Key Points

• Foundation Future Industries, a start-up founded in 2024, aims to leverage humanoid robots for military and industrial work, rather than household tasks and the service sector.

• The start-up has already tested its humanoid robots in Ukraine and is aiming to soon bring its technology to the U.S. military.

• The robotics company recently brought on Eric Trump, the son of the sitting president, as a chief strategy advisor.

As Silicon Valley races to build humanoid robots that can fold laundry and pour a latte, at least one start-up sees a very different use for the technology: war or other potentially hazardous and deadly jobs.

Meet Foundation Future Industries, a San Francisco-based robotics company with ties to the Trump family, developing ‘dual-use’ autonomous humanoid robots for both heavy industrial environments and military applications.

While the robots sound like something out of a Terminator-esque science fiction movie, they are nearing reality, with early iterations undergoing tests in Ukraine for potential use in Kyiv’s war against Russia.

Core to the company’s mission is the belief that humanoid robotics should be put towards humanity’s greatest challenges rather than household chores and service roles, Foundation CEO Sankaet Pathak told CNBC.

“I’m convinced the technology is reaching a level where it can replace jobs that are dangerous for humans to perform, and if you can do that, it’s the highest net good you can create out of all applications of robotics,” Pathak said.

Though Foundation operates in an increasingly crowded humanoid field, its explicit embrace of potential military uses for its technology has set it apart.

But the start-up has set ambitious targets for itself, with Pathak planning to scale production to thousands of units this year, and to begin frontline testing with the U.S. military within the next 18 months.

The plans and the firm’s growing ties to Washington represent yet another example of how artificial intelligence and robotics are beginning to transform modern warfare and become a focus of national security.

From Silicon Valley to Ukraine

Pathak is best known for previously leading Synapse, a controversial fintech platform that declared bankruptcy in 2024. Soon after, he started Foundation with Arjun Sethi, former CEO of Tribe Capital and Mike LeBlanc, a co-founder of Cobalt Robotics.

Pathak’s latest venture has also attracted some scrutiny after the company suggested it had close ties to General Motors and could receive investment from the automaker, claims GM later rejected.

Foundation would eventually gain more global recognition earlier this year when it sent two of its Phantom MK-1 units to Ukraine for a pilot demonstration, marking what the company described as the first known deployment of humanoid robots in a combat theater.

The ongoing tests, backed by the U.S. government and conducted with Ukrainian officials, focused on logistics in hazardous areas.

Ukraine was a natural debut, as its ongoing conflict with Russia has already emerged as a major test bed for robotics and AI in combat. The war, now in its fifth year, has seen the use of ground robots to deliver supplies to the front line, and autonomous and AI-augmented drones for precision strikes and reconnaissance.

According to Pathak, the MK-1 testing in Ukraine has already proved the robot’s potential to perform supply pickups, which often expose soldiers to danger.

But while the MK-1s help demonstrate the utility of the core technology, they are far from super soldiers, carrying only about a 44-pound payload, and lacking waterproofing and sufficient battery life to be deployed at scale.

Foundation aims to send new and improved robots to Ukraine this year in the form of its Phantom 2, which Pathak says will come with “superhuman abilities” and double the payload capacity of Phantom 1.

The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine declined to comment on the matter, while the U.S. Department of Defense did not respond to an inquiry.

Alignment with Washington

Foundation expects its tests in Ukraine to inform future work with the U.S. military. The start-up has already received government research contracts totaling $24 million for feasibility testing in inspection, logistics, and weapons handling across the Army, Navy and Air Force.

Pathak said conversations with government officials had shifted from research to how to scale the use of the robots. The CEO is aiming for Foundation to deploy its technology with the U.S. military and, if needed, on the front lines of conflicts within the next 12 to 18 months.

Notably, that goal will be carried out with Eric Trump, the second son of the sitting president, who recently joined the company as its chief strategy advisor — a move that has drawn scrutiny from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who alleged the firm’s government contracts were “corruption in plain sight.”

A Foundation spokesperson told CNBC that Eric Trump had been an investor in the firm before stepping in as an adviser, with the two parties having a shared vision of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.

Foundation has heavily leaned into its alignment with Washington’s interests, framing the importance of its tech in the broader geopolitical competition between the U.S. and China. The goal is to deliver “the best robots we can build” to the U.S. military — better than anything China has,” Pathak said.

While several American companies are working with the U.S. government to deploy autonomous robots for military applications, the Pentagon has yet to disclose the deployment of a humanoid robot for such purposes.

