect itself from embarrassment. If it is to send its team, which ends up sitting here in Islamabad without Iran showing up, that would be a huge embarrassment. As a result, there now appears to be a game between the US and Iran over who is going to get on their plane and fly here first. Per Bloomberg at about 4am US time: “Iran s state-run TV denies unspecified media reports that an Iranian delegation has departed for or arrived in Pakistan for negotiations with the US.” Latest:

Al Jazeera reports: Mediators received confirmation of US VP Vance and Iran’s Ghalifab’s arrival in Islamabad at dawn Wednesday to lead talks.At the same time, per WSJ, Iran has informed regional mediators that it will send a delegation to Islamabad after for days of repeatedly refusing to commit to a new round of negotiations. However, there’s not been official confirmation, only signaling, with Pakistani officials insisting the Iranians will be there. And yet, it was only on Monday that Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said that there was no plan for a second round of negotiations.

But if all goes well, Vice President Vance is expected to depart for Pakistan today, leading the delegation which includes Kushner and Witkoff. As a reminder, on Monday President Trump said “lots of bombs” will be unleased on Iran if there is no deal, and also given the White House doesn’t plan to extend the ceasefire. The key issues of Iran’s nuclear program and the Hormuz Strait loom large. Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has at the same time warned: “we do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and over the past two weeks we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield”.

Another Vessel Interdiction by US Navy
US forces boarded a sanctioned tanker without resistance in the Indo-Pacific as part of operations targeting vessels linked to Iran, the Pentagon said on X. Initial statements did not indicate a precise location, and clearly it did not occur in the Hormuz Strait. Washington recently announced it is ready to seize ‘illicit’ Iran-linked vessels anywhere on the high seas. The move follows Sunday’s major boarding of an Iranian-flagged vessel, when a US warship opened fire as it attempted to transit the strait, striking and damaging the engine room.

CENTCOM: Overnight, U.S. forces conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding of the stateless sanctioned M/T Tifani without incident in the INDOPACOM area of responsibility.

Read more …

They have no new cards. But they can say they do.

• Iran Promises To ‘Reveal New Cards On The Battlefield’ (RT)

Iranian officials have struck a defiant tone ahead of a possible new round of talks with Washington, warning that Tehran has prepared to “reveal new cards on the battlefield” while rejecting any negotiations conducted “under the shadow of threats.” Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf accused US President Donald Trump of trying to turn negotiations into “a table of surrender” and said Iran had spent the past two weeks preparing new military options.


“Trump, by imposing a siege and violating the ceasefire, seeks to turn this negotiating table – in his own imagination – into a table of surrender or to justify renewed warmongering. We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” Ghalibaf wrote on X.] Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, meanwhile, said the “non-constructive and contradictory” conduct of US officials sent the message that Washington was seeking Iran’s surrender, adding that Iranians “will not bow to coercion.”

The temporary ceasefire, brokered by Pakistan, is set to expire on Wednesday, after the first round of talks in Islamabad last weekend failed to produce a breakthrough and Trump imposed a US military blockade of Iranian ports. Trump warned on Sunday that if Iran doesn’t accept Washington’s “fair and reasonable deal,” the US is going to “knock out every single power plant, and every single bridge, in Iran.”

The US president initially announced the second round of talks for Monday, and the White House reportedly spent the day waiting for confirmation that Tehran would send its negotiating team. Axios reported later in the day that US Vice President J.D. Vance, alongside Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, was expected to leave for Islamabad by Tuesday morning.

According to Axios, Iranian negotiators had been stalling amid reported pressure from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to take a harder line and refuse talks unless the US first ends its blockade. The report claimed that Pakistani, Egyptian, and Turkish mediators had urged Tehran to attend, and that Iran’s team allegedly received a green light from the supreme leader on Monday night.

Read more …

‘Maximalist’ demands means: NO nuclear activity. Trump will not give that up.

• Iran: US Must Retract ‘Maximalist’ Nuclear Demands for Talks to Proceed (ET)

Iran is not ready to hold another set of peace talks with U.S. representatives until President Donald Trump backs off from his “maximalist” stance on Iran’s nuclear activity, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said on April 18. During a visit to Turkey on Saturday, Khatibzadeh told reporters that there needs to be a clear “framework of understanding” for peace talks to proceed. The Iranian official offered the comment with just days left on a two-week ceasefire that began on April 7.


Vice President JD Vance had led a U.S. delegation in a 21-hour round of talks with Iranian representatives on April 11, but the talks ended without a deal. At the time, Vance said the sticking point had been Iran’s refusal to clearly swear off the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Tehran has denied it’s pursuing nuclear weapons, however, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran has about 970 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity—a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent. As he spoke with reporters on Saturday, Khatibzadeh said Iran would not agree to stricter limits on nuclear activity than those expected of other countries under existing international standards.

“The other side should abandon its maximalist position and should respect international law, within which we can then secure diplomacy,” Khatibzadeh said. “I have to be very crystal clear that Iran would not accept to be an exception from the international law.” Earlier this week, Trump raised the prospect of a second round of weekend peace talks. As he spoke with reporters on Saturday, Khatibzadeh said no date would be set for such talks until there is a baseline agreement between Washington and Tehran. U.S. forces bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025. Since then, there has been speculation about whether stockpiles of highly enriched uranium may still be trapped under the rubble at these damaged nuclear facilities.

Read more …

Not so far. Too deadly.

• Are We Seeing the Makings of an Iranian Civil War? (Eric Florack)

Much has been made of the on-again, off-again negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz. The claim here in the States from a few under-informed individuals is that Donald Trump was lying to us about the status and that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, yada, yada, you know the drill. Of course, it’s untrue, but I want to take a few minutes this morning to explain why it’s untrue. The Islamic Regime in Iran is engineering its own destruction. The reason amounts to a civil war in Iran. To understand why, you must first understand what the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) actually is — and isn’t. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been studying the IRGC, its makeup, and its original purpose, as well as who controls it in the end.


With that understanding, we can have a better idea of the reason behind the on-again, off-again blockade situation we’ve seen over the last several days.Let’s bust a widely held misunderstanding right out of the gate. The IRGC is not a conventional military. Its founders did not build it to defend Iran’s borders. They built it in 1979 with a specific mandate: protect the Islamic Revolution and the clerical regime’s ideological order, suppress internal dissent, and project what they called “revolutionary power” across the region. The BBC called it a “business empire” back in 2010 — and that description still holds. The IRGC answers to no elected official. It reports directly to the Supreme Leader, bypassing the defense ministry and the civilian government entirely.

The IRGC commands land, naval, and missile forces, plus the Quds Force — the arm that funds, arms, and directs allied militias like Hezbollah and the Houthis. It also controls the Basij, a paramilitary force whose sole purpose is to keep Iran’s civilian population in line. The widespread killing of Iranian civilians over the past month is the Basij at work. As you may have picked up, the entire idea of the IRGC is permanent resistance and interference of the West, which, by the nature of the thing, includes the United States and Israel. That last point is the very reason for its existence. Absent that, the IRGC wouldn’t have any reason to exist at all.

Militarily, the IRGC is built for asymmetric warfare — an idea those of us who lived through Vietnam would recognize immediately. It is not designed for the swift, overwhelming force that conventional militaries such as our own pursue. It is designed to make any conflict long, painful, and costly. Threatening regional stability and choking energy flows isn’t a side effect of IRGC strategy — it is the strategy. The IRGC runs a parallel power structure inside Iran, and it answers to no one but the Supreme Leader. In that position and by design, it controls perhaps 40% of Iran’s economy. Say, construction companies, Telcom nets, and oil, to name a few items. I suppose that in some business sense, the IRGC is comparable to the East India Company.

With all that in mind, let’s turn to a piece in the Jerusalem Post from March 29: “Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian is reportedly clashing with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) chief Ahmad Vahidi over the economic and social impact of the war with the United States and Israel, Iran International reported on Saturday, citing Iranian sources. According to the London-based Iranian opposition outlet, Pezeshkian criticized the IRGC’s approach of increasing tensions in the region and attacking neighbouring countries, warning of the long-term effects that these movements could cause on the Iranian economy.

The report also mentioned that Pezeshkian has been demanding that executive decisions regarding the war be made by the Iranian government rather than the IRGC, a demand Vahidi did not accept. In response, the IRGC criticized Pezeshkian’s inability to implement structural reforms in the Islamic Republic to address several problems within the system before the current war began. The report comes as Iran’s already dying economy keeps being pushed toward full collapse after several weeks of war.

So this tells us many things. Among them, the civilian government is, and has been bucking the IRGC, with somewhat less than complete success. So we see that when Iranian President Pezeshkian, who seems, as a rule, more pragmatic than the IRGC, signaled he’s ready to be reasonable and will negotiate, the IRGC didn’t follow along, but rather launched a war against Iran’s civilian government. It is the IRGC who have been working against every diplomatic channel that Pezeshkian has been trying to open.

He’s not hiding by any means. Within the last 72 hours, Pezeshkian has been seen delivering a speech at Iran’s Ministry of Sports and Youth in Tehran, where he addressed the ongoing conflict with the US and stated that Iran is seeking to end the war “with dignity.” He’s also been in conference with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, ostensibly to discuss the current war. Both Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi have been at the center of reported internal tensions with the IRGC. It is the IRGC that’s been contradicting both Pezeshkian and Araghchi on the negotiations over Hormuz. Now, just because Pezeshkian seems more reasonable than the IRGC in some senses, doesn’t mean he’s not saying publicly things the IRGC wants him to say:

Iran is seeking to end the war with the US and Iran “with dignity,” the country’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Sunday, arguing that US President Donald Trump has no right to deprive Tehran of its nuclear rights, Anadolu reports. “Trump says Iran should not use its nuclear rights, but does not explain what crime Iran has committed,” Pezeshkian said during a visit to Iran’s Sports and Youth Ministry, the ISNA news agency reported. He also called for the nation to stand “firm against a bloodthirsty and brutal enemy.”Iran must manage the current atmosphere in a way that “does not portray us as war-mongers” as “we are defending ourselves,” he added.

Read more …

“Promethean Action Provides..” The elderly ladies are becoming a force.

The photo I’ve seen 5 times now. so here it is…

• Perspective on Iran Conflict and Latest Intel Efforts to Disrupt Trump (CTH)

Promethean Action – Barbara Boyd previews renewed Iran peace negotiations in Islamabad ahead of a ceasefire deadline, as Iran allegedly challenged a U.S. naval blockade, lost a ship, and again closed the Strait of Hormuz, with Trump warning “No More Mr. Nice guy” if peace fails and arguing Iran is bleeding $500 million a day. She shows a City of London–linked propaganda network is working to prolong the war and damage Trump before the midterms by targeting Vice President JD Vance, citing a Financial Times column by Edward Luce and post–Munich Security Conference smears portraying Vance as pro-Putin.

Boyd outlines three layers of Iran-linked messaging—Press TV in London, NIAC in Washington, and the “Iran Experts Initiative” infiltration of U.S. think tanks—and says justice is coming via prosecutions led by Joseph DiGenova, with Kash Patel promising arrests, while Vance leads talks and a National Fraud Task Force.

PRESIDENT TRUMP – “I’m winning a War, BY A LOT, things are going very well, our Military has been amazing and, if you read the Fake News, like The Failing New York Times, the absolutely horrendous and disgusting Wall Street Journal, or the now almost defunct, fortunately, Washington Post, you would actually think we are losing the War.

The enemy is confused, because they get these same Media “reports,” and yet they realize their Navy has been completely wiped out, their Air Force has gone onto darker runways, they have no Anti Missile or Anti Airplane Equipment, their former leaders are mostly gone (This has been, in addition to everything else, Regime Change!), and perhaps, most important of all, THE BLOCKADE, which we will not take off until there is a “DEAL,” is absolutely destroying Iran. They are losing $500 Million Dollars a day, an unsustainable number, even in the short run. The Anti-America Fake News Media is rooting for Iran to win, but it’s not going to happen, because I’m in charge! Just like these unpatriotic people used every ounce of their limited strength to fight me in the Election, they continue to do so with Iran. The result will be the same — It already is!” ~ President DONALD J. TRUMP.

Read more …

“Counsel to the Attorney General, has a nice ring to it.”

• It Is, After All, the Department of Justice (CTH)

Joe diGenova sworn in.


“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”
~Theodore Roosevelt

Counsel to the Attorney General, has a nice ring to it.

Heavenly Father, strengthen us when we feel weak and weary. Grant us perseverance to face challenges with courage and determination. Help us to trust in Your guidance, remain steadfast in our faith, and overcome every obstacle that comes our way. Fill our heart with confidence and resilience, allowing us to stay focused on our goals. May Your power flow through us so that we may achieve success that honors You and fulfills the purpose You have established for our life and this mission. Lord of righteousness, strengthen our faith so that we do not become discouraged, nor act impulsively. Grant us focus, discipline and energy so that every accomplishment can be a reflection of Your guidance. May every step we take align with Your will, and may patience guide us to sustain success with honor, fidelity and stewardship. Amen

Read more …

Memo newly declassified by DNI Gabbard shows concerns about integrity of American voting were far greater than the public was told by previous administrations. Evidence emerged that China had gained access to voter registration data in multiple states and had even sent fake driver’s licenses to the United States in a bid to help Joe Biden win the election, officials said.

• US Intel Secretly Flagged Major 2020 Election Vulnerabilities (JTN)

Months before the 2020 presidential election, U.S. intelligence issued a secret but stark warning that foreign adversaries had the capability to “compromise” America’s voting infrastructure and raised specific concerns about the vulnerability of voter registration databases that later would be penetrated by China and Iran, a newly declassified memo obtained by Just the News shows. The National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) concerns were so extensive that officials personally briefed President Donald Trump at the White House in February 2020, according to photos obtained by Just the News showing top CIA, FBI and Homeland Security officials joining with NIC analysts to inform the president.


But the American public was never fully alerted, even after evidence emerged that China had gained access to voter registration data in multiple states and had even sent fake driver’s licenses to the United States in a bid to help Joe Biden win the election, officials said. “We judge that US adversaries, including, at a minimum, Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise US election infrastructure for the 2020 presidential election,” the NIC wrote in the memo dated Jan. 15, 2020.

“Adversaries gaining access to US election-related systems could disrupt the voting process, steal sensitive data, or undermine confidence in the election results, but we do not know whether any of them have specific plans to manipulate election-related systems,” the memo added. The document was recently declassified by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who continues to expose examples of the intelligence community suppressing or misusing intelligence. Though officials say that an ongoing second Trump administration investigation has found no evidence yet that vote-counting machines were directly compromised in the 2020 election, the memo shows how such machines could be vulnerable to intrusions in the future and made clear that the voter registration databases that were breached by China and Iran were easy targets.

American voting system more vulnerable to intrusion than acknowledged
The memo, prepared by then-NationaI Intelligence for Cyber Christopher Porter, has become part of a broader body of evidence showing America’s election systems are more vulnerable to hacks, breaches and manipulations than previously acknowledged.After the 2020 election, many senior Intelligence Community officials insisted on the historical security of the 2020 election and downplayed concerns about such vulnerabilities.

Krebs: “The 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history.”
For example, the members of the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee released a mid-November 2020 joint statement declaring that “the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” One of the officials who sat on that committee, Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, testified to the Senate after the election that he “approved CISA’s publication of a joint statement from the election security community, reflecting that community’s consensus that the 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history.”

Krebs has been accused by the Trump White House of being “a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his government authority. Krebs’ misconduct involved the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic.”

Porter: “It is no secret that China and Iran compromise election equipment for a variety of intelligence purposes”
But Porter told Just the News those assurances did not reflect the government’s assessment of just how vulnerable America’s election infrastructure was. Iran and China did gain access eventually to voter registration data, but those breaches were suppressed until November 2021, when Iranian hackers were indicted, and March 2026 when Just the News obtained the first declassified documents acknowledging Beijing’s penetration of voter registration data.

[..] Intelligence community had disdain for the “vulgarian” Trump
In January 2021, the Intelligence Community analytic ombudsman — tasked with ensuring objectivity in intelligence products — conducted a review of the spy community’s handling of Russian and Chinese meddling efforts during the 2020 election. He concluded that intelligence analysts downplayed China’s actions because they had disdain for the “vulgarian” Trump and did not want to support the policies and priorities of the Trump administration toward China with which they “personally disagree,” Just the News reported last month.

Read more …

“..the Obama-Clinton-Kerry Iranian deal likely included a mechanism for return payments to U.S. officials following the release of billions in frozen Iranian asset funds and the loosening of sanctions “

• Spygate, Russiagate, IC Impeachment, Jack Smith Targeting and Lawfare (CTH)

In the next few days, much more about the overall investigative review underway in Florida will likely begin to surface. The review has been led by USAO Jason A. Reding Quiñones, a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Florida. Quinones is now supported by Counsel to the AG, Joe diGenova. As with all investigations containing multiple players and actors, the first investigative information is extracted from testimony by those furthest away from the principals, yet closest to the granular details of the events being reviewed. The questioning then goes upstream, using information collected to assemble more specific questions as the principal players are approached.


The widest concentric circles are questioned first. Then, using the responses and investigative information from that circle, the questioning and inquiry goes to the next inner circle of participants. The information is assembled, and more pointed questions are then targeted to the next inner circle; the process continues until the core is questioned. Beginning with the end in mind, the biggest challenge is knowing what the correct questions are to ask of those who were closest to the corrupt activity (the outer circle). Background research then becomes critical. From those pointed questions you get answers. Then, next level of more specific questions get focus, and so on, and so on.

On March 20, 2026, James Comey was subpoenaed. Also remember, there are two distinct and different aspects to the overall conspiracy and timeline. nThere was surveillance of the 2016 Republican candidates by contractors working on behalf of the FBI who was institutionally collaborating with the Clinton campaign; that is known as “Spygate.” There was then an FBI operation to target and eliminate the threat represented by the 2016 GOP primary winner, Donald Trump; that is known as “Russiagate.” ‘Spygate’ and ‘Russiagate’ are two distinctly different corrupt pathways that eventually merged due to common interests.

The Mueller investigation, an extension of Crossfire Hurricane (Russiagate) was used by Obama-era politicians and internal government officials as a mechanism to block President Trump from executing a divergent foreign policy. The primary policy of focus was to protect the Obama era operations, including the Iran deal. Based on mounting evidence, a pattern in other international activities and U.S. participants, the Obama-Clinton-Kerry Iranian deal likely included a mechanism for return payments to U.S. officials following the release of billions in frozen Iranian asset funds and the loosening of sanctions – (ie. pallets of cash). Qatar was the mediator/broker.

However, it is speculated, perhaps being evidenced, that return payments to the Obama team contained a timing mechanism, and the quid-pro-quo payments were stopped after President Trump withdrew from the Iran deal and re-instituted sanctions. Thus, a much larger background context exists for why the totality of the U.S. government and Intelligence Community opposed President Donald Trump. Is it all about the money? Time will tell. Current events may not be coincidental.

Read more …

Where Marco has free rein.

• US, Cuban Regime Confirm ‘Secret’ Talks in Havana (Sarah Anderson)

On April 10, something happened in Cuba that hasn’t happened in a decade: a U.S. government plane touched down outside of Guantánamo Bay. We have confirmation of this from the Cuban regime via their official Communist Party propaganda newspaper, Granma. Several media outlets, including Fox News, CNN, and the Miami Herald, are also confirming it, based on statements from unnamed senior State Department officials. The State Department delegation — supposedly made up of assistant or deputy-level officials but not Marco Rubio himself — reportedly warned the Cuban regime that it has a very short window in which to make a deal, which supposedly includes releasing political prisoners and making major economic and political reforms.


“As President [Donald] Trump has stated, a new dawn for Cuba is coming very soon. The Cuban regime should stop playing games as direct talks are occurring. They have a small window to make a deal,” a State Department official told the Miami Herald. Some outlets are reporting that the talks included compensation for U.S. citizens and companies whose properties were confiscated after the 1959 revolution, allowing Elon Musk’s Starlink into Cuba (it’s currently illegal to use there), and discussion of the threat of foreign military and terrorist groups being allowed to operate freely in the island nation.

Allegedly, a separate meeting was held with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, Raúl Castro’s grandson who goes by “Raulito” or “El Cangrejo” (the crab). While Rubio has never confirmed it that I’m aware of, some media outlets report that this is not the first time a team from the State Department has met with the younger Castro. And, of course, the Cuban regime tells a different story. Deputy Director General for U.S. Affairs Alejandro García del Toro told Granma that the meeting was “respectful and professional,” but denies that were any conditions, like political prisoners, or deadlines set by the United States. He also called it a “delicate matter” that is being handled “discreetly.”

“Eliminating the energy blockade against the country was a matter of top priority for our delegation. This act of economic coercion is an unjustified punishment for the entire Cuban population,” he said. The Miami Herald reports that a U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton surveillance drone was flying near Havana during the meeting, though I’ve noted that happening on other days last week, as well. Basically, the regime is attempting to paint this as normal diplomacy between two countries. But we all know it’s not. Regardless of what was actually discussed, Trump has made it pretty clear that he’s got his eye on making a change in Cuba soon. Assuming all of this is true, I believe he and Rubio are testing them to determine what the next steps are once we’re not so distracted with Iran.

As I reported over the weekend, on Friday, while speaking at a Turning Point USA rally, Trump said, “And very soon, this great strength will also bring about a day 70 years in waiting — it’s called a new dawn in Cuba. We’re going to help them out with Cuba. We have a lot of great Cuban-Americans… that were brutally treated, whose families were killed, and now, watch what happens.” Later, while aboard Air Force One, a reporter asked him about anonymous reports that the Pentagon is ramping up plans for military action against Cuba. “Well, it depends on what your definition of military action is,” the president said, not giving much away.

Read more …

“.. a “constellation that every smartphone, every ship, every aircraft and every missile guidance system on Earth depends on. SpaceX might just call it “Tuesday.”

• The Space Launch Industry Is in Big Trouble… Except for You-Know-Who (Green)

“Early this morning, SpaceX launched the final GPS III satellite in our constellation, the most advanced GPS satellites ever built,” Space Force Gen. Chance Saltzman announced on Tuesday. It’s the finishing touch, as Chronos Intelligence explained, in a “constellation that every smartphone, every ship, every aircraft and every missile guidance system on Earth depends on. SpaceX might just call it “Tuesday.” Elon Musk’s launch company is about to raise tens of billions in the biggest-ever IPO on its way to easily top a $1 trillion valuation — and no wonder. This morning’s Space Force mission was its 48th Falcon 9 launch of the year (with a 100% success rate) and on track to roughly match last year’s record-breaking launch cadence.


Meanwhile, the company is making final preparations for the next flight test of the massive Starship rocket that will not only make the Falcon 9 obsolete, but every other rocket in the world. But I’m not here today to praise Musk or SpaceX. I just needed to set the stage to show you how the competition is performing. Or not. Because Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance (ULA) are having a rough time. Blue Origin whiffed a major New Glenn mission on Sunday, putting a $30 million AST SpaceMobile cellular satellite into the wrong orbit. Bluebird 7 is so low that it lacks enough onboard fuel to boost itself to its proper orbit, and will have to be de-orbited as a total loss. AST SpaceMobile shares were down sharply on Monday and have yet to fully recover.

BO touted the launch as a success — they did recover the booster, which is always impressive. And the booster was partially reused, which is even more impressive. But the mission was a failure, and celebrating that is not a good look. New Glenn is “likely grounded for four months” to investigate what went wrong with the upper stage, according to Next Big Future’s Brian Wang. Meanwhile, ULA’s Vulcan workhorse — well, sort of — is grounded following two Northrop Grumman solid rocket booster failures. Folks, space is too big and too important for the United States of America to have just one reliable launch provider. True story.

SpaceX successfully landed an orbital launch vehicle — the now-venerable Falcon 9 — in late 2015. Just 15 months later, in early 2017, the company successfully re-flew a “flight proven” Falcon 9. Here we are, more than nine years later, and Blue Origin is only now becoming the second company anywhere in the world to master reusable rockets. I watched those early SpaceX efforts in total amazement, and not just because one of my closest friends was an actual rocket surgeon at ULA. Ed was very good at his job and had the bonus checks for nailing satellite orbital placement to prove it. So I asked him one time why ULA wasn’t looking into reusability.

“We did look into it, we’re not idiots,” he said. “We’re good engineers. We could do it, but the economics didn’t work out.” Making a rocket reusable comes with tradeoffs, and ULA didn’t see enough demand for lift to make those compromises financially worthwhile. SpaceX created Starlink, which generates the demand and the cash flow to keep the company ahead of the competition. My friend was right that ULA had plenty of engineering talent, but the corporate management lacked imagination.

Because, as the country’s only major launch company for so long, ULA didn’t need imaginative management — they just needed the next NASA or Pentagon launch. And those were basically guaranteed at the slow-but-steady cadence that the company’s disposable Atlas and Delta rockets could deliver. For what it’s worth, not long after that conversation, ULA “voluntold” engineering graybeards like my friend — actually guys as young as their early 50s — to retire. I couldn’t tell you for sure that retiring the most experienced engineering talent is directly responsible for ULA’s current woes, but there’s more than enough room there for conjecture.

ULA’s busiest year was 2016 with a total of 16 launches. After that, the company began transitioning to the troubled Vulcan Centaur rocket, which launched just five times in 2025, and is currently “paused” while Northrop Grumman works out issues with the solid rocket boosters — after a decade of development and transition. SpaceX conducted 165 Falcon 9 launches in 2025 with a 100% success rate.

Read more …

“The incoming PM has pledged to stop Budapest’s withdrawal from the ICC, which has an active warrant for the Israeli leader..”

• Hungary’s Magyar Warns Netanyahu of Arrest (RT)

Hungary’s incoming prime minister, Peter Magyar, has said he would order the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he enters the country, marking a sharp reversal of predecessor Viktor Orban’s policy. Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Magyar said he would halt Hungary’s withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC), initiated by Orban, and stressed that as a member state Budapest is legally obliged to enforce its arrest warrants. The ICC issued warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in 2024 over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.


Israel claimed earlier this week that Magyar had spoken with Netanyahu and invited him to visit Hungary after his Tisza party’s landslide win on April 12. Asked to clarify, Magyar confirmed the call but downplayed the invitation, saying he had spoken with multiple leaders and broadly invited them to attend an upcoming anniversary of the 1956 popular uprising. He added that Netanyahu was informed Hungary would seek to remain in the ICC – and what that implies.

“I made it clear to the Israeli prime minister that we are not stepping back [from the ICC]. It is the Tisza government’s intention to stop this and for Hungary to remain a member,” Magyar said. “So I think I didn’t mislead anyone. If a country is a member of the ICC and if a person who is wanted enters that country’s territory, they must be taken into custody… I assume that every state and government leader is aware of these regulations.”

Magyar’s position marks a direct break with the stance of the outgoing government, which rejected the ICC’s jurisdiction and guaranteed Netanyahu safe passage. Orban dismissed the warrant as “brazen and cynical.” Last April, Budapest moved to withdraw from the ICC, arguing the court had become politicized. The country’s parliament approved the move in May, though under the Rome Statute withdrawal only takes effect a year after formal UN notification, currently set for June 2.

Magyar campaigned on repairing ties with Brussels and unlocking more than €16 billion ($19 billion) in EU funds for Hungary currently frozen due to rule-of-law and corruption allegations. Since his victory, Magyar has also pledged to reform state media, consider Eurozone membership, and end vetoes on Ukraine aid – though with caveats. He backed Hungary’s opt-out from the EU’s €90 billion loan package to Kiev, citing budget constraints, and said Ukraine’s EU accession within a decade is unrealistic.

At Monday’s press conference, he also urged Kiev to reopen the Russian Druzhba pipeline and said Hungary would not accept “any kind of blackmail” over energy supplies. He previously said Budapest would continue buying Russian energy, prioritize the cheapest oil, and signaled he would “pick up” if Russian President Vladimir Putin called.

Read more …

“Europe’s five largest countries — Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Poland — all recorded BEV growth above 40% year-to-date.”

If the EVs were Peugeots and BMWs, easy peasy. But they’re Chinese and Tesla, I think.

• Europe EV Sales Jump 51% As Iran War Sends Gasoline Prices Soaring (Paraskova)

Registrations of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in Europe’s key automotive markets surged by 51% in March as the Iran war pushed gasoline prices to multi-year highs, data published by research firm New Automotive and trade association E-Mobility Europe showed on Monday. More than 224,000 new electric passenger cars were registered in March alone across 15 key EU + EFTA markets, the analysis found. These sales accounted for as much as 22% of all new passenger car sales across the key European markets.


In another sign that expensive gasoline is pushing drivers to EVs, European Union member states registered more than 500,000 new electric cars in the first quarter of 2026, a surge of 33.5% compared to the same period last year, the data showed. New BEV registrations accelerated across every major EU market in the first quarter of 2026. Europe’s five largest countries — Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Poland — all recorded BEV growth above 40% year-to-date. Europe’s biggest car market, Germany, saw a rebound in EV sales after the introduction of new incentives, with around one in four cars registered in March fully electric – a 42% year-to-date jump, according to the data. Italy’s BEV registrations soared by 65% year-to-date, boosting the EV market share to 8.6% in March from about 5% as of the end of 2025.

France continued to lead among large markets with a 28% BEV share in March, underpinned by its social leasing scheme, and nearly 50% year-to-date growth. Energy security was the catalyst for change in driver choice in recent weeks, analysts at New Automotive and E-Mobility Europe say. “At a time when energy security has moved to the top of the political agenda, the EV transition is delivering real and measurable resilience,” commented Ben Nelmes, CEO of New Automotive. “The pace of change we’re now seeing across major European markets — including countries like Italy and Poland that were slower to start — suggests the transition has entered a new phase.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/argosaki/status/2046475300960391255?s=20

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle April 2 2026

Apr 022026
 
 April 2, 2026  Posted by at 9:49 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  63 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh A Lane near Arles (Side of a Country Lane) 1888


• Trump Reassures Americans: Iran Operation Won’t Be a Forever War (Chris Queen)
• US, Iran Discussing Ceasefire In Exchange For Reopening Strait (ZH)
• Rubio Delivers a Reality Check on Iran, NATO, Cuba, and Venezuela (Anderson)
• Marco Rubio, the Question Must be Asked: “Why are we in NATO”? (CTH)
• NATO Without America? A Slow Shift Is Already Underway (Zevelev)
• Keir Starmer Gives a National Address – Things Will Never be the Same Again (CTH)
• Chuck Schumer Is Losing Control of His Party; They Turn On Him (Margolis)
• Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Warns Against Unbridled Free Speech (Turley)
• How Many Times has the EU Screwed Itself Over in the Past Year? (Marsden)
• Europe Needs to Hear This Harsh Truth (Stephen Green)
• A Civilization Whose Defense is Abandoned, is Lost (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Charlie Kirk Bullet Doesn’t Match Suspect’s Rifle – Lawyers (RT)
• More Than Half of Americans Believe AI Will Do More Harm Than Good: Poll ET)

 


 

https://twitter.com/andweknow/status/2039304266775740853?s=20 https://twitter.com/WallStreetMav/status/2039126040686248240?s=20 https://twitter.com/ScaryEurope/status/2039236276709376095?s=20 https://twitter.com/BasilTheGreat/status/2039088940129391074?s=20

 


 

 


 


He has to wrap it up quickly, nobody wants a long war, or heavy casualties, and it’s midterms soon.

• Trump Reassures Americans: Iran Operation Won’t Be a Forever War (Chris Queen)

President Donald Trump delivered a speech on Wednesday night with the intention of informing Americans about what’s going on with our joint military operations with Israel against Iran. It was remarkably restrained for a Trump speech and relatively brief. Side note: My favorite phrase from the speech was when Trump referred to the “green, green cash” that Barack Obama threw at the Islamic regime during his presidency. The president remarked that Wednesday was the one-month mark for Operation Epic Fury:


As we speak this evening, it has been just one month since the United States military began Operation Epic Fury targeting the world’s number one state sponsor of terror, Iran. In these past four weeks, our Armed Forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield — victories like few people have ever seen before. Tonight, Iran’s navy is GONE. Their air force is in ruins. Their leaders, most of them — the terrorist regime they led — are now dead. Their command and control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Core is being decimated as we speak. Their ability to launch missiles and drones is dramatically curtailed and their weapons, factories, and rocket launchers are being blown to pieces — very few of them left. Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks.

He reminded viewers that disabling Iran was one of his earliest campaign promises: “From the very first day I announced my campaign for President in 2015, I have vowed that I would never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. This fanatical regime has been chanting ‘Death to America, ‘Death to Israel,’ for 47 years. Their proxies were behind the murder of 241 Americans in the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut, the slaughter of hundreds of our servicemembers with roadside bombs, they were involved in the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, and they’ve carried out countless other heinous acts… For these terrorists to have nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat. The most violent and thuggish regime on earth would be free to carry out their campaigns of terror, coercion, conquest, and mass murder from behind a nuclear shield. I will never let that happen.”

The president expressed that his goal was to resolve Iran’s issues diplomatically, but Iran wouldn’t allow that to happen: “My first preference was always the path of diplomacy — yet, the regime continued their relentless quest for nuclear weapons and rejected every attempt at an agreement. For this reason, in June, I ordered a strike on Iran’s key nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer… The regime then sought to rebuild their nuclear program at a totally different location, making clear they had no intention of abandoning their pursuit of nuclear weapons… For years, everyone has said that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons — but in the end, those are just words if you’re not willing to take action when the time comes.”

Trump acknowledged the pain Americans are feeling at the gas pump. (As somebody who recently bought a new vehicle that gets much lower gas mileage than my prior car, I can testify.) “Many Americans have been concerned to see the recent rise in gasoline prices here at home… This short-term increase has been entirely the result of the Iranian regime launching deranged terror attacks against commercial oil tankers and neighboring countries that have nothing to do with the conflict. This is yet more proof that Iran can never be trusted with nuclear weapons. They will use them and they will use them quickly. It would lead to decades of extortion, economic pain, and instability worse than we can ever imagine. The United States has never been better prepared economically to confront this threat.”

He called out nations that are dealing with the effects of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz: “To those countries that can’t get fuel — many of which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, we had to do it ourselves — I have a suggestion. Number one, buy oil from the United States of America; we have plenty. We have so much. And Number two, build up some delayed courage… Go to the Strait and just take it. Protect it. Use it for yourselves. Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done.”

After assuring the public that operations in Iran should be done in “two to three weeks,” Trump reassured his viewers that Iran’s days as a threatening power are almost over. “Tonight, every American can look forward to a day when we are finally free from the wickedness of Iranian aggression and the specter of nuclear blackmail,” he declared. “Because of the actions we have taken, we are on the cusp of ending Iran’s sinister threat to America and the world.”

Tonight, the president gave a speech that was characteristically Trumpian. But it achieved the objectives that he wanted of informing the American people that Operation Epic Fury is nearly over and won’t be a “forever war.”

Read more …

A ceasefire or “back to the stone age”, everything’s on the menu.

• US, Iran Discussing Ceasefire In Exchange For Reopening Strait (ZH)

Ahead of Trump’s address tonight at 9pm ET, Axios reports citing three sources that the US and Iran are discussing a potential deal that would involve a ceasefire in exchange for Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz “The officials did not say whether those discussions had taken place directly or only through mediators, and they cautioned that it was unclear whether a deal could be reached. But the officials said President Trump was discussing the possibility with officials inside and outside the administration.” As a reminder, earlier in the day Trump claimed on Wednesday that Iran had asked the U.S. for a ceasefire, but stressed he would only consider it if the strait was reopened. In response, Iran countered that it had not requested a ceasefire. https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/2039352788468003220
* * *

Iranian Supreme Leader Vows To “Continue Supporting The Resistance Against The Zionist-US Enemy”
Amid speculation that he is dead or badly wounded, moments ago Iran’s new supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said on X that he “emphatically declare that the consistent policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, following on the path of Imam Khomeini and the martyred Leader, is to continue supporting the Resistance against the Zionist-US enemy.”
* * *

Iran: Not True that Iran Requested a Ceasefire
Iran has again rejected Trump’s narrative, after he hours ago claimed that “Iran’s New Regime President” has just “asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!” Iran’s Foreign Ministry has responded by saying “there is no truth” to “Trump’s statements that Iran requested a ceasefire.” The Iran FM spox statement continues: “No decision has been made yet. We have many considerations. Our conditions for ending the war are very clear. We do not accept a ceasefire; We seek a complete end.” As a reminder, President Masoud Pezeshkian has been Iran’s president since July 2024 – and he’s made public appearances in Tehran, even over the last days. There is not a “new regime president”.= Additionally, Trump is now threatening to bomb Iran “back to the stone age” if Hormuz is not reopened, but just yesterday suggested he’s fine with it staying closed and that ultimately others should open it.

Preparing American Public for an Exit?
President Trump has issued new words to Reuters on his highly anticipated speech tonight (9pm ET): The United States will be “out of Iran pretty quickly” and could return for “spot hits” if needed, President Donald Trump tells Reuters, hours before he was scheduled to make a primetime address to the nation. Trump also says he would state in the speech that he is considering withdrawing the US from the NATO alliance. There’s expected to be heavy focus on chastising NATO. If this is indeed the Bush-style ‘mission accomplished’ moment, it may be that he’s ready to blame Western allies for the closure of the Hormuz Strait – a problem which didn’t exist before Operation Epic Fury.

Trump: Iran President has Asked for Ceasefire
President Trump on Truth Social has claimed the US has been directly asked for ceasefire; however, he coupled this with the typical threat of bombing Iran “back to the Stone Ages!!!” Here’s what he said (note: Iran does not have a new president): Iran’s New Regime President, much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE! We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!! President DJT

And yet the Hormuz question lingers, after just yesterday Trump strangely said the vital energy shipping waterway would “automatically open”. Oil prices initially dumped on the Trump message, and quickly rebounded – perhaps based on the latter part of Trump’s statement. A lot would have to happen – for one Washington is likely to require that Tehran giving up charging a some $2 million fee for tankers to make safe passage. Oil unimpressed…

Read more …

“Cuba has no economy, and no one there can fix the economy because they’re incompetent. ..”

• Rubio Delivers a Reality Check on Iran, NATO, Cuba, and Venezuela (Anderson)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been doing a lot of MSM interviews lately, and I kind of get the feeling he’s… fed up. He’s tired of having to correct false narratives on Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela. As I reported on Monday, he got to a point where he told George Stephanopoulos that maybe he needed to “write down” Donald Trump’s objectives for Iran because no matter how many times Rubio told him what they were, he implied that he didn’t understand them. While it was entertaining, it does get old, I imagine.


The three main points about these topics that he’s asked about in every interview — and there have been a lot; perhaps Trump is prepping him to cover for Karoline Leavitt when she goes on maternity leave (kidding) — are as follows: 1) We’re very close to meeting our objectives in Iran. Not months, not days but weeks away. 2) Cuba has no economy, and no one there can fix the economy because they’re incompetent. 3) Venezuela is in phase two of the three-phase plan he and Trump have for its recovery, and things are going very well there. But no matter how many times he says these things, to hear the MSM tell it, the administration has no idea what’s going on in Iran, the people in Cuba are suffering because of Trump, and Venezuela isn’t improving at all.

Well, on Tuesday night, Rubio appeared on Hannity on Fox News, where he was actually allowed to talk without being asked asinine questions. He hit on all three countries (and NATO), and while he didn’t necessarily say anything new, he was able to lay it all out clearly and without dealing with stupidity, so it was nice to watch. Plus, as I said, he’s fed up with these MSM narratives, and it’s always fun to watch him get a little worked up. I’m going to kick back here and let him do most of the talking. I feel like i’m taking the lazy way out, but sometimes, it’s best just to let him talk. On how efficiently our military has achieved its objection and how it will “go down in history”:

On the threat to the United States and the rest of the world:

On why it’s the regime’s fault that we’ve gotten to this point:

Read more …

“The NATO membership is now a one-way street where they demand our military protection..”

• Marco Rubio, the Question Must be Asked: “Why are we in NATO”? (CTH)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears on Fox News to discuss the various goals and objectives of the U.S. military operation against Iran. As part of the interview Secretary Rubio was asked about the strategic conflicts and hypocrisies now flowing from NATO member states. The U.S. supports our NATO posture in Europe in part because it provides us with strategic military bases and operations that are considered vital to our national interests. However, as outlined in the Iran conflict, when we need to use those strategic bases the NATO member states withdraw previous permissions. France has blocked us from flying over their airspace, Spain and Italy have said the U.S. cannot use our military bases on their soil for operations. The U.K has refused to protect and/or escort their own energy assets.


The NATO membership is now a one-way street where they demand our military protection, but Europe blocks us from using our own military assets for our independent operations. Europe, while hiding behind the NATO protection skirt of the U.S, is simultaneously telling the U.S. what we can and cannot do with our own military. Secretary Rubio and President Trump are now confronting this very visible one-way benefit head on.

Read more …

80 years ago.

• NATO Without America? A Slow Shift Is Already Underway (Zevelev)

US President Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy is often dismissed as chaotic or erratic. In reality, it reflects a deeper shift that is unlikely to disappear when he leaves office. Beneath the surface lies a consistent worldview, one shaped by populism and nationalism, that’s steadily gaining ground, both within the United States and globally. This shift is already reshaping long-standing institutions. Nowhere is this more visible than in Washington’s relationship with its European allies. For decades, US foreign policy rested on a simple premise: alliances, above all NATO, were the foundation of American power and influence. That consensus held across party lines for nearly 80 years. Today, it’s breaking down.


Trump is not merely skeptical of alliances, he openly questions their value. His reaction to the refusal of European allies to support US and Israeli military action against Iran was telling. Writing on Truth Social, he described NATO as a “paper tiger” and accused American allies of cowardice. “Everyone agrees with us, but they don’t want to help. And we, as the United States, must remember this,” he said. The message is blunt: if allies don’t act when Washington calls, then their status as allies is called into question. This doesn’t mean the United States is about to withdraw from NATO. What is unfolding is more gradual, and arguably more significant – a quiet dismantling of the alliance’s traditional structure.

There are growing signs of this shift: sharper rhetoric, fewer high-level engagements, and plans to reduce the American role within NATO’s command system. This is no longer just political theater.Even when constrained by Congress, as in the decision to block a rapid reduction of US troops in Europe, the administration has adjusted tactics rather than abandoning its objective. The restriction on cutting troop levels below 76,000 slows the process, but doesn’t change its direction. The broader aim remains clear: shifting responsibility onto Europe.A key element of this strategy is the gradual transfer of operational control. Reforms to NATO’s integrated command structure are already underway.

Soon, all three of the alliance’s operational commands will be led by Europeans. This marks a significant step towards transforming NATO into a European-led organization. If the United States relinquishes its central role in force planning and command, the consequences will be profound. NATO may remain intact in form, but its substance will change. Washington will no longer lead the alliance in the way it once did. This isn’t simply a matter of one president’s preferences. Trump reflects a broader shift in American public opinion.

There’s growing fatigue in the United States with the idea of underwriting the security of others. Years of costly conflicts in the Middle East, rising national debt, and pressing domestic concerns have made the traditional role of global guarantor increasingly unpopular. Don’t mistake it for isolationism. The recent strikes on Iran demonstrate that Washington remains willing to use force when it chooses. The change is more subtle, and more consequential. The United States no longer wants to be bound by obligations. Alliances and institutions that once defined American leadership are now seen as constraints. The emerging model is one of leadership without commitments: the ability to act freely, without being tied to the interests or expectations of partners.

That is a fundamentally different approach to international relations. It leaves NATO in an uncertain position, still formally intact, but increasingly hollowed out. In time, the alliance may survive. But it will no longer be the same organization that defined the transatlantic relationship for generations. And it’s far from clear that Europe is ready for what comes next.

Read more …

“.. if it remains alone, without key support and protection from the USA, the British empire is at risk of collapse.”

• Keir Starmer Gives a National Address – Things Will Never be the Same Again (CTH)

Against the backdrop of the Iran conflict, crisis in the middle east and the disruption of energy supplies due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, U.K Prime Minister Keir Starmer held an urgent meeting with British business leaders, finance and bankers as well as U.K insurance leaders. At the conclusion of that meeting he informed media of a national address. During the national address to the people of Great Britain, Prime Minister Starmer emphasized that events in the middle east have forever changed the landscape of U.K. economic and geopolitical policy. Signaling an inflection point crossed, the British prime minister announced that urgent actions were being taken to mitigate a national crisis.


Additionally, accepting the U.S. position toward NATO and the U.K appears to be permanently shifted, Starmer said the British relationship with Europe now becomes critical to their vital national security interests. Against the backdrop of an end to the “special relationship” with America, the Brexit independence from the European Union is now a threat. The United Kingdom must find a way to reunite with the European Union, because if it remains alone, without key support and protection from the USA, the British empire is at risk of collapse.


Read more …

“..while he may be the most recognizable congressional leader, that familiarity isn’t doing him any favors ..”

• Chuck Schumer Is Losing Control of His Party; They Turn On Him (Margolis)

A quiet rebellion is brewing inside the Democratic Party, and Chuck Schumer is sitting right in the crosshairs. Even as the Senate Minority Leader works to claw back the majority he lost in 2024, several Senate candidates are making it a point of pride to say they won’t support him as leader — before they’ve even won their races. The clearest shot came from Illinois. Lieutenant Gov. Juliana Stratton, who won her Democratic Senate primary earlier this month, made her position crystal clear during a January debate. “I’ve already said that I will not support Chuck Schumer as leader in the Senate, and I’m the only person on this stage that has said so,” Stratton declared. She’s not alone.


Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow has also called for Schumer to step aside. Texas Senate Democratic nominee James Talarico is keeping his options open, saying he wants to hear from leadership candidates before making any commitment. And when Sen. Chris Murphy was offered the opportunity on NBC’s Meet the Press to back Schumer directly, he ducked it with a classic non-answer: “Well, no, we are united as a caucus right now.” United, sure. Just not necessarily behind Schumer.

Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, was careful to keep his support firmly in the past tense. “I’ve been supportive of our leadership right now,” Kim said, which is a far cry from saying he’d vote to keep Schumer in charge after November, and it’s quite the insult to the sitting leader. “And I think that that’s really what the American people are seeing is what we get when the Democrats are united, and the Republicans are constantly fighting themselves,” Kim concluded.

The Hill reports: “Schumer, 75, has led the Senate Democratic Conference since 2016, when he replaced longtime party leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who died in 2021. But in recent years, the New York Democrat has faced calls to give up power from various corners of the party, including from progressive groups, House Democrats, and even Democrats running for Senate. Criticism of Schumer particularly ramped up after eight Democrats, a group he was not part of, joined Republicans in voting to end the record-long government shutdown in November.

Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, the Democratic nominee in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), told liberal YouTuber Jack Cocchiarella earlier this month that she does not support Schumer serving as Senate Democratic leader for another Congress. We all know that Schumer’s problems with the base go back to this vote to keep the government open last March. That one vote cost him dearly with the base, and he’s never recovered from it. Schumer told The Hill he is just focused on winning the majority in November.

“The way to counter Trump more effectively is to win the majority in 2026 and put gavels in the hands of Democrats. That’s my North Star, and that’s what I’m focused on doing every single day,” Schumer said. A recent Morning Consult poll found that while he may be the most recognizable congressional leader, that familiarity isn’t doing him any favors. Compared to John Thune, Mike Johnson, and Hakeem Jeffries, Schumer is viewed the most negatively.

Read more …

“No One Knows What Will Happen Now”:

• Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Warns Against Unbridled Free Speech (Turley)

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is again warning of a growing threat to the nation. In her lone dissent in Chiles v. Salazar, Jackson observed that “to be completely frank, no one knows what will happen now.” The ominous tone stemmed from the fact that free speech had prevailed over state-imposed orthodoxy in a Colorado case. Eight justices, including her two liberal colleagues, ruled that Colorado could not prevent licensed counselors from “any practice or treatment” that “attempts or purports to change” a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The win for free speech was catastrophic for Jackson and many on the left. Allowing counselors to discuss the causes and basis for sexual orientation changes, Jackson maintained, would “open a can of worms.” It would be far better for the majority to simply silence such dissenting voices in the name of science.


The dissent in Chiles is only the latest example of the chilling jurisprudence of Justice Jackson, including a pronounced dismissal of free speech values. Consider the holding of her colleagues that Jackson finds so horrific. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the First Amendment “reflects … a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth … any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an ‘egregious’ assault on both of those commitments.” What a nightmare.

Instead, Jackson would have declared the ban on anything deemed “conversion therapy” to be “conduct,” not speech. It is that easy. You simply impose an orthodoxy and then treat any dissenters as being regulated for their conduct, not their viewpoints. Justice Elena Kagan could not withhold her frustration with her colleague, noting that “[b]ecause the State has suppressed one side of a debate, while aiding the other, the constitutional issue is straightforward.” She added that Jackson’s view “rests on reimagining—and in that way collapsing—the well-settled distinction between viewpoint-based and other content-based speech restrictions.”

Other countries have embraced Jackson’s permissive approach to speech curtailment. Recently, Malta failed to convict a man who was facing five months in prison for merely discussing his own abandonment of homosexuality due to a religious conversion. Of course, we just went through a pandemic when censorship and orthodoxy were dressed up as science. Leading scientific figures were canceled and harassed. That was the case with Jay Bhattacharya, who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration and was a vocal critic of COVID-19 policies. Bhattacharya was target due to his dissenting views on health policy, including opposing wholesale shutdowns of schools and businesses.

He and other scientists were later vindicated. European allies that did not shut down their schools fared far better than we did, including avoiding a national mental health and learning crisis. We simply never had that debate. He was recently honored with the prestigious “Intellectual Freedom” award from the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. He is also now the 18th director of the National Institutes of Health. Yet, years ago, the courts, the media, and politicians joined in treating dissenting views as “conspiracy theories.”

Some argued that the virus’s origin was likely the Chinese research lab in Wuhan. That position was denounced by the Washington Post as a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli called any mention of the lab theory “racist.” Federal agencies now support the lab theory as the most likely based on the scientific evidence.Likewise, many questioned the efficacy of those blue surgical masks and supported natural immunity to the virus — the government later recognized both positions.

Others questioned the six-foot rule, which shut down many businesses, as unsupported by science. In congressional testimony, Dr. Anthony Fauci later admitted that the rule “sort of just appeared” and “wasn’t based on data.” Yet not only did it result in heavily enforced rules (and meltdowns) in public areas, but the media further ostracized dissenting critics. For years, pundits portrayed those who questioned gender reassignment surgeries and treatments as bigots. Now, leading medical associations and European nations have decided that such procedures should not be generally allowed. All of it was orthodoxy masquerading as science.

Yet, Jackson sees the protection of dissenting scientific and professional views as a “can of worms” that the courts should avoid in favor of state and assocational imposed truths. She wrote that allowing such opposing views “ultimately risks grave harm to Americans’ health and wellbeing.”

Read more …

“Ursula von der Leyen recently announced the need to yank another €200 million from taxpayers to “support investment in innovative nuclear technologies.”

• How Many Times has the EU Screwed Itself Over in the Past Year? (Marsden)

Hey, good news! The EU has found a new source of desperately needed gas amid the current energy crunch. The bad news? It’s in the US. So it will serve America, first. With Europe getting any sloppy seconds that Daddy Trump feels like overcharging it for when he isn’t threatening to invade. It’ll be the French energy multinational, TotalEnergies, serving it up to the US like a waiter at a Montmartre bistro, forced to smile and bow while the guest pockets the silverware.


Even better? The company wasn’t even supposed to be over there doing that. They had planned to be building offshore windfarms. But instead, Trump’s Department of the Interior now says that they made a deal with the French company to spend roughly a billion dollars investing in American gas operations in exchange for getting about the same amount of cash back for agreeing to say goodbye to its green wind dreams in the US. Team Trump calls it an “innovative agreement driven by President Donald J. Trump’s Energy Dominance Agenda.” But the CEO of the European company is making the cucking sound like a big win.

“TotalEnergies is pleased to sign this settlement agreements with the DOI and to support the Administration’s Energy Policy. Considering that the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest, we have decided to renounce offshore wind development in the United States, in exchange for the reimbursement of the lease fees,” said TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne, while adjusting his knee pads, before continuing to service Trump via official US government press release.

“Furthermore, these agreements, under which we will reinvest the refunded lease fees to finance the construction of the 29 Mt Rio Grande LNG plant and the development of our oil and gas activities, allows us to support the development of US gas production and export.” Hold up. So this company gave the US about a billion dollars in exchange for access to green energy. Then the US gave them back their money. And now they’re reinvesting it to serve Trump’s agenda? And publicly “pleased” about it?

Well, good riddance to – er, I mean, so much for Europe’s green dreams, I guess. But at least it means they’ll get easier access to more desperately needed LNG, right? Since they’re the ones doing the heavy lifting. Not without securing a trade agreement on America’s terms, they won’t. Which is why they’re aiming to ratify a trade agreement with their tormentor.

Brussels had been concerned about the agreement that was struck with Trump back in 2025, named the Turnberry Agreement after the US president’s Scottish golf resort where it all went down. The deal was about tariffs. Specifically, it gave a huge break to the US with ZERO tariffs on some of its exports to the EU, while slapping a 15-percent tariff on EU imports to the US. Another master stroke of cuckoldry. And yet Trump still won’t stop talking about how the EU is constantly stiffing America on trade. Which explains why the EU has been dragging its feet on ratifying it, worried that maybe it was putting too many eggs in a very unstable basket. Something that the US warned it against doing with Russia, being only too happy to step up to offer a costlier overdependency on itself instead.

The EU is doing the exact same with green energy, turning its back on nuclear power before its beloved green renewables were even ready for prime time. Which also went about as well as you might expect from these central planning geniuses. Calling it a screwup, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently announced the need to yank another €200 million from taxpayers to “support investment in innovative nuclear technologies.” The same ones they’d been busy vilifying until recently.

Read more …

“Europe believes that their needs must be our priority, and that, furthermore, we’re required to do their job for them.”

• Europe Needs to Hear This Harsh Truth (Stephen Green)

Shipping and military expert John Konrad spent all day in D.C. on Tuesday talking to his military sources and concluded that “the Navy appears to be in no rush to reopen the strait,” even while Iran dictates whose oil tankers are allowed to pass. “What is this administration trying to leverage?” Konrad wondered, and that nobody he talked to was willing to discuss the fate of Hormuz “until European politicians and media stop calling Americans war criminals and monsters.”


While Konrad admitted he has “no idea” when Hormuz will reopen, “but if the price is a modicum of cooperation and respect for everything America has done for decades to keep Europe safe, the strait could stay closed for months, or turned into a toll booth for years, because the majority of Americans…. and the vast majority of Trump administration officials I’ve talked with… seem fed up with their arrogance.” The self-styled sophisticates in Brussels and Europe’s capitals remain remarkably provincial in their outlook, and that’s why today we will speak some harsh truths to our friends in Europe — not because the truth is harsh, but because they believe that we naïve Americans don’t recognize it.

So here comes the truth bomb, laser-guided right into the atrium of the EU’s Berlaymont building. The harsh truth is that Hormuz is their priority, not ours, and yet they refuse to make any serious contribution to the war effort. The U.S. is a net exporter of oil and liquified natural gas (LNG), and we buy hardly anything from the Gulf. Closing the Strait of Hormuz is an inconvenience for us (in the price of gas and diesel) and hardly a strategic necessity. In both military and economic terms, Hormuz is way down our target list. Complicating the decision matrix even further, re-opening Hormuz at this stage likely requires ground troops — so it’s simply smarter for us to continue the bombing campaign and see if we can’t wait out an increasingly split and brittle regime that might still collapse under pressure.

Europe, of course, doesn’t see things the way we do. Europe believes that their needs must be our priority, and that, furthermore, we’re required to do their job for them. [And Another Thing: We could do more to stabilize energy prices, but in 2024, the Biden Cabal declared a moratorium on the construction of new LNG export terminals. So while the rest of the world suffers an LNG supply shock, our producers are forced to, at times, pay people to take LNG off their hands, and even burn off excess. Crazy, right?]

Before Epic Fury, something like 20% of the world’s LNG and 25% of seaborne oil trade passed through the strait each year and accounted for something like 10-15% of Europe’s energy supplies. Losing that hurts, and Politico reported on Tuesday that one “top Brussels official urges Europeans to work from home and drive less.”nEU energy chief Dan Jørgensen says Europe faces a “very serious situation,” and that “even if… peace is here tomorrow, still we will not go back to normal in the foreseeable future.”nSucks to be EU, chief. Meanwhile, Europe’s contribution to the actual military effort is barely minuscule, and a handful of nations, including France (duh), Spain (fricken commies), and even Giorgia Meloni’s Italy, have closed their airbases to our military traffic headed to the Gulf. Apparently, “lead, follow, or get out of the way” isn’t a part of Europe’s lexicon.

Read more …

The UK today.

• A Civilization Whose Defense is Abandoned, is Lost (Paul Craig Roberts)

For many years I have expressed concern that Western Civilization was being destroyed intentionally from within by failing to convey the civilization’s achievements to succeeding generations via education. Instead, education was used to alienate generations from their own civilization by stressing evils such as wars, slavery, oppression of blacks and women, oppression of other peoples as the result of colonial rule, abuse of children by parents, religious prejudices, class prejudices, and so on. The history of Western Civilization as a series of great reforms was kept from generation after generation so successfully that today hardly anyone under sixty years of age knows about them.


Western civilization has many achievements in science, technology, architecture, music, art, but perhaps the greatest achievement of Western Civilization began in the ninth century during the reign of Alfred the Greet in what became England. Alfred established law based on the people’s beliefs and behavior–the English Common Law–not on the edicts of a king. This was the beginning of developments over the centuries that culminated in the Glorious Revolution of 1680 that established that the king was subject to the law and the law was established by the commoners and the aristocrats in Parliament, thus making the king accountable to the people. The accountability of government rested on free speech. Without free speech truth cannot be ascertained.

The Americans who inherited the notion of government accountable to the people inscribed in the US Constitution the right to free speech.In recent years this right on which accountable government rests has been eroded in the US and essentially destroyed in the UK. In America today citizens who use the Constitutionally protected right of free speech can lose their jobs, can be prohibited from contracting with or having jobs with many state governments. If they are students who protest Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, they are expelled from the university, and if they are foreign students they are deported. The universities do nothing to protect the free speech that the US Constitution guarantees. Neither do the bar associations nor the law schools.

Free speech is in the way of anti-Western civilization ideologies. We must believe that white racism, not the black King of Dahomey’s slave wars, is the cause of black slavery. We are denied the fact that blacks held blacks in slavery and the fact that the blacks sent to the New World were enslaved by blacks, and that colonists in the New World purchased already enslaved blacks for a labor force. White people did not enslave black people. Black people sold as slaves were enslaved by the black King of Dahomey. You will not be able to find this fact in any Black Studies program in any university. The generations of indoctrination of white people against themselves, called education, has produced a situation in which law is no longer applied to the guilty but to his victim. Black immigrant-invaders are protected against hate speech and an accusation of rape has become hate speech.

In the UK, and also I believe in Norway and Sweden and perhaps throughout the EU, a white woman who reports a rape or a gang-rape might be charged with a hate crime against a “person of color.” This possibility essentially conveys rape privileges to black immigrant-invaders to rape white European women. The police are as likely to hold the rape victim accountable for a hate crime as to hold the rapist accountable for rape. In England these rapes went on for 30 years with the police and the British government doing nothing about it except covering it up. A year or two ago former British prime minister Liz Truss said that for 30 years the British government covered up the rapes. It stilll does.

Read more …

Tyler Robinson’s defense team may use this argument in an attempt to get the charges against him dropped”

• Charlie Kirk Bullet Doesn’t Match Suspect’s Rifle – Lawyers (RT)

Investigators could not match the bullet that killed conservative influencer Charlie Kirk to the rifle used by his alleged assassin, lawyers for the suspect have claimed. The accused killer’s defense team is using this fact to push for a delayed trial. Tyler Robinson’s lawyers said in a recent court filing that the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) could not conclusively connect a bullet fragment recovered from Kirk’s body to a rifle found at the scene, citing an internal report by the agency.


The full ATF report has not been made public, but Robinson’s lawyers cited excerpts from the document in a request to delay a preliminary hearing scheduled for May. The 22-year-old suspect’s legal team stated that they need more time to review the bullet analysis, and to analyze the DNA of multiple other people found at the crime scene. Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was shot in the neck and killed almost instantly at an event on a Utah college campus last September. His death sent shockwaves through the US, with President Donald Trump posthumously awarding Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom and describing the conservative icon as “a visionary and one of the greatest figures of his generation.”

Robinson was arrested two days after Kirk’s death. Investigators quickly linked him to a Mauser model 98 rifle found near the scene, which had apparently been modified at some point to fire the American 30.06 round used in the assassination. Text messages between Robinson and his transgender lover were then unearthed, in which Robinson confessed to the killing and revealed almost every detail of the plot, down to how he cleaned his fingerprints off the gun before stashing it in a nearby patch of woods.

Prosecutors have said that DNA matching Robinson’s was found on the trigger of the rifle, but the case has nevertheless spawned multiple conspiracy theories – including the widely spread claim that Kirk was killed for turning on TPUSA’s pro-Israel donors and opposing US strikes on Iran. Every firearm leaves a unique imprint on a bullet as the projectile leaves the barrel. When enough fragments are found in good condition, ballistic analysts can match the projectile to the weapon with almost 100% confidence. Robinson’s lawyers suggested in the filings that they may point to the lack of a match in an attempt to dismiss charges against their client.

Read more …

People hear it will take their jobs, and that’s all they can understand.

• More Than Half of Americans Believe AI Will Do More Harm Than Good: Poll ET)

About 55 percent of Americans surveyed in a 2026 Quinnipiac poll said artificial intelligence (AI) will be more harmful than helpful. The survey, released on March 30, was conducted in collaboration with the Quinnipiac University School of Computing & Engineering and the Quinnipiac University School of Business. In April 2025, only 44 percent believed AI would do more harm than good in their daily lives. In the 2026 poll, 21 percent answered that AI affects their lives a lot, while 29 percent said only somewhat, and 30 percent believed AI impacts are minimal. Only 17 percent said they are not impacted at all.


Regarding education, 64 percent of survey respondents said AI is more harmful, compared with just 27 percent who believe it will help. For health care issues, 45 percent of those surveyed believed AI will do more harm, while 43 percent said AI will be more helpful. The employment outlook showed the greatest percentage of people worried about the future of AI, as 75 percent said continuous advancements in AI will most likely lead to a decline of job opportunities for people. While 18 percent said AI will not have much of an impact on jobs, only 7 percent said jobs for humans will increase as a result of AI.

In just one year, the fear of possible job losses due to AI increased by nearly 20 points. In April 2025, 56 percent of respondents said AI would be detrimental to human jobs. All generations surveyed remain pessimistic about the job outlook as a result of AI’s rapid growth, with Gen Z—including ages 18 to 29—exhibiting the highest percentage at 81 percent. For millennials, aged 30 to 45, 71 percent said jobs are likely to decrease as AI grows, and 67 percent of Gen Z, aged 46 to 61, agree. Of the baby boomer generation, aged 62 to 80, 66 percent indicated that human jobs will decline.

“Younger Americans report the highest familiarity with AI tools, but they are also the least optimistic about the labor market,” Tamilla Triantoro, associate professor of business analytics and information systems at Quinnipiac University School of Business, said in the report. “AI fluency and optimism here are moving in opposite directions.”Among those currently employed, 30 percent reported being very or somewhat concerned about AI rendering their jobs obsolete, but 69 percent said they are not very worried about it. Compared with last year’s survey, only 21 percent of employed Americans expressed fear of losing their jobs to AI.

“Americans are more worried about what AI may do to the labor market than about what it may do to their own jobs,” Triantoro said. “People seem more willing to predict a tougher market than to picture themselves on the losing end of that disruption—a pattern worth watching as the technology moves deeper into the workplace.”

An overwhelming 85 percent of Americans said they would be unwilling to work a job where their direct supervisor was an AI program that assigned their tasks and schedules. When asked how much they trust AI, 76 percent of respondents said that they hardly ever trust it, while just 21 percent admitted they do trust AI. Still, 51 percent said they often use AI for researching topics. Only 20 percent said they relied on AI for medical advice, and just 15 percent for personal advice.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle March 31 2026

Mar 312026
 
 March 31, 2026  Posted by at 9:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Damien Hirst Spiritual Day Blossom 2018


• Trump Presents a Strong Statement Toward Iran – Rubio Responds (CTH)
• Israel Has Launched America Into The Third World War (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Geopolitics of the Third World War (Alexander Dugin)
• Iran’s Victory Would Have a Silver Lining (Paul Craig Roberts)
• EU Parliament Told Continent Is ‘On Track For CIVIL WAR’ (MN)
• US Senators Seek To Sanction Hungary Over Obstructing Ukraine Aid (ZH)
• Whatever the Ruling on Birthright Citizenship… (Turley)
• Springtime for RINOs (James Howard Kunstler)
• The Great Illusion of NATO is Fading Fast (Trenin)
• Tom Homan Bulldozed Jake Tapper’s DHS Funding Narrative (Matt Margolis)
• This Trillion-Dollar Firm Wants Out of Mamdani’s NYC (Stephen Green)
• Scott Jennings Destroyed the ‘No Kings’ Rallies, CNN Wasn’t Happy (Margolis)

 


 

https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/2038285905627136090?s=20 https://twitter.com/MichaelARothman/status/2038389429426147786?s=20

 


 


Rubio’s good.

• Trump Presents a Strong Statement Toward Iran – Rubio Responds (CTH)

As Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears for an interview on Good Morning America, President Trump released the following statement:


“The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran. Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately “Open for Business,” we will conclude our lovely “stay” in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet “touched.” This will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime’s 47 year “Reign of Terror.” Thank you for your attention to this matter.” ~ President DONALD J. TRUMP

Secretary Rubio responded in real time to questions about the objectives. Rubio impressively underlined the objectives in Iran, reemphasizing the core intent of the military operation to remove the capacity of Iran to pose a threat to the stable alliances that have formed in the region.

Read more …

“The UN, EU, US, Russia, China, India are yet to try to stop Israel’s multi-year genocide of the Palestinians.”

• Israel Has Launched America Into The Third World War (Paul Craig Roberts)

“The Third World War has been initiated by the United States in the context of preserving, strengthening, and ultimately consolidating the unipolar model of world order. All others are offered a choice: to become obedient vassals or to be treated as enemies. It is against these opponents of the unipolar world that Washington is waging the Third World War. At stake is sovereignty.”


I think a more correct explanation of Trump’s change of posture is the power of the Israel Lobby over the US government, media, universities, and entertainment and Netanyahu’s ability to use this power to put the US again at war for Greater Israel as the George W. Bush administration was used in “the war on terror,” which was the opening phase of destroying “seven countries in five years” called for by the Zionist neoconservatives. It is the extraordinary control that Israel has over the United States that accounts for Trump’s change in posture. Trump inherited the war with Russia in Ukraine. He could not end it because the combination of the Israel Lobby and the US military/security complex is too powerful for an American president.

I am surprised that a person as thoughtful as Dugin does not see Netanyahu’s role in realigning Trump. Especially so because in February the former Israeli prime minister, Bennett, addressed the American Conference of Jewish Organizations and declared: “Turkey is the next Iran.” These were marching orders to the Israel Lobby to begin the demonization of Turkey and setting Turkey up as the next “terrorist” country to be destroyed. Dugin is very much aware of the threat posed by Greater Israel, but in his article he does not say that it is the Israel Lobby that changed Trump from a multipolar position to a unipolar position, thereby bringing wider wars to the world.

As best as I can tell, most governments defer to Israel’s explanations and justifications. The UN, EU, US, Russia, China, India are yet to try to stop Israel’s multi-year genocide of the Palestinians. In the US, UK, and some EU countries it is becoming a hate crime and a criminal felony to criticize Israel. American students are expelled from US universities for criticizing Israel. Even Putin defers to Israel and abandoned Russia’s Syrian ally to Greater Israel. As for the current conflict in the Middle East, Hezbollah secretary-general Qassem is the only person to accurately describe the war with Iran in terms of “the US-Israeli project of ‘Greater Israel.’” https://paulcraigroberts.org/finally-an-arab-leader-who-understands/

Read more …

“Washington has now fully adopted the neoconservative position and behaves as if it alone possesses genuine sovereignty ..”

• Geopolitics of the Third World War (Alexander Dugin)

(Translated from the original Russian version on RIA Novosti).
Many analysts are now advancing the hypothesis that the Third World War has already begun and that we are in its first stage. Whether this is so or not will become clear in the near future, but for now let us assume the validity of this hypothesis and attempt to survey its geopolitical contours.The essence of the Third World War lies in a radical transformation of the entire architecture of world politics. The international institutions that exist today have long ceased to correspond to the real state of affairs. They are still organized according to the logic of the Westphalian system and the bipolar world. The Westphalian model is based on the recognition of the sovereignty of all states acknowledged at the international level. The United Nations is built on the same foundation.


However, in practice, over the past hundred years, the principle of sovereignty has turned into pure hypocrisy. In the 1930s, a system took shape in Europe in which only three forces were sovereign, and these were strictly ideological: 1. the bourgeois-capitalist West (Britain, the United States, France, and so on); 2. the communist USSR; 3. the Axis countries with a fascist ideology. This situation persisted even after the end of the Second World War, except that one of the ideological poles—the fascist one—disappeared. The other two—the capitalist and the socialist ones—grew stronger and expanded. Yet once again, no national state was sovereign in itself. Some were governed from Moscow, others from Washington. The Non-Aligned Movement wavered between the two poles.

he self-dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the USSR put an end to bipolarity, and from that moment only the United States remained as the bearer of sovereignty. The United Nations and the Westphalian model became a fig leaf for global hegemony. Thus emerged the unipolar world. Already in the 1990s, it became clear that international law would have to be revised—either in favor of a world government (the liberal “end of history” scenario of Francis Fukuyama) or in favor of direct Western hegemony (as envisioned by American neoconservatives). European countries followed the world-government scenario and, as a preparatory stage towards it, ceded their sovereignty to the European Union. Everyone else was subtly encouraged to prepare for the same.

However, in the early 2000s, a new tendency emerged: the will to restore sovereignty in Russia and China. Moscow and Beijing moved to make sovereignty not a fiction but a reality. Thus, multipolarity made itself known. From that point onward, it was proposed that sovereignty be vested in “civilization-states”—both those already formed (Russia, China, India) and potential ones (the Islamic world, Africa, Latin America). These, in turn, coalesced into BRICS.

As a result, the unipolar project came into direct confrontation with the multipolar one. Both globalists and neoconservatives opposed multipolarity. The potential for conflict was evident, while the old norms and rules inherited from previous geopolitical eras no longer functioned. Whether the Third World War has already begun or not is ultimately secondary; its geopolitical content is clear: it is a war between unipolarity and multipolarity over a new architecture of the world, over the distribution of sovereign centers of decision-making: either confined to the West alone or shared among rising civilization-states.

Donald Trump returned to the White House for a second term in 2024 with an agenda that suggested he might accept multipolarity: rejection of interventions, criticism of globalists, direct conflict with liberals, sharp attacks on neoconservatives, a focus on domestic U.S. issues, and calls to return to traditional values—all of this gave reason to believe that Trump and his administration would align with multipolarity, while seeking to secure the most advantageous position for the United States within this new framework.

However, very soon the Trump administration began to move closer to the neoconservatives and to move away from its initial position. This was followed by support for the genocide in Gaza, continued provision of intelligence to Kiev, the seizure of Maduro, preparations for an invasion of Cuba, and finally a war against Iran, including the killing of the political leadership of the Islamic Republic. Washington has now fully adopted the neoconservative position and behaves as if it alone possesses genuine sovereignty in the world: without any reference to rules or international law, it asserts unilateral authority over the entire globe. It seeks to prove this in practice: through wars, invasions, abductions of heads of state, and the orchestration of regime-change operations.

The Third World War has been initiated by the United States in the context of preserving, strengthening, and ultimately consolidating the unipolar model of world order. All others are offered a choice: to become obedient vassals or to be treated as enemies. It is against these opponents of the unipolar world that Washington is waging the Third World War. At stake is sovereignty. Since there is as yet no single power capable of symmetrically opposing the United States, it is conducting military operations across several fronts simultaneously.

Read more …

“Israel wants to mobilize 15,000 working Israelis. Trump has sent 15,000 Marines and paratroopers. Iran has mobilized 1,000,000 troops. What does that tell you? ”

• Iran’s Victory Would Have a Silver Lining (Paul Craig Roberts)

Former Israeli Army officer says Israel’s military is “on the brink of collapse.” Israel’s capability, with US help, is assassinations and sneak attacks. Israel’s army is good at bombing civilians and shooting mothers and babies in the head. But when it comes to fighting, Israel is pitiful. Twice the vaunted IDF tried to occupy Southern Lebanon in order to steal the water resources there. And twice the Israeli army was totally defeated by a mere Hezbollah militia with no air force, tanks, or artillery. It might be about to happen for a third time.


The current war with Iran now expanded into Lebanon is disrupting Israeli life and bringing bombing home to them as Iranian missiles penetrate Israel and Washington’s air defenses without difficulty. More and more of Israel’s population is seeing the current war as an unnecessary “political war” and do not support it. If by “political,” Israelis mean the Zionist Greater Israel agenda, then the Israeli population’s support for the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel might not be very broad or deep and might be eroding. Possibly Israelis, as well as Muslims, are having the Zionist agenda imposed on them.

If this is the case, then the Israeli population’s support for the Israeli-American war on Iran may falter before the Iranian population’s support does. Already, the American public is heavily against Trump’s war against Iran. Unless the Trump-Netanyahu war criminals use their nukes, Iran is likely to win this war. The silver lining in an Iranian victory is the liberation of both America and the Israeli population from servitude to the crazed Zionist agenda of a Greater Israel from the Nile to Pakistan.

Americans should pray for an Iranian victory. Otherwise, their blood and money will continue to be used for Israel’s bloody purpose of Greater Israel. Israel wants to mobilize 15,000 working Israelis. Trump has sent 15,000 Marines and paratroopers. Iran has mobilized 1,000,000 troops. What does that tell you? If the dumbshit Netanyahu-Trump strike Iran with nukes, Iran will nuke Israel by destroying the nuclear plant at Dimona. Israel will no longer exist. Israel is tiny. lran is as large as Western Europe. An honest American has to ask himself how America became the vehicle for Israel’s wars for Greater Israel. Whatever happened to the requirement that the American government represents Americans’ interests, not those of some foreign country?

The 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by US VP Dick Cheney and the Zionists he positioned in the essential offices of the US government. The orchestrated “attack on America by Muslin terrorists” was the “New Pearl Harbor” that the American Zionist neoconservatives said was necessary to destroy seven Muslim countries in five years. It has taken longer than the five years that 4 Star General Wesley Clark said was the agenda shown to him by Pentagon generals. But America is now working for Israel on destroying Iran, after having disposed of Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Last month former Israeli prime minister Bennett came to America to address the American Organizations for Israel and gave them marching orders to begin demonizing Turkey as “the next Iran.”

Turkey has a leader who is just as stupid as America’s, as the UK’s, France’s, Germany’s, Russia’s, China’s, India’s. If Tayyip Erdogan understood the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel unfolding in front of his eyes, he would understand that he and his country are next and would have united with Iran to preserve Turkey’s sovereignty. But the fool thinks he can sit on the fence and ride both horses. In a world in which nuclear weapons and the ability to deploy deadly infections exist, and in which no objective, inquiring media exists, any fake news can rule.

There is nothing shameful about Iran fighting for its right to exist as a sovereign nation. But it is shameful for America to inflict harm on herself and others by fighting for Greater Israel.

Read more …

“Mass migration is shredding cultural homogeneity and paving the way for Balkanisation and violence..”

• EU Parliament Told Continent Is ‘On Track For CIVIL WAR’ (MN)

Europe’s ruling class has spent decades importing chaos under the banner of “diversity,” and now the bill is coming due in the most explosive way possible. A major conference held inside the European Parliament has heard stark warnings that the continent is barreling toward civil war as mass migration erodes trust, creates no-go zones, and fractures societies along ethnic lines. Professor David Betz of King’s College London cut straight to the point, telling the assembled lawmakers and experts: “Europe is on track for civil war”.


The event, titled Civil War: Europe at Risk?, was hosted by French populist-right leader Marion Maréchal and Sweden Democrats MEP Charlie Weimers. It also launched a new report documenting up to a thousand no-go zones across Europe based on public data including crime rates, sexual violence, youth gangs, unemployment, school performance, antisemitism, homophobia, mosque density, attacks on firefighters, and NGO presence. Maréchal opened the conference by reflecting that formerly peaceful and stable societies are “rapidly transforming before our eyes into societies of violence and mistrust”, stating that “the main basis of trust between citizens is cultural homogeneity”, which is now fast eroding.

She warned Europe is already under a great strain of “diffuse guerrilla activity”, which takes various forms, including “riots, looting, random attacks, anti-white racism, and terrorist attacks”. Weimers echoed the assessment, noting the impact of mass migration on cultural cohesion. The Swedish MEP reflected: “Western democracies that were once relatively homogenous societies have become deeply fragmented. Newcomers often share little in common with the indigenous population. More alarmingly, many have no intention of assimilating.” Both hosts said they were driven to hold the conference to find political answers and prevent “the horror of civil war”.

Betz, who has gained prominence for highlighting the collapse of social cohesion, described the trajectory in chilling detail. He warned of “a peasant revolt. A conservative uprising in which the ruled seek to punish their rulers for violating their obligations under the social contract, and for changing the rules of the game against their wishes. It will look something like Italy’s Years of Lead, the ‘dirty wars’ of Latin America, or maybe The Troubles of Northern Ireland, but on a larger scale.” He continued: “What is already a guarded society will become a radically more heavily fortified society as elites seek more protection with more walls, guards, and surveillance. It will be bloody… the Balkanisation of British life along ethnic lines [is underway].”

Betz further urged, “What I call assortative movement is already occurring, quite obviously in some places like Tower Hamlets in London, Sparkhill in Birmingham which are already ethnic enclaves, zones of negotiated policing with parallel legal systems, alternative economies, and… zones of endemic and large-scale out-group sexual predation… this ought to be more generally frightening.” “In government there are plenty of people who understand fully the gravity of the situation, although it is, career-wise, terminal to speak of it openly,” he added.

Betz also warned of the ultimate stakes for native populations. “Where does Balkanisation lead us? … it leads to the extinguishment of Britain in the sense of a coherent cultural entity dominated by people genuinely sharing the titular identity of ‘British’… it leads to large scale and widespread civil war…” “It is very possible that the Britons end up like the Canaanites or the Arcadians, a people of historic interest, their monuments visible here and there in some sort of ruination, of interest to archaeologists and historians,” Betz explained, adding “This would be a tragedy, but that is a very viable option in front of us, and in fact it is a possibility that is quite close.”

Weimers asked bluntly: “Where will Europe be in 50 years? Will there be a Europe in 50 years?” Betz further outlined how any future conflict might unfold, describing “the siege of urban areas but with a few 21st century twists. In many ways it will be reminiscent of the siege of Sarajevo, but much more dominated by paramilitary actors using system disruption tactics. Most importantly, infrastructure attack to degrade and destroy the life support systems of urban, non-native enclaves.” He continued, “The political object is very simple, it is to compel non-natives to leave.

The strategy is to create conditions of life in the cities so intolerable that leaving is preferable to staying… it’s not an implausible theory of victory because its central premise, the instability of the modern urban condition, at the best of times is something scholars of urban studies have been warning against for 50 years already.” Betz warned that “fuel systems are easy to attack, they are flammable if not explosive by definition, they are difficult to repair, and expensive to replace. In fact they are impossible to replace in civil war conditions where no insurance is available.” He continued, “Moreover, disruption of fuel has very rapid knock-on effects of everything else logistically, most importantly the food distribution system which is the traditional weapon of siegecraft.” The full conference is below:

Betz has continually warned of the deep social erosion he’s believes is cascading toward civil war in Britain and Eure. Retired British Army Colonel Richard Kemp has also warned that integration breakdowns have worsened over the past two decades, paving the way for inevitable conflict. Kemp outlined that there is “No government, the government now or any prospective government of the UK, has the guts to stop it” when it comes to the Islamification of Britain. The pattern is unmistakable. Globalist policies of open borders and elite denial have created parallel societies, eroded national identity, and left ordinary Europeans with no peaceful political outlet.

As Betz has noted, many in government already grasp the gravity but stay silent to protect their careers. As educational as this all is, Europe doesn’t need more conferences or reports. It needs leaders with the courage to end mass migration, restore cultural cohesion, and put their own people first — before the warnings stop being theoretical and the conflict becomes reality.

Read more …

“The ruling Fidesz party has made anti-Ukraine messages the central element of its election campaign and insisted on maintaining Russian oil imports.”

• US Senators Seek To Sanction Hungary Over Obstructing Ukraine Aid (ZH)

Because US Congress is perfectly functional, and all domestic issues have been resolved (one would very ironically think), the FT reports that a bipartisan pair of US senators are set to introduce legislation calling for sanctions to be imposed on senior Hungarian officials involved in obstructing aid to Ukraine. If passed, the Block Putin act would require President Trump to impose financial sanctions and visa bans on Hungarian government officials involved in the country’s purchases of Russian oil and gas, and who have sought to block support for Ukraine.


The introduction of the bill comes as Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has held up a €90bn EU loan to Ukraine as he faces a tough re-election campaign ahead of parliamentary elections next month. Opinion polls indicated Orbán, who has served as prime minister since 2010, could lose power. The opposition Tisza party’s lead stood at 23% points on Wednesday, according to pollster Median. Pro-government polls show a slight lead for Orbán’s ruling Fidesz. Orbán, historically aligned with Vladimir Putin, has accused Kyiv of disrupting the flow of Moscow’s oil to Hungary by stalling repairs to the Druzhba pipeline, which transits Ukraine.

Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Thom Tillis, co-chairs of the Senate Nato observer group, are set to introduce the legislation this week. The pair have been outspoken about Europe’s continued dependence on Russian energy. Tillis said: “The United States and our allies must remain united in supporting Ukraine and in cutting off the revenue streams that fuel Putin’s war.”“This bill holds senior Hungarian officials accountable while giving Hungary a clear path to get back in line with its allies by ending its reliance on Russian energy and stopping its obstruction of support for Ukraine,” he added.

Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said: “It is beyond belief that vice-president Vance is reportedly planning on visiting Hungary to provide an electoral boost to a corrupt government that continues to help fund Russia’s war machine.” “If we want this war in Ukraine to end, the Trump administration needs to be consistent in holding our allies to the same standards; no one, especially Viktor Orbán, should get a free pass,” she said. While much of the continent has sought to wean itself off Russian oil and gas supplies since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Hungary and Slovakia have increased their dependence on Russian energy… and lucky for them, as now the “rest of the continent” is about to go dry as a result of the Iran war.

Complicating matters, Trump is very close to Orbán and has endorsed his re-election bid. Politico on Wednesday reported preparations were being made for US vice-president JD Vance to visit Hungary days ahead of the elections. Trump has criticized Europe for continuing to buy Russian energy and has urged the continent to take the lead in supporting Ukraine. “They’re buying oil and gas from Russia while they’re fighting Russia,” Trump said in his address to the UN General Assembly in September. The draft text of the bill, which has been seen by the FT, does not mention Orbán explicitly as a target of the sanctions. Therefore, it would fall to the Trump administration to determine which Hungarian officials have been involved in holding up aid to Ukraine and continuing the country’s dependency on Russian energy, a congressional aide said.

Orbán and his foreign minister Péter Szijjártó have long sought close ties with Russia, with Szijjártó meeting his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov more than 20 times since the start of the war in 2022. The ruling Fidesz party has made anti-Ukraine messages the central element of its election campaign and insisted on maintaining Russian oil imports. “If President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy wants to get his money from Brussels, he must open the Druzhba crude pipeline,” Orbán said in a video message to the Ukrainian president last week. “They tell us openly that they don’t want to allow cheap Russian oil through to Hungary, so the situation is very simple. No oil — no money.”

Read more …

Why does the American Bar Association.express an opinion?

• Whatever the Ruling on Birthright Citizenship… (Turley)

The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in the historic birthright citizenship case. It is a hearing that has been over 150 years in the making, since the ratification of the 14th Amendment. It is not just a long-debated question that has divided the nation, but it has divided many lawyers as well. For that reason, there was one brief that stood out before the court: the amicus brief of the American Bar Association. The ABA filed its “friend of the court” brief to argue that the matter is clear: Anyone who gives birth on our soil, even if here illegally or only briefly, may claim U.S. citizenship for their child.


Most nations on Earth, including many of our European allies, reject birthright citizenship, and many of us in this nation believe that it is a foolish policy. Yet, even as someone who opposes birthright citizenship, I have long believed and argued that there are good-faith arguments on both sides of this debate. The sponsors of this language clearly disagreed on the issue at the time of its enactment. Some stated at the time that the language did not allow for birthright citizenship.The debate comes down to six poorly chosen words: “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Those words were not in the original draft, but were inserted by an amendment. Thus, they were not superfluous or casual verbiage, but an intentional condition. They were placed in the middle of an otherwise clear statement that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States … are citizens of the United States.”

For more than a century, many have argued that the words reflect an intent to limit the amendment to citizens and legal residents who are subject fully to the jurisdiction of the United States. That brings us back to the bar association. Regardless of how one comes out in the fascinating historical and constitutional debate, this is a case one would expect the ABA to sit out. It clearly does not speak for all lawyers on the issue, yet, it filed a strident brief and laid out a parade of horribles about what would happen if the Supreme Court were to reject birthright citizenship.I found the brief to be one of the least compelling submissions to the court. But, once again, the media will portray the brief as speaking for American lawyers, even though the ABA represents less than two out of every ten attorneys.

I previously wrote a column on these pages on “the rise and fall of the American Bar Association,” exploring how the ABA has alienated many lawyers with its partisan advocacy. When it was founded on August 21, 1878, in Saratoga Springs, New York, the 75 lawyers present from 20 states (and the District of Columbia) wanted an organization to create a national system of standards for “the advancement of the science of jurisprudence, the promotion of the administration of justice.” It was created to focus on professional accreditation, education, and training. That changed in 1990, when advocates overrode earlier votes to remain neutral on the constitutional interpretations supporting the right to abortion.

The adoption of a pro-abortion position shocked many and fundamentally changed the culture at the ABA. (It is worth noting that the very arguments embraced by the bar association were later rejected by the Supreme Court in the Dobbs decision.)Since that time, the ABA has become fully captive to partisans who use the organization to support liberal and often Democratic Party positions. The result has been a steady decline in membership.Today, there are roughly 1.3 million lawyers in the U.S. Even if the ABA represented just half of that number, it would have 650,000 members. As recently as 2015, it still had 400,000. But more recently, membership has fallen to 227,000, or just 17 percent of the bar.

Despite complaints that the ABA has become a partisan organization, its leadership has doubled down with positions and programming that are echo chambers for the left. During Trump’s terms, the ABA has uniformly opposed him and his policies. The ABA brief in favor of birthright citizenship is signed by ABA President Michele Behnke. It simply declares the language and history clear and resolved. It then predicts a virtual meltdown of order and due process in this country if birthright citizenship is not upheld. The decline of the ABA to the point where it does not speak for most lawyers has followed a familiar model. The media also abandoned neutrality in covering such stories, with many journalism schools now teaching students that they are advocates for social justice.

Likewise, academia largely purged its departments of Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians, as it increasingly prioritized advocacy over education. All three of these groups have one thing in common beyond their liberal ideological bias and advocacy: They are all increasingly unpopular. Higher education and the media have plummeted in public trust to record lows. Like the ABA, which can no longer claim to speak even for most lawyers, there is little indication that the loss of trust is causing the leadership to do any soul-searching. As memberships and revenues decline, the use of these institutions for advocacy remains personally beneficial. Behnke is leading an organization that is a shell of its former self, but she (like academics and journalists) is lionized for taking these positions.

Ironically, Behnke has a role in two of these areas, as a board member for the University of Wisconsin Law School and the University of Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association Board.Faced with an ABA doubling down on these controversial positions, various states are moving to do away with its historical role in bar memberships. The brief reaffirmed for many lawyers that the ABA is no longer a neutral and fair representative for all lawyers. It will continue to represent a dwindling faction of lawyers who look at the association as more of a stridently ideological than a strictly professional organization. That is why, whatever the outcome in Trump v. Barbara, the American Bar Association is likely to be the loser.

Read more …

“This sort of derangement is a novel psychopathology in the human species. . . a synthesis of low-IQ feminized brain scramble & neurotic lunacy.” JD Haltigan on X

• Springtime for RINOs (James Howard Kunstler)

Went to the No Kings assemblies in my town and the next nearby town on Saturday. Mental illness as far as the eye could see. Old folks, too, as far as the eye could see, predominately of the female persuasion: the devouring grandmothers. The Democratic Party has marshalled mental illness as its premier campaign strategy, and lately it is winning bigly around the country as mental illness becomes the go-to cope option for the ragged remnants of Boomerdom.


They believe things that are patently insane, for instance, the latest proposal by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) that illegal immigrants deserve reparations on account of being “traumatized” by U.S. immigration enforcement actions. If it feels like the Democratic Party is at war with our country you are not hallucinating. It is every bit as much a jihad as the Death to America crowd in Iran has explicitly pushed since 1979.

The president gets no help whatsoever from his own party, as you see in the disgraceful hijinks around the urgent issue of election reform. You know exactly how the election playbook was written: let x-million foreigners into the country illegally, give them (illegally) social security numbers, driver’s licenses, automatic voter registrations, addresses, mail-in ballots. . . and voila! They don’t even have to mail-in their own mail-in ballots. Lawfare ninja Marc Elias will arrange ballot pick-up service. And the cherry on top is that the census must count all the illegal aliens to add new congressional districts for extra seats in Congress.

So, in the face of that, Republican Majority Leader John Thune could not muster enough votes to save the SAVE Act. Or so he said. Looks more like lack a’wanna. Eerie lack a’wanna. On their tours of cable news, the hapless Republican senators, when asked, would not name their colleagues leaning against the SAVE Act. But you know who they are. Mitch McConnell, Murkowski, Tillis, Collins, Capito.

Leader Thune could not even manage to get Homeland Security funded with the prospect of Iranian sleeper cells awakening around the country. He just threw in the towel at three o’clock in the morning on Friday, and sent the whole crew home to meet the Easter Bunny. Chuck Schumer did an end-zone dance. The brokenness of our politics could not be more in your face. As things shape up this grueling springtime, Mr. Trump might have to go Abe Lincoln on these folks. That is, declare some sort of national emergency to save the election and the country.

Of course, the nation is more than a little distracted just now with doings in Iran. The No Kings folk are unabashedly rooting for everything to go wrong there, and not a few conservatives in the public arena are straining to conjure an Iranian victory in their black-pilled deliriums. Many claim they “have no idea” what we are doing there — can it be that hard? — or else they are rabidly exercised over our alliance with Israel in the operation. You know how that goes. Cue Tucker. He’ll explain.

The truth is we are pounding these savage Shia clerics and their Revolutionary Guard myrmidons to the garden of eternal bliss where the seventy-two virgins wait. Whatever remains of Iran’s legit government is bargaining under cover for an off-ramp now. Pakistan mediates. The parties sit in different rooms and pass notes through the mediators in a third room. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi pretends that he will not negotiate with Mr. Trump’s envoys, Witkoff and Kushner, both Jews, the horror! But that’s sheer fakery.

To avoid humiliation in the process, Iran is still lobbing missiles and drones around the Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and they will probably keep doing that until the very moment of capitulation. Anyway, in less than a week, Mr. Trump turns the lights off all over Iran, and then they are back in the twelfth century. . . no command communication, no juice for anything, no money, no food, no water, no nothing . . . and a population getting dangerously desperate to make it all go away. . . to return to some dim memory of what normal life once was in an Iran not ruled by psychotic death cultists.

Read more …

“America steps back, and the Alliance starts to wobble ..”

• The Great Illusion of NATO is Fading Fast (Trenin)

One of the more idealistic ambitions of the last Soviet leadership was the simultaneous dissolution of both Cold War blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Only half of that vision came to pass. The Warsaw Pact disappeared in the spring of 1991. NATO didn’t. Instead, it endured and expanded. Over the following decades, the alliance not only survived but grew from 16 to 32 members. It took part in military campaigns in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya, and steadily extended its reach. After the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, back in 2022, NATO expanded further, incorporating Finland and Sweden, while consolidating itself more firmly on an anti-Russian footing than at any time since the Cold War.