China, which has a number of leading humanoid robot companies, has also publicly funded and supported initiatives for the technology, primarily focused on industrial and economic applications. While Chinese military researchers have released reports on the potential of humanoid robots in the military, the extent of their trials remains unclear.

China’s military has previously showcased early iterations of AI-powered robotic dogs for combat, as well as motion-controlled humanoid robot soldiers.

The age of autonomous war

Proponents of humanoid technology in military and industrial fields argue that human-like robots are generally better suited than other forms of robotics to navigate real-world construction sites, logistics centers and war zones.

Kateryna Bondar, a senior fellow with the Wadhwani AI Center at CSIS, told CNBC that humanoid robots could theoretically provide certain upsides on the battlefield due to their autonomy and human-like dexterity.

“Modern urban combat spaces — where there are stairwells, ladders, basements and narrow corridors — were created for human movement, which could give humanoid systems an advantage over tracked or quadruped robots in certain scenarios,” Bondar said.

Still, there remain questions about the complexity and costs of manufacturing humanoids compared to other systems.

As humanoid robots move towards the battlefield, the technology has raised ethical concerns, particularly around the use of autonomous decision-making in combat when human lives are at stake.

Though most weaponized uses of the Phantom robots will retain some human confirmation in the decision loop, Pathak said Foundation’s robots will need to make fully autonomous decisions in certain time-critical scenarios.

Still, the U.S. military has already shown a willingness to adopt AI models, with the technology reportedly used to inform strikes and decision-making in its ongoing conflict with Iran.

A bigger hurdle for companies such as Foundation could be proving that their human-like robots can be more practical and cost-effective for military applications than other alternatives on the market — something many experts doubt.

“Making robots look like humans is a complex and expensive engineering challenge, and what Ukraine has taught us is the opposite — that we need the ability to adapt rapidly and manufacture quickly and cheaply,” said Melanie Sisson, a senior fellow with the Brookings Foreign Policy program.

What experts seem to agree on is that, regardless of shape or size, the age of AI robots in war is near.

“I expect tracked, flying and underwater robots to replace human forces,” said Toby Walsh, chief scientist at The University of New South Wales’s AI Institute.

However, it might be a “science fiction trope to expect humanoid terminator-style robots,” he said.

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by Annie Massa, Sophie Alexander and Bill Allison

(Bloomberg) -- SpaceX’s initial public offering will likely make President Donald Trump’s already wealthy administration even richer.

Ten officials ranging from special envoy Steve Witkoff to Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler reported financial interests in Elon Musk’s rocket company or in xAI, the artificial intelligence and social media firm it merged with in February, according to their most recent public financial disclosures.

In total, the federal staffers held SpaceX or xAI stock worth at least $9.9 million and as much as $43.8 million, according to the disclosures, which were made last year and list the value of assets in broad ranges. These officials could have sold all or part of their holdings since then without triggering additional disclosure requirements.

SpaceX stands out for the unprecedented size of its planned IPO, and for its close ties to government and members of the administration. The IPO, expected to happen as soon as next week, is set to make Musk the world’s first trillionaire if it achieves its targeted valuation of at least $1.8 trillion. It’s also expected to make billionaires of several company insiders and investors, while minting millions in wealth for employees.

The company is a major government contractor, with $4 billion in federal transactions in fiscal 2025. Last month, it was awarded an additional $6.5 billion in two contracts from the US Space Force to provide satellites for communications and monitoring airborne threats.

Musk, meanwhile, helped select dozens of people to fill contract-slashing and data-gathering roles throughout the federal government in his time running the Department of Government Efficiency. Many of them were his own employees, from SpaceX or other corners of his empire.

In Musk’s final month in Washington, Paul McInerny, a former SpaceX engineer, was named chief information officer of the Department of the Interior. McInerny reported the largest SpaceX stake of any official, holding between $5 million and $25 million. He didn’t have to divest, and instead received an ethics waiver to work on broad issues that could affect the company, filings show.

A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior said McInerny recuses himself from all matters involving his financial interests.

“Paul McInerny made the decision to serve our great country because he believes in the mission of the Trump administration and knows all of government can operate more efficiently for the American taxpayer,” the spokesperson said. “Mr. McInerny takes his ethical obligations seriously.”

Another high-profile SpaceX holder was Witkoff, who has worked on peace negotiations over Ukraine, Gaza and Iran. He disclosed assets of $1 million to $5 million in 3G Investors LLC, a vehicle whose only reported holding in the filing was SpaceX. A spokesperson for the White House didn’t comment on Witkoff’s disclosure.