For the first time in its history, Russia found itself facing a unified military alliance stretching across Europe and North America. The idea of a “collective West” opposing Moscow ceased to be rhetorical and became a strategic reality. Yet by the mid-2020s, cracks had begun to appear. The return of Donald Trump to the White House marked a shift not in America’s commitment to NATO, but in how that commitment was defined. Trump has abandoned the familiar model of the US as a paternal, often indulgent leader of the alliance. In its place, he presented America as a demanding hegemon, insisting that its allies bear a far greater share of the burden.

Initially, European capitals reacted with unease. For decades, they had relied on Washington to shoulder the lion’s share of NATO’s costs. Yet they have adjusted. Military spending targets rose, even toward Trump’s proposed 5% of GDP. But the real shift went deeper than budgets. Under Trump, Washington’s strategic focus moved decisively away from Europe and toward China. While previous administrations had sought to integrate Beijing into global governance structures, Trump pursued confrontation, both economic and geopolitical. In his second term, containing China has become the central pillar of US foreign policy.

This inevitably required a redistribution of resources. The latest US National Defense Strategy made the logic explicit: Western Europe, with its combined economic and demographic weight, was capable of managing the Russian challenge on its own. America would remain within NATO, but its role would change. It would step back from the front line and expect Europeans to step forward. This recalibration was most visible in Ukraine. Trump, wary of escalation and unconvinced of Ukraine’s strategic value, reduced US involvement without ending support altogether. He shifted the financial and military burden increasingly onto Europe and began engaging Moscow directly, often without consulting European allies.

For Western European elites, this was deeply unsettling. They had invested heavily, politically and economically, in the Ukraine conflict. For some, it had even become a tool for consolidating the European Union and driving militarization as a means of economic stimulus. Then came a further shock. Trump’s remarks on Greenland and Canada in which he questioned the sovereignty of longstanding NATO members struck at the alliance’s core assumptions. Whether or not such ambitions were realistic was beside the point. What mattered was that the leader of NATO had publicly cast doubt on the territorial integrity of its own allies. This was unprecedented.

Taken together, these developments called into question NATO’s foundational principle: collective defense. For decades, Article 5 had been treated as an ironclad guarantee, underpinned by American nuclear power. Yet in reality, that guarantee had always contained ambiguity. When the treaty was ratified, the US Senate ensured that Washington wouldn’t be automatically committed to war.

Read more …

“.. if you want ICE to take the mask off, the threat level has to decrease. It’s up 8000 percent increase in threats against ICE officers..”

• Tom Homan Bulldozed Jake Tapper’s DHS Funding Narrative (Matt Margolis)

Border Czar Tom Homan hit the Sunday shows this weekend, and the liberal networks didn’t know what hit them. Over at CNN, he spent the segment repeatedly bulldozing Jake Tapper, and it was awesome. Homan wasn’t there to take any crap, and he repeatedly hammered the same indisputable point to Tapper: fund the Department of Homeland Security, and the problems go away.


For example, Tapper asked why, if the administration had the power to move money around to pay TSA agents without Congress, it took 41 days to act. This is a point many Democrats have been making lately, and Homan crushed it. He responded by broadening the issue beyond TSA, and that TSA pay does not address the larger DHS funding problem. “You’ve got the Coast Guard. You’ve got CISA. You’ve got the men and women of Secret Service. You’ve got a lot of people working at the Department of Homeland Security that isn’t getting paid,” he said. He argued the entire department should be funded because the country is facing a “heightened threat posture.”


The most effective part of Homan’s response was how he turned Tapper’s question back on Congress. He said he did not pretend to be an appropriations expert, but he was clear about the political bottom line. “I’m just glad that President Trump is able to pay the TSA agents. At least that’s a start,” Homan said. “But, again, there’s a lot more, many more, thousands more, tens of thousands more DHS employees who are not being paid that need to be paid.”

Tapper then tried (and failed) to hit Homan on the ICE deployment to airports, asking whether the agents would leave once TSA workers were paid. Homan refused to give him the answer he seemed to want. “We will see,” he said. He explained that the deployment depends on how many TSA workers return, how many have quit, and what each airport needs. He said he was working with TSA and ICE leadership to figure that out, while praising ICE for “plugging those holes” and helping keep airports secure.

When Tapper cited the TSA union’s criticism that ICE replacements were like “a teaspoon of cough syrup” for a patient with pneumonia, Homan fired back that the wait times had already gone down. He said he had seen improvements in Houston and that additional agents were being sent to Baltimore. “Every place we send ICE officers, the lines have decreased,” he said. “They need to decrease more.” Homan also pushed back hard on the idea that ICE was overstepping its role at airports. He said ICE officers were checking IDs and covering exits so TSA screeners could focus on the machines. “We’re doing the job TSA is asking us to do, so their officers can get back to main screening,” he said.

Tapper then moved to the DHS deal and asked why President Donald Trump would oppose a deal that Senate Republicans said was good. Homan did not budge. He said Trump wanted the entire DHS funded and open, and he accused Democrats of trying to change ICE tactics and force the agency to arrest fewer people. “They’re holding the department hostage because they don’t like what ICE is doing,” Homan said. “If they don’t like what ICE is doing, then change the law. That’s your job.” When Tapper brought up warrant changes, mask use, alleged mistaken detentions, and broader criticism of ICE, Homan insisted that the laws had not changed.

“Let’s talk about the masks. You don’t see ICE wearing masks inside the airports because they’re not on the street arresting criminals. You have got the agitators who cross the line and threaten ICE agents,” he said. “The same people in the Democratic Congress that want ICE to take off the mask are the same people who say ICE is going to shoot people inside airports. I mean, they can’t have it both ways. So, if you want ICE to take the mask off, the threat level has to decrease. It’s up 8000 percent increase in threats against ICE officers, and that’s because of a lot of the rhetoric coming from the Hill. Stop calling ICE Nazis and racists. Stop saying they’re going to shoot people inside airports. That’s going to drive the threat level down, and we can talk about masks.”

Read more …

Apollo Global Management manages a meager $900 billion in assets…

• This Trillion-Dollar Firm Wants Out of Mamdani’s NYC (Stephen Green)

As New York City’s filthy commie mayor struggles to fill a $5.4 billion budget gap with a massive soak-the-rich-then-soak-them-some-more tax hike, trillion-dollar asset management fund Apollo Global Management says it will open a secondary headquarters in Florida or Texas. “Apollo expects most of its future hiring to be in the second hub rather than Manhattan,” according to the New York Post, surprising literally no one.] “The reality is that you can’t propose budget after budget that vilifies employees and then be surprised when they decide to go somewhere else,” Partnership for New York City CEO Steve Fulop told the paper.


“New York City can’t tax people in sane states,” Your Friendly Neighborhood VodkaPundit sagely added while adding an extra dash of schadenfreude to his Bloody Mary. You know what happens after a huge firm like Apollo builds a second headquarters in a low-tax, liberty-loving state like Florida or Texas, right? Sooner or later, they shrink operations at the old HQ before finally boarding the windows and padlocking the doors. “TAX THIS!” to put it in language New Yorkers understand and enjoy. Before we get deeper into this, I’d like to apologize for the completely over-the-top hyperbole in the lead and in the headline. As it turns out, Apollo Global Management is nothing like a “trillion-dollar firm.” In fact, Apollo manages a meager $900 billion in assets, which is practically nothing, and certainly not even close enough to a trillion dollars for Mamdani and his commie cronies to ever miss it.

On the other hand, $900 billion here, $900 billion there, and pretty soon you’re pining for the days of $5.4 billion deficits. So about that deficit. NYC has an annual budget of about $127 billion, and chronic deficits of $4-6 billion. But that’s nothing for the city’s “Democratic Socialist” mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who wants to throw additional billions of Other People’s Money at public education (already some of the most expensive in the world, and with terrible results), legal services for illegals fighting deportation, city-run grocery stores, Homeless Inc., free buses, and more. NYC lavishes its 8.5 million people (and shrinking) with $127 billion in spending, not including whatever Albany contributes with state spending. That’s just shy of $15,000 per person in city spending alone, but I wonder if you’ll ever meet a New Yorker who feels like they get anything close to $15,000 in services.

The city’s budget is slightly more than the entire state of Florida ($117.4 billion) spends on the state’s 23.5 million people (and growing). Florida’s budget includes $16.75 billion in reserves and $250 million for debt reduction. But let’s look at Miami, Florida’s largest city, where the local government spends just $3,600 per denizen — or roughly a quarter of NYC’s largess. Yet the Post notes that Mamdani views his city’s deficit as “a crisis that can only be fixed with more taxes to build revenue.”

“Florida has already lured heavyweights like Citadel and Elliott Management,” the Post reminds readers, while “Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are hunkering down in Texas.” Wealthy individuals and trillion-dollar firms (sorry, I did it again!) like Apollo either have left New York or are eyeing the exits. And Mamdani is just getting started.

Read more …

“If he were a king, Senate Democrats would be powerless because if Trump were a king, or acting like one, he’d just be able to do it.”

• Scott Jennings Destroyed the ‘No Kings’ Rallies, CNN Wasn’t Happy (Margolis)

The “No Kings” rallies over the weekend were such a joke, and CNN’s Scott Jennings totally exposed them for what they really are on Sunday’s State of the Union. What happened was that CNN political commentator Ashley Allison argued that the weekend’s protests represented a growing resistance movement — one that had been slow to materialize after the 2024 election but was now picking up steam. She pointed to the crowds, the celebrity appearances, Bruce Springsteen and Jane Fonda lending their star power to the cause. “When you have millions of people peacefully go out, rock stars, Bruce Springsteen, Jane Fonda, all these folks coming out and saying, we don’t like it either, we’re not in isolation, it shows a unifying force that could be powerful,” she said. Snooze…


Anyway, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) was even more enthusiastic, boasting about how he attended six rallies over the weekend like it was a badge of honor or something. That’s when Jennings pounced.”That’s a lot of free speech for a country with a king,” he said. Subramanyam tried to brush it off, inviting Jennings to join them next time and offering to get him a T-shirt. But Jennings didn’t let up.”That’s a lot of free speech for a country with a king,” he said again.There’s a reason that Subramanyam tried to ignore that statement.

The entire premise of the “No Kings” movement — that America is somehow living under a monarchy — looks stupid when thousands of people can freely march through major cities with zero consequence on a random Saturday. I would also add that Trump really wants the SAVE America to pass, but Democrats are blocking it in the Senate. If he were a king, Senate Democrats would be powerless because if Trump were a king, or acting like one, he’d just be able to do it. Nevertheless, Subramanyam ignored Jennings and pressed on, saying the rallies showed genuine grassroots energy and that he’d even met a Republican attendee who said the Iran situation would keep him from ever voting Republican again — which I guarantee never happened.

But I digress. The next great moment came when Jennings exposed what the No Kings rallies were really about. “These No Kings rallies actually look pretty representative to me of the Democratic coalition,” he said. “I saw people flying the hammer and sickle in New York City. I saw Hezbollah flags. I saw Hamas flags. I saw Palestinian flags. I saw trans signs. I see weirdo liberal boomers out there. This is pretty representative of the Democratic coalition. And that’s who funds it as well, by the way.” Allison pushed back immediately, insisting that the fringe elements Jennings mentioned didn’t represent what the movement stood for. But Jennings wasn’t buying the “that’s not who we are” defense.”You like hammer and sickle? You like hammer and sickle flags?” he shot back as the table erupted. “They had a bunch of them. They come from somewhere,” he added. They sure did, no matter how uncomfortable that makes the left.

Read more …

 


 

 


 

https://twitter.com/NatCy891/status/2038711644625293539?s=20 https://twitter.com/CRRJA5/status/2038097858428080577?s=20

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle March 30 2026

Mar 302026
 
 March 30, 2026  Posted by at 8:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  66 Responses »


Leonardo da Vinci Ginevra de’ Benci c. 1474-78

This website relies exclusively on readers’ support. Please donate generously. it’s our only source of income.

 


 


• US Prepares for ‘Weeks‘ of Ground Raids in Iran – WaPo (RT)
• Iran Warns US Troops Will Be ‘Set On Fire’ In Ground Invasion (RT)
• CENTCOM Announces 3,500 Marines Arrive in Ready Position (CTH)
• Trump Ready To Take US Arms For Ukraine & Divert Them To Middle East (ZH)
• Democrats Should Be Panicking About This (Matt Margolis)
• The Long And Winding Petro-Gold Road (Pepe Escobar)
• Tensions Surface Between Marco Rubio and EU’s Insufferable Kaja Kallas (CTH)
• Aliens are ‘Demons’ – Vance (RT)
• Vance Says The Clock Is Ticking For Ilhan Omar (MN)
• Republic of Somaliland Asks US to Extradite Ilhan Omar (Catherine Salgado)
• Leading Democrat Calls for Reparations for Illegal Immigrants (Turley)
• Ukraine Needs Nukes As Security Guarantee – Zelensky (RT)
• Slovakia Threatens To Block EU’s Russia Sanctions Over Oil Rift With Kiev (RT)
• Project Hail Mary’ Is a Gut Punch to Woke Hollywood (Matt Margolis)

 


 

https://twitter.com/mitchellvii/status/2037964733052055572?s=20 $200 MILLION? Try BILLION. 1,000 times more.

 


 

 


 


“President Donald Trump has yet to approve any of the Department of War’s invasion plans, according to the Washington Post .. ”

• US Prepares for ‘Weeks‘ of Ground Raids in Iran – WaPo (RT)

The US Department of War is reportedly drafting plans for weeks of potential ground operations in Iran, despite US President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that Tehran has already lost the month-long war and is begging for a deal to surrender. Any ground mission would not be a “full-scale invasion,” but rather limited raids by Special Operations forces and conventional infantry troops, several US officials who spoke with the Washington Post on condition of anonymity have insisted.


Potential objectives could include the seizure of Kharg Island, a key Iranian oil export hub, or raids into coastal areas near the Strait of Hormuz to destroy weapons capable of targeting commercial and military shipping. Trump has yet to approve any of the Department of War’s plans. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it is the Pentagon’s role to make preparations to provide the commander-in-chief with “maximum optionality.”

Earlier on Saturday, the US Central Command said the USS Tripoli amphibious assault ship had joined the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the region. The new reinforcements include around 3,500 US sailors and Marines with transport and strike aircraft, as well as amphibious assault assets. Another US amphibious ready group – comprising the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Boxer, the Whidbey Island-class dock landing ship USS Comstock, and the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland – is also reportedly moving to the region.

In the meantime, the Department of War is also deploying a third aircraft carrier group to the US Central Command’s area of responsibility to potentially join combat operations against Iran, according to CBS and CNN reports on Friday. Two carrier strike groups – led by the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Abraham Lincoln – spearheaded the US attack on Iran last month, until the Ford suffered an alleged “non-combat” fire aboard and retreated for repairs to Crete. It is unclear if the Bush will join or replace the Ford.

Read more …

“Our men are waiting for American soldiers to set them on fire..”

• Iran Warns US Troops Will Be ‘Set On Fire’ In Ground Invasion (RT)

As the conflict nears the one-month mark, the prospect of a US ground incursion appears increasingly plausible. In response, Iranian officials have issued stark warnings, with parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf saying the country is prepared for the arrival of American troops and vowing fierce retaliation. Ghalibaf has accused US President Donald Trump of duplicity, saying Washington is publicly signaling talks while covertly preparing for an attack. “Our men are waiting for American soldiers to set them on fire,” he said.


Meanwhile, Iran claims it inflicted major damage on US military assets in the region. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said its Air Force carried out a missile-drone strike on Saudi Arabia’s Al-Kharj Air Base, destroying at least one Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACS surveillance aircraft.


US media reports and circulating images suggest a $270 million aircraft was destroyed, several others damaged, and at least 12 American troops injured, though the Pentagon has not confirmed the scale of the reported losses.At the same time, The Washington Post reported that the US Department of War is drafting plans for weeks of potential ground operations. Officials cited by the outlet said any mission would likely involve limited raids rather than a full-scale invasion, with possible objectives including seizing Kharg Island, a key Iranian oil export hub.

Here are the latest developments:
The IRGC threatened to target two unnamed US- and Israeli-linked educational facilities unless Washington formally condemns Israel by 12:00 PM Tehran time on Monday, March 30, while Iran’s Foreign Ministry accused the US and Israel of deliberately targeting the country’s scientific and cultural infrastructure, citing strikes on major universities in Isfahan and Tehran.Yemen’s Houthis, who only recently declared their entry into the conflict, said they launched a second wave of missile and drone attacks on Israel and vowed to continue operations until Israeli actions cease. Protests against the war were reported in Tel Aviv and cities across the US and Europe, while in Lebanon crowds gathered in Beirut after three journalists were killed in what was described as a targeted Israeli strike.

Read more …

To conquer Kharg?

• CENTCOM Announces 3,500 Marines Arrive in Ready Position (CTH)

As the ongoing Operation Epic Fury military engagement continues, CENTCOM announces the arrival of 3.500 Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit into forward position.


As negotiations with Iranian leadership are reported to be ongoing, it would appear that options are now present for President Trump to make a decision on the potential seizure of Kharg Island, a crucial oil export hub off Iran’s coast. (Via Wall Street Journal) – “The Pentagon is looking at sending up to 10,000 additional ground troops to the Middle East to give President Trump more military options even as he weighs peace talks with Teh ran, Department of Defense officials with knowledge of the planning said.

The force, which would likely include infantry and armored vehicles, would be added to the roughly 5,000 Marines and the thousands of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division who have already been ordered to the region.It is unclear where precisely forces will go in the Middle East, but they will likely be within striking distance of Iran and Kharg Island, a crucial oil export hub off Iran’s coast. Trump has repeatedly said he will open the Strait of Hormuz, with or without the help of U.S. allies. (read more)

Read more …

Zelensky is in the way.

• Trump Ready To Take US Arms For Ukraine & Divert Them To Middle East (ZH)

The Iran war has been bad for Ukraine, and President Zelensky knows it. He’s frequently been warning partners not to let the global focus on the latest Middle East war distract from supporting Kiev. But President Trump himself made fresh remarks highlighting just this situation, signaling he’s willing to reroute arms originally tied to Ukraine toward the Middle East theater against Iran, reinforcing the obvious and growing pivot in US priorities.


Pressed on reports that shipments were being redirected on Thursday, Trump shrugged it off as standard practice: “We do that all the time. We have a lot of munitions. Sometimes we take from one and use for another.” He added Washington is no longer directly supplying the Ukrainian government and armed forces, but is instead “selling” weapons to NATO states that then pass them along. This has for many months been the White House’s stated plan.

According to The Washington Post, officials say the Pentagon is weighing whether to divert missile interceptors initially intended for NATO purchase for Ukraine and send them to the Middle East. While a final decision hasn’t been made, or has at least not been publicly declared, this would be reasonable given how much US bases in the region have struggled to intercept Iran’s inbound missiles and drones. On Friday Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia was hit, wounding at least a dozen US troops, with reports of several in serious condition. Expensive US Air Force planes were also hit.

Clearly the US needs more interceptors, and yet Ukraine has for months been raising the alarm over its need for more Patriots and other air defense systems. Russia’s assault on Ukrainian cities has not waned, but has been consistent and devastating. In early March, Zelensky stated that “We understand that a long war–if it is long–and the intensity of the military actions will affect the amount of air defense we receive.” He emphasized: “Everyone understands that, for us, this is a matter of life.”

Read more …

“..if they can’t sell this to their own allies in the press..”:

“..This was ABC News, with one of its own anchors walking a Democratic senator through the basic mechanics of the standoff and refusing to accept the spin ..”

• Democrats Should Be Panicking About This (Matt Margolis)

When the liberal media isn’t buying the Democrats’ talking points, you know they’re in trouble. On Sunday’s edition of This Week, host Jonathan Karl walked Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) through the reality of the Democrats blocking funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and things got a little testy when Van Hollen was confronted with some uncomfortable truths “I guess what’s confusing here is you have fought and blocked the funding for the Department of Homeland Security because you object, as you just outlined, to what ICE has been doing, and you wanted to force changes,” Karl said. “And yet, the only thing that has been assured throughout all of this is that ICE already has the money. Because, as you said, $75 billion passed in the budget bill last year.”


This isn’t new information; we’ve known for months now that ICE is funded through 2029, which made this standoff completely pointless, not to mention dangerous and reckless. Karl pressed the point further, spelling it out in plain English. “So you’re holding up the entirety of the Department of Homeland Security because you object to ICE, and you want changes to ICE,” he said. “Through it all, ICE continues to have the money it needs.”

That’s when the senator attempted to reframe the situation: “John, we’re not holding up all of the money for all the Department of Homeland Security. That’s just a false statement. We have said …repeatedly… we should fund TSA, we should fund FEMA, we should fund the Coast Guard. We are not prepared to give ICE another $10 billion …. on top of the monies they already have and are using in many of these lawless operations.” Karl cut in again, bringing the conversation back to consequences: “But fighting over that $10 billion … you’re holding up everything else.”

Then Van Hollen had the audacity to claim, “We’re not holding it up.” Karl wasn’t buying the spin. “And fighting over that additional $10 billion … you are holding up the rest of Department of Homeland Security.” Van Hollen just stuck to the script: “We’re not holding it up.” Karl wasn’t letting that slide: “I mean, but, but you’re saying—” “No, no, John, we’re not holding it up,” he insisted, but Karl kept coming back to the same, irrefutable point. “But you’re holding it up unless it doesn’t include money for ICE. That’s just a fact.”

Remember, this wasn’t a partisan hit from a conservative outlet. This was ABC News, with one of its own anchors walking a Democratic senator through the basic mechanics of the standoff and refusing to accept the spin. We’ve been pointing this out for weeks now, but when a left-wing media outlet points it out, it tells you exactly how the Democrats’ messaging is simply failing to fool anyone. And if the liberal media isn’t even buying it, it’s a clear sign the usual media safety net isn’t there to catch Democrats this time. Their messaging isn’t just weak—it’s collapsing under basic scrutiny in front of a national audience. And if they can’t sell this to their own allies in the press, Democrats should be panicking about this.

Read more …

Pepe doesn’t like Trump, who must therefore be a loser. I don’t find that strong.

• The Long And Winding Petro-Gold Road (Pepe Escobar)

The 15-point plan that Team Trump presented to Iran is already D.O.A. It’s an imposed capitulation: a surrender document disguised as “negotiation”. The non-plan plan – imposing demands while begging for a one-month ceasefire – includes zero uranium enrichment on Iranian soil; full dismantlement of Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow installations; all enriched uranium out of Iran; the missile program extremely restricted; no funding for Hezbollah, Ansarallah and Iraqi militias; the Strait of Hormuz totally opened. All that in exchange for a vague “cancelling the threat of reimposing sanctions”.


The only realistic Iranian response to this accumulated wishful thinking might be Mr. Khorramshahr-4 showering his business card across selected targets – consistent with leveraging economic and military deterrence to dictate the real terms. And the real terms are harsh: Closure of ALL US military bases in the Gulf; guarantee of no more wars; end of the war on Hezbollah; lifting of ALL sanctions; war damage reparations; a new order in the Strait of Hormuz (already in effect: collecting fees just like Egypt in Suez); missile program intact. Conclusion: the infernal escalation machine keeps rolling.

A Member’s Club With an Entrance Fee in Petroyuan
Meanwhile, oil and gas prices are mired in a kaleidoscope of volatility, affecting currencies, equities, commodities, supply chains, inflation scares. This is already an out-of-control global economic shock with devastating consequences in progress. Before the war, Iran was producing a little less of 1.1 million barrels of oil a day, sold at $65 a barrel with a $18 discount: thus, in practice only $47. Now, Iran has increased production to 1.5 million barrels a day, selling at $110 (and counting), mostly to China, with a maximum $4 discount.

And that does not even include petrochemical sales: on the up and up, and for an array of extra customers. To round it all up, all payments are conducted via alternative mechanisms. Which brings us to a startling fact: for all practical purposes, this is sanctions relief in effect. Now for the Holy Grail in the war: the Strait of Hormuz. It is de facto open, but with a toll booth controlled by the IRGC. A toll booth with a twist: veto power over the guest list. Like entering an exclusive private club. To get the IRGC clearance, a tanker needs to pay the toll: $2 million per vessel. This is how it works.

You contact an IRGC-linked broker. The broker relays to the IRGC the essential info: vessel ownership, national flag, cargo manifest, destination, crew list, and AIS transponder data. The IRGC runs background checks. If you are not US-linked, not shipping any Israel-linked cargo, and your flag is not part of “aggressor states”, you’re in. Japan and South Korea, for instance, still have not been cleared. Then you pay the toll. In cash – whatever currency you have – but preferably in yuan. Or in crypto. It’s a complex mechanism. The IRGC uses multiple addresses; cross-chain bridges to other networks; over-the-counter desks in jurisdictions way beyond American reach; and integration with all sorts of yuan settlement channels.

After the toll is paid, the IRGC issues a VHF radio clearance – complete with a specific time window linked to a narrow 5-mile nautical corridor through Iranian territorial waters, between Qeshm and little Larak island, where the IRGC Navy can visually identify your vessel. You’re free to go. No need for an escort ship. All of the above applies, for now, to tankers from China, India, Pakistan, Turkiye, Malaysia, Iraq, Bangladesh, Russia. Some don’t need to pay the full toll. Some get exemptions – on government-to-government basis (as in Sri Lanka and Thailand, both described as “friendly nations”). And some don’t pay anything.

So welcome to a member’s club with an entrance fee mostly in petroyuan. It took a single move from Iran to achieve what endless global summits could not: establishing an alternative settlement system – under fire, tested under supreme stress, and on top of it applied in the most consequential chokepoint on the planet. Each toll paid in petroyuan bypasses the petrodollar, SWIFT and US sanctions – all in one go. The Iranian parliament will approve legislation institutionalizing the toll booth as “security compensation.” No one saw this coming – and so fast: legalized chokepoint monetization. Without firing a shot. This is what de-dollarization trade is really all about.

The problem is what is not transiting Hormuz: fertilizers. Over 49% of urea for export comes from the Persian Gulf. Ammonia needs natural gas; but Qatar declared Force Majeure after the Epstein Syndicate attack on South Pars and the Iranian counter-strikes. The IRGC is focused on oil because oil finances the tool booth and long term, is at the heart of the post-dollar energy settlement system, fully supported by the Russia-China strategic partnership. So it’s no wonder the Empire of Chaos and Plunder has gone bonkers.

In a flash, in three weeks, we have the petroyuan ruling over the – de facto privatized – most important naval connectivity corridor on the planet. So CENTCOM will go all out Terminator to demolish the tool booth, attempting everything from bombing IRGC installations along the coast and setting up naval escorts for allied tankers to a tsunami of sanctions on toll booth brokers.

“Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying”
-Bob Dylan

Read more …

““We are doing the best we can to end the war. If you think you can do it better, go ahead. We will step aside..”

PS; Kallas was selected BECAUSE she’s insufferable -and because she hates Putin-. Her function is she makes Von der Leyen look less bad.

• Tensions Surface Between Marco Rubio and EU’s Insufferable Kaja Kallas (CTH)

If you’ve ever watched the intrapersonal aspects of the EU as a governing body, you have likely noticed that EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, is an annoying person always injecting herself into every discussion. The DEI infected bureaucrats always go along with it. Last month, Kallas came to the USA to meet with members of congress sympathetic to World War Reddit and Zelenskyy. A cashmere dustup was created because Secretary of State Marco Rubio didn’t meet with her on the eve of Operation Epic Fury. Mrs Kallas felt slighted. According to insider reports, during Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent visit to the G7 foreign minister’s assembly in Paris Mrs Kallas took the opportunity to snark at Secretary Rubio.


(Via Axios) – EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio when the U.S. would get tough on Russia during a G7 ministers meeting on Friday, sparking a sharp retort, according to three sources who attended the meeting. She noted that Rubio had said at the same forum a year earlier that if Russia hampered U.S. efforts to end the war, the U.S. would run out of patience and take more steps against the Kremlin. “A year has passed and Russia hasn’t moved,” Kallas told Rubio, according to the sources. “When is your patience going to run out?” Rubio was visibly annoyed, “We are doing the best we can to end the war. If you think you can do it better, go ahead. We will step aside,” he fired back, raising his voice. (read more)

Read more …

“The US vice president has vowed to examine the UFO files and “get to the bottom” of the matter with his “tippy top” access..”

• Aliens are ‘Demons’ – Vance (RT)

US Vice President J.D. Vance has said aliens are in fact “demons,” vowing to dig into US government files on UFOs. He made the remarks in an interview with podcaster Benny Johnson released on Friday. Vance discussed the UFO files and government disclosures, saying he is “obsessed” with the topic, but has not had enough time to “get to the bottom of it.” “I’ve already had a couple of times where I’ve said, ‘All right, we’re going to Area 51, we’re going out to New Mexico, we’re going to sort of get to the bottom of this.’ And then the timing of the trip didn’t work out,” he said. “I’m more curious than anybody. And I’ve got three years at the very tippy top of the classification. I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”


Area 51 is a secretive US Air Force facility in southern Nevada that has long been linked to speculation about alien life. Johnson asked Vance about President Donald Trump’s February order directing federal agencies to begin “identifying and releasing” government files related to UFOs and aliens. Trump said he was taking the step “based on the tremendous interest shown,” shortly after former President Barack Obama publicly said that aliens are “real.” Trump later told reporters that Obama “gave classified information, he is not supposed to be doing that.” https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/2037611400223179189?s=20

In the interview, Vance told Johnson, “I don’t think they’re aliens. I think they’re demons,” describing this as a Christian understanding of “celestial beings who fly around who do weird things to people.” Interest in UFOs and related phenomena has grown in recent years, as the US government has investigated numerous reports, including through the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), and established channels for pilots and the public to report sightings. In March 2024, the Pentagon said it had no proof that any unidentified aerial phenomena are in fact alien technology, adding that many cases involved weather balloons, spy planes, satellites, and other routine activity.

Read more …

“… what are the legal remedies now that we know that she’s committed immigration fraud?”

• Vance Says The Clock Is Ticking For Ilhan Omar (MN)

Vice President JD Vance has put Rep. Ilhan Omar squarely in the crosshairs, confirming the White House is actively exploring legal remedies to hold her accountable for immigration fraud. In a direct interview with Benny Johnson, Vance stated the Trump administration believes Omar broke the law to enter and remain in the United States — and they are not letting it slide. “So we actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America,” Vance said. “And I talked to [White House deputy chief of staff] Stephen Miller about this actually recently. We’re trying to look at what the remedies are. That’s the thing that we’re trying to figure out is what are the legal remedies now that we know that she’s committed immigration fraud?”


Vance continued, “How do you go after her? How do you investigate her? How do you actually do the thing? How do you build the case necessary to get some justice for the American people? Vance added that Omar “has been at the center of a lot of the worst fraudsters in the Somali community.” Benny Johnson later reflected on the interview, calling it “the first time on the record that we have absolute and total confirmation that Ilhan Omar did, in fact, commit immigration fraud.”

This latest development builds on years of scrutiny over Omar’s personal and financial dealings. As we reported earlier this year, Omar’s husband’s winery was exposed as a fake shell company allegedly used for money laundering, with revenue exploding from $15,000 in 2024 to $5 million in 2025 despite zero wine production at the listed address. The New York Times reported on a federal investigation into Omar’s finances in January. House Republicans and federal agencies launched a probe.

https://twitter.com/WallStreetApes/status/2035672843485319289

Even Democrat strategist James Carville previously ripped into Omar, calling her attacks on white men “stupid” and urging her to leave the Democratic Party. Omar has long faced accusations of marrying her brother Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009 to help him immigrate, after an earlier marriage to Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi. She later reconciled with Hirsi and divorced Elmi years later. Conservatives, including President Trump, have repeatedly highlighted her ties to massive welfare fraud schemes in Minnesota’s Somali community, where dozens were charged in a $1 billion theft from taxpayer-funded programs.

Vance is leading a new anti-fraud task force aimed at cracking down on such abuses, especially in Minnesota. President Trump has also mocked Omar over the Somali fraud scandals in recent remarks. The message from the White House is clear: no one is above the law — not even a sitting member of Congress who has spent years deflecting scrutiny while her community allegedly drained billions in American taxpayer dollars.

Read more …

For real?

BTW, new for me: “Somaliland is a self-declared independent republic separate in all but name from the rest of Somalia..”

• Republic of Somaliland Asks US to Extradite Ilhan Omar (Catherine Salgado)

After official confirmation that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) did, in fact, commit immigration fraud, the Republic of Somaliland — which has good reason to be bitter at the crimes of Omar and her Somali family — offered to be the hammer of justice if the United States would extradite Omar there. The tantalizing offer comes after Vice President JD Vance confirmed on Benny Johnson’s show what many of us have thought of Omar for a long time — there is, in fact, solid evidence that the radical Islamist member of Congress committed immigration fraud. “We actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America,” Vance stated.


The vice president explained that he has discussed this with a top Trump administration advisor. “I talked to Stephen Miller about this actually recently. We’re trying to look at what the remedies are,” Vance added. “That’s the thing that we’re trying to figure out is what are the legal remedies now that we know that she’s committed immigration fraud? How do you go after her? How do you investigate her? How do you actually do the thing? How do you build a case necessary to get some, some — some justice for the American people?”

he Republic of Somaliland is happy to help Americans see that justice comes to fruition. America is not the only country that has suffered from crimes committed by Omar and her family. In fact, the Republic of Somaliland shared a fascinating X thread recently exposing Omar’s family for war crimes and fraud and illustrating why the government might wish to see her extradited to their country. Did you know Omar’s father participated in the Isaaq Genocide? Why would we ever have let this family come into our country?

https://twitter.com/RepOfSomaliland/status/2034435436874170758

Speaking of which, Vance connected Omar not only to immigration fraud, of which her “marriage” to her brother is a part, but also to fraudulent networks pulling in taxpayer dollars here in America. “She has been at the center of a lot of the worst fraudsters in the Somalian community,” he argued. The Republic of Somaliland wants independence from Somalia precisely because of the sort of violence and corruption that the people who control Somalia and move to the USA from Somalia perpetrate.

In exchange for recognition, the Republic of Somaliland — which argues that historically and politically its independence from Somalia is legitimate — will give the USA a military base, access to a strategic port, and also access to critical minerals. And let’s be honest, that’s a pretty good deal that secures the United States a foothold in the Horn of Africa with a blow to Somalia, which has been sucking up a lot of U.S. taxpayer money through Somali “migrant” fraud.

Read more …

Take away here: Anyone who wants to have borders is a dictator.

• Leading Democrat Calls for Reparations for Illegal Immigrants (Turley)

As Chicago and other blue cities move toward reparations for African Americans, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D, Wa.) wants reparations for illegal immigrants for the trauma caused by immigration enforcement. At the same time, various Democrats are making clear that they want to entirely defund and eliminate Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So, after the Biden Administration allowed in millions over an open border, Democrats would eliminate ICE and some like Jayapal would pay illegal immigrants reparations. Rep. Jayapal declared on Friday:


“They need to be brought before us, and they need to be held account [sic] for the trauma that they have created, and we are going to have to have some form of reparation for the kids and the families that have been traumatized through all of this.” While not calling for reparations, other democrats have picked up the theme that someone has to pay for the trauma caused by immigration enforcement. Rep. Maxine Dexter (D, Or.) echoed the mantra of Democratic members that “The administration has terrorized our communities and mine in the Willamette Valley.”

Rep. Christian Menefee (D-TX) told constituents, “I can’t imagine seeing my kid in a jail cell just because of where he was born, just because of what language he speaks at home.” Jayapal fought back tears in her “shadow hearing” on Friday after calling for reparations, stating, “I still cannot believe that we are doing this to our own children.” U.S.-born President Donald Trump is the outsider, Jayapal argued: “When the founders put into the Constitution the idea that Congress would have power, they assumed that the party that was in control of Congress would stand up to a dictatorial, authoritarian president.”

Jayapal did not mention the many American children killed by what she called “our” migrants. The question becomes, if more groups get reparations, when does this become a form of wealth redistribution? Indeed, according to these members, much of the country has been traumatized by the Trump Administration. What is missing in cities like Chicago facing economic meltdowns is any notion of financial limits. Instead, Democrats are pushing tax hikes and wealth taxes to cover bloated budgets and growing deficits.

Read more …

Nope. C’mon, we’re going to give the mafia nukes?

• Ukraine Needs Nukes As Security Guarantee – Zelensky (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky has demanded that Kiev’s Western backers either admit Kiev to NATO or supply it with nuclear weapons, arguing that nothing less can protect Ukraine against a nuclear-armed Russia. In an interview with French newspaper Le Monde on Friday, Zelensky lashed out at Ukraine’s critics, who he said did not believe in Kiev’s ultimate victory over Russia due to Moscow’s nuclear arsenal. ”When everyone says that Ukraine will not win this war because Russia is a nuclear power, then tell me, what do you think, what security guarantees should Ukraine have to oppose it? Which? NATO? Nuclear weapons? Well then, people should speak with us in the same way,” he said.


He admitted, though, that “until now, no one has asked us that question,” adding that he found “astonishing” the fact that “no one is talking about Russia, at least in the same terms.”Zelensky’s comments came after he told Reuters earlier this week that Washington’s post-war security guarantees were contingent on Kiev withdrawing from the parts of Russia’s Donbass it still occupies. Donbass, along with two other former Ukrainian regions, overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in 2022, and Moscow has insisted that Kiev’s full withdrawal from the territory was a key condition for a sustainable peace. However, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back against Zelensky, accusing him of telling a “lie.” “I saw him say that, and it’s unfortunate he would say that, because he knows that’s not true and that’s not what he was told,” Rubio stated.

”What he was told is the obvious: security guarantees are not going to kick in until there’s an end to a war, because otherwise you’re getting yourself involved in the war.” Zelensky has, on numerous occasions, denied that Ukraine was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. However, he told Sky News last month that he would accept nuclear weapons from Britain and France “with pleasure, but I didn’t have propositions,” as he responded to Moscow’s accusation that London and Paris had plans to secretly arm Ukraine with atomic capabilities.Russia has repeatedly said it would not allow Ukraine to acquire nuclear weapons under any circumstances. Moscow has also suggested that Zelensky’s openness to getting his hands on nuclear weapons before the escalation of the conflict in 2022 was one of the reasons for the start of the hostilities.

Read more …

“.. the bloc has threatened Bratislava with repercussions over its domestic protective measures, including diesel rationing for foreigners..”

• Slovakia Threatens To Block EU’s Russia Sanctions Over Oil Rift With Kiev (RT)

Any attempts to fast-track Ukraine’s bid to join the EU will also be blocked if the issue is not resolved, PM Robert Fico has warned. Bratislava will veto the EU’s proposed 20th package of sanctions against Russia, as well as derail any attempts to simplify the potential accession of Kiev into the bloc, should Brussels continue to favor Ukraine over Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico has warned.


Slovakia, as well as its southern neighbor Hungary, has been locked in a bitter row with Ukraine since late January, when the Druzhba pipeline, which used to carry Russian crude into the two countries, went offline. Kiev has claimed it was damaged in Russian strikes, a charge Moscow has denied.Both Slovakia and Hungary have accused Ukraine of deliberately withholding supplies for political blackmail and threatened retaliatory steps should the pipeline remain out of commission. Kiev has claimed the artery was being repaired but has repeatedly shifted the deadline.

Speaking in a video address posted to his Facebook page late on Saturday, Fico lamented the treatment his country has been receiving from EU bureaucrats. Namely, the bloc has threatened Bratislava with repercussions over its domestic protective measures, including diesel rationing for foreigners, the PM said. “The European Commission immediately sent us a threatening letter within two days, wherein it threatened all possible actions. It is strange that the same language is not used in reference to [Vladimir] Zelensky; those are full of love and understanding,” Fico stated.

Should the attitude remain the same and the EU Commission continue to “favor Ukraine over Slovakia,” Bratislava will block the proposed 20th package of anti-Russian sanctions, as well as no longer show “willingness for Ukraine’s rapid accession to the union,” the PM warned. The sanctions package has already ended up in limbo over the Druzhba row, as the initiative was vetoed by another victim of the pipeline shutdown, Hungary. Budapest has also derailed the proposed €90 billion ($104 billion) EU assistance package for Kiev, agreed to by the member states late last year. Without the emergency loan, Ukraine is projected to run out of money by June, according to Bloomberg.

Read more …

Hollywood is back to good movies?

• Project Hail Mary’ Is a Gut Punch to Woke Hollywood (Matt Margolis)

Last night, my family saw Project Hail Mary, and it was exactly the kind of movie more studios should be making. It’s smart, clean, entertaining, and it trusts the audience to enjoy a good story without being preached at. I read the novel when it first came out and have reread it a few times since. So, it’s safe to say that I’ve been looking forward to this movie for a long time and, honestly, kind of dreading it. Would Hollywood make this story woke? Would they take this great story and ruin it for the narrative?


The movie follows Ryland Grace, played by Ryan Gosling, a science teacher and biologist who wakes up alone on a mission to save Earth from a sun-dimming threat called astrophage. That setup could easily have turned into another heavy-handed Hollywood lecture, but instead it delivers a genuinely fun, family-friendly sci-fi adventure. And the audience response says plenty. Project Hail Mary has earned a 95% critics score and a 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s done some great box office as well. It opened with about $80.6 million domestically and more than $140 million worldwide. That is not the sign of a movie people tolerated because critics told them to. That is a sign of a movie people actually liked.

That matters because Hollywood has been severely lacking in good storytelling for years after forgetting how to make movies people want to see. It’s like they’ve gotten lazy, pushing out endless sequels, remaking a classic with a race swap or a gender swap, or injecting a political lecture into a script and calling it progress. Then they act shocked when audiences roll their eyes and stay home. Heck, even their target audiences don’t seem to want to see the crap they’re churning out. Remember that gay rom-com Bros that tanked? Not even the LGBTQ community bothered to support it.

Project Hail Mary is a reminder that people still show up for original stories when the movie respects them. It also helps that the film appears to have none of the usual baggage that turns a night at the movies into a cause for concern for parents with young kids. There’s no nudity or sexual content, and I don’t even recall there being any profanity. In other words, it’s the rare modern release that parents can actually take seriously as entertainment for a broad audience.

That stands in sharp contrast to the mess Hollywood keeps shoving down our throats. As you know, Disney has made a habit of “updating” classic stories with race-swaps and overt ideological signaling, then pretending that criticism is the problem rather than the execution. Even HBO’s new Harry Potter series has sparked controversy over casting a black actor to portray Severus Snape, a move that fans of the franchise know will create a racial subtext in his backstory, making Harry Potter’s father seem racist.

That’s why the success of Project Hail Mary is so refreshing. It proves that audiences do not need to be lectured, scolded, or re-educated every time they buy a ticket. In the end, we want a good story and great characters. If Hollywood can learn anything from Project Hail Mary, it’s that original movies can still win, family-friendly movies can still draw crowds, and viewers are perfectly capable of rewarding good storytelling without the social-justice sermon attached. Sometimes people just want to be entertained. Imagine that.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/ProudofusUK/status/2037890781088829946?s=20 https://twitter.com/iam_smx/status/2038046413615948117?s=20 https://twitter.com/Old_But_Gold50s/status/2038066108314624254?s=20

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle March 7 2026

Mar 072026
 
 March 7, 2026  Posted by at 10:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  71 Responses »


Mark Chagall Paris through the window 1913


• Trump to Rubio: Here’s Your Next Project (Sarah Anderson)
• Strange – CNN Found a War to Cover Again (CTH)
• Trump’s Favorability With His Voting Base Tops All Previous Presidents (JTN)
• The Sinking Ship Problem of the Epstein Coalition (Helmer)
• The Rockets Red Glare (James Howard Kunstler)
• President Trump: ‘No Deal with Iran Except Unconditional Surrender’ (CTH)
• Virginia Dems Move to Require Teaching Jan. 6th as an Insurrection (Turley)
• James Comer Suggests Criminal Referrals Are Possible In Minnesota Fraud Probe (JTN)
• Anthropic CEO Apologizes For ‘Dictator Trump’ Meltdown Memo (ZH)
• Zelensky Issues Military Threat to Orban (RT)
• Orban Intercepts Zelenskyy’s Money Laundering Operation (CTH)
• Churchill Wasn’t The First: Europe’s War On Russia Is Centuries Old (Norin)
• This Speech Started The Cold War – Still Haunts The World 80 Years On (Amar)

 


 

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2029740962369405166?s=20 https://twitter.com/AstronomyVibes/status/2029738545125150860?s=20 https://twitter.com/EvanLuthra/status/2029799159025521112?s=20 https://twitter.com/AlexMasonCrypto/status/2029590536722751572?s=20

 


 


Cuba.

• Trump to Rubio: Here’s Your Next Project (Sarah Anderson)

Donald Trump told Marco Rubio that he’s got a new project coming on Thursday, and no, I’m not talking about babysitting Kristi Noem, though, apparently, he’s doing that too. Trump welcomed the Inter Miami CF soccer club to the White House today, and there was a lot of talk about Cuba, as the club’s co-owners, brothers Jorge and José Mas, are of Cuban descent. After praising Rubio as the “best Secretary of State in the country’s history” and joking that he didn’t want him to get “too popular,” Trump said, “He’s doing some job, and your next one is going to be… special. He’s waiting, but he says, ‘Let’s get [Iran] finished first.’ We could do them all at the same time, but bad things happen. If you watch countries, over the years, you do them all too fast, bad things happen. We’re not going to let bad things happen.”


The “special” job is, of course, taking over Cuba (last week, Trump called it a “friendly takeover”). The president implied during his speech that it would happen in a couple of weeks, but he said we need to get Iran under control first. But Trump was adamant, as he has been for weeks, that Cuba will fall. Of the regime, he said, “They want to make a deal so badly. You have no idea.” If the Miami Herald is to be believed, the current hand-picked “president” of the nation, Miguel Díaz-Canel, is the holdout and “biggest obstacle,” but it sounds like if he doesn’t start negotiating, he could end up being Cuba’s biggest loser. Rubio is reportedly in talks with Raúl Castro’s grandson, as well as other people in the country’s so-called “government.”

Díaz-Canel actually spent his day at the Iranian Embassy, paying homage to Ayatollah Khamenei. These images are giving me major “defiant Nicolás Maduro before the January 3 raid” vibes. We know how that turned out. Unfortunately, there’s no warrant out for Díaz-Canel’s arrest. Trump also said today that soon, Cubans who live in the United States will be able to go back to their country, but given the current conditions, I can’t imagine a lot of people are super eager. On Wednesday, over two-thirds of the island suffered an extended blackout. While some power has been restored, word is that it could take days to fix it. Then again, sadly, I think the people in Cuba are used to it at this point. Many parts of the country go 20 hours a day without power. The regime blames Trump’s oil squeeze, but we all know what the real problem is. It starts with a “c” and ends with an “ommunism.”

I’ve been banking stories out of Cuba for the last few days for an update, but if I included every single one of them, this article would end up at about 8,000 words, so I’m going to pick the two biggies. So, we know that Mexico’s narco-president, Claudia Sheinbaum, was sending Cuba “humanitarian oil” last year and early this year before Trump put a stop to it by threatening more tariffs. In February, she began sending humanitarian aid instead. Tons of it — items like food and toiletries, while about a third of her own country lives in poverty. Many have condemned her actions, mostly because she sent the aid straight to the regime rather than the Catholic Church as our State Department has been doing.

Well, Azteca Noticias did some investigative work and found that those items are being sold wholesale in state or military-controlled stores that only accept U.S. dollars. For example, for $43, you could get about 30 kilograms or just over 66 pounds of dry beans. And so, people continue to go hungry. The other major news is that many countries in the region are cutting any sort of diplomatic ties with the Cuban regime. The most noteworthy in recent days is Ecuador, which declared Cuban Ambassador Basilio Gutiérrez persona non grata and gave him and his staff 48 hours to get the heck out of the country. Those staff members could be seen on the roof of the embassy burning papers on Wednesday.

Several other countries are also refusing to continue participating in Cuba’s forced labor program. Commies will tell you it’s a great humanitarian gesture in which Cuba sends doctors and other healthcare providers and professionals to underserved countries. But the fact is that these medical professionals are treated like garbage. Some have compared it to modern-day slavery. Meanwhile, the regime gets rich off what these countries pay for the services. Honduras just sent 168 people back home, and on Thursday, Jamaica announced that it was ending its relationship with the program after five decades. Trump said on Thursday that Cuba will definitely fall. It’s just a matter of time as to when. He acted as if it’s merely a scheduling conflict between handling that, Iran, and Venezuela. He makes it all look so simple. We are witnessing history here, folks, and I will continue to document it as much as I can.

Read more …

“..the media participation was limited to column inches, punditry reports, claims and scripted presentations that worked alongside Zelenskyy, the actor..”

• Strange – CNN Found a War to Cover Again (CTH)

CNN is bragging about the teams they have on the ground in Iran and around the war zone to provide coverage for Operation Epic Fury. [SOURCE] Which again, brings up an interesting contrast that seemingly flew under the radar from past events.


As we noted in the beginning of the Russian war in Ukraine, where was the media for that one? Where was this CNN coverage for the war in Ukraine? The Ukraine war was the only war in modern history with ZERO mainstream media reports complete with helmets, flak jackets and play-by-play reporting of every moment within the conflict. Why? The answer is not necessarily complicated. The Ukraine war was a war of narratives. Yes, there was actual fighting, but the physical conflict itself was not in alignment with the narrative the media intended to create from it. The reality within Ukraine did not fit in the pert chart and the visuals would not ever have supported the claims.

Ukraine was/is the COVID-19 of wars. A western intelligence operation using the geography of Ukraine to push an agenda in alignment with western interests. It would not and does not serve the interests of truth and transparency for media to report from inside a battlespace that might contradict their claims. Hence, we labeled it “World War Reddit,” and it remains that way through today. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was installed by the same interests who triggered the conflict. As an outcome, the media participation was limited to column inches, punditry reports, claims and scripted presentations that worked alongside Zelenskyy, the actor, traveling all around the world promoting the conflict and raising money.

The physical battlespace was far less valuable than the EU/NATO and Intelligence Community narratives needed to maintain it. As soon as everyone started making money from the screenplay, maintaining ticket sales was prioritized over the performance itself. Criticism and critiques can be completely avoided by keeping the curtain down and just narrating what’s going on behind it. That system of deception continues through today. Strange that everyone just accepted it.

Read more …

Says CNN.

• Trump’s Favorability With His Voting Base Tops All Previous Presidents (JTN)

Multiple new polls show President Donald Trump’s approval rating within his party is higher than any other president in history. “Republicans love Donald Trump more than any president’s own party’s supporters loved him at this particular point,” CNN’s Harry Enten told viewers Wednesday night. The poll, which found that at this point in his second term, Trump’s GOP approval sits at a remarkable 86%, while former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush were both at 77%. Strong approval within their own parties is now at 53% for Trump, again higher than Obama and Bush, whose strong approval ratings were 48% and 47% respectively. This approval comes despite other polls showing majority disapproval for Trump’s strike on Iran.


Trump’s approval rating held steady at 44%
A Fox News poll released in late January 2026 shows similar results: strong support persists among Republicans, with 85% approving overall and 97% among those identifying as MAGA (Make America Great Again, Trump’s slogan) supporters. Among all voters, Trump’s job approval rating held steady at 44% among registered voters, with 56% disapproving, unchanged from the previous month. That survey showed that Trump’s rating matches former President George W. Bush’s at a comparable point in his second term and exceeds Barack Obama’s by 2 points.

A president’s own party approval is a direct result of campaign promises coming to fruition. For Trump, there’s a substantial list thanks to his bullishness. President Trump’s campaign promise to secure the southern border has come to fruition through aggressive enforcement measures, resulting in negative net migration for the first time in 50 years and border crossings dropping to historic lows. Trump fulfilled his pledge to deliver major tax relief by signing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which extended his 2017 tax cuts, eliminated taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security benefits, and provided significant reductions for working- and middle-class Americans.

The administration achieved record energy production and dominance by unleashing domestic drilling and deregulation, contributing to lower energy costs and positioning the U.S. as a leading global energy exporter. Trump successfully implemented policies ensuring that net job growth went primarily to native-born Americans through strict immigration enforcement, reversing trends from prior years. His commitment to massive bureaucracy cuts and government efficiency efforts has saved hundreds of billions of dollars, equivalent to substantial per-taxpayer relief, while reshoring trillions in investments to boost American manufacturing and economic growth.

Read more …

“… the US, Israel and their allies – the “Epstein Coalition” as the Russian military bloggers are calling them…”

• The Sinking Ship Problem of the Epstein Coalition (Helmer)

The problem is that rats can leave a sinking ship but they cannot return if their ship has already sunk. They must surrender instead or drown. This must have been what President Vladimir Putin meant when he instructed his spokesman Dmitry Peskov to announce on Thursday afternoon, March 5: “Moscow has not received any requests for assistance, including weapons provisions, from Iran, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a briefing. ‘As for the current situation, there have been no requests from Iran. Our consistent position is well-known to everyone. It remains unchanged,’ he pointed out, when asked if Russia planned to provide any assistance to Iran, particularly by providing weapons, in addition to political support.”


In other words, Russian military intelligence must have told the Kremlin that the war aims of — are failing to decapitate Iran’s civilian and military leadership; failing to destroy their missile stocks and underground launcher capacities; and failing to detect, intercept and prevent the escalating destruction of Iran’s counter-attack targets in the US base system, the Gulf Arab economies, and Israel itself. Accordingly, the Russian assessment is that Iran will not need to request military resupply and other assistance from Russia. Not yet — because the attrition of the Epstein Coalition forces is so rapid, they will be compelled to ask for a stop before Iran will need to ask for Russian assistance.

This is not the interpretation of Russian plans by the Trump Administration. At his Pentagon briefing on March 4, the US Secretary of War, Peter Hegseth, was asked by a reporter: “What is your message to Iran’s allies, namely Russia and China, who have called for an immediate end to hostilities?” Hegseth replied: “I don’t have a message for them and they’re not really a factor here and we’re – our issue is not with them; it’s with the nuclear ambitions of Iran.” Peskov’s announcement followed after Hegseth’s. Since Russian and Iranian officials know exactly what they have been discussing with each other, before the war began and since, Peskov cannot have been addressing Iran. Was he then messaging Washington for reassurance that “our consistent position… remains unchanged”? Was Hegseth correct that this means Russia has not entered the war on Iran’s side and will not do so?

This is the sinking ship question. It remains to be answered whose ship is sinking. It is unclear if Peskov’s message is the same as the Russian Foreign Ministry’s. Reading in retrospect and between the lines of the Ministry communiqués after Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s first telephone call with Abbas Aragchi, Iran’s Foreign Minister, on February 28 and his second call on March 3, there is ambiguity. In the first call Aragchi briefed Lavrov on Iran’s “steps to repel the aggression by the United States and Israel” and “expressed sincere gratitude to the Russian Federation for invariable and solid support.” That last phrase implies Russian intelligence, air defence radar, missile battery, and electronic countermeasures support, plus missile targeting and guidance in the counter-offensive.

In the second call, Lavrov has reported himself as having “reaffirmed Russia’s principled position in support of de-escalation, rejection of force, and a transition to a political and diplomatic settlement of the conflict.” Transition means not yet.Lavrov’s spokesman, Maria Zakharova added on the next day, March 4: “We are convinced that the crisis surrounding Iran has no military solution. We strongly call for the abandonment of forceful methods and a return to political and diplomatic resolution of all issues.” Zakharova also announced that a special operation is under way for five border crossings between Iran and Turkmenistan to open for the northbound evacuation of Russians in Iran. This means that the same routes are now open for Russian military supplies to move southward to Iran, when or if they may be needed. When or if — this is the key to Russian decision-making in the days ahead.

Read more …

“If you are feeling dumb today, just remember, there are real people who believe Iran is winning.” —Cam Higby on “X”

• The Rockets Red Glare (James Howard Kunstler)

You probably wonder what the end of this war will look like. It won’t look like V-J Day in Times Square, 1945, with sailors kissing girls they met five seconds ago. Our country is way too divided and disturbed with politically-inflected mental illness for love to bloom in the streets like it did then. If you happen to catch the glum crew on CNN you will detect that they really want this operation to fail because, you know, Trump. The war will be over when Iran loses the ability to spray missiles and drones all over the place — and notice how they are pouring it on the Emirate states, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and even Azerbaijan, for Gawdsake, turning would-be bystanders into pissed-off additional enemies they need like a hole in the head.


At some point they will run out of ordnance, or the will to roll them out of the supposed 10,000 bat caves their weapons are stashed in. Our side apparently has an uncanny knack for seeing the launchers creep into daylight and efficiently blowing them up. Creates a disincentive to even think about launching. Of course, Iran might have some spectacular last-ditch thingie they can unleash to horrify the world — perhaps a “dirty” bomb that uses the 460 kilos of 60-percent enriched uranium they bragged about at one of the last negotiation sessions before the war with Witkoff and Kushner. Standing by on that.

But, at some point a week or so hence, a stillness will fall upon the earth and sky above Iran, and that will be all she wrote for sheer havoc. Victory will not look much like anything. Just that stillness. The body politic in Iran is another matter. Expect awful turmoil. Iran’s command structure is shattered. Officials don’t dare pick a room in some building to meet in. The Internet is down and most communication with it. Nobody knows who is really in charge, and nobody may be in charge, not for quite a long time to come.

Let’s hope we have the patience to let the Iranians sort out their own governing structure, and that it will be made up of people who are not insane, not fanatics of the martyrdom cult that has ruled the place for fifty years. It’s probably not part of the US plan to slaughter the Revolutionary Guard, or Sepah, the chief apparatus of despotic control in the country. Or the Basij, (Sâzmân-e Basij-e Mostaz’afin, which means “Organization for the Mobilization of the Oppressed”), an auxiliary volunteer paramilitary militia that acts as the “morality police” and cracks down on dissent. Hundreds of thousands are employed by these groups.

You might imagine circumstances in which the members of those dastardly outfits decide to peel away from them, sensing a loss of legitimacy and danger in remaining on-board. Surely, a lot of Iranians will have blood in their eyes, looking for scores to settle, just as the people took revenge on members of the Shah’s secret police, the Savak, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Even now with the bombs still falling in Tehran (perhaps even because of them), many ordinary Iranians are dancing in the streets. You must suppose there is massive opposition to the regime. But first, chaos.

Why would we feel any necessity to put “boots on the ground” in there? Why expose American troops to the factional fighting that is apt to break out, as it did in Iraq? Did we not learn the lessons of Fallujah? Wouldn’t it be enough that Iran just loses its ability to fire weapons at anyone? Loses its ability to mess with shipping in the Persian Gulf? And loses its ability to foment mischief in other countries, including any ideological influence it might still have, or any financial mojo for sponsoring terrorism? Can we not just stand by and let the Iranians figure out their own future?

Try imagining a peaceful Iran not bent on exporting Jihad (just like you might imagine a peaceful Ukraine, not making itself a problem for the rest of the world). Forgive the cliché, but Iran (a.k.a. Persia), is an old and durable culture, with a highly educated population, one of the world’s largest oil-and-gas reserves, and plenty of other resources. Iran could be somebody. It doesn’t have to be a bum with a one-way ticket to Palookaville.

As for our own country, too many people here are busy wolfing down the black pills with their Adderall and their Starbucks iced lavender cream chai. It’s actually possible that there is a satisfactory outcome to this Iran operation. Would that disappoint you — as it apparently disappoints the glum crew at CNN? As with Iran, it doesn’t pay to be insane, and something close to half of America is insane. That perturbation is mostly lodged in the American Left these days, the Democratic Party, devoted to a long list of ideas and propositions at odds with reality and locked into a strange willful hysteria that regards any kind of good faith as poison. That is exactly why we can’t have clean elections. How about fixing that?

Read more …

“Keep an eye on Russia. Ignore the western media narratives and look for direct source information on Russian oil activity. Let them work and just keep watching.”

• President Trump: ‘No Deal with Iran Except Unconditional Surrender’ (CTH)

The U.S. and Israel have been targeting deep underground missile sites within Iran, with strong success. Iranian counterstrikes, missile & drone launches are down 80 to 90 percent according to Pentagon officials. Additionally, the Israeli military has reported they dismantled an underground bunker system in Tehran used by regime leadership. Originally the bunker was used by slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei underneath the leadership compound in central Tehran. The bunker was targeted by 50 Israeli fighter jets and subsequently destroyed. President Trump announced via Truth Social that he will not seek any terms with Iran other than unconditional surrender.


Meanwhile, in a somewhat predictable move, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has announced the U.S. will lift some sanctions on Russian oil exports in order to mitigate shortfalls. India will be permitted to purchase additional Russian oil for use in their refineries. The gasoline end products will then be sold into the market. BESSENT: “President Trump’s energy agenda has resulted in oil and gas production reaching the highest levels ever recorded. To enable oil to keep flowing into the global market, the Treasury Department is issuing a temporary 30-day waiver to allow Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil. This deliberately short-term measure will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government as it only authorizes transactions involving oil already stranded at sea. India is an essential partner of the United States, and we fully anticipate that New Delhi will ramp up purchases of U.S. oil. This stop-gap measure will alleviate pressure caused by Iran’s attempt to take global energy hostage. (more)”

Strategically, it has always appeared that President Trump wanted to remove the sanctions against Russia as part of a negotiated peace deal with Ukraine. However, the intransigence of Ukraine and the EU had blocked that move. I would anticipate at some date the U.S. will use the opportunity of global need as a justification to permit more Russian oil to be sold into Western markets. This approach will not make Ukraine or the EU happy; however, it could be structured to put petrodollars back in control of Russian oil sales. That approach would further weaken China and the BRICS assembly who have been purchasing energy products in domestic exchange currencies.

The U.S., Venezuela and Russia could increase output and replace the missing oil production from the middle east region. This would stabilize markets. Although, the politics of that approach would face stiff opposition. What seems very likely is that Bessent, Rubio and Trump have a plan. If there’s one person in U.S. politics who understands how to use oil to financially mitigate any geopolitical impacts, it’s President Trump. Keep an eye on Russia. Ignore the western media narratives and look for direct source information on Russian oil activity. Let them work and just keep watching.

Read more …

“.. the Supreme Court effectively reduced many of the charges to mere trespass in later litigation, rejecting obstruction claims.”

• Virginia Dems Move to Require Teaching Jan. 6th as an Insurrection (Turley)

Virginia Democrats are moving to require teachers to tell students that Jan. 6th was an “insurrection” and effectively bar them from referencing “peaceful protests” or election irregularities. The characterization of the riot as an insurrection is historically and legally false. However, any parents who want to send their children to Virginia public schools would have to accept this form of indoctrination as part of their children’s education.


In the last election, Democrats campaigned as moderates, including Abigail Spanberger. Once in control of the Governor’s mansion and the legislature, however, they have moved quickly to the far left in a flurry of measures. Democratic legislators just voted themselves almost a 300% increase in salaries. They will need it. They are moving to increase taxes on ride shares, concerts, counseling, leaf blowers, Amazon deliveries, DoorDash, Uber Eats, ammunition, and other areas. However, HB 333, drafted by Del. Dan I. Helmer of Fairfax, raises serious concerns over academic freedom and free speech. The summary of the bill mandates “a program of instruction on or relating to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol” and further:

“prohibits any such program of instruction, any accompanying curriculum or instructional materials, or any instruction provided by a teacher as a part of such program of instruction from (i) describing, portraying, or presenting as credible a description or portrayal of the actions precipitating or involved in the January 6, 2021, insurrection as peaceful protest or (ii) stating, suggesting, or presenting as credible a statement or suggestion that there was extensive election fraud that could have changed or actually changed the results of the 2020 presidential election. The bill requires any such program of instruction, any accompanying curriculum or instructional materials, or any instruction provided by a teacher as a part of such program of instruction to describe the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol as an unprecedented, violent attack on U.S. democratic institutions, infrastructure, and representatives for the purpose of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

Soon after Jan. 6th, I condemned the riot but rejected the argument that this was an insurrection. However, it soon became part of an orthodoxy in politics and academia despite the fact that the public rejected it. As former House Speaker Pelosi declared, “It is essential that we preserve the narrative of January 6th.” Yet, “insurrection” and “sedition” are legal terms. They have a meaning. The FBI investigated thousands after January 6th and charged hundreds. Not one was charged with insurrection or conspiracy to overthrow the country. The vast majority are charged with relatively minor offenses of trespass or unlawful entry or property damage- the type of charges that are common in protests and riots.

Indeed, the Supreme Court effectively reduced many of the charges to mere trespass in later litigation, rejecting obstruction claims. Faced with a collapsing historical and legal narrative, Democrats are now moving to simply indoctrinate students that this was an “insurrection.” Notably, Helmer is running again for Congress after Democrats, with the support of Gov. Spanberger, moved to reduce Republicans in the state (which is divided down the middle between the parties) to just one of eleven districts through gerrymandering.

Helmer is running in one of the most notorious new districts, called the “lobster” or the “scorpion,” because it runs from the Potomac River in Arlington southwestward, then splits into two “claws” toward the West Virginia line near Rawley Springs and Goochland and Powhatan. In my book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I discuss the radicalization of the American left. While many on the left advocate censoring “disinformation,” they are far less circumspect in promulgating their own disinformation.Likewise, where Democrats have objected to the pressure put on universities for greater diversity of viewpoints as an attack on academic freedom, these Democrats see no problem in mandating the teaching of positions that are demonstrably false.

Here, Rep. Helmer and other Democrats are mandating the teaching of a false narrative to children rather than simply relying on public debate. The reason is that they are losing the debate over the characterization of this riot as an actual insurrection. This, and other moves on the left, will only accelerate the exodus of families from public education. Notably, Fairfax County (which Helmer represents) has seen a sharp fall in enrollments in recent years.

Read more …

Walz, Ellison, Omar et al.

• James Comer Suggests Criminal Referrals Are Possible In Minnesota Fraud Probe (JTN)

Chairman James Comer, who leads the House Oversight Committee, told Just the News that further criminal referrals are possible with the evidence his committee has uncovered of the rampant welfare fraud in Minnesota. A new report from Comer’s committee, released on Wednesday, concluded that senior Minnesota government officials, including Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, were for years aware of claims of widespread fraud in the state’s federally funded welfare programs, but failed to act, other than to retaliate against whistleblowers, Just the News reported. Comer told Just the News that he has already shared those findings with the Justice Department.


“We’ve given [the Justice Department] the report today that shows Walz and them knew. I don’t know that it’s a crime. Incompetence isn’t a crime, unfortunately…but at the end of the day, if some of these fraudsters implicate a coordination with Attorney General Ellison or Governor Walz, then I think that you could see some referrals from the committee,” Comer said on the Just the News, No Noise TV show on Wednesday. Governor Walz, who was also the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2024, previously acknowledged there is fraud in his state, but said his administration has made it a priority to root it out for years.

He appeared at an Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday alongside Ellison where he again defended his handling of the fraud allegations, touting the federal prosecution of more than 75 defendants, but struggled to answer why his own government did not take action against the suspected fraudsters after his office was informed of suspicious activity. “I have watched with dismay as members of this Committee have made unfounded allegations that I am somehow complicit in defrauding Minnesota programs,” Walz said in his opening statement before the committee. “As a former member of Congress, I know that this institution can be better than these evidence-free accusations levied for nakedly partisan reasons,” he said, before reiterating a commitment to work with Congress and federal prosecutors to root out fraud.

However, the Oversight Committee believes the evidence shows the opposite, that Walz and his senior officials knew about the fraud concerns from the very beginning of his tenure and ultimately failed to act to address it before facing public backlash and pressure from the federal government in recent months. That evidence comes from testimony gathered by the committee from nine current and former Minnesota state officials who oversaw the benefits programs within the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and the Department of Human Services (DHS), the two government bodies that oversaw the programs at the center of the fraud allegations.

Read more …

No company can force the hand of a government. If it does. it IS the government. Shouldn’t his model have told him that?

• Anthropic CEO Apologizes For ‘Dictator Trump’ Meltdown Memo (ZH)

As Anthropic attempts to salvage their relationship with the Trump administration, CEO Dario Amodei publicly apologized Thursday for the inflammatory tone of his leaked internal memo that accused the White House of targeting his company because it hadn’t offered “dictator-style praise” to President Trump. The apology came in his first major interview since the Pentagon’s Department of War (DoW) formally designated Anthropic a supply chain risk to national security – effective immediately – marking the first time such a label has been applied to a U.S. company.


The March 5 designation, confirmed in a letter to Anthropic leadership, stems from weeks of failed negotiations over Claude AI’s military applications. Anthropic refused to drop strict red lines prohibiting the model’s use for mass domestic surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous lethal weapons, insisting on meaningful safeguards rather than what Amodei previously called “safety theater” in rival deals like OpenAI’s. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had threatened broad restrictions, including barring defense contractors from any commercial activity with Anthropic, but the company clarified the scope appears narrower: it primarily affects direct DoW-related work, with partners like Microsoft confirming continued availability for non-defense uses.

Last Friday, the Trump administration ‘fired’ the company after a bruising dispute with the Pentagon came to a head over ethical concerns surrounding Claude’s military use. The Pentagon demanded to use ClaudeAI for “any lawful purpose” with no guardrails – or having to allegedly ask permission in a life-or-death scenario. In the interview with The Economist Amodei described the crisis as one of the most “disorienting” in Anthropic’s history. He attributed the leaked memo – written hastily on Slack amid rapid-fire events including Trump’s announcements and OpenAI snaking their contract – to confusion and panic from a “difficult day.”

“It does not reflect my careful or considered views,” he said, downplaying it as a casual internal message rather than a formal memo. He said he’d apologized to DoW personnel and signaled openness to further dialogue with administration figures, though he sidestepped a direct personal apology to Trump. Amodei’s Thursday mea culpa was accompanied with a blog post titled: “Where things stand with the Department of War,” where he emphasized shared interests with the military, offered Claude at nominal cost plus engineer support for warfighters, and highlighted ongoing “productive conversations” despite the label.

I also want to apologize directly for a post internal to the company that was leaked to the press yesterday. Anthropic did not leak this post nor direct anyone else to do so—it is not in our interest to escalate this situation. That particular post was written within a few hours of the President’s Truth Social post announcing Anthropic would be removed from all federal systems, the Secretary of War’s X post announcing the supply chain risk designation, and the announcement of a deal between the Pentagon and OpenAI, which even OpenAI later characterized as confusing. It was a difficult day for the company, and I apologize for the tone of the post. It does not reflect my careful or considered views. It was also written six days ago, and is an out-of-date assessment of the current situation.”

Read more …

“Orban, meanwhile, has taken to social media to issue his own warning. “There will be no deals, no compromise. We will break the Ukrainian oil blockade by force,”

• Zelensky Issues Military Threat to Orban (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has issued an apparent military threat to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban over the ongoing refusal by Budapest to lift a veto on billions in loans underwritten by EU members for Kiev. Orban last month blocked a planned €90 billion ($106 billion) emergency loan raised by EU members for Kiev – following the bloc’s failure to agree on outright stealing billions in Russian assets frozen in Belgium. Orban took the step in response to Ukraine preventing key Russian oil supplies from reaching Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline.


Speaking on new weapons for Kiev’s armed forces on Thursday, Zelensky stated: “We hope that one person in the EU will not block the €90 billion… Otherwise, we will give the address of this person to our armed forces, to our guys, so that they call him and communicate with him in their own language.” The diplomatic dispute between Hungary and Ukraine has escalated in recent weeks, spilling over into personal barbs. Zelensky launched a string of attacks against Orban, including fat-shaming him during the Munich Security Conference last month.

https://twitter.com/BGatesIsaPyscho/status/2022635714953789612?s=20

The Hungarian prime minister has long opposed Ukraine’s push to join the EU, and has repeatedly refused to send it weapons or approve EU military aid, calling for diplomacy instead. Orban, meanwhile, has taken to social media to issue his own warning. “There will be no deals, no compromise. We will break the Ukrainian oil blockade by force,” he wrote on X on Thursday, adding that oil will soon flow to Hungary again through the Druzhba pipeline.

The Soviet-era pipeline, part of which runs through Ukraine, went offline in January after Kiev claimed it had been damaged by Russian strikes – accusations Moscow denies. Hungary and Slovakia, both heavily reliant on Russian energy, have accused Kiev of deliberately cutting them off for political reasons and inventing obstacles for restarting oil flows. Zelensky has issued threats against foreign leaders and officials before. Last year, he suggested that Russia’s top officials should check for bomb shelters, hinting that Ukraine could target the Kremlin. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the comments “irresponsible.”

Read more …

“..a loan with no payback clause..”

• Orban Intercepts Zelenskyy’s Money Laundering Operation (CTH)

Ukraine (Zelenskyy) was angry at Hungary (Orban) for blocking the €90 billion EU loan (a loan with no payback clause) which was backed by confiscated Russian sovereign wealth funds. A splendidly European financial scheme. To get back at Viktor Orban, Volodymyr Zelenskyy destroyed an oil/gas pipeline hub in Ukraine that transferred Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia (Robert Fico). Hungary and Slovakia were furious, and Zelenskyy said repairs were too complicated to be easily fixed. Viktor Orban and Robert Fico then doubled down on blocking Ukraine funds and Ukraine’s assentation to the EU.


When Zelenskyy was questioned about Hungarian or EU inspectors visiting the site to evaluate the repairs, Zelenskyy said they would not be allowed access. Zelenskyy further noted when he was told Patriot Missiles were in short supply, he did not get to visit the inventory; implying his lies were similar to lies told by the United States. Caught in a lie, Zelenskyy followed up by saying he didn’t care, it was Russian oil so get lost. Two days ago, Hungary then intercepted two Ukraine vans carrying $40 million in cash dollars, €35 million in cash Euros, and 9 kg of gold – presumably a money laundering transfer intended to fund Zelenskyy and his intelligence chiefs.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó stating that “since January, $900 million and €420 million in cash, as well as 146 kilograms of gold, have been transported across Hungary.” The shipment apprehended by Hungary included 40 million U.S. dollars as well as 35 million euros and 9 kilograms (19.8 pounds) of gold — worth around $1.5 million at current prices — according to a separate statement by Oschadbank. Hungary’s National Tax and Customs Administration confirmed Friday that it had detained the Ukrainian citizens and seized the two armored cash-transport vehicles. It added it was conducting criminal proceedings on suspicion of money laundering. {LINK}

Upon hearing of the intercept yesterday, a highly angered Volodymyr Zelenskyy then threatened to send Ukraine “special military operators” to the home of Viktor Orban to extract revenge. Zelenskyy’s threat caused the European Commission to issue an unusual rebuke of the Ukraine dictator. “Specifically in relation to the comments made by President Zelenskyy, we are very clear as the European Commission that that type of language is not acceptable. There must not be threats against EU member states,” Commission deputy chief spokesperson Olof Gill told reporters Friday, in a rare condemnation of the leader in Kyiv. {link}

Zelenskyy, with pants down and visibly on fire, now missing all the money/gold, retreats from the originating position that started this mess and says he will repair the oil transfer station he destroyed, if Hungary will permit Ukraine to get the €90 billion loan (not a loan) from the Russian sovereign wealth fund.

Read more …

“Before the Iron Curtain: The centuries-old roots of the Russia–Europe rift ..”

• Churchill Wasn’t The First: Europe’s War On Russia Is Centuries Old (Norin)

In 1946, Winston Churchill’s Fulton Speech symbolically marked the beginning of the Cold War between the Western world and the Soviet Union. Since then, relations between Russia and the West have been fraught with tension. In recent years, this culminated in a strong and almost existential antagonism. Surprisingly, just a while ago, Russia viewed Europe as a natural ally. For two decades following the collapse of the USSR, there was a belief that Russia and Europe have a promising future together. Russian energy resources and European technology seemed like a perfect match, and Europe was commonly considered to be a model, both in terms of lifestyle and organizational efficiency.


That optimism turned out to be fleeting. Unfortunately, the roots of Russian-European opposition run much deeper. Ideas about isolating, colonizing, or even breaking up Russia didn’t emerge recently, and weren’t even invented by Adolf Hitler.

Prisoners of geography
One defining characteristic of Russia is its geographical position, which has historically influenced the decisions of its leaders and its overall policy. Russia is located on the edge of Europe, making connections with the rest of the European continent challenging. Throughout the centuries, this has affected relations between Russia and Europe, giving rise to unrealistic expectations, illusions, and persistent mutual fear. Russian foreign policy has long been shaped by efforts to break through this ‘cordon sanitaire’.

At the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, several global developments occurred at around the same time. Europe discovered the great wide world, and as a result, soldiers, traders, and missionaries left its borders. Europeans didn’t just discover new lands – they were intent on carrying the word of the true faith there. Those who were willing to listen became part of the Christian world (although they were granted lesser roles within it), and those who resisted became enemies. However, while European missionaries erected crosses on the shores of America and India, movements spread within Europe that were initially considered heresies. Protestantism spread rapidly across the Old World, and intense religious conflicts raged in Europe.

Ignorant of these troubles, Rus’ was preoccupied with its own affairs. The country had cast off the Mongol yoke and was piecing itself together after centuries of foreign domination. It was during this period that emissaries from Western Europe arrived, including representatives from Rome. Their main goals were to persuade Rus’ to join the fight against the Islamic world, particularly the Ottoman Turks, and enter into a union with Rome. Initially, Catholics felt inspired by Russia – here was a vast and already Christian nation, which needed only some guidance along the right path.

Read more …

“Winston Churchill’s Fulton address was a signal for the Iron Curtain to drop, and for nukes to almost drop as well..”

• This Speech Started The Cold War – Still Haunts The World 80 Years On (Amar)

Eighty years ago, on March 5, 1946, one of the most famous leaders of World War Two delivered a fairly short but stern message which helped lock humanity into a future of open-ended and high-risk Cold War. That was the essence of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s Fulton Speech (if we name it after the small midwestern US college town where he gave it), also known as the Iron Curtain Speech (after its key claim).


A massive political, ideological, and last but not least, military barrier had come to divide post-World War Two Europe, Churchill argued, and it was all the wicked Soviets’ fault: They had broken the Grand Alliance with the West by taking control of “the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe,” he charged. In the face of this “Soviet sphere” and the aggressive strategies seeking to expand it even farther, Churchill warned, a Western policy of “balance of power” would be ineffective and lead to “catastrophe.” Instead, he urged, the “Western Democracies” needed to “stand together” in order to – Churchill clearly implied – deter the Soviets, who in his view respected only strength, especially of the military variety.

Well lubricated with shameless flattery for American President Harry Truman, who had travelled far to be in the audience and had a hand in setting up the speech, as well as for the US in general – at its “pinnacle of world power” – the Fulton Speech also pitched Churchill’s own, badly declining Britain as a junior but special sidekick to the Americans in their “primacy.” Unfortunately, that too came to pass.

Short and – in its recommendations – really quite generic as it was, Churchill’s intervention, speaking in the middle of nowhere in what is now called fly-over country, has a secure place of honor in naively admiring accounts of the West’s Cold War. There, it is still celebrated as an example of looking unflinchingly at harsh realities, a valiant call to arms, and a wise policy recommendation. Even those less sentimentally inclined still consider the speech necessary and the strategy of containment that it was effectively selling, inevitable.

That however is lazy thinking. For more reasons than one: Most obviously, the old Cold War was extremely costly as well as outrageously perilous. In the end, it lasted for four decades, before it ended with a negotiated settlement, initiated by the Soviet Union, in the late 1980s (no, the Cold War did not end in 1991, whatever ideology-contaminated Wikipedia says). Over almost half a century, this Cold War of the last century could, all serious observers have long understood, easily have ended with World War Three instead, including a world-ending use of nuclear weapons. In that entirely possible scenario, I would not be here to write this, and you would not be here to read it. And everything around us would be missing as well.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Dark matter https://twitter.com/AstronomyVibes/status/2029551805097808281?s=20

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 17 2026

Feb 172026
 
 February 17, 2026  Posted by at 10:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  67 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Head of a Woman 1946 ..gifted to Greece’s National Gallery by Picasso in 1946 in recognition of Athens’s resistance to Nazi occupation; he inscribed on the back: “For the Greek people, a tribute from Picasso.”


• Trump Derangement Syndrome Has Hit a Sick New Low (Matt Margolis)
• Reid Hoffman Funded Suit Against Trump Alleging Rape (Tim O’Brien)
• The Trump Administration Officially Kills DEI at the FAA (Matt Margolis)
• Big Losses for Banks Coming in 2026 – Charles Nenner (USAW)
• Welp, Here Comes the ‘Death Spiral’ (Stephen Green)
• Marco Rubio Joint Press Conference with Hungarian PM Viktor Orban (CTH)
• Macron’s AI Clown Show: Europe’s Digital Dilemma (ZH)
• Ro Khanna and the Impunity of “Wealthy, Powerful Men” (Turley)
• Hillary Clinton Admits Mass Migration Is “Disruptive & Destabilizing” (ZH)
• Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein (CTH)
• Epstein-itis (James Howard Kunstler)
• Newsom and AOC Go to Europe to Pitch High Tax, High Regulation Policies (Turley)
• No Prospect’ Of EU Governments Preventing CIVIL WAR: British Army Colonel (MN)

 


 

Palantir AI teaching itself $145 M https://twitter.com/gabrelyanov/status/2023241194684264472?s=20 Cybercab

 


 

 


 


“..It doesn’t matter if the target is a child rapist or a murderer. Opposing Trump’s immigration policies matters more than anything else.”:”:

• Trump Derangement Syndrome Has Hit a Sick New Low (Matt Margolis)

A Minnesota woman just put on full display the moral rot at the heart of the anti-ICE movement, and she did it with a camera rolling. Last week, Olivia Jensen stalked ICE agents around Rochester, Minn., harassing them while they tried to track down an illegal immigrant accused of child rape and murder. When an agent finally told her what kind of monster they were after, Jensen’s response cut through every pretense the left hides behind: “No, I don’t care.” This wasn’t some slip of the tongue. Jensen said this, and posted her confrontation to Facebook and TikTok like a trophy, complete with a lengthy explanation of how she followed the agents from Walmart to her old address in Claremont, 30 miles away.


“Today, 2/11/26, I went to a NW area of Rochester after hearing that there was ICE activity in the area. I located the dark Gary Durango […] with 3 agents inside following a woman in her car,” Jensen posted on Facebook. “They followed her to Walmart north where I interacted with them while completely staying within my rights. They took pictures of me and the inside and outside of my car for simply exercising my rights. I will share the video of this interaction below. They very clearly were running my plates and trying to obtain information about me in an effort to intimidate me.”

She accused them of intimidation for running her plates and visiting her former home. But the agents were just making sure she got home safely after she’d been tailing them across southeast Minnesota. The exchange stripped away any illusion about what drives these ICE agitators. After Jensen screamed “race traitor” at a Hispanic agent, he calmly explained they were hunting a child molester. She called him a liar. The other agent stepped in with a reality check: “If you actually cared, you would care about the child who got raped and also by the person who got murdered by the person we are looking for.”

That’s when Jensen said the quiet part out loud. She admitted she didn’t care. Then she pivoted to the standard talking point about how ICE should only go after “illegal, violent immigrants” before insisting “that’s not what you are doing.” Except it was exactly what they were doing. They were literally chasing a suspect wanted for raping a child and murder. “If you actually cared, you probably would care about the child who got raped and the person who got murdered by the person we’re looking for, but you see, you don’t care,” an ICE agent told Jensen. “No, I don’t care,” Jensen admitted.

This is what Trump Derangement Syndrome looks like. The activist class wants Americans to believe their beef is with detaining and deporting otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants. They frame it as compassion, as standing up for families just trying to build better lives. But when push comes to shove, and ICE is hunting someone accused of the most heinous crimes imaginable, the mask comes off. These agitators don’t want ICE arresting anyone, period. It doesn’t matter if the target is a child rapist or a murderer. Opposing Trump’s immigration policies matters more than anything else.

Read more …

“In one email, it says that “Reid will spend the night at 71st,” which is a reference to Epstein’s Upper East Side townhouse. ”

• Reid Hoffman Funded Suit Against Trump Alleging Rape (Tim O’Brien)

The disclosures from the Epstein files have been enlightening to say the least, particularly if you wonder if you are seeing what you think you’re seeing. More to the point, do you remember that 2023 lawsuit against candidate Donald Trump from E. Jean Carroll? That’s the one where Carroll, who is now 82 years old, waited all these years and, after two of Trump’s presidential races and one term as president, decided to sue the billionaire on allegations of defamation, rape, and sexual abuse.


The case was mostly based on unsubstantiated accusations that Trump sexually abused and raped Carroll in 1996, 23 years earlier. In the end, a jury awarded Carroll $5 million in a judgement that rejected the plaintiff’s claim that she was raped, but it found Trump responsible for sexual abuse. The jury verdict also gave Trump’s dishonest critics the opportunity to falsely claim he raped someone. Before, during, and after the trial, Carroll made a number of curious statements that make you wonder just how right in the head she is. Like the time in 2019 that she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “Most people think of rape as being sexy.” Now the Epstein files are providing some new context to that case and, more specifically, to the man with the money behind the lawsuit.

Since 2023, we knew that billionaire leftist and founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman bankrolled the litigation. He provided most, if not all, of the money needed to pay those blue-chip lawyers who represented Carroll. The Denver Gazette reported in 2023 this fact, along with the fact that he’s donated to “Democratic causes including former 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,” adding, “He also partnered with megadonor George Soros in 2021 to form an organization to combat disinformation.” Hoffman is a certified never-Trumper with advanced-stage TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome). Hoffman was all too happy to take credit for the role his funding played in supporting Carroll’s lawsuit.

So, you heard Hoffman, right? He said, “Her (Carroll’s) voice should be heard, that because she was challenging someone who was so much more wealthy and powerful that shouldn’t be squashed.…Providing that voice for, you know, people who otherwise would be ground down by the system, or the powerful, is I think a good thing, obviously especially in the case of women, and especially in the case of sexual, and other, kind of torture, and attack…So, providing that support was something I was very happy to do.” As a leftist billionaire, all of this is very on brand for Hoffman. Hypocrisy and double standards are also on brand for the left. In that spirit, it appears Hoffman has not disappointed.

Hoffman was mentioned quite a bit in the Epstein files, and it would appear not as a mere acquaintance of Epstein. That said, it’s important to know that not everyone mentioned in the files did anything wrong. In a few cases that we already know of, some who are mentioned explicitly rejected Jeffrey Epstein and what he was all about. Others were simply people who had crossed paths with Epstein along the way. Hoffman’s interactions with Epstein suggest he did a lot more than simply cross paths with Epstein. His name is mentioned in the files 2,658 times. The New York Post has reported that some of the recently released Epstein email files “reveal LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman discussing visits to Epstein’s infamous private island, his New Mexico ranch, and his New York apartment.”

In one email, it says that “Reid will spend the night at 71st,” which is a reference to Epstein’s Upper East Side townhouse. The Post also reported, “An apparent 2014 scheduling memo lists a variety of dinners and parties, as well as the line: ‘Jeffrey will have Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman will go to the ranch for the weekend (JE did not give exact dates).’” Ito is a notable Japanese venture capitalist. Here are some of the emails in question. While there is nothing specifically incriminating in the wording of the emails, Hoffman’s obviously close relationship with Epstein raises a number of questions, especially for a man who, when he funded Carroll’s lawsuit against Trump, said that in providing that funding, he was supporting “people who otherwise would be ground down by the system, or the powerful.”

And then he added that he thought this was “a good thing, obviously especially in the case of women, and especially in the case of sexual, and other, kinds of torture, and attack.” Let’s say, for sport, that Hoffman didn’t engage in the perks of spending all that time on Epstein’s island or in his pervert Bed and Breakfast. Do you think he knew what an unsavory character Epstein was? Do you think he ever offered to pay for lawsuits on behalf of Epstein’s victims? Do you think Hoffman had his share of opportunities to get to know any of them? I guess we just need to stay tuned.

Read more …

“These disastrous policies began under Obama, were reversed during Trump’s first term, and then roared back under Biden. The result? A staffing crisis filled with underqualified controllers who couldn’t handle the job. ..”

• The Trump Administration Officially Kills DEI at the FAA (Matt Margolis)

Last year’s deadly midair collision at Reagan National Airport, which killed all 67 people aboard an American Airlines plane and a U.S. Army helicopter, was a wake-up call that many on the left refused to hear. President Donald Trump, however, understood the problem and sought to fix it. He pointed directly at the Barack Obama and Joe Biden DEI policies that prioritized checkbox diversity over actual competence in air traffic control. He was absolutely right. Air traffic control whistleblowers confirmed that the FAA’s obsession with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives has led to a shortage of qualified personnel. These disastrous policies began under Obama, were reversed during Trump’s first term, and then roared back under Biden. The result? A staffing crisis filled with underqualified controllers who couldn’t handle the job.


The whistleblowers revealed that meeting diversity quotas became more important than actual ability. I’m sorry, but when you’re juggling planes full of passengers through the skies, “good enough for diversity” doesn’t cut it. The problems were so severe that near misses occurred multiple times a week. Reagan National wasn’t a random tragedy; it was an inevitable disaster created by DEI. But those days are over. Last week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that the FAA issued a mandatory “Operations Specification” that forces every commercial airline to commit to merit-based hiring for pilots. No more woke hiring practices and no more prioritizing race and sex over skill. If airlines don’t comply, they face federal investigation.

“When families board their aircraft, they should fly with confidence knowing the pilot behind the controls is the best of the best,” Duffy said. “The American people don’t care what their pilot looks like or their gender—they just care that they are most qualified man or woman for the job.” This shouldn’t be controversial. It’s just common sense. But under the Biden-Buttigieg regime, common sense got tossed out the window. The FAA spent years focused on renaming cockpits to “flight decks” and investigating racist roads and bridges while actual safety standards crumbled.The new mandate requires all U.S. carriers to certify they’ve terminated race and sex-based hiring practices. Airlines must prove they’re identifying candidates based on specific experience and technical aptitude that match their operating environment.v

Imagine that: hiring people who can actually do the job. Such a novel concept, right?“At the FAA, the safety of passengers is our number one priority,” said FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford. “It is a bare minimum expectation for airlines to hire the most qualified individual when making someone responsible for hundreds of lives at a time. Someone’s race, sex, or creed, has nothing to do with their ability to fly and land aircraft safely.” This action follows Trump’s Executive Order on Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity and his Presidential Action on Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation. The FAA has already raised performance standards, dismantled DEI offices and contracts, and scrapped the worst of the Biden-era directives. But until now, allegations of airlines hiring based on race and sex persisted.

The safety of our skies should never take a backseat to diversity quotas. Period. Americans deserve to know that the people monitoring their flights and flying their planes earned those positions through competence, not because they checked the right demographic boxes on a form. It’s about time the FAA refocused on hiring the most competent individuals who can ensure the safety of everyone traveling through our airspace. And you can bet this fix wouldn’t have happened under a Democrat administration — it would still be prioritizing DEI initiatives and then scratching its head over what caused preventable crashes.

Read more …

“..if you are a banker and you lose a fortune, then you are always bailed out with tax money. This is why they never improve.”

• Big Losses for Banks Coming in 2026 – Charles Nenner (USAW)

Last April, renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner predicted a depression cycle starting at the end of 2025 into 2026. The economy is clearly slowing down, and the latest “1 million plus” negative jobs revision that comes out Wednesday (2/11/26) certainly points to a tanking economy. Nenner says, “I have to adjust for all the immigrants let into the country, but we will soon see unemployment numbers go up.” The next big downward surprise for the economy is big losses for the banks. Nenner predicts, “The institutions I work with that are selling real estate in New York are telling me a lot of banks are already negative. If you look in their books in California, they already had these big losses.


“They did not get out of their bonds because they thought interest rates would never go up. There are a lot of things that are already wrong, but it has not come out yet. I don’t know if there are going to be failures, but it will come out, and they will have big losses when they have to show the books.” So, what is Nenner predicting will happen with the troubled banks? Nenner says, “I guess the Fed will step in or the government will step in . . . because if you are a banker and you lose a fortune, then you are always bailed out with tax money. This is why they never improve.”