In most cases, it’s unclear whether the officials have made changes to their holdings since they were reported. Though they’re legally required to report sales of certain assets no more than 45 days after the transaction — including stocks and bonds — private company holdings are exempt. New financial disclosures filed in May are slated to become public by mid-June.

‘No Analogs’

SpaceX is seeking to raise as much as $75 billion, which would make it the biggest public stock offering of all time. But government ethics attorneys said it’s more than the size of the IPO that makes it abnormal.

“This is just such a unicorn event,” said Caleb Burns, co-chair of law firm Wiley Rein LLP’s election law and government ethics practice. “It’s the biggest public offering ever, helmed by a onetime close ally of the president, who with his DOGE efforts had involvement with virtually every administrative agency in the federal government.”

“Historically, there are no analogs,” he added.

In at least one case, an appointee was required to divest from a position in SpaceX to meet ethics requirements. Kevin Warsh, who replaced Jerome Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve last month, held exposure to SpaceX through a fund affiliated with the Duquesne Family Office, led by billionaire investor Stan Druckenmiller. Warsh said in an ethics filing that he would divest from that fund before assuming his role at the central bank.

The Fed declined to comment beyond the ethics filing.

Elsewhere in Trump’s administration, officials revealed smaller holdings in Musk’s companies.

Loeffler, the former senator and current administrator of the Small Business Administration, disclosed an investment in xAI worth between $1 million and $5 million. Listed as an asset of the family office that invests for Loeffler and her husband, Intercontinental Exchange Inc. founder Jeffrey Sprecher, it was held in a UBS Group AG account through a Valor Equity Partners fund whose sole investment was xAI, according to the filing. Valor was founded by longtime Musk associate Antonio Gracias, and is one of the largest holders of SpaceX after Musk.

The SBA didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Michael Lynch, a former SpaceX employee who’s now deputy administrator of the General Services Administration — a hub managing contracting and properties that the federal government owns — held between $500,000 and $1 million worth of SpaceX, filings show.

“All appropriate ethics policies and processes were followed regarding this matter,” a spokesperson for the GSA said in an emailed statement. “Deputy Administrator Lynch is leveraging his industry leadership experience to help federal agencies buy and use smart technology solutions at the best value for American taxpayers.”

Stacey Feinberg, ambassador to Luxembourg, reported a financial interest in xAI through a fund run by 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner. Her interest in the fund was worth between $500,000 and $1 million. Like McInerny, she received approval to retain her stake, with the government determining the likelihood of any overlap between her duties and the company’s interests was “remote.”

US ambassadors to Ireland, the Czech Republic and Portugal also reported stakes in SpaceX and xAI.

A spokesperson for the State Department said all government officials, including ambassadors, must comply with ethics disclosure requirements and legal obligations.

Reilly Steel, associate professor of law at Columbia University, said he’s “unaware of another IPO in recent years in which so many top government officials have a financial interest.”

Interior Department

Ethics officials must weigh federal appointees’ financial interests carefully when it comes to holdings that do business with the government.

“There are recusal obligations that can apply to address any perceived conflicts of interest,” said Burns at Wiley Rein, “but it’s not an easy assessment.”

McInerny, who made between $1 million and $5 million selling some of his SpaceX stock in 2024 and 2025, worked in software at SpaceX supporting early Dragon and Falcon-9 missions, according to the Department of the Interior’s website. He now stewards all data and technology at the department, which manages hundreds of millions of acres of federal lands, environmental permitting and other responsibilities.

SpaceX interacts with the DOI on several fronts, including as a minor contractor. The National Park Service uses its Starlink satellites. SpaceX has also sought approvals for projects: In Texas, it asked the US Fish and Wildlife Service, an agency of the DOI, for permission to install utility lines and a road near a wildlife refuge.

McInerny underscored to ethics officials that offloading his SpaceX shares would be complex. As long as it’s a private company, SpaceX controls when shareholders can sell and how much of their holdings they can offload, according to his ethics waiver. The government gave him clearance to weigh in on matters of “general applicability” that could potentially affect his own financial interests in SpaceX, in order to continue carrying out his role, according to filings.

The arrangement merits close attention, according to Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight.

“It may be legal, but it’s not a best practice,” he said. “This requires daily oversight. The best practice would be to get out of it to remove even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

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by Marc Friedman

Self-government, at its deepest level, is the belief that people and communities possess the wisdom and capacity to govern their own lives without coercion, centralized control, or force imposed by others.