With gold and silver, there is good news and bad news. First comes the bad news. I asked Nenner if he would be a buyer of silver and gold now? Nenner says, “No, not right now because the cycle is down for the moment. . .. It is the same thing for gold. The cycle is down. If we close below $4,700, we will get some downside price targets. Usually, things that go up fast also go down fast. It’s not over for gold and silver; it’s just a correction.” Nenner put his clients in gold at $1,600 an ounce, and he bought silver at $29 per ounce. Now comes the good news, as Nenner points out, “The bull market for gold and silver will continue to the end of 2027. By then, we can do some fine tuning.”

On the war cycle, good news—for now. In the Middle East, Nenner says, “Right now, the war cycle is not going to heat up.” How about the war cycle for Europe and Russia? Nenner says, “No, they are not going to heat up either. The war cycles are topping right now. It’s not going to heat up for the short term.” Nenner is still worried about China and Taiwan at some point in the future. The really bad news on the war cycle comes in the 2030 to 2032 time frame. Nenner says, “The 2030 to 2032 war cycle is going to be very bad. There are going to be a lot of casualties. They start shooting rockets, and how many people are going to die? I think it will be in the billions of people, and that is what the numbers show.”

Nenner warns of terrorists let into the country by the Biden Administration that could set off bombs in the US “on a big scale.” Nenner contends this will be part of the war cycle that comes at the end of this decade. Nenner also said Trump could help cushion the financial fall of the USA, but he could not stop the down financial cycle. Nenner pointed out, “You cannot stop winter, but you can get a winter coat, and Trump is a winter coat.” Now, Nenner says, “There was so much damage done to America that Trump can’t fix it. . .. The cycle is turning down, and you can’t do anything about it.” Nenner also predicted in January of 2024 that President Trump “would be coming back.”

So, let’s all pray to God the Father and His Son Jesus for divine help.

Read more …

“So how about a devastating debt spiral to perk you up on this fine Presidents’ Day? “:

• Welp, Here Comes the ‘Death Spiral’ (Stephen Green)

So how about a devastating debt spiral to perk you up on this fine Presidents’ Day? The latest Congressional Budget Office report — with the thrilling title “The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036” — doesn’t use the phrase “debt spiral,” but Fortune’s Jason Ma did on Saturday, and I’m totally stealing it. Ma wrote of a debt “tipping point” that most people aren’t aware of but that could “arrive soon” with potentially devastating effects. I think I lose readers every time I write about this stuff, and yet I persist.


Before we get to that spiral, let’s set the stage. Ma noted that “publicly held debt is currently at $31 trillion and is about 100% of GDP. By fiscal year 2030, debt is expected to exceed the 106% record set after World War II, then surge to 120% by 2036.” Of course, we won the war in short order, spending returned to normal, and the debt became manageable.&; I think pretty much everybody reading PJ Media is at the very least vaguely aware of these current figures, but the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget warned last week: “Later in the decade, under CBO’s baseline, the average interest rate on all federal debt will exceed nominal economic growth, which could represent the start of a debt spiral.”

“Fearing the political backlash of fiscal austerity, lawmakers often point to the prospect of robust economic growth as an alternative way to keep U.S. debt under control over the long term,” Ma wrote, “But the threat of interest costs growing faster than the economy risks sending debt into escape velocity and forcing more drastic measures to prevent a crisis.” So let’s talk about the reality that few people seem willing to address. And Another Thing: Maybe people would pay more attention to these CBO reports if they gave them titles like, “Louisiana Johnson and the Spiral of Doom.”There are three ways out from under trillions and trillions in debt. Only three.

Washington can inflate away the debt, which is the preferred method of corrupt governments throughout history. The Biden Cabal managed to knock the real value of our debt down by 20% or so in just a couple of years, and all they had to do was set the typical American’s income back by years (not to mention wipe out any cash savings) to do it. The second option is default, although it does come in two flavors. There could be an orderly default, where Washington goes to our creditors at home and abroad and says, “Look, you and I both know we can’t pay back all the interest we owe you. So let’s negotiate how big a haircut you’re going to take while we get our finances in order.” Then there’s a disorderly default, where Washington just stops paying and there’s a global run on the dollar, markets collapse, and savings evaporate. The first flavor is almost too foul for even a small taste. The second melts your face off.

The third option is to grow out way out, and this is Trump’s preference. Mine, too, for that matter. Washington needs to do everything in its power to spur growth — primarily deregulation and tax cuts — while Congress keeps spending growth smaller (even just slightly smaller) than GDP growth. If the bond markets saw Congress rein in spending growth, those long-term interest rates would come down fairly quickly. Until that happens, however, the bond markets must — must — price in the risk of inflation and/or default. What that means in, no matter how low the Fed cuts short-term rates, those long-term rates will remain stubbornly high.

And Another Thing: Come to think of it, there is a fourth option, and that’s send the military into foreign countries to steal what we can’t pay. That’s a bad way, mmkay? That isn’t the Fed’s fault, and we can’t blame Jerome Powell for this one. It’s simple economic reality. Or as Bill Clinton advisor James Carville put it more than 30 years ago, when a nasty bond market reaction put the kibosh on Clinton’s grander spending plans, “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope or as a 400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.” Everybody, it seems, but those reckless fools in Congress who hold the nation’s purse strings — and all our fates — in their hands.

Read more …

Vance or Rubio in ’28? Place your bets here.

• Marco Rubio Joint Press Conference with Hungarian PM Viktor Orban (CTH)

Secretary Marco Rubio went out of his way in this joint presser to emphasize the personal relationship between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and U.S. President Donald Trump. Orban is facing a serious election challenge this April and all of the EU/NATO systems are actively trying to create pressure points to remove him. Secretary Marco Rubio is in Budapest today for meetings with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his government to include the signing of a civilian-nuclear cooperation agreement heralded by the Trump administration.


Hungary is one of the few voices within the European Union who is pushing back against Brussels efforts to go to war against Russia. Prime Minister Orban has been very critical of Ukraine, openly stating his opposition to EU membership for the embattled country. In response President Zelenskyy has weaponized Ukraine’s geographical stewardship of oil and gas pipelines to shut down Hungarian energy and drive-up prices.

Read more …

“.. politicians stage themselves retroactively as initiators of the new, attempting to position themselves at the forefront of developments they have ignored or actively obstructed for decades..”:

• Macron’s AI Clown Show: Europe’s Digital Dilemma (ZH)

The European Union has lost its place in the global race for artificial intelligence. In a single tweet on platform X, France’s President Emmanuel Macron inadvertently outlined the convoluted situation while simultaneously revealing his personal emotional fragility. The leading representatives of the European Union like to present themselves as emotionless technocrats. Maintaining the greatest possible distance from citizens, they execute their agenda of societal transformation toward what they understand as a net-zero transformation economy. This ostentatious distance from the citizenry acts as a simulacrum of power, which, in politicians like Emmanuel Macron, often veers into the caricatural.


Macron’s striking presence in foreign affairs—whether regarding the Ukraine war or recurring provocations toward the United States—correlates with his aggressive censorship policy toward his own population. A president without a people, steering his minority government through a budgetary crisis that brings France ever closer to the fiscal abyss.In Macron’s persona, the European misstep is condensed: economically failed, deeply unpopular among his own people, geopolitically essentially irrelevant—and yet imbued with lofty, messianic plans. This performative play of power, coupled with hardly disguised impotence and incompetence, inevitably produces an effect that can be described as clownish. It is the expression of a political style that can no longer reconcile claim with reality—and thus delivers less leadership than a tragicomic performance.

Politicians like the French president are indeed aware of the growing public anger over their policies and, behind the technocratic façade, very much experience emotional states—Macron revealed this for a brief moment on February 7 on the platform “X,” which he otherwise fights. This moment of exposure was triggered by a reaction to Israeli AI investor Dr. Eli David. The entrepreneur had ridiculed the French government’s plan to initiate an AI revolution with a mere initial investment of €30 million, publicly calling the president a “clown.”

Macron responded in classic social media fashion: fast, unconsidered, emotional. And this was precisely the real revelation. His message not only displayed personal fragility but simultaneously exposed Europe’s fatal economic strategy in the field of artificial intelligence. Macron directly addressed David’s criticism and slid into a rhetorical trap, writing: Yes, exactly this “clown,” meaning himself, would trigger an investment boom with €30 million, eventually mobilizing over €100 billion in private funds. Macron plans a French Silicon Valley south of Paris and intends to catapult his country to the Olympus of artificial intelligence—with €30 million of state money, initially benefiting those who provide the technological framework for the upcoming rollout of digital IDs.

In this sentence, Europe’s dilemma crystallized: self-assurance and denial, the familiar pathos of EU Europeans combined with an astonishing detachment from reality—and a political style that reveals more about Europe’s position in the global AI race than any sober analysis could. Those familiar with the codes, memes, and recurring keywords of digital platforms understand the significance of this label. When “clown world” or “clown politics” is mentioned, it refers precisely to the comedy we witness daily: the routine evasion of European top politicians from the consequences of their centrally controlled policies—be it economic and industrial policy, migration, or the grotesquely perceived energy policy.

The clown meme condenses the cynically self-ironic perception of the viewer of this comedy—a viewer aware that they are not only the target of these policies but will ultimately bear their consequences.Clown politics takes many forms. These include the countless crisis or innovation summits in which politicians stage themselves retroactively as initiators of the new, attempting to position themselves at the forefront of developments they have ignored or actively obstructed for decades. These summits are a particularly pernicious form of masking incompetence: political self-validation rituals simulating activity while merely covering up structural stagnation.

Read more …

” Both seemed to put the onus on the Justice Department to protect them from their own folly..”

• Ro Khanna and the Impunity of “Wealthy, Powerful Men” (Turley)

Last year, I wrote a column expressing concerns over the move to release the Epstein files en masse, including grand jury material. The files include a wide range of tangential figures and unsupported allegations common to criminal investigations. Politicians eager to capitalize on the scandal would likely show little concern for the underlying facts in “outing” names and repeating unproven allegations. That fear was realized this week with the chest-pounding speech of Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Cal.) on the House floor in which he took credit for outing six “wealthy, powerful men” who he suggested were actively shielded by the DOJ from public exposure. After the DOJ unredacted the names at his request, he read them on the floor. It turns out that four have nothing to do with Epstein.


Had Khanna made these comments outside of the House floor, he would be looking at four defamation lawsuits. However, Khanna knew the men could not sue him because of the immunity afforded to him under the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause.Khanna has been clearly positioning himself for a 2028 presidential run by pandering to the far left of his party. That includes his support for a wealth tax that has already reportedly led to a trillion dollars leaving the state and could harm his own Silicon Valley constituents. The Epstein files offer an easy platform for another “Spartacus moment” for politicians, who portray themselves as public avengers. That was evident on the House floor as Khanna took credit for exposing these six men.

It would turn out to be another Rep. Jasmine Crockett disaster where a gotcha moment became a spectacular face-planting. Khanna portrayed himself and Rep. Thomas Massie (R., KY) as ferreting out the names of the “wealthy, powerful men” whom the Trump Administration has fought to conceal. The Justice Department had previously agreed to let any members review the unredacted material. I have spoken with members who were part of the conference on the petition to force the release of these documents. They have told me that Massie, Khanna, and Marjorie Taylor Greene opposed repeated efforts to amend the petition to allow for greater resources and protection in the review of the millions of documents to avoid this danger.

In the conference, their colleagues specifically raised the danger of the release of entirely innocent names like the ones released by Khanna on the floor. They dismissed the danger and refused to amend the petition to avoid this type of error. (Indeed, in the hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi, Rep. Brad Knott, R-N.C., makes reference to that failed effort to give the staff and resources to avoid the release of names with no connection to the underling criminal conduct). The media, again, eagerly spread the false claim of six men “likely incriminated” in the Epstein scandal. Khanna congratulated himself and his colleague for discovering the cover-up: “Why did it take Thomas Massie and me going to the Justice Department to get these six men’s identities to become public? And if we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those 3 million files.”

There is another possible explanation. Four of these men have little or nothing to do with Epstein. One of the names was previously connected to Epstein in public files. That is Les Wexner. Another, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, was the head of a Dubai logistics company called DP World. However, the other four were just photos used in a photo lineup. In other words, they were just random individuals used by the police to fill out a lineup. The Justice Department responded to Khanna’s public demonstration by declaring that “Rep Ro Khanna and Rep Thomas Massie forced the unmasking of completely random people selected years ago for an FBI lineup – men and women. These individuals have NOTHING to do with Epstein or Maxwell,” the spokesperson told the Guardian…”

What is curious is that Khanna blamed the Justice Department for his going to the floor to out the men as suspected wealthy and powerful predators. However, Massie admitted that he previously raised the possibility that the men were just used randomly in a line up. Both seemed to put the onus on the Justice Department to protect them from their own folly. [..]

Read more …

“The West-West Divide: What Remains of Common Values..”

• Hillary Clinton Admits Mass Migration Is “Disruptive & Destabilizing” (ZH)

After U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke earlier on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, where he said the U.S. and Europe “belong together” and argued for a stronger West, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who served under former President Barack Obama, appeared on a panel later that afternoon and made surprising remarks about mass migration. Clinton participated in a panel titled, “The West-West Divide: What Remains of Common Values,” and said that mass migration invasion involving millions of illegal aliens has been “destabilizing” to society.


Clinton continued: “So this debate that’s going on is driven by an effort to control people, to control who we are, how we look, who we love. And I think we need to call it for what it is. There is a legitimate reason to have a debate about things like migration. It went too far. It’s been disruptive and destabilizing, and it needs to be fixed in a humane way, with secure borders that don’t torture and kill people, and with a strong family structure, because it is at the base.”

Clinton’s comments about how mass migration has been an utter failure probably made White House border czar Tom Homan blush. In fact, unhinged Democrats, such as the Democratic Socialists of America, are probably furious with Clinton, given her very blunt public stance on immigration policy. In fact, if we circle back to Rubio’s comments earlier in the day, he slammed “mass migration”. Let’s not forget that Rubio’s State Department last fall recognized that mass migration was an “existential threat” to the West and risks “undermining the stability of key American allies.”

“America First” politicians are coming to their senses about the illegal alien invasion, as it was a move by globalists, NGOs, and their Democratic Party allies to install a new voting bloc and transform America into a one-party rule of left-wing kings and queens (think California). That’s why “America First” politicians and Elon Musk are pushing hard for the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to secure the integrity of elections.
Read more …

“Bannon and Epstein were very close and talked to each other about seemingly everything.”

• Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein (CTH)

Through the years I didn’t really have much of an opinion of Steve Bannon, I approached any story of interest that surrounded him by simply looking at the factual details of the current event in question. CTH well understood that Bannon, and subsequently his expressed opinion and objective, was simply an outcome of his position – downstream from the billionaire of the moment who paid him. In essence, Steve Bannon always seemed to be, much like Kellyanne Conway, an advocate for whoever was financing him. From Robert/Rebekah Mercer at Breitbart forward to any endeavor thereafter, it always just appeared the same.That said, with the release of the Epstein files, the relationship between Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein is something CTH did not expect. {HERE} Bannon and Epstein were very close and talked to each other about seemingly everything.


I can never unsee what I have read. Nor will CTH ever entertain the possibility that Bannon was ever a good element within the MAGA effort. There is a solid argument to be made that the Bannon War Room was funded, or organized in the funding mechanisms, by Jeffrey Epstein. {HERE} The files of messages between them contain some shocking stuff happening in the background while Steve Bannon was in very close proximity to candidate and President Trump. The level of disdain Bannon had for Donald Trump’s family and for Donald Trump himself is really something CTH did not expect to see. {examples: HERE and HERE} I am left to wonder now how much of the vitriol against Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, ie. “Javanka hatred”, actually originated from the Braintrust behind Bannon and the assembly of people in his immediate orbit.

Initially, I saw some Twitter accounts attempt to defend Steve Bannon by saying Epstein did all the talking in their text exchanges and Bannon was less communicative. However, that only applied to the first batches of files reviewed. As a few days went along and people started citing files, reading them gives a much more fulsome picture of the relationship. Steve Bannon may have been focused on the financial gains and perhaps networks of people in his association with Epstein; but he certainly got deep into it and expressed extreme praise for Epstein, even going so far as to call him a god. {LINK} These were two men in a very close friendship. There is no political or ideological distance between Bannon and Epstein.

The level of expressed skullduggery that has been going on for years in the background is very unsettling to accept, and I say that as a person who doesn’t customarily get shocked by duplicity. This is not about division; this is about something more akin to betrayal. While putting on a MAGA face for the War Room broadcasts, in the background Bannon was actually plotting and advising of ways to eliminate Donald Trump from republican politics. This is Brutus level disloyalty, even accepting the guy has no moral compass other than his bank account. I can never unsee what has been seen.

There’s also some weird stuff in the exchanges about contextual things from years past. As an example, in one set of text messages Bannon and Epstein were discussing Patrick Byrne who is now part of the Emerald Robinson/Mike Flynn network. Bannon notes in 2018 that Byrne told him he was working for the CIA, and apparently Bannon did not believe him. This is the same November, 2018, message exchange where Epstein is advising Steve Bannon on how to set up a media network to maximize privacy, structure the financing and eliminate the problems with transparency. This is the origin of what would less than a year later become Bannon’s War Room on Real Voice America. Did Jeffrey Epstein provide the seed capital to assist the start-up of Bannon’s War Room? That question isn’t clear, but sheesh, the creepy irony of the possibility is really over-the-top.

I guess in the big scheme of things, considering all of the potential creepy stuff that is far more consequential to the Epstein file release, the relationship with Steve Bannon is not at the top of the issues of concern. However, the reality of seeing this relationship and reading how much they both hated MAGA is just so darn deflating. Trust lost can never be reestablished.Ugh. All of it. Just, ugh. Now we reevaluate everyone who openly, frequently and willingly associated themselves with Steve Bannon on that “War Room” platform. Including: Julie Kelly, Mike Davis, Jack Posobiec, Lara Logan, John Solomon, Laura Loomer, Harmeet Dhillon and so many more. Did they know about this Bannon-Epstein network?

Read more …

“If you tolerate the intolerable, you’re communicating that it’s okay to mistreat you.” —Aimee Terese on X

• Epstein-itis (James Howard Kunstler)

Did you think the American zeitgeist — our collective spirit plus our thinking — could not get crazier? Gird your loins. It’s getting worse by the hour. The Jeffrey Epstein files suggest that people will do anything and that people will believe anything. Pizza, hot dogs, white sharks. . . boys, girls, babies, teens, Russian whores. . . celebrities by the score. . . billionaires. . . cannibal orgies. . . vivisection parlors. . . adrenochrome. . . blood. . . dead bodies. . . demon worship. . . a depraved and insane global leadership. . . lemme outa here!

I don’t know what’s real in Epstein and what’s not — but neither do you. What you ought to know is that the colossal inventory of Epstein files is perhaps the greatest instrument of mass mind-fuckery ever seen in the history of Western Civ. How interesting, too, that the deluge of material coincides exactly with the critical capability emergence of Artificial Intelligence as a tool for the manipulation of documentary evidence. And also consider all the years since 2019 that interested parties have had to mess with, destroy, possibly fabricate, and catalog all this stuff.

Apparently, the Woke-Jacobin-Marxist eruption was not enough to destabilize the consensus about reality. The absurdities you were asked to swallow about all-women-are-women-including-men. . . the police killed George Floyd. . . mostly peaceful riots. . . the vaccine is safe and effective. . . the free-est, fairest elections ever. . . “Joe Biden” is president. . . the border is secure. . . speaking English is white supremacy — did not push America deeply enough into Crazyland. More was required to completely demolish your sense of an ordered world.

Donald Trump was correct, at least, that releasing the Epstein files would bring on more chaos than clarity and impede the effort to get our country back on the rails with an economic engine based on the production of goods instead of financialized hyper-casino voodoo. Well, now we’re in a maelstrom of innuendo, code-talk, gossip, and redaction, and you can hardly begin to sort it out. The Attorney General of the USA, bless her heart, has already botched the management of this monster.

Epstein’s relations with Israel and its Mossad intel blob, along with his connections to global banking interests, have aroused the zestiest breakout of antipathy to Jews since the SS busied itself loading the crematoriums of Europe. Hatred of Jews is a recurring symptom of civilization distress. But it is also possible that Israel has behaved badly — and it is certain that many political intellectuals are reevaluating the way that nation was established after World War Two. To some degree, Israel has become a paranoid state (though even paranoiacs have real enemies).

Where does that go from here? Thoughtful people are pessimistic. For sure, they resent the money and influence seeded by Israel in the US Congress. They might be concerned as well about all the other interests pounding money into American politics. Grift is everywhere, and everyone can see it now. The looming end of the grift orgy is probably behind the Democratic Party’s current psychotic disposition. Having lost its 20th century base of factory workers, the party has had to work the extreme margins of American life to build a coalition of the feckless, the reckless, the brainles

s, and the shameless. They have become the party’s wards in a reimagined patronage system even more pernicious than the old one under characters like Boss Tweed and Mayor Richard Daley-the-First of Chicago. The Democratic Party can’t win elections without rigging them and it’s astonishing that they’ve gotten away with building such sturdy armature of ballot fraud in plain sight with next to zero objection from the supposed guardians in officialdom. The features of it are so arrant that a political class with any sense or dignity would have laughed it straight into the criminal courts — and its perps straight into the penitentiary. The fraud became especially acute with the 2020 and 2022 elections. It is about to be revealed in the troves of evidence extracted lately from Fulton County, GA, and presently from Maricopa County, AZ. These birds are cooked. Not a few people will eventually go to jail over these shenanigans. And meanwhile, the SAVE Act pulsates in the Senate like a lump of kryptonite.

Now, you may realize that a political party based entirely on socially marginal persons — many of them mentally ill — will adopt a roster of ideas and policies that are patently marginal, which is to say, crazy. The party elders are now straining to eliminate some of that. Last week, Barack Obama unloaded on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s botched handling of the state’s epic homeless crisis. “We should recognize that the average person doesn’t want to have to navigate around a tent city in the middle of downtown,” the ex-president said in an interview with progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen.

Hillary Clinton, dropping in on the Munich Security Conference, said, amazingly, “There is a legitimate reason to have a debate about things like migration. It went too far, it’s been disruptive and destabilizing. . .” before tossing in some Woke word-salad: “. . . and it needs to be fixed in a humane way with secure borders that don’t torture and kill people and how we’re going to have a strong family structure because it is at the base of civilization.” Say, what. . . ?

But then, poor Hillary, who can’t help being a Cluster-B psycho, turned up moderating a panel at the same Munich meet-up to take up the issue: “Girls Just Want to Have Fundamental Rights: Fighting the Global Pushback.“ To nail down her point, Hillary brought onstage as the featured speaker, Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), known previously as Tim McBride, a man. The insanity is, of course, self-evident. The take-away from all this. They’re not trying hard enough to get their minds right.

And in the meantime, America and the other nations of Western Civ, must contend with the gigantic trip laid on them that is the Epstein files. We know the newspapers and cable news channels are hopeless. Is there anyone or any sense-making institution that can usher us through this nightmare back into the daylight?

Read more …

“..58 percent of voters believe their party is “too liberal.” But Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez found a welcoming audience in Europe.”

• Newsom and AOC Go to Europe to Pitch High Tax, High Regulation Policies (Turley)

This week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) joined the many Californians now seeking their fortune elsewhere. The difference is that Newsom is planning to come back to California, even as billionaires, investors, and companies flee his state for greener pastures. Newsom and Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) were selling a brave new world that looked a lot like the broken old world. It was an ironic moment. They were addressing countries at the Munich Security Conference that had previously destroyed their economies through socialist and far-left policies. The rush of liberal Democratic officeholders to Europe was telling. A new poll shows that a record 58 percent of voters believe their party is “too liberal.” But Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez found a welcoming audience in Europe.


The global elite gushed over Ocasio-Cortez and sat enraptured as she rattled off socialist platitudes. That included New York Times correspondent Katrin Bennhold, who thrilled the audience by treating it as a given that Ocasio-Cortez will run for president.Both Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez spoke of returning the U.S. to the good graces of the global elite. Newsom assured the Europeans that Trump’s reign is temporary, and that the U.S. will soon enough dismantle the “wrecking ball” that the administration has taken to the EU.

Newsom offered his leadership and his state as the model, proclaiming that “California is a stable and reliable partner” for Europe. The model includes high taxes, massive spending programs and greater bureaucratic regulations — precisely the policies that have driven the European economy into its current stagnation. In other words, Democrats were in Europe to offer precisely what Newsom outwardly condemned: “doubling down on stupid.” When not fumbling with security questions about issues such as Taiwan, Ocasio-Cortez was demanding that wealth taxes be implemented in the U.S. “expeditiously.” Such a tax on billionaires’ wealth, including unrealized gains, is currently being pushed in California. The predictable result is that billionaires and other wealthy citizens are rushing to leave the state and taking their investments and companies with them.

Ocasio-Cortez had the audience at hello. Rather than having Vice President J.D. Vance shaming them for their attacks on free speech, the Europeans positively gushed over Democratic leaders pushing far-left agendas. It did not matter that such policies devastated European economies in the 20th century. In my book “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss the rise of support for socialism in both the U.S. and Europe. Many of those supporting it are young voters with no memory of the collapse of socialist economies in the 20th Century. In 1977, Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan pursued many of the same socialist policies, leading to what was called the “winter of discontent” as inflation hit 25 percent.

With the collapse of the British pound, the United Kingdom had to take the demoralizing step of securing a loan from the International Monetary Fund, as if it were a developing country. In France, François Mitterrand was also elected to pursue his “rupture with capitalism.” The French economy collapsed; Mitterrand quickly had to reverse himself and restore capitalist policies. That history is rarely discussed or taught today. The “warmth of collectivism,” as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani put it, is back in vogue. It does not matter that, in Argentina, President Javier Milei is achieving one of the most impressive economic turnarounds in history — dramatically curtailing runaway inflation, government deficits and poverty — by reinstating free-market policies and reducing government spending.

What is chilling about Europe is that the EU has strangled growth with its increasingly centralized controls and massive bureaucracy. My book describes the instability of the EU and its global governance model. Europe is facing populist movements and, like many Democrats, the response has been calls for further consolidation of power. This included the creation of a new, uniform European corporate law, known as the “28th Regime.” With an economy crushed by a massive EU bureaucracy and regulations, the solution of many is all too familiar: borrow more money. French President Emmanuel Macron and others want to issue “Euro bonds” to spend their way into an economic recovery — another policy ideal shared with many on the American left.

This week was only the latest effort of the American left to strengthen an alliance with the EU. Previously, American leaders such as Hillary Clinton pushed the EU to censor Americans online after free speech protections were restored by companies like Twitter. Likewise, the American left is enamored with the EU’s global bureaucracy and regulations. Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez certainly found their element in Munich, and the EU certainly found the “reliable partners” it has longed for in creating “a new World Order with European Values.”

Read more …

“..already in a “pre civil war” state, with “dire social instability,” “economic decline,” and “elite pusillanimity” as key precursors..”

• No Prospect’ Of EU Governments Preventing CIVIL WAR: British Army Colonel (MN)

Major unrest looms as political leaders kick the can down the road on immigration and integration failures, according to a seasoned military expert. Retired Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, has issued a stark warning about the trajectory of social cohesion in Europe and Britain. Speaking to Israeli broadcaster i24News, Kemp highlighted how integration breakdowns have worsened over the past two decades, paving the way for inevitable conflict.“Things have been getting worse, getting bad, for many years, and they are only going to get worse,” Kemp stated, pointing to the reluctance of governments to confront the issues head-on.


Kemp, who also served in counter-insurgency operations in Northern Ireland and held intelligence roles in Westminster and the Cabinet Office, emphasized the lack of political will to address what he termed the “Islamification” of the UK. “No government, the government now or any prospective government of the UK, has the guts to stop it,” he said. “If they want to take strong action to prevent the Islamification of the UK, it’s going to mean big trouble for them. They don’t want trouble, they look four years ahead, they will kick the can down the road to someone else. ”This political shortsightedness, according to Kemp, is fueling the risk of “civil war in Europe.” He described a potential scenario resembling Northern Ireland but on a far more intense scale, where “you have the indigenous British and some of the immigrant population and the British government all on three different sides fighting against each other.”

The officer attributed the slim chances of maintaining social order to democratic dysfunction and a lack of real choice for voters. “The big problem that British people have is they don’t have political choice. We don’t really live in a democracy,” Kemp asserted. “Whatever party you vote for, you get the same policies. That applies also to immigration and to the way in which the Islamic population is allowed to grow in numbers and dominance.” Kemp also noted the rise of Islamist politics in the UK, with Gaza-focused candidates winning seats in high-migration areas. “We’re going to see much more of that in the next election,” he predicted, referencing concerns within the Labour Party, including Health Minister Wes Streeting’s private message:

“I fear we’re in big trouble here – and I am toast at the next election. We just lost our safest ward in Redbridge (51% Muslim, Ilford S) to a Gaza independent. At this rate, I don’t think we’ll hold either of the two Ilford seats.”This isn’t the first time Kemp has raised the alarm. As we highlighted last year, he previously warned of growing unrest over mass migration and allegations of child sexual abuse by new arrivals, stating: “There’s only so much that I think people can take of that, and they’ve been very quiet up until now, the people in the UK have not really raised their voices against this, or in a very limited way only. But the more it develops, and it is going to develop more and more, the more unrest we are going to see.”

In that earlier commentary, Kemp went further: “And they have no option. I’m not encouraging or supporting this, but I think the people will feel they have no option than to take action into their own hand rather than rely on political leaders who are doing nothing, in their eyes. I think there is every likelihood, I don’t know what the timeframe is, but I would go so far as to not just predict civil unrest, but civil war in the UK in the coming years if this situation continues which I believe it will.” Kemp’s views align with broader expert analyses on Europe’s fracturing societies. King’s College London Professor David Betz has warned that countries like the UK, France, and Sweden are already in a “pre civil war” state, with “dire social instability,” “economic decline,” and “elite pusillanimity” as key precursors.

Betz stated: “We’re already past the tipping point, is my estimation… we are past the point at which there is a political offramp. We are past the point at which normal politics is able to solve the problem… almost every plausible way forward from here involves some kind of violence in my view.” Betz further urged: “I would probably avoid big cities. I would suggest you reduce your exposure to big cities if you are able,” and concluded: “Things are bad now, but they are going to get very much worse. Hopefully after they will get better, but you will have to go through the period of very much worse before you get there.”Echoing these concerns, academic Michael Rainsborough described Britain’s path as intentional rather than accidental, rooted in elite strategies of division.

He referenced historical policies under Tony Blair aimed “to rub the Right’s nose in diversity,” and warned of a “descent into what we termed dirty war,” involving internal repression and low-intensity strife. Rainsborough highlighted the erosion of national sentiment, noting public spaces filled with “Pride flags, Palestinian flags, Ukrainian flags — anything, it seems, but the Cross of St George.” He cautioned that such dynamics could lead to “Balkanisation — or, in the local idiom, Ulsterisation,” drawing parallels to Northern Ireland’s troubles. These repeated warnings from military and academic figures underscore a pattern: unchecked mass migration, elite detachment from public will, and a refusal to enforce borders are eroding the fabric of Western societies. As globalist policies prioritize appeasement over security, the pushback from ordinary citizens grows—demanding leaders who put their own people first, before the powder keg ignites.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/2023175702938554542?s=20 Tucker https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2023412775851110657?s=20

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 16 2026

Feb 162026
 
 February 16, 2026  Posted by at 10:44 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  70 Responses »


John William Godward Dolce Far Niente (Sweet Idleness, or A Pompeian Fishpond) 1904


• Marco Rubio Expands on Purposeful Speech to Munich Security Conference (CTH)
• Eric Schmidt Warns Ukraine’s “No Man’s Land” Is Future of War (ZH)
• Trump Promises Voter ID “Whether Congress Approves Or Not” (ZH)
• Judge Weighs Whether to Block Vaccine Changes From CDC, RFK Jr. (ET)
• Comedian Zelensky Turned Munich Conference Into Circus – Political Consultant (RT)
• Trump ‘Very Serious’ About Annexing Greenland – Danish PM (RT)
• Russia Open To Discussing Ukraine’s ‘External Governance’ – Senior Diplomat (RT)
• Fetterman Reveals His Parents Are TRUMP Supporters (MN)
• We Actually Needed a Law to Stop Paying Dead People (Margolis)
• Bondi Says ALL Epstein Files Have Been Released (Salgado)
• ‘The Search for the Cause of Havana Syndrome’ (Moran)
• Senator Unloads On Minnesota AG Ellison Over Fraud Scandal (ZH)
• Hillary’s Script, Interrupted (David Manney)

 


 

https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2022457483537567991?s=20 Mustafa Share

 


 

 


 


Marco wants to be president. What does Trump say?

• Marco Rubio Expands on Purposeful Speech to Munich Security Conference (CTH)

Marco Rubio appears for an interview with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News. The interview was pre-scheduled as a follow up to the rather historic speech in Munich at the security conference. Within the interview {video and transcript below} Rubio expands on the baseline of the speech, the ‘why‘ is the U.S-EU alliance important. Beginning with the end in mind, Rubio reminds the interviewer that an alliance must first accept the purpose of the assembly. There are common values and common social components to the relationship that sit at the core of the decision to be allies.


We have a shared civilization based on shared values, and within that central component the Trump administration is staring at the Europeans and saying they have lost focus on these values. Europe is diminishing itself; it is fracturing its culture and has lost its sovereign identity. The United States wants to stay partnered with Europe, but we are not going to be a partner anchored to a collective mindset that has lost its identity. This culturally Marxist status, a gathering of nations infected with political correctness, pontificating wokeness and apologetic self-flagellation, is the core problem the Europeans are not willing to face.

President Trump and Marco Rubio are essentially telling the EU to shake it off, quit being woke, get proud of your heritage, institute political systems that give benefit to the population and regain pride in themselves and their identity. The process begins with national security, but that is not just about military spending. Their energy industry needs to support economic independence; they cannot outsource component manufacturing; they need to reestablish economic baselines that are not dependent on Russia, China, India or any other risk vector that could be used to manipulate.

QUESTION: Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, thank you for talking to Bloomberg. You’ve just made this rather remarkable speech where you talked about the destiny of Europe and America always being intertwined. You talked about the alliance which has stretched all the way, culturally, from Michelangelo to the Rolling Stones – a first, I suspect, for a secretary of state – but a culture that has bled and died together. But the very common theme of your speech was the need to share the burden, the need for Europe and America to do things together, which was slightly different from the Vice President last year. Were you kind of offering a carrot where perhaps he was offering a stick?

SECRETARY RUBIO: I think it’s the same message. I think what the Vice President said last year very clearly was that Europe had made a series of decisions internally that were threatening to the alliance and ultimately to themselves, not because we hate Europe or we don’t like Europeans but because – what is it that we fight for, what is it that binds us together? And ultimately, it’s the fact that we are both heirs to the same civilization. And it’s a great civilization and it’s one we should be proud of. It’s one that’s contributed extraordinarily to the world and it’s one, frankly, upon which America is built, from our language to our system of government to our laws to the food we eat to the name of our cities and towns – all of it deeply linked to this Western civilization and culture that we should be proud of, and it’s worth defending.

And ultimately, that’s the point. The point is that people – people don’t fight and die for abstract ideas. They are willing to fight and defend who they are and what matters and is important to them. And that was the foundation he laid last year in his speech – and we add on into this year – to explain to people that when we come off as urgent or even critical about decisions that Europe has failed to make or made, it is because we care. It is because we understand that ultimately, our own fate will be intertwined with what happens with Europe. We want Europe to survive, we want Europe to prosper, because we’re interconnected in so many different ways and because our alliance is so critical. But it has to be an alliance of allies that are capable and willing to fight for who they are and what’s important.

(more…)

Read more …

“..swarms of drones operated remotely and increasingly automated with AI targeting “

• Eric Schmidt Warns Ukraine’s “No Man’s Land” Is Future of War (ZH)

Google’s old motto, “Don’t be evil,” was retired for very good reasons about eight years ago.


Former CEO Eric Schmidt has found a new obsession and is linked to a covert drone production pipeline that has supplied hundreds of FPV drones to Ukrainian front-line units, reinforcing his warning in a new Financial Times op-ed that “Ukraine’s no man’s land is the future of war.” “Future wars are going to be defined by unmanned weapons,” Schmidt wrote in the op-ed. He said, “The winner of those drone battles will then be able to advance with unmanned ground and maritime vehicles, which move slowly but can carry heavier payloads.” Schmidt described a stretch on the first line as “no man’s land.”

He explained: “Ukraine is ready for the next stage of warfare, with swarms of drones operated remotely and increasingly automated with AI targeting. No man’s land has expanded as each side pulls its most valuable personnel back from the front while new generations of drones achieve longer ranges and increased lethality through better batteries, sensors and aerodynamics. Automating operations so personnel can operate safely behind the lines has become an urgent Ukrainian priority, with plans to move drone pilots even farther from the front in 2026.

The combination of unblockable satellite communications, cheap spectrum networks and accurate GPS targeting means the only way to fight will be through drone vs drone combat. Drones share data in real time, meaning that many inexpensive platforms can act as a single weapon. They will carry air-to-air missiles to defeat attackers, just like a fighter jet does, but will be cheaper and more abundant. Within this kill zone, reportedly extending for miles – and in some assessments, approximately 15 miles or more wide – FPV drones and ground robots dominate, with AI kill chains that, in some cases, reduce or remove direct human-in-the-loop to kill.

Schmidt continued: “When the war in Ukraine is eventually settled, the result may be a tense peace that offers as many lessons for western nations as the conflict itself. In the future, a “drone wall” could be established along the division between Russia and Ukraine, where omnipresent automated drones monitor the border like an intelligent electric fence. Because these drones are valuable enemy targets, they will need to be armed to repel attackers, creating a hard border that is miles high and miles wide.”

Numerous publications have documented the rise of Schmidt’s secretive military drone company, White Stork, including a 2025 Forbes report. A separate report from Aviation Weekly said that Schmidt’s drone company “will expand production to deliver hundreds of thousands of drones to Ukraine this year and more in 2026.” And while humans are still embedded in the kill chain, we must share the gamification of war story that Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces have been using since last year, even keeping an online “killboard” that lets anyone track confirmed Russian losses from Ukrainian drone strikes in near real time.

Read more …

“Even Democrat Voters agree, 85%, that there should be Voter I.D.”

• Trump Promises Voter ID “Whether Congress Approves Or Not” (ZH)

The SAVE America Act squeaked through the House this week by five votes. The final tally was 218-213, with Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas standing as the lone Democrat to cross party lines. On Friday, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) gave Republicans their 50th vote late Friday afternoon, telling Maine Wire the revised bill strikes an appropriate balance between election security and voter access. “The law is clear that in this country only American citizens are eligible to vote in federal elections. In addition, having people provide an ID at the polls, just as they have to do before boarding an airplane, checking into a hotel, or buying an alcoholic beverage, is a simple reform that will improve the security of our federal elections and will help give people more confidence in the results,” she told Maine Wire.


“Requiring voters to produce passports or birth certificates on Election Day — as opposed to just a state-issued ID — would have placed an unnecessary burden on the voters. That provision is no longer in the bill, and dropping this requirement was key to getting my support.” With Will Collins on board, Republicans have enough support to pass the bill even without additional backing, with Vice President JD Vance ready to break any tie. Unfortunately, 50 votes only get the GOP so far. The legislation still lacks the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has made clear the bill is “dead on arrival.” And Collins herself opposes scrapping the filibuster to ram the measure through.

“I oppose eliminating the legislative filibuster,” Collins said. “The filibuster is an important protection for the rights of the minority party, that requires Senators to work together in the best interest of the country. Removing that protection would, for example, allow a future Congress controlled by Democrats to pass provisions on anything they want — DC Statehood, open borders, or packing the Supreme Court — with just a simple majority of Senators.” President Trump, however, is promising that requiring a photo ID to vote will get done with or without Congress. In a post on Truth Social, he accused Democrats of opposing Voter ID and citizenship verification because “they want to continue to cheat in Elections.”

He said this “was not what our Founders desired” and promised to present an “irrefutable” legal argument on the issue soon. Trump vowed that “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not,” and stated that Americans demand “Citizenship, and No Mail-In Ballots, with exceptions for Military, Disability, Illness, or Travel.” Trump also slammed Democrats as “horrible, disingenuous CHEATERS” for opposing Voter I.D., claiming they “boldly laugh in the backrooms” while opposing it. He called the lack of Voter I.D. “even crazier, and more ridiculous, than Men playing in Women’s Sports, Open Borders, or Transgender for Everyone.”

Trump urged Republicans to make it “a CAN’T MISS FOR RE-ELECTION IN THE MIDTERMS, AND BEYOND,” noting that “Even Democrat Voters agree, 85%, that there should be Voter I.D.” He called Democratic leaders “Crooked Losers like Schumer and Jeffries,” who label it “racist,” and promised to present legal arguments for action via an Executive Order. Trump warned that if Democrats regain power, they will “PACK THE COURT with a total of 21 Supreme Court Justices” and warned the country “will never be the same if they allow these demented and evil people to knowingly, and happily, destroy it.” Trump previously signed an executive order attempting to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements on federal voter registration forms. That effort crashed into multiple legal challenges and has been systematically dismantled by the courts.

Read more …

Judges set policy here?

• Judge Weighs Whether to Block Vaccine Changes From CDC, RFK Jr. (ET)

A federal judge weighing whether to block changes to U.S. vaccine guidance and an advisory panel did not immediately rule Feb. 13 after hearing from attorneys representing medical groups and the government. Lawyers for the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and other groups told U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy during a hearing at the federal courthouse in Boston that recent changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine schedule and the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel violate federal law and will reduce vaccination rates. “This is a clear and present danger to public health,” said James Oh, a lawyer for the groups.


Oh said the schedule update, which removed the broad recommendation for six childhood vaccines for diseases including rotavirus, influenza and hepatitis A, “set off alarms” in the medical community and occurred without any rational explanation from the agency. The CDC on Jan. 5, with backing from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., narrowed the number of vaccines routinely recommended by the childhood schedule. Government officials said in filings that the the reasoning behind the change was in part due to an assessment carried out by senior health officials that analyzed the U.S. childhood schedule against schedules from other countries.

“The U.S. is a global outlier among peer nations in the number of target diseases included in its childhood vaccination schedule and in the total number of recommended vaccine doses,” the officials, Drs. Tracy Beth Hoeg and Martin Kulldorff, concluded. The plaintiffs, which also include several women who say changes under Kennedy have prevented them from receiving vaccines, are challenging a series of actions. They focused on arguments for and against imposing an injunction blocking that update and the health secretary’s remaking of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee.

Oh said that the committee is not fairly balanced because it is dominated by people who oppose vaccines, in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and urged Murphy to block the committee’s upcoming Feb. 26–27 meeting. Government lawyers said in a recent brief that the advisory committee members have a variety of employment histories and that the accusation they are anti-vaccine “does not accurately represent the members’ complex and nuanced perspectives and their committee voting records.” Murphy asked during the hearing whether he could consider the “broader public health impacts” of the changes in vaccine recommendations while weighing the case.

Department of Justice lawyer Isaac Belfer told him health officials were not pursuing an anti-vaccine agenda and welcomed “spirited debate about vaccine policy.” But he said the Department of Health and Human Services had broad authority to change policy to address a decline in public trust in vaccines following the COVID-19 pandemic. “The court cannot substitute its judgment in place of the agency,” Belfer said. Murphy did not immediately rule. With the meeting upcoming, he said he “must make a decision in this case on an uncomfortably tight timeline.”

Read more …

“:Orban previously dismissed Zelensky’s rhetoric as the behavior of “a man in a desperate position” and has accused Brussels and Kiev of “declaring war on Hungary.”

• Comedian Zelensky Turned Munich Conference Into Circus – Political Consultant (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky turned the Munich Security Conference into a circus with a personal and “childish” attack on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, political risk consultant and lawyer Adriel Kasonta has said. The controversy stems from remarks made by Zelensky on Saturday, in which he mocked Orban’s physique while claiming that Ukraine is fighting to protect the entire EU from Russia. “It’s Ukrainians who are holding the European front… And even one Viktor can think about how to grow his belly, not how to grow his army to stop Russian tanks from returning to the streets of Budapest,” Zelensky said.


The comment was met with applause from the largely pro-Ukraine and pro-EU audience in Munich, but critics argue that the insult was unbecoming of a “serious” leader. Speaking to RT, Kasonta described the Ukrainian leader’s behavior as that of a “desperate man” resorting to the antics of his former comedy career on one of the world’s most important political stages. “He’s trying to take his tricks from the comedian past into the public fora like the Munich Security Conference – turning this previously very important gathering of Western leaders or world leaders discussing important issues related to world security into a farce,” he said.

Kasonta argued that spectacles like Zelensky’s are alienating global observers. “This security conference is observed around the world and countries outside of the Western hemisphere are just scratching their heads and wondering why instead of discussing important issues related to this war-torn world that we are living in currently, we are simply allowing leaders like Mr. Zelensky to turn it into a big circus,” he said. Orban, who has refused to send weapons to Ukraine and blocked EU funds for military aid, responded to the insult on X with characteristic coolness, suggesting that Zelensky’s words would “greatly help Hungarians see the situation more clearly.”

“This debate is not about me and it is not about you. It is about the future of Hungary, Ukraine, and Europe. This is precisely why you cannot become a member of the European Union,” Orban wrote. Orban previously dismissed Zelensky’s rhetoric as the behavior of “a man in a desperate position” and has accused Brussels and Kiev of “declaring war on Hungary.”

Read more …

Show you can protect it.

• Trump ‘Very Serious’ About Annexing Greenland – Danish PM (RT)

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that US President Donald Trump remains “very serious” about annexing Greenland, despite recently toning down his rhetoric about using military force to take over the resource-rich Arctic territory. Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to acquire the autonomous Danish territory, citing its strategic location and alleged threats from Russia and China – claims dismissed by Copenhagen, Moscow, and Beijing. Although he initially did not rule out using military force, last month he announced a framework deal with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Frederiksen argued the threat is far from over, describing the pressure on Greenland as “unacceptable.”


“Unfortunately, the US president remains very serious,” she said, adding that “the people of Greenland have never been threatened by anyone before.” While Copenhagen is willing to work with Washington to allow an expanded military presence, Frederiksen stressed that “there are, of course, things that you cannot compromise on” – such as sovereignty and territorial integrity. “We now have a working group. We will try to see if we can find a solution… we will do whatever we can, but of course, there are red lines that will not be crossed,” she said, following a 45-minute meeting on Friday with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Details of the talks have not been made public.

Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen echoed the concerns, calling it “outrageous” that Greenlanders are being threatened by a NATO member. Frederiksen warned last month that the annexation threats could undermine “everything,” including the US-led military bloc. French President Emmanuel Macron also criticized Washington’s stance, calling the “Greenland moment” evidence that the Trump administration is “openly anti-European.”

Read more …

“Moscow has since said Zelensky’s legal status is a major obstacle to concluding a binding peace deal “

• Russia Open To Discussing Ukraine’s ‘External Governance’ – Senior Diplomat (RT)

Russia is ready to discuss establishing “temporary external governance” in Ukraine under UN auspices to facilitate long-overdue democratic elections, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin has said. In an interview with TASS released on Sunday, Galuzin noted that the idea was first floated by Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2025, describing it as one possible way to further the peace process. This step, he said, “would make it possible to hold democratic elections in Ukraine, bring to power a capable government with which a full-fledged peace treaty could be signed, along with legitimate documents on future interstate cooperation.”


“In general, Russia is prepared to discuss with the US, European nations, and other countries the possibility of introducing temporary external governance in Kiev,” he added. Galuzin acknowledged that while the UN “does not formally have a standardized mechanism” for these types of cases, there are historical precedents.Moscow proposed the idea of external governance after the expiration of Vladimir Zelensky’s presidential term in 2024. At the time, the Ukrainian leader refused to hold new elections, citing martial law, which prompted Russia to declare him “illegitimate.” Moscow has since said Zelensky’s legal status is a major obstacle to concluding a binding peace deal.

Following US pressure, Zelensky signaled that he is open to having an election, but demanded security guarantees from the West and Russia. In March 2025, the US dismissed the external management proposal, saying governance in Ukraine is “determined by its Constitution and the people of the country.” Prior to this, however, US President Donald Trump branded Zelensky “a dictator without elections.”

Read more …

“..Democrat extremists are already plotting to primary Fetterman ahead of his 2028 reelection bid, viewing his moderate positions as a betrayal.”

• Fetterman Reveals His Parents Are TRUMP Supporters (MN)

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman has once again set himself apart from the radical elements in his party by admitting that his own parents support President Trump—and using that as a reason to reject the Democrats’ over-the-top attacks on MAGA voters. In a recent interview with Politico’s Dasha Burns, Fetterman again explained why he won’t join the chorus labeling Trump supporters as threats to democracy, emphasizing personal connections over partisan hysteria.Burns asked Fetterman directly about Trump’s praise for him as the “most sensible Democrat,” questioning if it’s a “badge of honor or kryptonite for a Democrat in 2026.” Fetterman responded, “My parents would appreciate it.”


He continued, “I know, and I love a lot of people that vote for Trump. And that’s part of why I refuse to call these people Nazis, or they’re brownshirts, or they’re trying to destroy our democracy.” Fetterman made it clear he’s not engaging in that rhetoric, stating, “I’m not defending the president, but I will say he hasn’t defied a single court order yet. He hasn’t. And there was the big freak out that he was going to run in 28.” “And I’m like, no, he’s not going to run. That’s not going to happen. And now, of course he’s not going to run,” the Senator added. When Burns pressed on his relationship with Trump, Fetterman said, “If I have something to say it’s not going to be, you know, in an insult. It’s not going to be extreme things…when you have members of Congress calling him a piece of shit.”

“And I think it’s crazy, it’s like you just don’t, you know, I’ll always talk and speak, you know, with respect, because I really want to find a way forward.” This admission underscores Fetterman’s ongoing pushback against his party’s extremes, a stance that has increasingly isolated him from Democratic insiders. As we previously reported, Democrat extremists are already plotting to primary Fetterman ahead of his 2028 reelection bid, viewing his moderate positions as a betrayal. Despite his popularity in Pennsylvania, including strong support from Republicans, party officials are contemplating challenges because he won’t fully embrace their radical agenda.

Fetterman recently warned Democrats that socialism and far-left ideas are electoral poison, stating that such policies “pushed our party over the cliff” and led to recent losses. He called for “common sense” to prevail, highlighting the party’s shift toward figures like New York City’s socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani as a warning sign. Fetterman has also urged his colleagues to dial back the constant outrage, telling them to stop turning everything into a “national freak out.” He criticized Democrats for overreacting to issues like the firing of Jimmy Kimmel and risking government shutdowns over partisan squabbles, emphasizing that “people need to just chill a little about a lot of things.”

These repeated calls for moderation have earned Fetterman bipartisan respect, even as they fuel internal Democratic discord. His refusal to demonize Trump voters, rooted in his own family’s views, exposes the growing divide between the party’s base and its leadership’s ideological purity tests. Republicans stand to benefit from this chaos, as Fetterman’s crossover appeal could complicate Democratic efforts in swing states like Pennsylvania. If pushed too far, he might even consider running independently, further splintering the left.

Fetterman’s approach highlights a rare willingness to prioritize respect and practicality over division, a move that contrasts sharply with the Democrats’ ongoing embrace of extremism. As the party grapples with its identity, his voice serves as a reminder that alienating everyday Americans—including Trump supporters—only weakens their position.

Read more …

”I’m not sure what’s worse: the fact that we needed a bill to stop paying dead people or the fact that a bill to stop paying dead people met resistance. “

• We Actually Needed a Law to Stop Paying Dead People (Margolis)

Last week, President Donald Trump signed the Ending Improper Payments to Deceased People Act. Believe it or not, we actually needed a bill to end fraudulent payments to dead people. And it took four years to get done. “Using dead Americans to rip off taxpayers is as low as it gets,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who wrote the bill, said in a statement. “Many Americans have seen these scams play out across the country and are tired of watching these fraudsters game the system—so am I. That’s why I wrote this common-sense bill to end this outrageous abuse permanently, and I’m grateful President Trump signed it into law so we can ensure taxpayer dollars go to living Americans who actually need our help.”


Kennedy appeared on NewsNation this week and discussed the bill. “The idea that we send billions of dollars to dead people, and they get cash. The checks get cashed. It’s obviously a lot of fraud,” Kennedy told NewsNation’s Katie Pavlich. When Pavlich asked if he was specifically talking about Social Security checks, Kennedy clarified: “No, we’re talking about all kind of checks.” The root of the problem lay in bureaucratic turf-guarding. The Social Security Administration maintains a comprehensive list of deceased Americans but refused to share that information with other federal agencies, including the Department of Treasury. Kennedy’s attempts to reason with the agency hit a brick wall of excuses, prompting him to write the bill.

“I went to them, and I said, ‘Why won’t you tell Treasury who the dead people are?’ And Social Security said, ‘Well, we don’t have the legal authority.’ And I said, ‘Sure you do,’ and they said, ‘No, we don’t.’ So I knew I wasn’t gonna get anywhere with them, so I had to go pass a bill,” Kennedy explained. The reason the bill took four years to become law, believe it or not, was that he faced opposition, which Kennedy found hard to believe. But his persistence paid off. Kennedy being Kennedy, he couldn’t resist a dig at the state of American elections while discussing his legislative achievement: “And so far as I can tell, dead people can still vote, but they can’t cash checks … ’cause we’re not gonna be sending them to them anymore, and it’s gonna save billions and billions and billions of dollars.”

Kennedy also delivered some harsh criticism of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. According to Kennedy, state cooperation on fraud prevention varies wildly, and Walz falls into the non-cooperating category. “Well, every state is different,” he said. “Some state governors cooperate, some of them don’t. Governor Walz didn’t cooperate. He knew about this fraud. He knew all about it. And he lied about it.” Then came the trademark Kennedy zinger: “I’m sorry. Uh, no offense to the governor, but he learned to lie before he learned to talk.” I’m not sure what’s worse: the fact that we needed a bill to stop paying dead people or the fact that a bill to stop paying dead people met resistance.

Read more …

I thought there were 3 million more?!

• Bondi Says ALL Epstein Files Have Been Released (Salgado)

Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed Sunday morning that all of the Justice Department’s files related to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein have been released. Bondi made the announcement in a letter first obtained by Fox News, which quoted the letter: “In accordance with the requirements of the Act, and as described in various Department submissions to the courts of the Southern District of New York assigned to the Epstein and Maxwell prosecutions and related orders, the Department released all ‘records, documents, communications and investigative materials in the possession of the Department’ that ‘relate to’ any of nine different categories.”


Among the famous names in the letter are Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill Gates, Prince Harry, Mark Zuckerberg, Woody Allen, Kim Kardashian, Kurt Cobain, and Bruce Springsteen. In accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the list of names includes “all persons where (1) they are or were a government official or politically exposed person and (2) their name appears in the files released under the Act at least once,” the letter said, adding that the names appear in a “wide variety of contexts.”

Amid the bombshells of the recent rounds of files were revelations of billionaire Bill Gates’s ties to Epstein, his STDs from “Russian girls,” and efforts to drug his then-wife Melinda. We also saw a message about the burial of two abused girls at Epstein’s Zorro Ranch through machinations of “Madame G,” probably Ghislaine Maxwell. One of Donald Trump’s major and most popular campaign promises was the release of the Epstein files. Some people have asked the DOJ to re-release some of the files with fewer redactions, which protect the names and details of pedophiles, and perhaps this latest release is that answer.

Read more …

“What if, instead of continuous microwaves beamed at people, it were a “pulsed” energy weapon?”

• ‘The Search for the Cause of Havana Syndrome’ (Moran)

I made a classic mistake in college by taking a course in “Icelandic and Scandinavian Sagas.” The mistake was that I was told it was an easy “A” and the professor was a soft touch. Instead, I got a Viking of a professor with the temperment of “Ivar the Boneless.” What’s worse, the course was a real gonad-buster. Nevertheless, it was one of the most interesting classes I took in college. “Sagas” aren’t like folk tales or legends. They’re more like prose narratives with a rhythm and meter all their own. Unlike many medieval legends filled with dragons and magic, sagas often read like historical novels. They focus on real people, genealogy, and the legal or social disputes of the time. As I found to my chagrin, the sagas are also endless tellings of unremarkable stories and violent people.


What I took away from that course was that the last person you want to run into in your travels is a 10th-century Viking raider. Steer clear if at all possible. I have been following the “saga” of the search for the cause of the affliction known as Havana syndrome, which the U.S. government refers to as an “Anomalous Health Incident ” (AHI), for much of the last decade. The number of theories about the syndrome nearly matches the number of victims. Bureaucratic infighting, State Department politics, and intelligence agency rivalries have all contributed to confusion and a lack of consensus about the real, serious symptoms our diplomats suffer.

Havana syndrome first appeared in 2016, when several diplomats at the U.S. interests section in Havana began to complain of a host of symptoms, including headaches, nausea, vertigo, and lethargy. Some patients reported severe symptoms that prevented them from performing their jobs. Some were even forced to retire. Not all personnel suffered the same symptoms to the same degree. Therein lies the mystery. Some patients suffered from some of the symptoms, but not all of them. Others reported only mild discomfort.

In 2020, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) released a report on Havana syndrome that concluded: “directed, pulsed radio frequency energy appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases.” “It is just a totally incredible explanation for what happened to these diplomats,” said University of Pennsylvania bioengineer Kenneth Foster. “It’s just not possible. The idea that someone could beam huge amounts of microwave energy at people and not have it be obvious defies credibility.

What if, instead of continuous microwaves beamed at people, it were a “pulsed” energy weapon? Such a weapon would be impossible to test on people, right? Who’d volunteer? Enter an unnamed Norwegian scientist who was so skeptical that any device could cause Havana syndrome symptoms that he actually built his own “directed pulse energy” machine and tried it out on himself. Washington Post:

“Working in strict secrecy, a government scientist in Norway built a machine capable of emitting powerful pulses of microwave energy and, in an effort to prove such devices are harmless to humans, in 2024 tested it on himself. He suffered neurological symptoms similar to those of “Havana syndrome,” the unexplained malady that has struck hundreds of U.S. spies and diplomats around the world. The bizarre story, described by four people familiar with the events, is the latest wrinkle in the decade-long quest to find the causes of Havana syndrome, whose sufferers experience long-lasting effects including cognitive challenges, dizziness and nausea. The U.S. government calls the events Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs). The secret test in Norway has not been previously reported. The Norwegian government told the CIA about the results, two of the people said, prompting at least two visits in 2024 to Norway by Pentagon and White House officials.”

The German daily Der Spiegel and 60 Minutes and conducted their own investigation and concluded that it was possible that a directed energy weapon was being used by the shadowy Russian GRU intelligence outfit known as Unit 29155. That group is responsible for sabotage and assassinations. They were in the vicinity of many reported Havana syndrome attacks, according to the investigation. Hardly a smoking gun. But U.S. intelligence did acquire a pulse-directed energy weapon in 2024 for a few million dollars, according to the Post. v Tests are continuing on the device with no definitive answers. The Post reports that the device acquired by the U.S. government is different than the device built by the Norwegian scientist. The story continues. Since it’s not likely that Russia or any other nation is going to fess up and admit they’re targeting our diplomats, the mystery will remain, and our diplomats will continue to be at risk.

Read more …

“No donations came.” He insisted, “You’re completely wrong. … I did not see anybody.” Hawley countered with video proof of their nearly hour-long sit-down—easy to find online.”

• Senator Unloads On Minnesota AG Ellison Over Fraud Scandal (ZH)

During a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing this week, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) confronted Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. The Missouri Republican exposed Ellison’s ties to the Feeding Our Future scandal, where fraudsters stole $250 million in federal child nutrition funds. Hawley didn’t hold back, charging the Democrat with protecting fraudsters who funneled cash to terrorists and traffickers, as well as Ellison’s own campaign coffers, and telling him he “ought to be in jail.” Hawley opened the confrontation by spotlighting $10,000 in campaign donations Ellison pocketed from players in the Feeding Our Future mess, which the New York Post broke last year, detailing how the money flowed in right after a December 11, 2021, meeting at Ellison’s office.


Ellison repeatedly denied it, calling it a false statement. But Hawley read directly from the meeting transcript, where money was discussed repeatedly. An audio recording of that meeting revealed that Ellison met with members of the Somali community who were later convicted in the scandal. In the recording, the individuals ask Ellison for help securing funding before discussing campaign donations. “The only way that we can protect what we have is by inserting ourselves into the political arena,” a man is heard saying on the audio.“Putting our votes where it needs to be. But most importantly, putting our dollars in the right place. And supporting candidates that will fight to protect our interests.” “That’s right,” Ellison replied.

Ellison accepted $10,000 in campaign contributions from the fraudsters mere days later, as did his son, Minneapolis councilman Jeremiah Ellison. Hawley proceeded to read from that recording, quoting Ellison’s own words back to him. “Send me the names of all these folks who are investigating them,” Ellison said. He promised to call the Education Department and ask what was going on. “I already have my team working on this,” he told them, according to the transcript. “What day should we get together to discuss it again?” Ellison pledged repeatedly to help them fight the investigators. “You have my attention. I’m concerned about this,” he said. “Let’s go fight these people.””Why’d you do it? Was it worth it?” Hawley asked.

“This is what accountability looks like, of which you’ve had none,” Hawley countered. “You helped fraudsters defraud your state and this government of $9 billion, and you got a fat campaign contribution out of it. You ought to be indicted. That’s the truth.” Ellison shot back hard. He denied the donations flat-out: “a lie” and “No donations came.” He insisted, “You’re completely wrong. … I did not see anybody.” Hawley countered with video proof of their nearly hour-long sit-down—easy to find online. Ellison dismissed Hawley’s quotes as “cherry-picked.” As the exchange got heated, Ellison repeatedly talked over Hawley, which the senator didn’t appreciate. “It’s my hearing, pal,” he snapped. “Don’t call me ‘pal,’” Ellison shot back. “Well, I should call you a prisoner because you ought to be in jail.”

He demanded resignation. Ellison flipped it: “I was thinking the same thing about you.” Hawley didn’t stop there. He brought up testimony from the previous day showing where the fraudulent money went: to terrorist groups, transnational criminal organizations, drug trafficking, and child trafficking. “You took $10,000 and helped them do it,” he said. Ellison kept denying everything, but Hawley had receipts. He cited a Minnesota Star Tribune report that Partners in Nutrition raised concerns with the attorney general’s office in 2018 and 2019, but Ellison did nothing. The New York Post reported that Ellison accepted campaign donations from individuals linked to the fraud after meeting with them. “You’ve been right at the center of this fraud thing from the beginning, and you’ve enabled it,” Hawley said. “You should resign.” Ellison shot back, “And, sir, you should resign. I was thinking the same thing about you.”

Read more …

Not clear why she’s there.

• Hillary’s Script, Interrupted (David Manney)

Hillary Clinton, a former all-star American leader, took the stage in Munich expecting a stroll on familiar ground. The setting felt friendly, the crowd leaned globalist, and the talking points seemed well-rehearsed. Then a Czech politician, calmly stepping outside the approved script, asked a question that didn’t flatter the room. It was as if a thousand voices in the Force suddenly vanished; the room’s temperature changed. Czech Deputy Prime Minister Petr Macinka challenged prevailing narratives on sovereignty, migration, and Western leadership. He spoke; he didn’t shout. He didn’t posture, he simply disagreed. Clinton’s composure tightened as her facial expression stiffened. Her infamous temper flickered across her face in full public view.


The exchange quickly spread online, showing Clinton sharply reacting while Macinka remains measured. It was a contrast that told the story better than any summary could dream of.A widely shared Facebook clip captured the moment from a different angle, showing how visibly irritated Clinton grew as her preferred narrative met resistance. Clinton has well over 40 years of navigating hostile interviews and political storms; few situations publicly rattle her. Yet the Munich moment felt different: Macinka didn’t attack her character; he questioned her assumptions in a calm, rational voice.That alone proved disruptive.

Western elites have gathered in European conferences for years to reinforce shared assumptions about global governance, open borders, and centralized authority. Dissent rarely appears in those halls without first being filtered, because when it isn’t, tension quickly rises, offering a glimpse into the human nature hidden behind long-built façades.Macinka spoke as an elected official representing voters who increasingly resist top-down mandates from Brussels and beyond, arguing for national sovereignty and accountability to his country. Clinton appeared completely off guard, as if the ground she felt safe standing on had shifted.

Let me be the first to express grave concern for Macinka’s well-being. Given recent political history, he may want to publicly confirm he’s enjoying excellent health and has no plans to be found in mysterious circumstances anytime soon. Purely a precaution, of course. This incident exposed something deeper: Democratic figures for years have accused President Donald Trump of destabilizing Western alliances and eroding global cooperation. Yet in Munich, frustration erupted not from chaos, but from calm contradiction. When agreements fill the air, Clinton appears comfortable, but when respectful disagreement entered the conversation, she clearly bristled.

Her reaction undercut the image of seasoned steadiness she often projects on global stages. Clinton wasn’t the only Democrat in Munich struggling with optics. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and California Governor Gavin Newsom also faced criticism during their appearances. Both tried to present themselves as seasoned global leaders, but drew scrutiny for remarks that appeared tone-deaf and disconnected from global realities. mThe contrast between confident branding and uneven performance created friction. Munich has long been intended as a platform for polished leadership, but it has also been a stage for awkward exchanges.

Global politics demands agility and tolerance for dissent. Leaders seeking authority need to have thick skin to withstand questions without visible irritation. A raised eyebrow, or a wrinkled face that suddenly appears smooth, speaks louder than a thousand words. As we’ve seen from Democrats the past few weeks, they work from prepared frameworks, where talking points guide conversations in friendly venues that reinforce comfort. But when somebody interrupts the rhythm, their ability—or, in this case, inability—to keep it together matters. Clinton’s body language suggested she wasn’t happy with Macinka’s calm, reasoned approach. I imagine that in her mind’s eye, she was wishing for a little Darth Vader dark side to squeeze Macinka into a sugar cube.

Political leaders regularly insist that democracy thrives on debate, but debate loses its meaning when only one side fails to respect the other. Hillary’s Munich moment reminded us that the elites don’t appreciate it when the unwashed speak up. People across Europe and America have increasingly questioned centralized power structures, voting for leaders who promise to prioritize national interests. Those voters expect representation, not lectures from on high. When a representative from that moment speaks plainly on an open stage, dismissing alternative views doesn’t work.

Until somebody ignored it, Hillary’s script ran smoothly. The interruptions showed something more than policy differences; they revealed the moment when Clinton ran into legitimate opposition to the soup she’s been dealing out. Confidence requires calm under pressure, and leadership demands composure when challenged. Hillary failed in both accounts. Munich offered a brief snapshot of that reality. As global politics grows increasingly volatile, moments like this matter: when a steady, shrieking voice, sharing talking points discussed in safe forums, gets interrupted by a dose of reality, we get to see the real person behind the mask. It’s in moments like this that the 2016 presidential election reminds us of just how close we came to, well, you know, living in Hell.

https://twitter.com/WyattCatarina/status/2023029449315504573?s=20 Read more …

 

 

 

 

Dalio X https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/2023034863545376817?s=20 Homan https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2023039139005047267?s=20 Swan Muslim

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 18 2025

Aug 182025
 
 August 18, 2025  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  70 Responses »


Edward Hopper Office in a Small City 1953

 

• Zelensky Refuses Trump’s Push For Peace Deal (RT)
• Kiev Fears Repetition Of Oval Office ‘Disaster’ – WaPo (RT)
• ‘No Going Into NATO by Ukraine’ – Trump (Sp.)
• Witkoff: US Pushing To Extract ‘Article 5-Like’ Protections For Ukraine (ZH)
• Ukraine’s European Backers ‘In Panic’ After Alaska Summit – Putin Envoy (RT)
• Trump Envoy Reveals Major Concession From Putin (JTN)
• Russia Made Concessions On ‘Land Swaps’ With Ukraine – Witkoff (RT)
• Special Envoy Steve Witkoff Outlines Some Unexpected Russian Concessions (CTH)
• Secretary Marco Rubio -vs- Margaret Brennan (CTH)
• EU Leaders To Join Zelensky In US After Trump ‘Thwarted’ Their Plans – Bild (RT)
• Trump In Favor of Territorial Concessions By Ukraine – Media (RT)
• Average American Gets $3,752 Tax Cut In 2026 From Big Beautiful Bill (JTN)
• Amid DC Takeover, Trump Eyes Crime in Other Cities (ET)
• Average American Gets $3,752 Tax Cut In 2026 From Big Beautiful Bill (JTN)
• Amid DC Takeover, Trump Eyes Crime in Other Cities (ET)
• The Left Melts Down Over Gloria Gaynor Kennedy Center Honor (Margolis)
• Australian Lawyer Apologizes For AI-Generated Errors In Murder Case (AP)
• System Failing CV 19 Vax Injured – Dr. Pierre Kory (USAW)
• Judge Puts Alex Jones’ Infowars Up For Sale Again (ZH)

 

 

GOP

VDH
https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/1956886209898086544

gerry

https://twitter.com/IndycarpenterSR/status/1956806616134701078

 

 

 

 

I was wondering how Trump will want to go about demilitarizing Ukraine, one of Russia’s demands. At least the EU won’t have to pay for, and send, more arms, there’ll be nobody left to use them.

Even more I wonder what practical steps they would take to denazify Ukraine. You can’t very well keep Zelensky in place, he’s led an Azov regime for 3 years.

Russia will have good and clear answers to these questions.

Good luck this afternoon…

• Zelensky Refuses Trump’s Push For Peace Deal (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has rejected US President Donald Trump’s call for a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev, reiterating that a truce has to be implemented before discussing details of a possible settlement. Zelensky made the statement on Sunday during a joint press-conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who will accompany him to Washington for talks with Trump on Monday. The Ukrainian leader claimed that Moscow had made “many demands” on the settlement of the conflict and that Kiev needs to be made aware of them. “If there are really as many as we have heard, then it will take time to go through them all,” he said.

According to Zelensky, it is “impossible” for Ukraine to negotiate “under pressure of weapons.” “It is necessary to ceasefire and work quickly on a final deal,” he insisted. Russia has repeatedly rejected Ukraine’s demands for a ceasefire, saying that a pause in the fighting would be exploited by Kiev to rearm and regroup its forces. The Ukrainian leader also rejected the possibility of making territorial concessions to Russia as part of a peace deal, saying that trading land is forbidden by the country’s constitution.

Von der Leyen insisted that “Ukraine must become a steel porcupine, indigestible to potential invaders,” repeating a metaphor that she has used before. She promised that the EU would keep working to strengthen the Ukrainian defense industry, especially when it comes to drone production. The European Commission head insisted that decisions regarding territory “belong only to Ukraine, and cannot be taken without Ukraine at the table.” The EU will continue trying to apply diplomatic and economic pressure on Russia, with its 19th sanctions package against Moscow currently in preparation, Von der Leyen said.

Read more …

“Moscow has insisted that any settlement must include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification, along with recognition of the new territorial reality..”

• Kiev Fears Repetition Of Oval Office ‘Disaster’ – WaPo (RT)

The upcoming meeting between Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and US President Donald Trump could replicate the “disastrous” Oval Office confrontation earlier this year, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. The Ukrainian leader, joined by senior EU officials, is set to meet Trump on Monday for what was widely reported as a discussion on a potential peace settlement. Zelensky’s February visit to Washington ended in a PR debacle. His talks with Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance collapsed into a confrontation, with Trump accusing him of disrespect and “gambling with World War III.” A joint press conference was scrapped, Zelensky was ushered out, and the US briefly froze military aid. US media, including the Washington Post, called the session “disastrous” and a major diplomatic setback for Kiev.

“Foremost in Ukrainians’ minds is avoiding a repetition of a contentious meeting in the Oval Office,” the newspaper wrote. “Unfortunately, there is such risk indeed” of a repeat, Nikolay Beleskov, a research fellow at the Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies, told the Washington Post. Beleskov added that Zelensky must tread carefully during the Washington visit, stressing that the Ukrainian leader needs to “strike a balance between being non-provocative” and pushing his agenda. The concern comes just days after Trump held his first face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. The summit in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday was described by Trump as “warm” and by Putin as “frank” and “substantive.”

After the Alaska talks, Trump said Washington and Moscow were “pretty close to the end” of the conflict. He is reportedly drafting a plan requiring Kiev to cede parts of Donbass still under its control, in exchange for a Kremlin halt to hostilities elsewhere. Zelensky has repeatedly rejected any territorial concessions. Moscow has insisted that any settlement must include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification, along with recognition of the new territorial reality covering Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, all of which voted to become parts of Russia. Putin expressed cautious optimism after the summit, saying the talks had brought Russia and the US “closer” to ending hostilities.

Read more …

“President Zelensky of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight..”

• ‘No Going Into NATO by Ukraine’ – Trump (Sp.)

Volodymyr Zelensky can end the conflict “almost immediately, if he wants to,” by recognizing Crimea as part of Russia and agreeing to Ukraine’s non-entry into NATO, US President Donald Trump said. “President Zelensky of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight. Remember how it started. No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social — blasting Zelensky ahead of White House talks with him and NATO allies. Top EU and NATO leaders — von der Leyen, Starmer, Merz, Macron, Stubb, Meloni and Rutte — are all rushing to Washington to prop up Zelensky. Trump makes it clear: it is Zelensky’s choice — war or peace.

Read more …

Sounds cute and all, but I think it smells far too much like entering NATO without entering NATO.

Ukraine faces no threats other than Russia, and Article 5 doesn’t apply there. Russia won’t leave until and unless its demands have been met, and they won’t come back unless these are broken.

• Witkoff: US Pushing To Extract ‘Article 5-Like’ Protections For Ukraine (ZH)

Update(1918ET): It appears that the White House is ready to push for Europe’s consensus – at least at the moment (or as a starting negotiating tactic) – which is to provide non-NATO “article 5 style security guarantees” for a post-peace settlement Ukraine. The only problem is that of course it would be NATO countries themselves enforcing such a rule, which will be seen as a non-starter for the Kremlin. According to the latest from Trump’s top envoy: Special envoy Steve Witkoff says the White House extracted critical wins from its Friday summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, even as President Donald Trump failed to walk away with the ceasefire he loudly advocated for. Security guarantees offering Ukraine “Article 5-like protections” are the real prize, Witkoff told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. They’re “game-changing,” he said.

But his wording is perhaps an acknowledgement that even the US adminstration knows it’s mearly a goal and unlikely to be the realistic outcome. He explained Sunday in the aftermath of the Alaska summit, “We didn’t think that we were anywhere close to agreeing to Article Five protection from the United States in legislative enshrinement within the Russian Federation, not to go after any other territory when the peace deal is codified.” Witkoff contineud on CNN’s State of the Union, “We got to an agreement that the United States and other European nations could effectively offer Article 5-like language to cover a security guarantee.”

But whether the Kremlin actually sees it this way is another quesiton entirely. Naturally the Trump adminsitration is going to start from its own ‘maximalist’ position – but at least the sides are talking and are engaged. If Moscow agrees, it will certainly seek nothing less than significant territorial concessions and political recognization of at least some of the Donbass. Still, based also on Rubio’s latest media comments, the hawks in the Western alliance are continuing to run the show: “Territories will have to be discussed, it’s just a fact,” says the Secretary of State.[..]

What would this look like on the ground in Eastern Europe? Putin has repeatedly warned that Russia will never accept NATO country troops on the ground in Ukraine, so certainly the provervbial devil will be in the details, and there’s yet a long way to go for the negotiating sides. Much might also depend on the temperature in the room of the Oval Office on Monday, when Trump meets leading European leaders and Zelensky in the Oval.

* * *
Ahead of the planned Monday meeting between President Trump and Ukraine’s Zelensky in the Oval Office, which will also have the attendance and participation of a growing list of European and NATO leaders, there’s increasing talk of seeking American-supported “Article 5-style” security guarantees for Ukraine as part of any broader peace deal with Russia. According to CNN, citing a senior European official, the proposed plan wouldn’t involve NATO directly – and would effectively remove the question of membership in the military alliance – but would aim to offer Ukraine protections similar to NATO’s collective defense clause. The specifics of the proposal remain undisclosed and unclear, and there’s also the practical reality and major hurdle of just how such ‘guarantees’ would be enforced. The Kremlin would likely balk at such a condition, given Russian leadership has said it would never allow any Western troop deployment or NATO-style force in Ukraine.

There has actually for years throughout the grinding war been talk among European capitals of the idea of deploying a “reassurance force” in Ukraine. One thing that all the Western allies agree on at this early stage is that the initiative would never get off the ground without the United States officially backing and supporting it. And yet if the European leaders going to the White House lobby hard for this, it’s almost certain this would break the negotiating process with Russia. For Moscow, assurance of permanent Ukrainian neutrality remains a top priority, and so talk of an Article-5 style system which would ‘protect’ Ukraine in the instance of future Russian attacks is likely to a complete non-starter as an option.

But it’s especially the hawks which are pushing this, and likely Moscow is going to see it as simply NATO placing its security blanket over Kiev under a different guise, or just under the cover of differing semantics.On Sunday, more and more European leaders have confirmed they will be joining Ukrainian President Zelensky on his trip to the White House on Monday.

Read more …

Maybe Zelensky can bring all 27 EU members with him. And claim that shows strength.

• Ukraine’s European Backers ‘In Panic’ After Alaska Summit – Putin Envoy (RT)

Ukraine’s backers in the EU and UK are “in a panic” after the Alaska summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, according to Russian economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev. Putin and Trump met in Anchorage on Friday in their first face-to-face encounter since 2018, with ways to resolve the Ukraine conflict topping the agenda. The Russian president described the talks as “frank” and “substantive,” while Trump said they were “warm.” Dmitriev, who is CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and was among his country’s delegation in Alaska, wrote on Telegram on Sunday that “European and British supporters of the conflict are in panic” because of the diplomatic efforts by Moscow and Washington.

He added links to a report by Politico, which stated that Western European leaders are “anxious” ahead of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s planned meeting with Trump in Washington on Monday. According to the outlet’s sources, they plan to send Finnish President Alexander Stubb to Washington in hopes that he “can help prevent any flare-ups between Trump and Zelensky and convince the US president to include Europe in any further talks.” Dmitriev also referenced an article by Bild claiming that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer are considering traveling to Washington to support Zelensky.

Zelensky’s previous trip to the White House in February culminated in a shouting match in front of the cameras with Trump and US Vice President J.D. Vance, who accused the Ukrainian leader of being ungrateful for American aid and being uninterested in peace. Trump told Fox News on Friday that Zelensky should “make the deal” to resolve the conflict with Russia, stressing that Putin “wants to see it done” and urging Western Europe to “get involved a little bit.” According to Axios, Trump told Kiev’s European backers that he wants to arrange a trilateral summit with Putin and Zelensky “as soon as next Friday.” Putin reiterated on Saturday that any settlement of the Ukraine conflict should eliminate its root causes. Moscow insists that for lasting peace to be achieved, Ukraine should renounce its NATO ambitions, demilitarize, and recognize the current territorial realities.

Read more …

“..robust security guarantees”

• Trump Envoy Reveals Major Concession From Putin (JTN)

European leaders will join Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he meets with President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday, and Trump’s special envoy revealed Sunday a major concession that Vladimir Putin has made in hopes of reaching a peace accord. The leaders joining Zelensky include French President Emmanuel Macron, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary-General Mark Rutte, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, according to the BBC. On Friday, Trump met with Putin in Alaska to discuss how the three-year-old war could end.

The U.S. has been engaging in negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to end the ongoing war that began in 2022. Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff told CNN Sunday that Putin agreed to “robust security guarantees” for Ukraine from the U.S. as part of a possible peace deal. “We agreed to robust security guarantees that I would describe as game-changing,” Witkoff told Jake Tapper. Trump on Sunday morning wrote on TRUTH Social that there was “BIG PROGRESS” on Russia and to stay tuned.

Read more …

So far Russia’s the only party making concessions.

• Russia Made Concessions On ‘Land Swaps’ With Ukraine – Witkoff (RT)

Russia is now ready to make certain concessions as part of “land swaps” with Ukraine, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has claimed. Trump will be meeting with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and several Western European leaders at the White House on Monday, in a bid to work out a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev. On Friday, Trump held talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, with the presidents expressing cautious optimism that progress was made towards a resolution of the Ukraine conflict. Witkoff told CNN on Sunday that during the Alaska summit, the Russian delegation “made some concessions at the table with regard to all five of those regions,” apparently referring to Crimea, the Donetsk and the Lugansk People’s Republics, and Zaporozhye and Kherson regions – all former Ukrainian territories which became part of Russia after referendums.

According to the US official, the Kremlin appears ready to conduct “land swapping” with Kiev, with the current front line serving as the starting point in at least some areas. Witkoff said that Moscow’s demands had undergone a “significant” shift toward “moderation.” On Saturday, the New York Times and Fox News, citing anonymous European officials, claimed that Trump endorsed a peace plan that envisages Ukraine ceding the whole of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics to Russia, with Moscow agreeing to cease hostilities along the current front line in Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.

The Kremlin has yet to comment on any such conditions. Officially, Moscow continues to insist that Ukraine recognize Crimea, the DPR and LPR as well as and Zaporozhye and Kherson regions as Russian territory in their entirety. In his CNN interview, Witkoff further touted a “game changing” agreement by Russia to “robust security guarantees” akin to NATO’s Article 5 being provided to Ukraine by the US and unnamed European nations. Explaining Trump’s endorsement of a comprehensive peace deal as opposed to a temporary ceasefire, Witkoff said it was due to the significant headway achieved during the Alaska summit.

Read more …

“Witkoff outlined a major set of concessions..”

• Special Envoy Steve Witkoff Outlines Some Unexpected Russian Concessions (CTH)

Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is interviewed by Furrowed Brow. Within the first question, Tapper asks for an example of a concession that Russia agreed to. Witkoff outlined a major set of concessions, leaving surprised Furrowed to say “huh.”

Read more …

Sundance had three Rubio interviews yesterday. I picked the one witn the interviewer Sundance despises most.

Note: Rubio of course was in Alaska with Trump and Putin. Flies home, sleeps a few hours(?!) and spends the day going from network to network. Sounds like Trump.

Note 2: This is incredibly dumb: “MARGARET BRENNAN: Isn’t the root cause the fact that Russia invaded in the first place? SEC. RUBIO: Well, ultimately, yeah.”

If you don’t know what Putin means by root causes, ask him. He was in the room with ypu, Marco.

• Secretary Marco Rubio -vs- Margaret Brennan (CTH)

MARGARET BRENNAN: Vladimir Putin did not give President Trump the ceasefire he sought. And now Putin says the root causes of the conflict have to be resolved in a peace agreement. Isn’t the root cause the fact that Russia invaded in the first place?

SEC. RUBIO: Well, ultimately, yeah. But I mean, what he means by root causes is this long historical complaints that we’ve heard repeatedly. This is not a new argument, he’s been making this for a long time, and it’s the argument that it’s Western encroachment. I don’t want to get into- it’s just so long. But the bottom line is that all of- you know, we’re not going to focus on all of that stuff. We’re going to focus on this: are they going to stop fighting or not? And what it’s going to take to stop the fighting. And what it’s going to take to stop the fighting, if we’re being honest and serious here, is both sides are going to have to give, and both sides should expect to get something from this.

And that’s a very difficult thing to do. It’s very difficult because Ukraine obviously feels, you know, harmed, and rightfully so, because they were invaded. And the Russian side, because they feel like they got momentum in the battlefield, and frankly, don’t care, don’t seem to care very much about how many Russian soldiers die in this endeavor. They just churn through it. So I think what the President deserves a lot of credit for is the amount of time and energy that his administration is placing on reaching a peace agreement for a war that’s not a war that started under him. It’s half, you know, it’s on the other side of the world.

That said, I mean, it’s relevant to us. But there are a lot of other issues he could be focused on. So tomorrow, we’ll be meeting with President Zelenskyy. We’ll be meeting with European leaders. We just met with Putin. He’s dedicated a lot of time and energy because he has made it a priority of his administration to stop or end war- stop wars or prevent them. And right now, this is the biggest war going on in the world. It’s the biggest war in Europe since World War Two. We’re going to continue to do everything we can to reach an agreement that ends the dying and the killing and the suffering that’s going on right now.

Read more …

What plans did Trump thwart? “EU leaders have insisted that a ceasefire come first, and have rejected territorial concessions, as has Zelensky..” Well, yeah, that’s 0 for 2.

“Macron said the goal of the talks in Washington was to “present a united front” between Ukraine and the EU, and warned against showing “weakness” towards Russia…”

You show weakness by … trying not to show weakness. ‘Trying not to show weakness’ means hiding it. It’s not a problem if you’re strong.

• EU Leaders To Join Zelensky In US After Trump ‘Thwarted’ Their Plans – Bild (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky will arrive in Washington on Monday for talks with US President Donald Trump, accompanied by EU top brass, German outlet Bild has reported. Joining Zelensky will be German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the tabloid wrote on Sunday. The trip follows Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, resolving the Ukraine conflict topping the agenda.

Following the summit, Trump signaled that he now favors a full peace settlement over a ceasefire, and that he may be open to a recognition of Russia’s new territories, consistent with Moscow’s position. Trump’s shift has “thwarted” the EU’s plans for Ukraine, Bild stated on Sunday. EU leaders have insisted that a ceasefire come first, and have rejected territorial concessions, as has Zelensky. Following the summit, Macron said the goal of the talks in Washington was to “present a united front” between Ukraine and the EU, and warned against showing “weakness” towards Russia.

Merz said the EU would continue to support Kiev, and that any negotiations needed to begin with a ceasefire. Von der Leyen rejected any notion that Ukraine should cede territory to Russia and threatened more sanctions on Moscow. Stubb is going to Washington to “help prevent any flare-ups between Trump and Zelensky and convince the US president to include Europe in any further talks,” Politico reported earlier. Zelensky’s previous visit to Washington ended in a heated exchange between the Ukrainian and Trump. Ukraine’s backers in the EU are “in a panic” following the Alaska summit, Russian economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who was part of Moscow’s delegation, has said.

Read more …

Sacrilege. How dare he?

• Trump In Favor of Territorial Concessions By Ukraine – Media (RT)

US President Donald Trump has endorsed a peace plan that envisages Ukraine ceding the whole of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics to Russia, the New York Times and Fox News have claimed, citing anonymous European officials. Moscow would then supposedly agree to cease hostilities elsewhere. The reports came in the wake of Trump’s meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Anchorage, Alaska on Friday. Following the talks, the two presidents expressed hope that progress had been made toward a resolution of the Ukraine conflict. On Saturday, the NYT quoted its sources as saying that during the upcoming meeting with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and several Western European leaders at the White House on Monday,

Trump will propose that Kiev relinquish the areas of the new Russian territories in Donbass still under Ukrainian control. The Kremlin, in turn, would agree to cease hostilities along the current front line in Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, which also became part of Russia after referendums in 2022. Around the same time, Fox News quoted an unnamed European diplomat as suggesting that the arrangement had been proposed by President Putin during the Alaska summit, and that “President Trump supports the terms.” Zelensky has repeatedly ruled out any territorial concessions to Moscow.

Speaking to CNN on Sunday, President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, claimed that Moscow had “made some [territorial] concessions” in what he described as a “significant” shift toward “moderation.” According to the US official, the current front line would serve as the basis for “land swapping” in at least some areas. The Kremlin has yet to comment on the supposed new territorial arrangements. As of Sunday, Moscow still officially insists that Ukraine recognize Crimea, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions as Russian territory in their entirety, and withdraw its troops from their administrative borders.

Read more …

Looking at how complex it all is, i’d say: bring in DOGE.

• Average American Gets $3,752 Tax Cut In 2026 From Big Beautiful Bill (JTN)

The White House is touting a new economic analysis that estimates taxpayers will see an average $3,752 tax cut in 2026, due to provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation report, taxpayers in every state will see reduced federal taxes next year and though there is “considerable geographic variation” in tax benefits. “President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill is the largest, most consequential tax cut on the middle class ever,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said Friday. “Between lower inflation, massive investments, and historic tax cuts, all Americans are reaping the benefits of the Trump Economy – and the Golden Age has just begun.” Republicans’ multitrillion-dollar OBBBA, among other things, made permanent the expiring 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s across-the-board reduced tax rates; $15,000 standard deduction; $2,000 Child Tax Credit; 20% QBI deduction for small businesses; and $750,000 home mortgage interest deduction cap.

Three key business tax credits were made permanent as well – full reimbursement for new capital investments like machinery and equipment, an expanded deduction for corporation’s interest on debt, and immediate deductions for companies’ research costs. The OBBBA also implemented a host of temporary tax provisions set to expire in 2030, including a quadrupling of the $10,000 state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap; a $6,000 deduction for seniors; and temporary tax deductions for tips and overtime pay, capped for single filers at $25,000 and $12,500, respectively. Taken together, the Tax Foundation analysis estimates that the OBBBA’s tax provisions will lower individuals’ taxes in every state and create 938,000 full-time jobs in the long run.

Individuals in Wyoming, Washington, and Massachusetts will see the largest average tax cuts in 2026 – hovering around $5,100 – while residents of West Virginia and Mississippi will see the smallest average tax cuts that year, around $2,400. On a more local level, taxpayers in mountain resort towns will receive the highest average tax benefits while taxpayers in rural counties will receive the lowest tax benefits. Once the temporary tax provisions expire, however, the average tax cut will fall to $2,505 in 2030, then climb to $3,301 by 2035 due to inflation. Although individual households will benefit from the tax cuts, the country’s fiscal health likely won’t, according to budget watchdogs like the Congressional Budget Office. CBO estimates that the trillions in lost federal revenue will add an extra $4.1 trillion to the national debt by 2034.

Read more …

They won’t make it easy. But every American living in these places should love this.

• Amid DC Takeover, Trump Eyes Crime in Other Cities (ET)

While federalizing the local police and deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump has suggested he could flex his authority to fight violent crime elsewhere. “We have other cities also that are bad, very bad,” the president said during an Aug. 11 press conference. He listed Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Baltimore among the cities of concern. Although homicide and other violent crimes have recently dipped across America, the numbers from big cities are still high—in some cases, higher than they were before surges one to two decades ago. Trump’s power to deploy the National Guard outside the nation’s capital is also under debate. A federal judge is deciding whether his deployment of troops to Los Angeles was lawful. Here is what you should know.

The President’s Powers
Trump federalized D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department after declaring a crime emergency. He did so under Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which lets him control the district’s police for up to 30 days without Congressional authorization. He wants Congress to extend that power, suggesting a national emergency declaration could be a means of sidestepping the legislature if it does not act. There is no equivalent to the D.C. Home Rule Act in the other big cities Trump named. There, state and local authorities have control over law enforcement. The National Guard is a trickier question. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer is assessing whether Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles and nearby municipalities violated the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA).

In Washington, the president has deployed the District of Columbia National Guard, which is under clear presidential control. He did so while keeping them under Title 32 duty status. That shields the president from allegations of violating the PCA. It also leaves them under local authority as they back up the police who are making arrests. Trump highlighted other possible solutions involving Congress, which is currently in its August recess. “We’ll count on the Republicans in Congress and the Senate to vote” to end no-cash bail, he said, referencing a legal reality in many cities and states that have drawn his ire. Illinois, Chicago’s home state, eliminated cash bail in 2023. Los Angeles County did so too for almost all offenses. New York State made a similar change in 2019. “Maybe they’ll self-clean up, and maybe they’ll self-do this and get rid of the cashless bail thing and all of the things that caused this problem,” Trump said.

Although his local authority outside Washington may be limited, Trump has floated interventions against crime outside the capital. The Second City seems to be first in his mind. “If we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago,” he said during his Aug. 11 press conference. The Chicago Police Department recorded 573 homicides in 2024, more than any other U.S. city. That is down from 620 in 2023. Shootings and the number of shooting victims also fell, though both still numbered in the thousands. Vehicular hijackings have declined, too. There were 188 homicides during the first half of 2025, marking a 32 percent decrease from the same period in 2024. Chicago’s homicide rate stood at more than 21 per 100,000 in 2024. That homicide rate, though high, has trended down from even higher rates during the 1990s. Yet, rates were lower than today during the 2000s and early 2010s, according to an analysis from the University of Chicago Crime Lab. An Illinois Policy Institute analysis found that the arrest rate for homicides has also fallen, declining from 42 percent a decade ago to 27 percent from June 2024 through June 2025.

New York City
“I’m going to look at New York in a little while,” Trump said. Though rates and numbers differ, New York City’s violent crime trends resemble Chicago’s. Homicides and other serious felonies have recently trended down, but, in some cases, remain higher than they were 10 or 15 years ago. In 2024, for example, there were 382 murders and non-negligible manslaughters in the Big Apple, according to city data on crime complaints. That is below a recent peak in 2021, which saw 488 such cases, and well below much higher totals decades ago, like in 2000, when there were 673 murders and non-negligible manslaughters.

Read more …

“..they struggled to find a person of color who would agree to be on the list.”

• The Left Melts Down Over Gloria Gaynor Kennedy Center Honor (Margolis)

There was a time when talent and perseverance meant something in this country—when artists were celebrated for what they accomplished, not sidelined for failing to check the right ideological boxes. But today, cultural recognition is too often twisted into another battleground of partisan resentment. Rather than applauding decades of influence, the media all too eagerly tears down those it deems politically inconvenient. Case in point: the left’s reaction to Gloria Gaynor’s Kennedy Center honor. On Thursday, for example, Ana Navarro of “The View” went so far as to plead with Gaynor to reject her upcoming award simply because it will be bestowed by President Donald Trump. “Look, the woman is a goddess and deserves all the flowers that come her way. But I wish she wouldn’t accept an award from the hands of a man who has attacked the rights and history of women, people of color, and LGBTQ,” she wrote in a post on Instagram.

In other words, Navarro was triggered by the fact that the award undermined the “Trump is racist” narrative. While some called on Gaynor to reject the award, others claimed she didn’t deserve it. During a segment on CNN’s “This Morning Weekend,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Tia Mitchell, who is black, criticized the Kennedy Center’s decision to honor Gloria Gaynor, implying the selection was politically motivated. “There was a robust conversation during the break about the selection of Gloria Gaynor,” anchor Victor Blackwell noted before turning to Mitchell for her perspective. Mitchell argued, “I just, I do believe as much as the Trump administration has attacked DEI, I think they wanted a person of color on the list of Kennedy Center honorees. And to me, the fact that Gloria Ga- Gloria Gaynor is the one person of color on the list indicates that they struggled to find a person of color who would agree to be on the list.”

She also dismissed Gaynor’s accomplishments: “Because she doesn’t have a huge body of work, which is what the Kennedy Center usually picks, is people who are icons in their genre of, um, of the arts, and she’s basically a one-hit wonder.” Mitchell’s critique couldn’t be further from the truth. Gaynor may be before my time, but it took no time at all for me to research her career and debunk the claim that Gaynor is a one-hit wonder who didn’t deserve to be awarded. She began her professional career in the 1960s with the jazz and R&B band the Soul Satisfiers and signed with Columbia Records in 1975. Her album “Never Can Say Goodbye” produced multiple hits, including “Honey Bee” and the title track, showcasing her versatility and helping define the disco sound.

Her 1978 album “Love Tracks” featured “I Will Survive,” which earned her a Grammy Award for Best Disco Recording in 1980. Beyond disco, Gaynor shifted into gospel music with her 2019 album “Testimony,” which won the Grammy for Best Roots Gospel Album and earned her a nomination for Best Gospel Performance/Song for the track “Talkin’ ‘Bout Jesus.” Her influence has been recognized with inductions into both the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, cementing her legacy as a groundbreaking artist who has inspired generations of performers and audiences alike. Mitchell’s attempt to frame Gaynor’s honor as a political stunt ignores decades of achievement, cultural impact, and recognition. Reducing her to a “one-hit wonder” not only misrepresents her career but also undermines the significance of the Kennedy Center’s honor.

The real lens through which Mitchell’s criticism should be viewed is clear: Trump Derangement Syndrome. Her insistence that the selection of Gaynor was politically motivated reflects a broader pattern of left-wing media hostility toward anything even remotely connected to the Trump administration. Gaynor’s decades-long contributions to music are ignored, minimized, or dismissed simply because the honoree list exists under a political climate Mitchell opposes. This reflects a media culture that increasingly evaluates cultural achievements not on talent or legacy, but through the lens of left-wing gatekeeping. From urging Gaynor to reject the award to dismissing her as a “one hit wonder” and framing her honor as a political token, the left shows how Trump Derangement Syndrome has seeped into every corner of its worldview.

Read more …

Imagine going to jail for life because a prosecutor used an AI bot.

• Australian Lawyer Apologizes For AI-Generated Errors In Murder Case (AP)

A senior lawyer in Australia has apologized to a judge for filing submissions in a murder case that included fake quotes and nonexistent case judgments generated by artificial intelligence. The blunder in the Supreme Court of Victoria state is another in a litany of mishaps AI has caused in justice systems around the world. Defense lawyer Rishi Nathwani, who holds the prestigious legal title of King’s Counsel, took “full responsibility” for filing incorrect information in submissions in the case of a teenager charged with murder, according to court documents seen by The Associated Press on Friday. “We are deeply sorry and embarrassed for what occurred,” Nathwani told Justice James Elliott on Wednesday, on behalf of the defense team.

The AI-generated errors caused a 24-hour delay in resolving a case that Elliott had hoped to conclude on Wednesday. Elliott ruled on Thursday that Nathwani’s client, who cannot be identified because he is a minor, was not guilty of murder because of mental impairment. “At the risk of understatement, the manner in which these events have unfolded is unsatisfactory,” Elliott told lawyers on Thursday. “The ability of the court to rely upon the accuracy of submissions made by counsel is fundamental to the due administration of justice,” Elliott added. The fake submissions included fabricated quotes from a speech to the state legislature and nonexistent case citations purportedly from the Supreme Court. The errors were discovered by Elliott’s associates, who couldn’t find the cases and requested that defense lawyers provide copies.

The lawyers admitted the citations “do not exist” and that the submission contained “fictitious quotes,” court documents say. The lawyers explained they checked that the initial citations were accurate and wrongly assumed the others would also be correct. The submissions were also sent to prosecutor Daniel Porceddu, who didn’t check their accuracy. The judge noted that the Supreme Court released guidelines last year for how lawyers use AI. “It is not acceptable for artificial intelligence to be used unless the product of that use is independently and thoroughly verified,” Elliott said. The court documents do not identify the generative artificial intelligence system used by the lawyers. In a comparable case in the United States in 2023, a federal judge imposed $5,000 fines on two lawyers and a law firm after ChatGPT was blamed for their submission of fictitious legal research in an aviation injury claim.

Read more …

” ‘Long Covid’ and ‘Long Vax’ is essentially a disease called ME/CFS or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It’s been around for decades.”

• System Failing CV 19 Vax Injured – Dr. Pierre Kory (USAW)

World renowned CV19 critical care and pulmonary expert Dr. Pierre Kory was one of the first to call for Ivermectin (IVM) and Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat Covid in the early days of the pandemic. Instead, Big Pharma, the CDC and FDA trashed the effective and safe drugs to push a CV19 vaccine. That was the first big Covid lie. Dr. Kory was worried about the “Calamitous Suppression of Early CV19 Treatment.” Nearly a million Americans died for lack of treatment. The second big lie was the CV19 vaccines. We were told they were “safe and effective,” and they turned out to be deadly and debilitating bioweapons. Many millions around the world have been killed or disabled by the CV19 vax bioweapon. More than 270 million Americans and more than 5.5 billion people worldwide have gotten the CV19 vax.

This bioweapon is powered by many toxic ingredients, including but not limited to mRNA. Now, instead of sounding the alarm on the huge death and disability problem caused by the CV19 vax, there is more coverup and withholding of lifesaving treatment. The third big lie is a lie by coverup and omission. Dr. Kory has been on the cutting edge of vax injury treatment since the beginning of the pandemic and has long said, “the CV19 vax is a humanitarian catastrophe being turbocharged without treatment.” Treatment is only offered by relatively few doctors. Dr. Kory is one them, and he says, “It’s really destructive to the human body. . .. In my practice, we see what we call ‘Long Vax’ or ‘Long Covid.’ They have so many organ system symptoms and huge high rates of disabilities.

When they come to me, they are really sick, and they have been failed by the system. . .. The media is complicit in all of this. Every catastrophe I talk about is fueled by the media in complicity with medical journals. I don’t think we talk about that enough. Medical journals are the biggest censors of ‘inconvenient science,’ especially the high impact ones. You can find good information in peripheral journals, but those are ignored. . .. I think the information sphere is a big driver of a lot of this catastrophe.”

What is Dr. Kory seeing in his CV19 injured patients? Dr. Kory says, “They go to their system doctors where they are offered little except for extensive workups, testing, imaging and referrals to psychiatry or physical therapy. By the way, physical therapy is the worst thing for them. ‘Long Covid’ and ‘Long Vax’ is essentially a disease called ME/CFS or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It’s been around for decades. Historically, it’s caused by things like Mononucleosis and Lyme Disease, but Covid and the CV19 vaccine are huge drivers of ME/CFS. In my practice, 70% of my patients and maybe a bit higher, their ME/CFS was triggered by the CV19 vaccine. Only about 30% or less was triggered by Covid. With the CV19 vaccine, there are insanely high rates of ME/CFS.”

Has Dr. Kory’s practice peaked in terms of new patients that need treatment from CV19 injuries? Dr. Kory says, “The answer is NO. That’s what is crazy. I did have concerns when I first started because I opened a practice that focuses on studying and treating CV19 vax injury and Long Covid. We are still getting new patients at pretty good rates.” Dr. Kory says there are many symptoms for CV19 vax injury. Some of them include constant fatigue, brain fog, memory problems and comprehension issues. Shedding from the vaxed to the unvaxed can make some people sick, but most problems Dr. Kory sees are from people who have been CV19 vaxed. Dr. Kory also says, “Do not get any Covid boosters. . .. Paxlovid does not work,” and “I would not inject any mRNA in my body–ever.” Dr. Kory is also treating cancer triggered by the CV19 vaccine.

Read more …

“The Onion offered $1.75 million in actual cash for Infowars assets. First United American Companies, which runs a website in Jones’ name that sells nutritional supplements bid $3.5 million, but somehow The Onion still won the auction.”

• Judge Puts Alex Jones’ Infowars Up For Sale Again (ZH)

The establishment media has long argued that the Sandy Hook lawsuits against Alex Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, are about “justice” for grieving parents suffering from harassment. However, the actions of the plaintiffs and others involved in the civil case suggest that their goals are highly political and have little to do with compensating for alleged pain caused by Jones voicing his opinions on the event. If the suit was simply about reparations for hardship of the “victims” caused by defamation, then the payout would have been based on an amount Jones could realistically produce. Instead, judges awarded 15 plaintiffs $1.5 billion in damages; an insane punishment designed to bury Jones forever. Because a bankruptcy judge in Connecticut ruled Jones’ behavior was “willful and malicious” in spreading “false information” about the Sandy Hook shooting, his debt to the families cannot be erased through bankruptcy proceedings and Jones could be required to continue to pay on all future income until the the plaintiffs receive the full amount.

Meaning, the political left wants to make Jones into a pauper or a slave for the rest of his life and a cautionary tale to others in the alternative media. Furthermore, officials in charge of the initial auction allegedly rigged the outcome in favor of a sale to leftist propaganda rag, The Onion. The Onion did not have the cash on hand to service their $7 million bid for the sale, instead they relied on a deal that would have tapped into Jones’ future payments to the plaintiffs, as if Jones’ wallet could be treated as a bank account in control of The Onion (otherwise known as a “contingency bid”). The Onion offered $1.75 million in actual cash for Infowars assets. First United American Companies, which runs a website in Jones’ name that sells nutritional supplements bid $3.5 million, but somehow The Onion still won the auction. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez blocked the sale and criticized the auction process as flawed. He said the outcome “left a lot of money on the table” for families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

In other words, this suggests that the plaintiffs were willing to sacrifice part of their damages just to see The Onion take control of Infowars and humiliate Jones. But again, the lawsuits weren’t politically motivated at all… A new decision by Texas Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in a Wednesday hearing orders that Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, will once again be turned over to a court-appointed receiver, who will be responsible for selling the assets and using the proceeds to pay Jones’ debts to the Sandy Hook families. Numerous progressive legacy outlets jumped on the story this week, all of them hoping that The Onion will still be able to buy the brand and turn it into a “parody of itself”. Of course, this would require that they have more cash on hand than any competing buyers. It also requires a level of comedy talent that doesn’t exist at The Onion, which means readers would be few and the Infowars parody website would likely fade into obscurity.

Leftists have been salivating over the possible dismantling of Alex Jones’ media empire for years, believing that the selling of his assets will represent a massive “victory” for their side and remove one of their most popular enemies from the culture war chessboard. Of course, even if they were to get exactly what they want, Jones has already essentially won. The leftists are on the run and the national shift has been dramatic since the Sandy Hook suit was decided. Jones has helped to accomplish a primary goal – The defeat of woke ideology in America. By extension, the sale of Infowars is not looked upon as an act of “justice being served” by most of the public. It is regarded as a petty sabotage by a fearful, shrinking political minority desperate to prevent the voices of their ideological opponents from being heard. It is not the kind of win that the woke club thinks it is.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

copper
https://twitter.com/FredsFarm247/status/1956826719978950944

cockatoo
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1956960696526077984

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle July 11 2025

Jul 112025
 
 July 11, 2025  Posted by at 9:17 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  38 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Female bust 1943

 

• Trump To Send $300 Million Worth Of Weapons To Ukraine – Reuters (RT)
• NATO Will Pay for US Weapons Designed to Be Supplied to Ukraine – Trump (Sp.)
• US Lacks Interest in Boosting Aid to Ukraine – Jeffrey Sachs (Sp.)
• Ukraine and EU ‘Already Lost’ [to Russia] – Orban (RT)
• Alan Dershowitz Says He Knows Who’s On The Epstein List (ZH)
• Will Pam Bondi Get Axed After the Epstein Debacle? (Margolis)
• Trump and Musk Allies Fight For Control of DOGE – WSJ (RT)
• Kiriakou: How Intelligence Agencies Gather Blackmail on Politicians (ZH)
• Von der Leyen Survives No-Confidence Vote, Dissent Surprises Brussels (TASS)
• EU Will Soon Collapse Without Russian Resources – MEP (RT)
• Everybody Loves Marco (PJM)
• America’s Cops Are Finally Safer. Can You Guess the Reason Why? (Margolis)
• Globalism Destroyed American Jobs (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Most US Law Enforcement Funds Are Going To Immigration & Border (ZH)
• Did Joe Biden’s Doctor Just Confirm a Cover-Up of His Health? (Margolis)
• Greece Suspends Asylum Applications For Arrivals From North Africa (RT)
• What Just Happened In Rio Should Terrify The West (Ibragimov)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1942986868989055479

bannon
https://twitter.com/KarluskaP/status/1942959341415575610

Glenn

Bird flu

 

 

 

 

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a longtime skeptic of expanded aid to Kiev, reportedly ordered the pause without consulting Trump..”

• Trump To Send $300 Million Worth Of Weapons To Ukraine – Reuters (RT)

US President Donald Trump will for the first time use his authority to send weapons drawn from Pentagon stockpiles directly to Ukraine, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing two people familiar with the decision. While the Trump administration has so far only delivered weapons approved under his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) allows Trump to supply arms to Ukraine in an emergency. The new shipment could reportedly be worth around $300 million and may include Patriot surface-to-air missiles as well as medium-range rockets. The move would mark a reversal of the Pentagon’s recent decision to halt some deliveries over concerns about depleting domestic stockpiles.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a longtime skeptic of expanded aid to Kiev, reportedly ordered the pause without consulting Trump. The president confirmed earlier this week that he would send additional arms to Ukraine, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio later told reporters that the pause “unfortunately was mischaracterized.” During his election campaign, Trump criticized Biden’s unconditional aid to Kiev and called Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky “the greatest salesman on Earth” for persuading Democrats to keep weapons flowing.

Weapons supplies remain critical, as Ukrainian forces continue to lose ground to Russia and face increasing difficulties replenishing their ranks with new conscripts. Moscow has maintained that foreign arms will not prevent it from achieving its objectives. Last month, President Vladimir Putin reiterated that Russia considers Western countries supplying weapons to Ukraine as “de facto direct participants in the conflict.”

Read more …

It’s nothing personal, it’s strictly buiness.

• NATO Will Pay for US Weapons Designed to Be Supplied to Ukraine – Trump (Sp.)

US President Donald Trump said NATO, whose member Washington is, will pay for American weapons that the alliance will subsequently supply to Ukraine. “We’re sending weapons to NATO, and NATO is paying for those weapons, 100%. So what we’re doing is the weapons that are going out are going to NATO, and then NATO is going to be giving those weapons [to Ukraine], and NATO is paying for those weapons,” Trump told NBC News. He said the agreement was reached at a NATO summit in June. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz previously announced his readiness to purchase Patriot missile systems from the United States for their transfer to Ukraine. He discussed it with Trump, but there is no final decision yet.

Read more …

“The American people, including Trump’s voter base, have no interest in this war. This was, and remains, a Deep State project..”

• US Lacks Interest in Boosting Aid to Ukraine – Jeffrey Sachs (Sp.)

The US will not significantly increase arms supplies or financing to Ukraine, because American society, including voters of US President Donald Trump, are not interested in this war, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, told Sputnik. “Still I do not believe that the US will significantly expand its role in supplying arms or financing Ukraine. The American people, including Trump’s voter base, have no interest in this war. This was, and remains, a Deep State project,” a well-known American economist said.

Trump announced his intention to supply the Kiev regime with “some more weapons” on Monday, but did not clarify the specific types of military aid his administration plans to send or whether Patriot missiles demanded by Ukraine would be included. Axios reported earlier on Tuesday that Trump had promised to immediately send 10 Patriot interceptor missiles to Kiev and provide assistance in finding other means of military supplies.

Read more …

“..there will come a bitter moment when European leaders – apart from us and the Slovaks – will have to admit that they followed a mistaken strategy and were therefore defeated in this war.”

• Ukraine and EU ‘Already Lost’ [to Russia] – Orban (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said both Ukraine and the EU have already lost the conflict with Russia in an interview with the YouTube channel Patriota, which was posted on Wednesday. He argued that the war cannot be won on the battlefield and should be resolved through diplomacy. The Hungarian leader suggested that “there will come a bitter moment when European leaders – apart from us and the Slovaks – will have to admit that they followed a mistaken strategy and were therefore defeated in this war.” “I believe the EU has already lost the war. Ukraine is holding on – although it’s retreating – but I think Ukraine has also lost,” Orban said. The Hungarian leader did not specify what specific strategy he was referring to, but his government has consistently opposed EU sanctions targeting Russia and refused to send weapons to Kiev.

Budapest has instead called for negotiations to find a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. Orban stressed that resolving the Ukraine conflict on the battlefield is “impossible” and insisted that it can only be ended through diplomacy, which would also help reduce, or completely prevent, further casualties. He added that the EU should never have entered this path and that it is now crucial to “slow down, stop, thank the generals for their service, bring back the diplomats and foreign ministers, and begin working toward peace.” Orban’s comments come as key EU powers have continued to advocate continued military support for Ukraine. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested on Wednesday that diplomacy has been “exhausted” and vowed to keep sending arms to Kiev.

France’s defense minister has also called the demilitarization of Ukraine – one of Russia’s key demands – a “red line,” arguing that Kiev must retain a standing army if it ends up being denied NATO membership. However, other leaders have voiced skepticism. Czech President Petr Pavel, a pro-Russia hardliner, recently said the EU must reconsider its Russia strategy, warning that fighting Moscow “endlessly” would lead to massive casualties and economic damage to both Ukraine and the EU. Russia has repeatedly denounced Western military backing for Ukraine, saying it only prolongs the war. President Vladimir Putin have also described Europe’s sanctions and attempts to phase out Russian energy as “economic suicide.”

Read more …

“..I’m bound by confidentiality from a judge and cases, and I can’t disclose what I know..”

• Alan Dershowitz Says He Knows Who’s On The Epstein List (ZH)

Two days after the FBI leaked a memo to Axios revealing that the Epstein case is effectively ‘closed’ (he killed himself and there’s no ‘list’ of clients) – former Epstein attorney and associate Alan Dershowitz says he knows exactly who’s on the ‘Epstein list,’ and why it’s being suppressed from the public. “I have seen – remember I was accused falsely,” Dershowitz said on the Sean Spicer show. “Let me tell you, I know for a fact documents are being suppressed. And they’re being suppressed to protect the individuals. I know the names of the individuals. I know why they’re being suppressed. I know who’s suppressing them. But I’m bound by confidentiality from a judge and cases, and I can’t disclose what I know. But I – hand to God, I know the names of people whose files are being suppressed in order to protect them, and that’s wrong.”

SPICER: Just out of curiosity without names, are these poiticians, business leaders, both?
DERSHOWITZ: They’re everything, and look – let me tell you… a lot of them are – at least one of them is somebody who was accused. Others are accusers, and the judges have said – if somebody calls themselves a victim, we’re not going to give any information about them – but they may not be victims, they may be perpetrators. So we don’t have information about false accusers. We know there have been many false accusers who have accused innocent people for money, and those records are being deliberately, willfully suppressed – and they shouldn’t be suppressed. If the accusation is allowed out, so should the material that diminishes the credibility of the accuser. We want total transparency on this. Every single document. No redactions. That’s what I’ve said from day one… I waive any of my rights to privacy, anything there is about me, I’m happy because it will be exculpatory.”

On Wednesday, President Trump and AG Pam Bondi completely botched a reporter’s question over Epstein – with Trump lashing out, saying “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” Then Bondi jumped in – saying “First, to back up on that. In February, I did an interview on Fox and it’s been getting a lot of attention because I was asked a question about the client list. And my response was ‘it’s sitting on my desk to be reviewed,’ meaning the file – along with the JFK, MLK files as well. That’s what I meant by that. Also to the tens of thousands of video – they turned out to be child porn downloaded by that disgusting Jeffrey Epstein. Child porn is what they were. Never gonna be released. Never gonna see the light of day. To him being an agent; I have no knowledge of that. We can get back to you on that.”

Read more …

“Bondi, she argues, either “willingly humiliated some of the president’s most loyal supporters” or is simply “lazy and incompetent.”

• Will Pam Bondi Get Axed After the Epstein Debacle? (Margolis)

Is Pam Bondi’s tenure as President Trump’s attorney general hanging by a thread? Megyn Kelly thinks so. According to her, the Epstein debacle has exposed a level of incompetence and political tone-deafness that even the most loyal Trump supporters can’t ignore. In her recent analysis, Kelly didn’t pull any punches about Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files. She called out Bondi’s performance as not just a misstep, but a full-blown embarrassment — one that may have sealed her fate in the Trump administration. Bondi, she argues, either “willingly humiliated some of the president’s most loyal supporters” or is simply “lazy and incompetent.” There’s no sugarcoating here. Kelly points to Bondi’s much-hyped promise to deliver the Epstein “client list,” only for Bondi to produce a pile of nothing: recycled, publicly available documents masquerading as bombshells.

For a base hungry for accountability and truth, this was a slap in the face. Kelly’s words cut to the heart of the matter: “If you’re going to make a spectacle out of finally revealing the Epstein files, you’d better have the goods. Pam Bondi didn’t.” Instead, Bondi delivered nothing new, just a parade of letdowns that left Trump supporters feeling duped and insulted. Kelly’s assessment is that Bondi’s actions were not just a failure; they were a betrayal of trust. And when Bondi tried to shift the blame, Kelly wasn’t buying it. Bondi’s excuse that the FBI gave her the wrong documents only made things worse. Kelly zeroed in on the lack of follow-through: promises of further revelations that never materialized and wild, unsubstantiated claims about “tens of thousands of kiddy porn or child pornography material” that only muddied the waters.

Kelly harshly criticized Bondi for briefing pro-Trump influencers with a binder full of what turned out to be old, recycled information. She accused Bondi of either being too lazy to vet the material or deliberately setting up the president’s allies — like Kash Patel and the vice president — for embarrassment. Either way, she argued, it reflects badly on Bondi. “So she’s either lazy and incompetent, or she willingly humiliated some of the president’s most loyal supporters. Neither one of those is good,” Kelly said. “And that’s why, I’m sorry, but I’m going to predict her days are numbered as a member of the Trump administration. You know, Trump, he’s not dumb. But I just don’t think, I don’t think Trump created this.”

Perhaps even more telling was the way that Trump, always quick to reward loyalty and results, conspicuously left Bondi out of his praise in a recent post on Truth Social: The FBI, under the direction of Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, is back to the basics: Locking up criminals, and cleaning up America’s streets. We have the Greatest Law Enforcement professionals in the World, but “Politics” and Corrupt Leadership often prevented them from doing their job. That is no longer the case, and now, they have been unleashed to do their jobs, and they are doing just that. Keep it up — MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN! In Trump’s world, omission is often the loudest condemnation. As Kelly sees it, unless Bondi can pull off a miracle, she’s finished. And she may have a point.

Read more …

“DOGE staffers are being questioned in closed-door meetings about whether they support President Donald Trump or Musk..”

• Trump and Musk Allies Fight For Control of DOGE – WSJ (RT)

A power struggle is underway at the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), The Wall Street Journal has claimed. Allies of Elon Musk are reportedly trying to retain influence as the White House moves to scale back the agency’s power. Current and former officials told the outlet that DOGE staffers are being questioned in closed-door meetings about whether they support President Donald Trump or Musk, the tech billionaire who led the department until last month. Musk quit as the head of DOGE amid disagreements with Trump over a sweeping tax and spending package called the Big Beautiful Bill, which included a $5 trillion debt ceiling hike. He criticized the legislation as undercutting DOGE’s mission to reduce federal spending.

Tension and paranoia have reportedly taken hold inside DOGE’s shrinking ranks. White House officials are now said to be working to limit the department’s influence. Despite resigning, Musk’s influence reportedly persists through Steve Davis, a longtime aide who left his government post in May. Davis has continued to interact with DOGE staff, and according to some insiders, still issues guidance. In private conversations, he has supposedly even claimed his departure was “fake news.” A DOGE official close to Musk, however, said Davis’ contact with staff is informal. Some in DOGE say Musk loyalists are pushing for a reboot under as DOGE 2.0, with a focus on modernizing government websites and IT systems rather than downsizing staff.

Others, including White House officials, suspect Musk and Davis are leveraging government ties for private business interests. WSJ noted that the struggle poses political risks for Musk, whose companies Tesla and SpaceX rely on federal contracts and are currently facing financial pressure. Last week, Trump escalated the feud, telling reporters: “We might have to put DOGE on Elon… DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon.” On July 5, Musk announced the launch of the America Party, which he says will break the two-party system and win enough Congressional seats to gain leverage.

Read more …

“That, he says, is EXACTLY what Epstein was to intelligence agencies: someone with access (like the copy machine repairman) who quietly delivered leverage on the world’s elite.”

• Kiriakou: How Intelligence Agencies Gather Blackmail on Politicians (ZH)

You’ll see how this connects to Epstein. John Kiriakou reveals his superior got a promotion and a medal when he recruited a copy machine repairman. At first, Kiriakou laughed, but then he realized the brilliance of the plan when he learned that the repairman secretly sent every document from a prime minister’s office straight to the CIA. How did he do it? By planting a tiny device on the copy machine. “He [my trainer] said, all of us want to recruit the prime minister. We’re not going to recruit the prime minister. We’re not even going to have access to the prime minister. But the prime minister’s got a copy machine in his office. “And every once in a while, that machine is going to need to be cleaned and serviced.

So you recruit the copy machine repairman. And when he goes in there to make his repair or to clean the drums or whatever, he installs a little device that we give him so that every time somebody makes a copy, it transmits a copy back to the CIA.” What happened next? He said, “I got a promotion. I got a medal. I got a photo op with the director. It made my career…” Because this flow of information was pure leverage for the CIA:

“You know what they’re thinking. You know their next move. You know who their enemies are and who their allies are. Maybe it’s their position on trade negotiations. Maybe the prime minister has a health problem you need to plan for. You never know what might come through,” Kiriakou explained.“That ONE critical nugget is all it takes.” That, he says, is EXACTLY what Epstein was to intelligence agencies: someone with access (like the copy machine repairman) who quietly delivered leverage on the world’s elite.

https://twitter.com/JohnMcCloy/status/1942990582466437625

Read more …

30% dissent is a lot.

• Von der Leyen Survives No-Confidence Vote, Dissent Surprises Brussels (TASS)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suspects certain “external forces” are trying to divide the EU, but her narrow escape in today’s no confidence vote shows that the problems may be internal. “As external forces seek to destabilize and divide us, it is our duty to respond in line with our values. Thank you, and long live Europe,” von der Leyen wrote on X. The European Union “needs strength, vision, and the capacity to act,” she argued. Earlier, a diplomat in Brussels told TASS that the results of the no-confidence vote on the EU chief “sent shockwaves through Brussels.” Even supporters of the motion expected some 15% to 20% of members to support the move, and “the share of those dissatisfied with the work of the European Commission exceeded these expectations,” he said.

The diplomat also opined that the vote “will not affect the political course being pursued by the European Commission.” According to him, next, the EC “will probably launch a large-scale media campaign for damage control, one that is likely to attribute the discontent with how the European Commission runs things to external forces,” he explained. Von der Leyen survived a no-confidence vote in the European Parliament at a plenary session in Strasbourg on Thursday. The vote followed allegations of corruption and misconduct in the EU’s procurement of COVID-19 vaccines. Out of 553 MEPs who showed up to cast a ballot, 360 voted to reject the motion, with 175 in favor and 18 abstaining.

Read more …

”[Von der Leyen], you will destroy the EU, and I am convinced that the EU will soon collapse because you are doing everything to make it happen..”

• EU Will Soon Collapse Without Russian Resources – MEP (RT)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is leading the EU down a path of self-destruction by attempting to sever energy ties with Russia, Slovak MEP Milan Uhrik has said. In May, von der Leyen unveiled a plan to phase out all Russian oil and gas imports by the end of 2027, as part of the EU’s REPowerEU roadmap, which aims to eliminate the bloc’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels and shift to renewable sources. ”[Von der Leyen], you will destroy the EU, and I am convinced that the EU will soon collapse because you are doing everything to make it happen,” Uhrik said in a speech in the European Parliament on Wednesday. Moscow has argued that EU restrictions are self-defeating, causing surging energy prices and weakening the bloc’s economy. Since 2022, Germany has fallen into recession, while growth across the EU has stagnated.

Brussels is also discussing an 18th sanctions package targeting Russia’s energy and financial sectors. The proposal stalled after Slovakia vetoed it last week. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico argued that Slovakia was “fighting for our households and businesses” against “harmful ideological decisions” from Brussels. Neighboring Hungary also blocked the measure, warning it would cripple its energy security and spike prices. Uhrik stressed that Russian hydrocarbons remain vital for Slovakia’s industrial base. “Without them, our industry would either not function or would not be competitive,” he said. He urged fellow Slovak politician Maros Sefcovic, currently the EU’s commissioner for trade and economic security, to “stand up for Slovakia” on the issue.

Uhrik also took aim at NATO’s proposal to raise member states’ defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. “No, thank you – that’s enough. We just don’t want this,” he said, adding that Slovaks did not envision such a future when they joined the EU.Von der Leyen survived a no-confidence vote in the European Parliament on Thursday over her handling of COVID-19 vaccine procurement. The politician previously dismissed her critics as “conspiracy theorists” acting in the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Read more …

“In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said that “I never was very, let’s say, approving of Marco because he was kind of a neocon war hawk and now he’s had this incredible transformation.”

• Everybody Loves Marco (PJM)

Marco Rubio may just be the most popular guy in Donald Trump’s Cabinet right now. It’s not just me saying that; the rest of the administration seems to think so, too. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles appeared on the “Pod Force Once” podcast with Miranda Devine on Wednesday, and she had what the New York Post called a “glowing endorsement” for the Secretary of State. Wiles said she often sits in Cabinet meetings and marvels at the “energetic” team Trump has put together: “But I was sitting in a Cabinet meeting one day, and they do tend to go on a while , and so I was jotting down in my notebook the, you know, how I saw the Cabinet — and these numbers are wrong, but order of magnitude correct — five published authors, seven billionaires, 11 lawyers, a couple of minorities, a Democrat or two. It is an amazing group of people that he put together.”

She singled out several people, but she seemed especially proud of Rubio. “Marco Rubio was born for this,” she said, adding that he had “quickly assimilated… in his NSC position.” She’s not the only person I’ve noticed praising the man who, once upon a time, wasn’t all that beloved by Trump and his MAGA base. In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said that “I never was very, let’s say, approving of Marco because he was kind of a neocon war hawk and now he’s had this incredible transformation.” Today, the Health and Human Services secretary says he and Rubio are aligned on most things. He also pointed out that Rubio may be the funniest man in the Cabinet. “He says things that make people belly laugh every cabinet meeting,” he told Carlson.

Vice President JD Vance told Fox News last month that Rubio was probably his “best friend in the administration” and said they hang out all the time (to be a fly on the wall for those conversations). The president himself has even said he sees Rubio as the next potential leader of the MAGA movement. Back in May, when Trump appeared on “Meet the Press,” host Kristen Welker asked him, “When you look to the future, Mr. President, do you think the MAGA movement can survive without you as its leader?” “I think we have a tremendous group of people,” the president responded. “We talked about a number of them. You look at Marco, you look at JD Vance, who’s fantastic.”

I always thought it was interesting that he mentioned Rubio first in that interview. But, as the Post points out, numerous polls show that Vance has a strong lead over Rubio, and, in some cases, even Ron DeSantis beats him when people are asked who they’d like to have as president in 2028. Trump also gave the Secretary a nice compliment during the NATO Summit a couple of weeks ago. After Rubio fired off at the media, setting the record straight on whether or not Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been set back significantly, the president said, “You know what Marco reminded me — he did such a nice job there — it was nine years ago I had to debate this guy. It was not easy. I think he even got better. But when you were into your little thing, I said this is what I had to debate this guy.”

I’d also like to mention that anytime I write about Rubio — and I do often — I get a pretty big stream of feedback from y’all suggesting that he would make a great contender for 2028 for president or vice president for Vance. I see it on X, too. For what it’s worth, earlier today, I was going through my own X/Twitter archives looking for something completely unrelated and realized I was pushing for a Rubio for president long before it was cool. I have receipts that go as far back as 2010.

Of course, a lot can change between now and then, and I hate when we get too ahead of ourselves in politics — it’s like putting out Christmas decorations in stores in August — but there is no denying that Rubio is Trump and the GOP’s star at the moment. He’s won over the hearts and minds of much of Trump’s base, and he knows how to work the swamp. He’s great on domestic policy, and he’s even better on foreign policy. With few exceptions, leaders around the world respect him and consider him a friend. They want to work with him. And assuming nothing changes, he’ll have Trump’s backing.

Read more …

“A new report from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund reveals a staggering 53% drop in officer fatalities..”

• America’s Cops Are Finally Safer. Can You Guess the Reason Why? (Margolis)

There’s a new reality unfolding across America, and it should give every law-abiding citizen a reason to breathe a little easier: police officers are safer on the job today than they were in recent years, and the Donald Trump presidency deserves the credit. Under Joe Biden (and Barack Obama), the men and women who wear the badge have been under siege—not just by criminals, but by a relentless anti-police movement fueled by the radical Left and amplified by their allies in the media and the Democratic Party. The “Defund the Police” crowd, with progressive politicians and activists cheering it on, did everything in its power to demonize law enforcement and turn public sentiment against those who risk their lives to keep our communities safe.

The deaths of Michael Brown and George Floyd were weaponized to push a narrative that painted every cop as a racist villain and every police department as a threat. But Americans had had enough. They saw the chaos, the rising crime, the lawlessness that swept through cities where leftist policies were given free rein. They understood that a society without respect for law enforcement is a society teetering on the brink. That’s why, when the time came, voters sent a message: they wanted law and order restored, and they wanted a president who would stand with the police, not against them.

Since President Trump’s return to the White House, the numbers speak for themselves. A new report from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund reveals a staggering 53% drop in officer fatalities compared to the previous year. Traffic-related deaths have been cut in half. Deaths from assaults, stabbings, and other causes have plummeted. For the first time in more than half a century, the nation is on pace for fewer than 100 line-of-duty deaths by year’s end.

This isn’t a coincidence. It’s the direct result of a cultural shift away from the anti-police hysteria that defined the Left’s agenda. Under Trump, the message from the top is that our police are heroes, not villains. They deserve respect, support, and the resources they need to do their jobs. The days of the White House turning its back on law enforcement are over. The days of criminals being emboldened by soft-on-crime policies are ending. “We as an organization never like to use the words ’good news’ when we’re talking about or reporting on even a single police officer’s death, but I would call this a very welcome and encouraging trend line,” Bill Alexander, the CEO of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, told The Washington Times.

Mr. Alexander said the nation is on pace to see fewer than 100 line-of-duty deaths by the end of this year, which would be a first for the country in the more than 50 years officer deaths have been tracked.The executive credited better law enforcement training for giving officers the tools to defuse tense situations both gracefully and safely. Mr. Alexander also said Mr. Trump’s election last fall marked a culture shift away from the anti-police fervor that was so prominent in the previous five years. “The profession writ large was targeted and demonized to, I might argue, an unfair degree,” the CEO said.

“Across almost every line of communication, whether that was popular media, social media, mainstream media, maybe even to a worrying degree from too many of our elected officials, again, targeting the profession,” Mr. Alexander said. “I think that that was having a really detrimental impact on a number of interactions between the public and law enforcement.” The radical Left won’t admit it, but its anti-cop crusade was a disaster. It endangered officers, emboldened criminals, and left communities less safe. Now, with Trump at the helm, that dangerous experiment is being reversed. The numbers prove it. The streets prove it. And the families of America’s law enforcement officers know it better than anyone. The Trump presidency is saving the lives of law enforcement. That’s a fact the Left can’t spin, and it’s a victory every American should celebrate.

Read more …

“Now, you tell me how is America a superpower instead of an emperor without any clothes? Why should anyone be afraid of a country that pays its bills by printing debt instruments?”

• Globalism Destroyed American Jobs (Paul Craig Roberts)

For many years I reported monthly on the jobs reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over the years the new jobs were consistently in health and social assistance, waitresses and bartenders, and government employment. Manufacturing jobs making things that could be exported to pay for imports simply were not present. I emphasized that the jobs offshoring policy associated with globalism was de-industrializing the United States and destroying the middle class and the ladders of upward mobility that had made America an opportunity society. I held accountable the economic professors at Harvard and Dartmouth who promised that the lost of US manufacturing jobs, which they derided as “dirty fingernail jobs,” would be replaced by higher paid clean fingernail tech jobs. No such jobs ever appeared for the displaced manufacturing work force which has ceased to exist.

Fortunately, the US dollar being the world reserve currency allows the US to pay its bills by printing Treasury bonds. As Treasury bonds are the reserves of most foreign central banks, there has been a constant demand for more reserves. Thus, financing the US debt has been no problem. When US debt grows, so do the reserves of the world’s central banks. No problem. David Stockman in 45 years has been unable to learn this. The problem is internal. Manufacturing jobs are high productivity, high value added. Therefore the wage is high. The replacement jobs–stocking big box store shelves are low productivity. Consequently, the growth of income from wages stagnated and declined. Today American living standards are based more on credit than on productivity. Engineering and design follow manufacturing. When manufacturing leaves, so do engineering and design.

America was the loser. China was the winner. Wall Street forced American manufacturers to offshore their production to China in order to raise profits from lower labor and compliance costs. Wall Street ordered US manufacturers to “meet the Chinese price” or Wall Street would finance takeovers of the companies and move their production offshore. Clearly, Wall Street is an anti-American entity. I remember when Washington’s strategic thinkers said it would be 50 years before China would be a problem for American hegemony. The offshoring of US manufacturing, technology, and business knowhow reduced the time to 5 years. Today on a purchasing parity comparison, the Chinese economy exceeds that of the US. This is what globalism did for America. It made the American economy subordinate to China.

American economists were too well paid by globalists for me to draw them into a debate. Instead, they stayed with their propaganda, and America lost the ladders of upward mobility. To worsen the situation, the Democrats and Republican business interests left the borders open to millions of immigrant invaders who have overwhelmed educational, health, and housing services and driven down wages in the low productivity jobs. Today the profits of fruit and vegetable growers and meat slaughter houses depend on cheap immigrant-invader wages. But this is only the beginning. According to Bloomberg News, Artificial Intelligence will soon eliminate 20-40% of the jobs in America’s largest cities. Robotics are eliminating other low skilled wage jobs. What will America do with a population displaced by the digital revolution and AI?

Civilizational collapse stares us in the face, and not a single media source mentions the fact. Let’s look at June’s jobs report. It is the same as those I reported over many years. Where are the 147,000 jobs? Health care and social assistance provide 58,600 jobs. Leisure and hospitality provide 20,000 jobs. State and local education provide 63,500 jobs. That accounts for June’s new jobs.Clearly this is not a robust economy. Except for the 20,000 leisure and hospitality jobs, most of the rest are financed by government budget. Now, you tell me how is America a superpower instead of an emperor without any clothes? Why should anyone be afraid of a country that pays its bills by printing debt instruments? The reason is that the US has nuclear weapons and is under Israel’s direction. That is sufficient to terrify the world.

Read more …

Look at the money you can save if you just leave the border open…

• Most US Law Enforcement Funds Are Going To Immigration & Border (ZH)

Two thirds of all federal law enforcement funding in the United States for fiscal year 2025 is going to immigration and border enforcement, according to a CATO Institute analysis of data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Together, immigration and border enforcement will receive more than $33 billion. This includes funding for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at $19 billion, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at $10 billion, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) at $281 million, the Department of Homeland Security’s general offices at $3.2 billion and 20 percent of the Coast Guard’s budget – approximately $2.2 billion. However, as Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, CATO notes that the actual value is even higher, as the Trump administration is “diverting thousands of agents from other federal law enforcement agencies and much of the military to enforcing immigration and border law.”

According to CATO analysts, the amount spent on immigration and border enforcement agencies is 36 times higher than spending on tax and financial crimes enforcement (IRS-Treasury), 21 times higher than funding for firearms enforcement (ATF), 13 times higher than on drug enforcement (DEA), 10 times higher than spending on the Secret Service and 8 times higher than the FBI budget. These figures are based on current calculations and do not yet reflect the additional increases expected under H.R. 1 – the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The CBP projects that this will direct an extra $168 billion over the coming years to immigration and border enforcement agencies, along with more funding for agencies that indirectly support immigration law enforcement. Unlike normal fiscal year appropriations, H.R. 1 makes these funds available over five years, though they can be accessed for up to 10 years, so long as they are committed by 2029.

Read more …

HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, is a US federal law that establishes national standards for protecting sensitive patient health information.

• Did Joe Biden’s Doctor Just Confirm a Cover-Up of His Health? (Margolis)

In a move that should obliterate whatever remains of the myth of transparency in Washington, Joe Biden’s longtime physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, finally showed up for a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee—and proceeded to not answer a single question.n But while O’Connor may have refused to talk, his silence said plenty. According to Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), O’Connor was asked two simple but devastating questions: “Were you ever told to lie about the president’s health?” and “Did you ever believe President Biden was unfit to execute his duties?” O’Connor didn’t say “No,” he pleaded the Fifth both times—choosing constitutional protection over basic accountability.

“This is unprecedented,” Comer said. “And I think that this adds more fuel to the fire that there was a cover-up.” He’s right. When a sitting president’s personal doctor refuses to answer whether he was told to lie to the American people, it’s not just troubling—it’s damning. This isn’t some minor bureaucratic hiccup or a routine legal maneuver—this is the doctor who, for years, stood between the American people and the truth about Joe Biden’s fitness for office. Now, when given the chance to clear the air, he chooses silence. Although O’Connor had previously refused to cooperate, somehow, pleading the Fifth now instead of answering those two questions looks worse. Let’s not pretend this is normal. O’Connor’s refusal to answer even basic questions about Biden’s condition raises the obvious question: What, exactly, is he trying to hide?

Of course, we all know the answer. For years, the Biden White House dismissed legitimate concerns about the president’s health as partisan attacks, hiding behind carefully worded reports from O’Connor. Those glowing annual assessments were the backbone of the cover-up, reassuring the public while Biden visibly declined. Let’s be clear: O’Connor’s refusal to answer questions isn’t about medical ethics—it’s about political damage control. This is the same doctor who repeatedly vouched for Biden’s fitness while the public watched a very different reality unfold. If there’s nothing to hide, why not answer questions? Why invoke your right not to incriminate yourself? Comer said it is “clear there was a conspiracy to cover up” Biden’s cognitive decline.

New York Post: “The only question O’Connor did answer before the deposition concluded was confirming his name, according to an Oversight spokesperson, who pointed out that doctor-patient privilege would have allowed the witness to answer at least some questions. Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman, who served as physician to the president during Barack Obama’s first term, agreed with that interpretation. “In my opinion, [the first question] doesn’t involve HIPAA,” Kuhlman told The Post. As for the second question, Kuhlman advised, “I don’t think that’s covered by HIPAA,” because it “doesn’t sound like that’s specific health information that they’re seeking.”

When asked whether he would answer questions under oath that don’t directly relate to a patient’s health, Kuhlman said: “In my role as a physician caring for a patient, I probably would.” Dr. O’Connor’s refusal to answer questions about Biden’s health isn’t just a legal tactic—it’s an admission that there’s something worth hiding. The American people have every right to demand answers. The time for stonewalling is over.

Read more …

Is it starting again? Western Crete Coast Guard: 9,000 arrivals so far this year. “..963 arrivals were recorded last Sunday alone, marking a 380% increase in migrant flows compared to the same period last year.”

• Greece Suspends Asylum Applications For Arrivals From North Africa (RT)

Greece has suspended the processing of asylum applications from people coming to the country from North Africa for three months, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has announced, warning that those arriving illegally by boat will be arrested and detained. The temporary measure will allow the government to effectively address the surge in migrant arrivals, the Greek official said in a post on X on Wednesday. “The Greek Government sends a message of determination that the passage from North Africa to Greece is closing… [and] to all traffickers and all their potential customers that the money they spend may be completely wasted, because it will be difficult to reach Greece by sea,” he declared.

The move comes just a day after Libya’s eastern-based government in Benghazi blocked the entry of an EU delegation, including Greek Minister for Migration and Asylum Thanos Plevris, who had visited the country for talks on curbing illegal migration. Libya became a key transit point for human trafficking and migration to Europe via the Mediterranean following a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 that led to the overthrow and assassination of longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi.

Greek officials have reported a sharp rise in migrant arrivals on the southern islands of Crete and Gavdos in recent months, with more than 9,000 people landing there since the beginning of 2025. According to the Greek City Times, Vasilis Katsikandarakis, president of the Western Crete Coast Guard Personnel Union, has stated that 963 arrivals were recorded last Sunday alone, marking a 380% increase in migrant flows compared to the same period last year. “The migration issue is suffocating us,” Katsikandarakis said, claiming that “thousands more are waiting in North Africa.” On Tuesday, EU Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner, Greek Migration Minister Thanos Plevris, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, and Maltese Minister for Home Affairs Byron Camilleri met with Libya’s UN-recognized government in Tripoli to discuss efforts to combat illegal migration along the Central Mediterranean route.

Following the meeting, the Tripoli-based administration’s prime minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, said he had tasked the Interior Ministry with drafting a national migration plan rooted in practical cooperation and a commitment to lasting solutions. The EU officials had been scheduled to hold talks with the rival administration in Benghazi but were declared unwelcome for allegedly violating Libyan laws. The EU has struggled to manage the migration crisis since 2015, with Greece, Italy, and Spain receiving the highest number of arrivals across the Mediterranean. The bloc plans to tie its development aid and trade relations with African nations to their cooperation in curbing small boat departures to Europe, Politico reported Wednesday, citing an internal draft document.

Read more …

BRICS.

“..the liberal model of globalization is losing viability as the center of economic and political activity shifts decisively toward the Global South – developing countries with rising demographic, resource, and technological potential.”

• What Just Happened In Rio Should Terrify The West (Ibragimov)

A few days ago, the city of Rio de Janeiro hosted the 17th BRICS summit, marking a significant step forward for the organization amid the accelerating transformation of the global political and economic landscape. Represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Russia played an active role in the summit’s proceedings, while President Vladimir Putin addressed the plenary session via video link. In his remarks, the Russian leader offered a comprehensive analysis of current global trends, emphasizing that the liberal model of globalization is losing viability as the center of economic and political activity shifts decisively toward the Global South – developing countries with rising demographic, resource, and technological potential.

The Rio summit reaffirmed BRICS’ growing political weight and its ambition to become a key force in shaping the emerging multipolar order. High-level meetings drew global attention not only because of their scale but also due to the substantive outcomes they produced. A total of 126 joint commitments were adopted, spanning critical areas such as global governance reform, the restructuring of international financial institutions, healthcare, climate initiatives, artificial intelligence, and sustainable development.

The declaration adopted at the summit, titled ‘Strengthening Global South Cooperation for More Inclusive and Sustainable Governance’, underscored BRICS’ commitment to multilateralism, respect for international law, and the promotion of a fair and equitable world order. But beyond the formal language, the summit revealed a deeper shift: BRICS is no longer limiting itself to cautious technocratic dialogue. The bloc is increasingly positioning itself as a cohesive international actor – capable of proposing new frameworks for economic integration, political solidarity, and global coordination.

Crucially, this political reorientation did not begin in Rio. It builds directly on the strategic groundwork laid during the 2024 summit in Kazan, Russia – the largest BRICS gathering to date – which brought together not only member states but also dozens of partners under the BRICS+ umbrella. The Kazan summit established a new level of cooperation and ambition, and Rio served as a continuation of that trajectory. It became the arena where aspirations evolved into policy, and where the Global South began to more clearly articulate its place in the world.

Among the most consequential developments at the Rio summit was the firm commitment to advancing financial sovereignty among member states. Particular emphasis was placed on transitioning to transactions in national currencies – a long-standing initiative championed by Russia and several other BRICS countries. The leaders endorsed this direction, recognizing the need to reduce dependence on dominant reserve currencies. President Putin underscored that this was not merely an economic measure, but a geopolitical move aimed at strengthening the sovereignty of participating nations and insulating them from external pressure.

In support of this goal, the summit produced agreements to boost mutual investment volumes and accelerate the development of independent payment and settlement mechanisms. These initiatives are designed to lay the groundwork for a more resilient financial architecture – one that bypasses traditional Western-controlled institutions and empowers countries to determine the terms of their own economic cooperation. Increasingly, BRICS views economic autonomy as a precondition for long-term political independence in a world marked by volatility and polarization.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/goddeketal/status/1943302172034166796


https://twitter.com/hvgoenka/status/1942953159682670617

A small court in Holland hosts (the first?) vaccine damage court case.
https://twitter.com/JimFergusonUK/status/1943353968026923029

math
https://twitter.com/vegastarr/status/1942932500168183925

https://twitter.com/21WIRE/status/1943458617291870441

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle January 16 2025

Jan 162025
 
 January 16, 2025  Posted by at 11:22 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  75 Responses »


Marcel Duchamp The king and queen surrounded by swift nudes 1912

 

• Trump Announces Israel-Hamas Ceasefire (RT)
• Trump Envoy Swayed Netanyahu More In One Meeting Than Biden Did All Year (ZH)
• “Turns Out, Presidents Matter”: Marc Andreessen (ZH)
• Marco Rubio Urges End to Ukraine Conflict (Sp.)
• Prepare For War – NATO Chief (RT)
• What Trump Should Do (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Trump Team’s Ukraine Predictions ‘Campaign Bluster’ – Reuters (RT)
• Ban On Talks With Moscow Remains – Kiev (RT)
• Moscow and Kiev Hold ‘Limited Talks’ – Bloomberg (RT)
• German Military Retreats From X (RT)
• Berlin Proves It Will Support Kiev To Its Own Detriment (Romanenko)
• Biden SEC Sues Musk Over Twitter Purchase In 11th Hour “Sham” (ZH)
• Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg To Attend Trump Inauguration (JTN)
• Trump Mulls Executive Order To ‘Save Tiktok’ – WaPo (RT)
• Why Europe Fears Free Speech (Munchau)

 

 


A Final Toast – by Mr. Fish

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1879639928880943151

RFK

Cuomo

Bondi

Sheehy

Newsom

Palisades

Tucker

Sen. Kennedy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1879567371108581639

Gov. Taxes

 

 

Bibi doesn’t listen to Biden. He hears Trump loud and clear, though.

• Trump Announces Israel-Hamas Ceasefire (RT)

Israel and Hamas have struck a deal that sees all hostages released, US President-elect Donald Trump has announced “We have a deal for the hostages in the Middle East,” Trump posted on his TruthSocial platform on Wednesday. “They will be released shortly.” According to multiple media outlets, the agreement approved in Qatar involves a 42-day ceasefire and an exchange of prisoners, including all Israelis taken captive in the October 7, 2023 Hamas incursion from Gaza. “This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies,” Trump added in another post.

His national security team will “continue to work closely with Israel and our Allies to make sure Gaza NEVER again becomes a terrorist safe haven,” the president-elect added. “This is only the beginning of great things to come for America, and indeed, the World!” Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly joined the talks in Doha and played a key role in persuading the Israeli delegation to accept the deal. “This deal was achieved because of the help of many and demonstrates that a policy of peace through strength wins,” Witkoff told Israel’s Channel 12 on Wednesday. “Thank you to the Israeli negotiating teams, thank you to the Qataris, thank you to Egypt, thank you to the Biden administration, and most of all to Donald Trump, whose policy of peace through strength is the one that won.”

A “breakthrough” in the talks was said to have been reached early on Monday. Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani has met with senior Hamas officials to persuade the Palestinian group to accept the agreement. Egyptian and Turkish intelligence chiefs also took part in the negotiations, along with the heads of Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet.

Read more …

Bide demands praise for a whole year in which he failed. Trump simply says: I don’t want my 2d term to start with an ugly war.

• Trump Envoy Swayed Netanyahu More In One Meeting Than Biden Did All Year (ZH)

Even Israeli media is very clearly attributing achievement of the Gaza ceasefire deal to President-elect Donald Trump and his team. President Biden too at one point in an afternoon press conference hailing the deal acknowledged that he spoke as ‘one team’ with Trump on the Gaza deal. According to The Times of Israel: “A “tense” weekend meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and incoming Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff led to a breakthrough in the hostage negotiations, with the top aide to US President-elect Donald Trump doing more to sway the premier in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year, two Arab officials told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. Witkoff has been in Doha for the past week to take part in the hostage negotiations, as mediators try to secure a deal before Trump’s January 20 inauguration. On Saturday, Witkoff flew to Israel for a meeting with Netanyahu at the premier’s Jerusalem office.

During the meeting, Witkoff urged Netanyahu to accept key compromises necessary for an agreement, the two Arab officials on Monday told The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity. Neither Witkoff nor Netanyahu’s office responded to requests for comment”. As expected, Biden disagrees with this assessment… Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to make a public statement. Interestingly, Trump was the first leader to hail the deal, attributing it largely to his election victory in November and anticipation of his entering the Oval Office next Monday. But Biden chalked it up to his own diplomacy: “This deal will halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much-needed humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians and reunite the hostages with their families after more than 15 months in captivity,” he said in the statement.

The US president further said Wednesday’s agreement “not only of the extreme pressure that Hamas has been under and the changed regional equation after a ceasefire in Lebanon and weakening of Iran — but also of dogged and painstaking American diplomacy,” he says. “My diplomacy never ceased in their efforts to get this done.” Many political analysts, including Glenn Greenwald, would beg to differ. An initial Hamas statement is meanwhile celebrating this as a ‘win’ over the Israeli military machine, which has been unable to root out the Islamist insurgency in the strip. Words from Hamas leadership praised “the legendary steadfastness of the great Palestinian people and the valiant resistance in the Gaza Strip.” Hamas is for the first time coming out publicly in the streets of Gaza, as a deal finally looks legit at this point…

Still there are reports of intensified Israeli bombing in parts of Gaza, merely hours before the deal is expected to go into effect, which will see the release of hostages and an exchange for many dozens of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Meanwhile, Nassim Taleb makes a great point, stating on X that …with Kamala there is a near-certainty of more wars coupled with a lot of bullshit about “peace” initiatives. With Trump (rather, Trump-Vance) there is a possibility of peace coupled with loud saber rattling. Indeed, if the truce holds, it will likely go down in the history books as a victory for Trump’s early diplomacy. Progressives too have been wondering what took the Biden White House so long, given also that virtually the same deal was on the table previously this summer, and it collapsed. Israeli lawmakers and ministers are expected to vote on approving the deal on Thursday morning, but a lot can happen between now and then.

Read more …

Andreessen: “He’s world-class at real estate and communications.” “He’s probably the first person in the world to be world-class in both things.” “He very deeply understands business.” “When Trump puts up one of these giant hotels, these are large-scale systems projects. There are many dimensions. A lot of things can go wrong. There’s technology change. You’ve got to manage these hands-on because they can always go sideways.” “He’s world-class at thinking things through systematically.” “There’s this video of him talking about the water situation in California on Joe Rogan six months ago. It’s one of those classic Trump things, where at the time, everybody’s like, why is he going on and on about the water situation in California?”

“And then, of course, LA is burning down in the last three days. And if you listen to what he talked about with the water situation in California. He is exactly 100% correct.” “In the first term, when he diagnosed the German energy situation at the United Nations. He said you will become dependent on Russian energy, and that will be a disaster for you, and it has been. It was an extremely precise, accurate, and prescient five-minute analysis of this system’s problem.” “In my energy conversation with him, he’s extremely sophisticated. The energy people that I know know that he’s sophisticated. So, he wraps his head around these things very quickly and easily.”

• “Turns Out, Presidents Matter”: Marc Andreessen (ZH)

Marc Andreessen, the billionaire investor and co-founder of the influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, joined the host of Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson (former Reagan speechwriter), to discuss his pivotal role in shaping Silicon Valley and politics. For decades, Andreessen has supported Democrats, including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. However, a troubling 2024 spring meeting with Biden administration officials spooked the Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He said Biden officials explained their plan to control AI through government regulatory capture—a strategy reminiscent of Communist policies in China. Andreessen told Robinson that President-elect Donald Trump’s knowledge about problem-solving in business and energy is “extremely sophisticated” and “world-class on real estate and communications.”

“My analysis would be he is world-class in real estate and on communications … and he’s world-class on both which is like probably the first person in the world to be world-class on both of those things, right? The real estate industry is not historically known for its great communicators,” Andreessen continued. Robinson and Andreessen also discussed Silicon Valley’s technological and political evolution, Andreessen’s shifting political alliances from Clinton, Obama, and Biden to MAGA, and his vision for harnessing cutting-edge technology to advance societal progress. They also addressed energy challenges, border security, and national defense. In particular, Robinson and Andreessen spoke about China’s manufacturing dominance. Andreessen explained:

“And I’ll just tell you where I’m worried right now, where the problem is compounding. So you mentioned the, sort of, iPhone assembly, and that’s a big deal. But basically, there’s three industries that sort of follow phones that are kicking in right now. So, one is drones. And it’s sort of in a bizarre turn of events, the Chinese basically own the global drone market for all, basically, the consumer drones, all the cheap drones. Which by the way, numerically then are the drones that all the militarys also use in overwhelming numbers. And something over 90% of all drones used by the US military are made in China. No, no, it gets worse, it gets worse, it gets worse, it gets worse before it gets. So the drone thing is not just a company, it’s an entire ecosystem. It’s all of the componentry.

“We have a drone company that’s been trying to compete with the Chinese company. Number one, the Biden FAA has been trying to kill us this entire time, trying to do all kinds of things to make sure that American drone companies can’t succeed as part of their war on tech. It’s literally just another in the long list of ways that they’ve been just trying to absolutely kill us. But two is, China has figured this out. And so, the US has been sanctioning AI chips going to China, China is now sanctioning, they sanction our drone company for the battery, [LAUGH] cuz the battery is made in China, right? And so they have like significant leverage, not just for the drones, but for the entire supply chain. By the way, the drone supply chain is very analogous to the car supply chain. A self driving electric car is very similar to a drone, or for that matter, to an iPhone. It’s an electrical mechanical device, but it’s a lot of the same kind of battery technology, chip technology, sensor technology.

So they now have their version of what the Germans used to have, which is sort of, the thousands of mid market companies that make all the parts that go into a car. But the German ecosystem is still making them for old internal combustion cars, the Chinese ecosystem is making them for electric cars and self driving cars. And of course, that means the new Chinese cars that are coming out are really good and they have a giant advantage on cost. And they are starting to bring to market cars that are equivalent in quality to western cars at a third or a fourth of price. So that’s coming. And then the big one that follows phones, drones, and cars, logically, is robots.

Robinson asked Andreessen: And the Chinese are ahead of us there? Andreessen responded: 100%, now, we have the leading, this is important, we have the leading software,like we have the leading R&D. Like, we have the smartest, I’m convinced we have like the smartest robotics AI people. We have the best people, specifically for the design of the systems, but we don’t have anything resembling the manufacturing capability at all. Andreessen noted that these technologies are upstream from all the military applications because they are intertwined in the same supply chains. He said the US must confront this and reverse the fragmented approach, where the Biden administration would “hate the domestic American technology industry and is trying to kill it” one day and then, on other days, “thinks we’re gonna somehow develop some sort of competitive response to China on cars or on weapons in the future.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1879396919107313836

The takeaway from the interview is clear: Trump 2.0 must craft a coherent, competitive response to advancing technology under an ‘America First’ agenda. This is in contrast to the radicals in the Biden-Harris regime, who focused on de-growth policies (under the guise of climate change) that have allowed China to advance ahead of the US. “What’s the whole of government strategy on China? Zero, right? It turns out the president matters,” Andreessen concluded. One must ask: whose team was the Biden-Harris administration on? It doesn’t appear they prioritized an ‘America First’ agenda. This will change under Trump.

Read more …

Rubio presents the hawkish case.

• Marco Rubio Urges End to Ukraine Conflict (Sp.)

The United States’ official position on the Ukraine conflict must be that it should be brought to an end, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, President-elect Donald Trump’s secretary of state nominee, said on Wednesday. “I think it should be the official position of the United States that this war should be brought to an end,” Rubio said during a hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, when asked to elaborate on his decision late last year to vote against aid to Ukraine. The 53-year-old admitted that “this is not going to be an easy endeavor” and called for “everyone to be realistic.” He suggested that conflict settlement could start with “some ceasefire” and require concessions by both Russia and Ukraine.

Rubio pointed to a change in the dynamic of the Ukraine conflict, saying it has become a “war of attrition” and “stalemate.” He believes there is “no way Russia takes all of Ukraine.” “It’s also unrealistic to believe that somehow a nation the size of Ukraine — no matter how incompetent and no matter how much damage the Russian Federation has suffered as a result of this invasion — there is no way Ukraine is also going to push these people all the way back to where they were on the eve of the invasion,” Rubio added.

Read more …

NATO wants war. Nobody else does.

• Prepare For War – NATO Chief (RT)

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has called on members of the US-led military bloc to adopt a “wartime mindset” and significantly increase defense spending, citing supposed threats from Russia and other nations. Rutte noted on Wednesday that NATO members have increased defense investments and conducted more frequent military exercises. However, he argued that these efforts are “not sufficient to deal with the dangers coming our way in the next four to five years.” The bloc’s “future security is at stake,” Rutte claimed in his opening remarks at a meeting of the Military Committee in Chiefs of Defense in Brussels. He accused Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran of attempting to “weaken our democracies and chip away at our freedom.”

“To prevent war, we need to prepare for it. It is time to shift to a wartime mindset,” Rutte asserted, urging NATO states to allocate more resources toward defense and develop “more and better defense capabilities.” He also stressed the importance of providing increased support to Ukraine to “change the trajectory of the war,” and called for enhanced cooperation with global partners. Moscow has repeatedly denied assertions that it represents a threat to any NATO member states and has instead accused the US-led bloc of waging a proxy war against Russia and encroaching on its territory. Last month, President Vladimir Putin said that practically all NATO states are currently at war with Russia.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also noted on Tuesday that history appears to be repeating itself, suggesting that there were “obvious parallels” between Moscow’s current confrontation with NATO and the attempts of Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler to take over Russia after subjugating dozens of European countries. On Tuesday, Rutte announced that NATO would bolster its presence in the Baltic Sea – a strategic area for Russian naval operations and energy exports – by launching a new mission under the pretext of protecting undersea infrastructure. The NATO chief revealed that this presence will involve frigates, maritime patrol aircraft, and a “small fleet of naval drones” that are expected to provide “enhanced surveillance and deterrence.”

The announcement follows an incident involving a Cook Islands-registered oil tanker, the Eagle S, which allegedly damaged the Estlink 2 power cable connecting Finland and Estonia last month. The EU has warned that it could impose sanctions on Moscow over what EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has described as the “deliberate destruction of Europe’s critical infrastructure” using a “shadow fleet” of tankers, which supposedly includes the Eagle S. While the tanker has been detained by Finnish authorities, no conclusive evidence has been presented regarding its involvement in the alleged sabotage.

Read more …

If Trump can deal with the real challenges [..], he will go down as the greatest American president in history.

• What Trump Should Do (Paul Craig Roberts)

American security agencies have long used the cloak of national security to avoid accountability for their crimes, such as the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, and the numerous assassinations of foreign leaders and screw-ups. Beginning with the Clinton regime, presidents and non-security appointees also began escaping accountability. The situation worsened in the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney regime, and it exploded in the Biden regime with the Attorney General, FBI, and Democrat state attorneys general and prosecutors using law as a weapon against Trump, his attorneys, and his supporters. Many people were ruined financially.

Many were falsely imprisoned, and Trump himself had his reelection in 2020 stolen by the most brazen and obvious vote theft in American history. The evidence is clear that Biden himself is guilty of selling vice presidential and presidential influence with his son, Hunter, being the marketer and sharing the revenues. Yet the US Department of Justice prevented any investigation and indictments The whore American media covered up the story. The practice of elevating high office holders to the privileged status of a king or an aristocracy above both the law and the US Constitution must not continue in the Trump regime. If it does, high officials will have gained squatters’ rights in being above the law, and the US Constitution will be reduced to a dead document.

At this point, the only way a collapse of the rule of law in the US can be avoided is for the Trump regime to relentless prosecute the Department of Justice, FBI, and White House officials who selectively applied law in the form of lawfare against political opponents. If those responsible avoid accountability, a legal precedent will have been established, and the differential rights and status based on race and gender that are already in place will be joined by special legal privileges for high government officials. It would mean the end of any possibility of accountable government. This should be the highest priority of the Trump regime. It is even more important than closing the border.

On the war front Trump should simply walk away from conflict with Iran and Russia. Wars distract from domestic matters and will prevent focus on making America great again. Wars will bring more propaganda about “terrorists” and more infringements of US civil liberty, which is not a path to making America great again. There is no reason whatsoever for American blood, taxpayers’ money, and more issuance of US debt in order to enrich the coffers of the military/security complex and to expand the frontier of Greater Israel. Trump should come to the realization that Israel is of no value to America. Israel is a deadweight burden around our necks, and the unconditional American support for Israel’s wars and genocide of the Palestinians has cost America’s reputation hugely. If America ever had a moral luster, it no longer does.

Iran and Russia do not threaten the US. The Middle East is full of problems for Iran, whose government doesn’t need problems with the US. Ukraine is Russia’s problem, not ours. Washington is responsible for the conflict. Trump should apologize and remove us from the conflict. The minute Trump stops sending money and weapons to Ukraine and Israel, peace will descend on the world. Trump should return to his original position that NATO is of no value to America. If NATO did not exist, Russia and Europe would be engaged in mutually beneficial economic ventures. These ventures would create financing and business opportunities also for Americans. All would prosper. It is Washington’s pursuit of hegemony–the control over others–that is suppressing economic activity worldwide and eroding the living standard of all Americans except the top one percent.

MAGA America has no interest in the agendas of special interest lobby group policies that benefit only a tiny percentage of people who are already so rich that they can’t possibly spend their huge amount of income and wealth. The problems of the world originate in Washington and they are institutionalized in the Israel Lobby, the military/security complex, Big Pharma and its control over high cost and ineffective American medicine that sacrifices Americans’ health and the integrity of doctors to Big Pharma’s profits. These are the real threats to America that if America is again to be great, these threats, not Russia and Iran, must be destroyed and eliminated. If the Trump regime can reestablish the respect for a rule of law by indicting and prosecuting DOJ, FBI, and other officials for their criminal behavior, and if Trump can disengage the US/Israeli war machine, he will have saved the world from nuclear war and re-established the United States as the principal nation to whom the world looks for leadership.

My concern is that Trump will love the war role. As Winston Churchill believed, there is nothing more exciting than being a war leader, especially if you imagine prospects of winning. Trump is extremely susceptible to getting into war based on advice that Putin has no red lines because Putin is too fearful of conflict. With Iran’s isolation from the destruction of Syria and a reformist government that wants to be free of religious restrictions and to make money in the West, Trump is being advised it is time to bring Iran down.

When the Ruling Elite have you blocked elsewhere, their agenda becomes your only choice. Has Trump fought so hard only for the sake of being used by the well-institutionalized American Establishment? The third thing Trump should immediately do is to shut down the US biowarfare labs Washington is operating all over the world. These labs are trying to create deadly pathogens that are highly contagious. The labs are even attempting to target the pathogens at specific ethnicities, collecting, for example, Russian DNA in the hopes of finding some material unique to Russians to which to attach the pathogen. These American labs are all illegal. Washington tries to avoid responsibility by locating its biowarfare labs in other countries. Trump should put an immediate halt to the activity and prosecute those responsible, including the US Congress if Congress authorized this illegal activity.

Those who profit from this evil activity claim that we have to do it because our enemies do it, but they never provide any documentation for their claim. Regardless, as the Covid experience proves, when a pathogen is released it goes everywhere. To use one as a weapon results in the same self-destruction as nuclear war. So much of science is committed to weapons. Science needs to be turned back to improving health and the human condition. If Trump can deal with the real challenges that we face instead of being led off to fake challenges serving special interests, he will go down as the greatest American president in history.

Read more …

If the shooting stops within 24 hours, there’s no bluster. Negotiations will come after.

• Trump Team’s Ukraine Predictions ‘Campaign Bluster’ – Reuters (RT)

Donald Trump’s election promises to end the Ukraine conflict “in 24 hours” were driven by “a combination of campaign bluster and a lack of appreciation of the intractability” of the situation, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing sources close to the US president-elect. Trump repeatedly touted his ability to end hostilities between Russia and Ukraine while on the campaign trail, accusing President Joe Biden of mishandling the crisis. Privately, members of the Trump team expect the timeline for resolving the conflict to be measured in months, the news agency said. Reuters spoke with two individuals on condition of anonymity, who described themselves as Trump associates who have discussed the issue with him.

The view aligns with public remarks by members of the future administration. Keith Kellogg, whom Trump has tapped to serve as a special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, told Fox News last week that he aims to mediate a resolution within 100 days after Inauguration Day on January 20. Trump expressed frustration that he has to wait to be sworn in before implementing his plans, speaking at a recent press conference at his residence in Florida. Asked whether he intended to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in the first three to six months of his presidency, the politician said such a meeting would hopefully be arranged “long before six months”. At the same event, Trump expressed empathy with Russian concerns over NATO’s expansion in Europe, which Moscow has cited as one of the key causes of the Ukraine conflict. He criticized the Biden administration for falling to effectively negotiate with Putin on the issue.

According to Reuters, Trump advisers generally support proposals that would take Ukraine’s bid to join NATO off the table for the foreseeable future, and push for a ceasefire along the current battle lines. They also advocate deploying European troops to monitor a potential demilitarized zone, the report said. The Kremlin has welcomed Trump’s recognition of Russian national concerns. However, Moscow expects a sustainable solution addressing the wider European security architecture. Moscow will not accept an agreement that would merely freeze the conflict and give Kiev time to rebuild its army for future hostilities, as happened with the Minsk Agreements of 2014-2015, officials have said.

Read more …

The talks won’t involve Ukraine.

• Ban On Talks With Moscow Remains – Kiev (RT)

Kiev is maintaining its moratorium on direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga confirmed in an interview with European Pravda published on Wednesday. Two years ago, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree banning his government from any talks with Moscow. When asked if Russia should be involved in potential peace negotiations, Sibiga stated that at the moment, such a “modality” has not been considered. “Let us wait for official contacts with the US, where we will discuss further steps,” the diplomat added. Sibiga took up the post as Kiev’s chief diplomat in September, following the resignation of his predecessor Dmitry Kuleba, who stepped down amid a large-scale purge of Ukraine’s senior officials and took up a position at a Harvard-based research center.

In the interview, Sibiga claimed that US President-elect Donald Trump’s “peace through strength” approach aligns with Zelensky’s so-called “peace formula,” which is predicated on Russia withdrawing its troops from all territory claimed by Ukraine, paying reparations, and subjecting itself to a war crimes tribunal. Moscow has dismissed the plan, calling it “detached from reality.” Russia has repeatedly said it is open to talks on Ukraine, provided they take into account the territorial “reality on the ground,” an approach recently echoed by French president, Emmanual Macron. The Ukrainian leader, however, has recently shifted his rhetoric from emphasizing “victory” to demanding a “just peace,” underpinned by security guarantees from the West, including NATO membership, while leaving the status of the new Russian regions undetermined.

Last week, Zelensky expressed a desire to secure a peace agreement with Russia within the year, emphasizing the need for strong security guarantees from its Western supporters. Trump had repeatedly claimed while on the campaign trail that he could end the conflict within 24 hours. However, the president-elect recently said it might take up to six months after taking office to facilitate a deal between Moscow and Kiev. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow is ready to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine within a broader Eurasian framework in order to address larger geopolitical issues. The Russian president reiterated last month that Moscow is ready for negotiations with Kiev without any preconditions other than those agreed upon in Istanbul in 2022, which involved Ukraine agreeing to a neutral status and restrictions on the deployment of foreign weaponry in the country.

Read more …

Oh wait…

• Moscow and Kiev Hold ‘Limited Talks’ – Bloomberg (RT)

Russia and Ukraine are holding “limited talks” in Qatar, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing sources on the Russian side. The negotiations are focused on preventing threats to nuclear facilities amid the ongoing conflict between the two neighbors, the media outlet claimed. Bloomberg’s Ukrainian sources maintained that the only talks held between the two nations are linked to prisoner exchanges. Earlier on Wednesday, Moscow and Kiev confirmed the latest POW swap, which involved 25 servicemen from each side. According to Bloomberg, the Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment. In August 2024, the Washington Post claimed that Moscow and Kiev were holding talks on a potential moratorium on striking energy infrastructure in the summer of that year, allegedly also mediated by Qatar. The negotiations were reportedly thwarted by the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian Kursk border region in early August, the US media outlet stated.

Moscow then refuted the report, saying that “no one has derailed anything.” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov brushed the information off as mere “rumors.” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at that time that no “security regimes” for critical infrastructure had been discussed by the two sides. According to Zakharova, Moscow and Kiev have not engaged in any talks since spring 2022 when peace talks collapse, which Russia blamed on Western interference. In November 2024, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman, Majed bin Mohammed al-Ansari, told journalists that his nation’s mediation efforts in the Ukraine conflict go beyond the humanitarian efforts aimed at helping children affected by the hostilities to reunite with their families.

According to al-Ansari, Qatar has always pursued a policy aimed at “reaching peace.” The spokesman also stated that time that Doha was supporting all the efforts aimed at achieving a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Kiev has refused direct talks with Moscow ever since Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky banned direct talks in autumn 2022. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga confirmed in an interview with European Pravda published on Wednesday that the moratorium is still in place. He also said that Kiev would wait for further contacts with the US before making any moves. Moscow has repeatedly stated that it is ready for peace talks at any moment without any preconditions other than those agreed upon in Istanbul in 2022. The draft treaty involved Kiev agreeing to a neutral status and accepting restrictions on foreign weaponry deployment on Ukrainian territory.

Read more …

Who cares?

• German Military Retreats From X (RT)

The German Defense Ministry and the Army (the Bundeswehr) have announced they will stop posting on X claiming that Elon Musk’s platform makes it “difficult to have a factual exchange.” Musk has lambasted the current German government for promoting the “woke mind virus” and leading the country to ruin, going so far as to endorse the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and interview its leader Alice Weidel live on his platform earlier this week. “We will leave our X-channel dormant until further notice and will not post anything actively for the time being,” the Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday. “We have decided to take this step because a factual exchange is becoming increasingly difficult here.”

According to a statement posted on the ministry’s website, it will continue to communicate with the public via press releases, a WhatsApp group, YouTube, Instagram, and “other social media.” The Bundeswehr reserves the right to post on X “in the case of disinformation campaigns,” it said. The move comes after over 60 German universities and research institutes announced their departure from X, alleging “increasing radicalization” on the site. Two labor unions and the top federal court have also departed the platform in a huff. Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, citing the previous management’s out-of-control censorship, and has since rebranded the platform as X. Subsequent revelations have shown that Twitter’s previous executive team worked closely with the government to suppress opposition narratives.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will continue to use X “for the time being,” his spokesman told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday. “It’s a difficult balance to strike,” the official representative said, describing X as “not without controversy.” The “controversy” in question appears to be Musk’s endorsement of AfD and an interview with Weidel. He did the same last year to back Donald Trump’s presidential bid in the US, which saw him triumph in November. The German establishment has long tarred AfD with accusations of “extremism,” but its popularity has surged in recent months due to its positions on immigration and the economy. Scholz’s “traffic light” coalition collapsed in November and Germans will have to vote for a new parliament in late February. Since Musk’s $44 billion purchase, proponents of “fact-checking” and censoring “disinformation” have tried to set up alternatives such as Threads and Bluesky, but failed to make an appreciable dent in X’s user base.

Read more …

“..each new pledge to Ukraine serves as a stark reminder of Berlin’s neglect of its own citizens..”

• Berlin Proves It Will Support Kiev To Its Own Detriment (Romanenko)

As Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius proudly announced the delivery of RCH 155 self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine – even before the Bundeswehr receives them – Berlin’s priorities have once again come under scrutiny. The decision to ship this state-of-the-art artillery system to Ukraine highlights a glaring paradox: Germany’s commitment to modernizing its own armed forces seems secondary to its zeal in arming Kiev for a war increasingly serving as a proxy for Western interests against Russia. “We are standing by Ukraine in this existential fight. The RCH 155 represents not only our technical capabilities but also our steadfast support,” Pistorius declared. Yet, for many Germans, each such statement lands like a hammer blow to national confidence in their government.

Comments online have laid bare the growing resentment, with users describing each new arms shipment as “another 0.5% boost for the AfD.” This remark reflects a troubling but undeniable trend in German politics: the ruling coalition’s unwavering support for Ukraine is alienating voters at home. The RCH 155 is an advanced artillery system mounted on a Boxer wheeled vehicle, boasting a range exceeding 40 kilometers and cutting-edge mobility. It was intended to play a key role in modernizing Germany’s military – a long-overdue initiative for the Bundeswehr, which has been plagued by underfunding and outdated equipment. Instead, these cutting-edge weapons will first see action in Ukraine, leaving Germany’s armed forces waiting. Critics argue that this decision exemplifies the government’s misguided priorities. “The Bundeswehr is not only defending Germany but also the NATO alliance,” said one military analyst.

“If we are not equipped to fulfil that role, it weakens the very foundation of our defense strategy.” The irony is inescapable: while Pistorius makes sweeping promises to Kiev, German soldiers continue to train on aging and inadequate equipment. This frustration is not confined to military circles. Across the political spectrum, Germans are increasingly questioning their country’s role as a financial and military backer of Ukraine. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a far-right populist party, has capitalized on this discontent, surging in the polls to become a significant political force. Recent state elections have seen the AfD achieve double-digit gains, fueled by voter dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of domestic issues. Energy prices remain high, inflation eats into wages, and public infrastructure continues to crumble.

Many Germans feel that resources and attention should be directed inward, not outward. For them, each new pledge to Ukraine serves as a stark reminder of Berlin’s neglect of its own citizens. The government’s unwavering support for Ukraine – a proxy for Western interests against Russia – is also being called into question. Pistorius’ rhetoric about an “existential fight” may resonate with international allies, but for many Germans, it rings hollow. They see a government that appears more concerned with maintaining its standing in Washington and Brussels than with addressing the needs of its own people. Comments on Die Welt reports about the transfer often highlight this disconnect. One user wrote, “We’ve become the arms supplier for the world while our own army remains underfunded and ill-equipped. How long will this madness continue?” Another opined, “Every tank, every howitzer we send is another nail in the coffin of this coalition’s credibility.”

Read more …

I read he had a 10-day grace period and filed the docs after 11 days. So one day late. Enough for Gensler to sue.

• Biden SEC Sues Musk Over Twitter Purchase In 11th Hour “Sham” (ZH)

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued Elon Musk in connection to his $44 billion purchase of Twitter (now X) in October 2022. In a Tuesday press release, the agency claims that by delaying the filing of a beneficial ownership report by 11 days, Musk saved $150 million, or 0.34% on several subsequent tranches of stock he bought before filing the disclosure on April 4, 2022. According to the agency, Twitter shares surged by 27% after Musk filed the ownership report – by which time he already owned 9% of the company’s shares. “Investors who sold Twitter common stock during this period did so at artificially low prices and thus suffered substantial economic harm,” reads the complaint. The agency wants Musk to disgorge any profits he incurred due to the late filing, along with pay a civil fine.

In response, Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, told the Epoch Times that Musk did nothing wrong – calling the SEC’s lawsuit a “sham.” “Today’s action is an admission by the SEC that they cannot bring an actual case,” he said, adding that Musk “has done nothing wrong and everyone sees this sham for what it is.” As the Epoch Times notes further, Spiro accused the SEC of running a “multi-year campaign of harassment” against Musk and insisted the agency was blowing the alleged late disclosure filing out of proportion, adding that this type of infraction carries a nominal penalty.

The lawsuit is the latest chapter in Musk’s contentious relationship with the SEC. In 2018, the agency sued him for posting on social media that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 per share, a claim that was later revealed to be exaggerated. The SEC contended that Musk’s “misleading” post caused Tesla’s stock price to jump by over 6 percent and led to “significant market disruption.” That case was settled with Musk agreeing to pay a $20 million fine and step down as Tesla’s chairman for three years. The settlement did not require Musk to admit to any wrongdoing.

Musk’s “funding secured” post also sparked another lawsuit by a group of Tesla investors, who claimed that it was materially misleading and led them to suffer as much as $12 billion in financial losses. During a three-week trial in the case, Musk’s attorneys argued that he believed his statements about taking Tesla private were truthful, citing discussions with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) as evidence of potential funding. Musk testified that PIF representatives showed strong interest in the deal, which led him to claim that the funding was secured.

“I had no ill motive,” Musk said in court. “My intent was to do the right thing for all shareholders.” The jury sided with Musk in the case. Jurors delivered a unanimous verdict in February 2023, finding that Musk and Tesla were not liable for misleading investors with the posts. The investors appealed the decision, arguing that the judge gave erroneous instructions to the jurors. The appellate court upheld the jury’s decision, clearing Musk of securities fraud.The SEC’s current chair, Gary Gensler, plans to step down from his post on Jan. 20, the day President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated for a second term. Meanwhile, SEC Chief Accountant Paul Munter will retire from the agency effective Jan. 25 – making it unclear if the agency will even proceed with its filing against Musk.

JD Vance Gensler

Read more …

“All three CEOs are expected to be seated with Trump and his administration officials on the platform.”

• Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg To Attend Trump Inauguration (JTN)

Tech giants Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg will all attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next week, and will be featured in a prominent spot together on the stage, according to NBC News. The three CEOs have all donated at least $1 million to Trump’s campaign or the Trump-Vance inaugural committee, and Musk is considered a close Trump ally. Musk, who runs and owns multiple companies including the social media platform X, will be co-leading the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) during the second Trump administration, and has donated more than $250 million to getting Trump reelected.

Bezos, who owns the Washington Post and is the owner and founder of Amazon, instructed his paper not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 elections. Amazon has also donated $1 million to the inaugural fund. Zuckerberg, who runs and founded the social media platform Facebook and its parent company Meta, recently reshuffled his company’s moderation policies in a move that some believe was done to appease the incoming Trump administration. He will also co-host a black tie reception on Monday night with Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson, per the Associated Press. Trump will officially be sworn into office on Capitol Hill on January 20. All three CEOs are expected to be seated with Trump and his administration officials on the platform.

Read more …

Trump wants TikTok as a negotiating tool with China.

“For all of those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump. The other side is closing it up, but I’m now a big star on TikTok.”

• Trump Mulls Executive Order To ‘Save Tiktok’ – WaPo (RT)

President-elect Donald Trump is considering issuing an executive order to delay the enforcement of a US law that mandates the sale or shutdown of TikTok, potentially granting the popular social media platform a temporary reprieve, according to The Washington Post. The current legislation, which was passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden last year, requires ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to divest from its US operations by January 19, 2025. Failure to comply would result in TikTok being removed from US app stores and losing access to essential infrastructure, effectively ceasing its operations in the country.

Trump has reportedly been “mulling ways to save the day,” including potentially issuing an executive order that would extend the compliance deadline by 60 to 90 days, allowing for further negotiations, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the matter. TikTok has already devised a plan to “go dark” for 170 million US users on Sunday. According to anonymous insiders cited by Reuters, the app would greet American users with a pop-up message explaining the ban and providing an option to download their data. This move would exceed the law’s requirements, which permit existing users to continue using the app without new downloads. The Supreme Court has yet to issue a ruling on TikTok’s appeal against the law. During recent oral arguments, the justices appeared to prioritize national security concerns over potential free speech implications.

During his first term, Trump attempted to ban TikTok, citing national security risks due to its Chinese ownership. However, during the recent campaign, he changed his mind, stating: “For all of those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump. The other side is closing it up, but I’m now a big star on TikTok.” In December, Trump reportedly met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, further signaling a shift in his stance toward the platform. Trump’s legal team has also requested the Supreme Court to halt the ban’s implementation, seeking additional time to pursue a political solution.

Read more …

“I am struggling to spot the difference between the extremists of the Right, and those who are trying to fight them.”

• Why Europe Fears Free Speech (Munchau)

We all know the old joke: when a European referendum delivers the “wrong” outcome, the country votes again until they get it “right”. The EU thought this would be the case after Brexit. But so far, no one’s laughing. If anything, things have got worse. Take Romania, which recently cancelled its presidential election when Calin Georgescu, leader of a nationalist Right coalition, won the first round. Thierry Breton, former French European Commissioner, revealed the EU’s mindset during a damning recent TV interview. “We did it in Romania and we will obviously do it in Germany if necessary,” he said. In other words, if you can’t beat the far-Right, ban them.

I disagree with almost everything Breton has ever said, but I am grateful to him for stating his case with such revealing clarity. During his time as industry commissioner in Brussels, from 2019 until last summer, when Emmanuel Macron replaced him with a more compliant figure, he was the driving force behind a series of laws designed to keep Europe in the digital dark ages. The most extreme of which is the Digital Services Act (DSA) which compels “very large online platforms”, such as X and Meta, to check facts and filter out fake news. But, thanks to Breton, the truth is out there. Europe’s ultimate aim isn’t to save public discourse, it is to suffocate far-Right parties by depriving them of the oxygen of information. The DSA isn’t even the last word in the EU’s anti-digital jihad. One of Ursula von der Leyen’s big ideas last year during the European election was the so-called “democracy shield” — effectively launching even more legislation to prevent outside interference in EU affairs.

This notion conjures up images of laser beams and light-sabre fights. And in some respects it’s not far from the truth: a frightened bloc needs a shield to protect itself from the encroaching enemy. Mark Zuckerberg is certainly on the attack. Last week he announced that he is abandoning fact-checking on his platforms — effectively defying the DSA. And he is betting on Donald Trump to protect him from the legal consequences. Given that J.D. Vance, the Vice President-elect, has already threatened to end US support for Nato if Europe tries to censor Elon Musk’s X, surely the same will apply to Facebook. And the EU is far too dependent on the US to be able to mount an effective campaign against any of America’s social media platforms once Trump is president. The DSA, hastily drawn up during the pandemic, not only misjudges the nature of the social media, it misjudges political power. It exposes Europe’s essential weakness before America.

This isn’t just a geopolitical battle, though. It is also a European one. The attempted clampdown reveals that there is something the bloc fears more than free speech: populism. MEPs found it hard enough to stomach Nigel Farage’s brutal outbursts when he was a member of the European Parliament. Now they have Musk breathing down their neck, endorsing candidates from the AfD, a party that sits on the far-Right in the European Parliament’s benches and which supports German withdrawal from the EU. The German media had a collective breakdown when Musk tweeted an endorsement for the AfD, interviewed Alice Weidel, the party’s co-leader, on X, and then endorsed her in an article for Die Welt. The op-ed editor of the German daily resigned in protest. And an article in another newspaper hysterically described Musk’s intervention as unconstitutional. That journalists would advocate censorship seems shocking, until one understands the role of journalism in continental European society. It operates firmly inside a narrow centrist political consensus, which spans all the parties from the centre-left to the centre-right. Naturally, the AfD does not get much airtime in the German media.

But while marginalised by traditional media, the AfD thrives on TikTok, where it has large following. So what irks the German media, and politicians from other parties, is that the censorship cartel is no longer functioning as well as it once did. In the US and in the UK, the once mighty legacy media have already lost their power. Hillary Clinton expressed the frustration perhaps most clearly when she said that social media companies must fact check, or else “we lose total control”. But Europe still lives in a twilight zone where the traditional media still basks in the dwindling sunset of power, trying to ignore social media rising on the other horizon. Like all the modern political battles in Europe, this is about protecting vested interests.

The Romanian case demonstrates how these restrictions on freedom of speech are the first salvos in a greater war of repression. The presidential elections there were cancelled on the grounds that a Russian-infested TikTok had misinformed voters. I am sure that the Russians were active. But it is shocking to think that an election was cancelled because someone lied on TikTok. Let’s be clear, there was no suggestion of any vote rigging. Georgescu won the first round of the election fair and square. But as with the laughable misperception in Brussels after the Brexit vote, the presumption behind the EU’s support for the nullification of the result, was that voters were too stupid to make up their own mind. The rerun is to take place on 4 May, followed by a run-off between the most successful candidate two weeks later. Georgescu is still the most likely candidate to win according to opinion polls, but the Romanian political establishment is still determined to find ways to disbar him, the most promising of which is the hope that he may have received undeclared funds.

There are similar patterns elsewhere. Marine Le Pen faces potential disqualification from the 2027 presidential elections following accusations of irregularities regarding her assistants in the European Parliament. More recently, Brussels was spooked by the victory in Austria of the Freedom Party, which managed to obtain 28.8% of the vote in the September general election. It surpassed a threshold at which point it became politically impossible for the other parties to form coalitions. Herbert Kickl, the FPÖ’s leader, is now likely to become Austria’s next chancellor. Meanwhile, in Germany, a group of 113 MPs has ganged up to ban the AfD. Their story is that the far-Right wants to destroy democracy. While the party is not yet polling high enough to frustrate yet another centrist coalition in Berlin after next month’s elections, Germany may only be a few percentage points away from an Austrian-style impasse.

Surely, though, the sensible approach to the rise of the AfD, the FPÖ and other parties of the Right is not to censor them, but to address the underlying problem that has made them so strong: persistent economic uncertainty, loss of purchasing power, and dysfunctional policies on migration. Failing that, why not co-opt parties of the far-Right as junior coalition partners as they did in Sweden and Finland? If Weidel were suddenly thrust into the job of economics minister, we would see whether she could defend her record in government. But the centrist parties in Germany and France do neither. They have erected political firewalls against the far-Right. And they are doubling down with the same old policies.

It’s an approach that will inevitably backfire. A banned Le Pen would be far more dangerous for the centrist establishment, and possibly even more extreme when she eventually gets to power. Likewise the AfD would surely be radicalised after a ban. Until then, the EU’s blunt weapons of choice — the legal bans, political firewalls, and censorship — will inflict more self-harm than good. In the pecking order of democratic rights, freedom of speech has a relatively low priority in Europe. Like the creatures in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, I am struggling to spot the difference between the extremists of the Right, and those who are trying to fight them.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Garland
https://twitter.com/i/status/1879521669326545175

 

 

Rescue

 

 

Encantadora
https://twitter.com/i/status/1879266144122753059

 

 

Shark attack

 

 

Snow cats

 

 

Penguin

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 Older Entries