It’s an idea rooted in sovereignty, voluntary cooperation, personal responsibility, and the conviction that human beings often solve problems more intelligently, compassionately, and creatively when solutions emerge organically from the ground up rather than being mandated from afar.

The greatest obstacle to this philosophy of freedom is not that its principles are flawed, but that the language surrounding them often feels abstract, ideological, and disconnected from everyday life. Too often, as advocates of self-government, we speak in theories, policy jargon, and intellectual frameworks, while failing to recognize that ordinary people are struggling with mortgages, family challenges, rising costs, and communities that no longer feel connected.

I believe that if we want people to truly understand the living heartbeat of self-government, we must move beyond abstractions and speak in human realities. This means sharing concrete examples of how freedom has long operated in neighborhoods, friendships, families, churches, businesses, and local communities, well before distant institutions imposed one-size-fits-all solutions.

To understand why this message so often fails, and how we can make it resonate again, we need only look across the backyard fence.

An Analogy From Across the Fence

John leaned against the wooden fence that separated his yard from Mary’s. The evening air was cool, and his neighbor Mary was busy potting geraniums. John had been reading extensively about decentralized authority and individual liberty, and he felt an urgent need to share his thoughts about a new municipal proposal to heavily regulate home-based businesses in their town.

“Mary,” John began, “did you see the new city council agenda? They want to mandate expensive permits for anyone running a business from their house. Personally, I believe the city has no right to control this, as it violates our natural rights and pushes us down a slippery slope toward total collectivism. We need to stand up and defend our absolute property rights.”

Mary paused, holding her garden spade in midair, and looked at John with a mixture of confusion and mild defensiveness. “I hear you, John. My sister across town runs a small accounting firm from her spare bedroom. But my neighbor down the street runs an unpermitted car repair operation out of his driveway. There are loud power tools running at all hours of the day and night, oil spilling into the storm drains, and customers blocking my driveway. The city needs to do something to keep our neighborhood orderly and clean. Some rules are necessary for the common good.”

John shook his head, frustrated. “You’re missing the forest for the trees, Mary. The common good is a myth used to justify tyranny. If a neighbor causes actual damage, that is an issue for civil courts. But preemptive regulation destroys the market process and violates individual autonomy. We must oppose the regulation on principle, or we lose our freedom.”

Mary sighed, turned back to her flowers, and muttered something about needing to finish her gardening before dark. The conversation was over.

The Righteousness Trap

John walked away frustrated, certain he had defended the cause of liberty with passion and precision, yet somehow feeling as though he had lost ground. The reality struck him that Mary seemed even more entrenched in her position than when the conversation began.

As he made his way back toward his porch, an uncomfortable realization settled over him: He had spoken for nearly five straight minutes without asking Mary a single question. In his effort to defend freedom, he had completely bypassed her lived experience, her fears, and the realities shaping her point of view.

What he thought had sounded principled and persuasive had likely come across as something else entirely. He appeared less like a concerned neighbor having a conversation and more like a lecturer delivering a monologue.

Many advocates of liberty fall into this “righteousness trap” without realizing it. We become so focused on being factually and intellectually correct that we forget persuasion is emotional before it is intellectual. We mistake winning debates for building trust. Over time, this creates a movement filled with brilliant intellectual arguments but very few converts.

When we lead with rigid ideology, people instinctively put up their defenses. They are no longer hearing a conversation or even a policy proposal. What they often take in is an unspoken demand to abandon the worldview, experiences, and values that help them make sense of their lives.

Most people do not move through the world thinking in political theories or abstract philosophical frameworks. They live through relationships, responsibilities, fears, hopes, and deeply held human values. If we fail to speak to those realities first, even the most principled ideas can come across as cold, distant, or threatening.

Speaking in Human Terms

I believe breakthroughs come when personal freedom is explained through concerns people already carry in their daily lives. Instead of demanding that someone adopt a new philosophical framework, this values-based approach identifies the values they already hold and demonstrates how self-government best fulfills them.

Most people are not secretly longing for ideological purity. They are trying to protect something tangible: their safety, their dignity, their family, their sense of fairness and decency, and the people they care about.

There is, therefore, a deep emotional resonance when the focus is on widely shared values. The most potent of these values are safety, fairness, and compassion. By grounding freedom in everyday human concerns, philosophy becomes accessible and the argument becomes persuasive and deeply appealing.

Reframing Safety at a Human Scale

Safety is often viewed as the primary justification for state intervention. This messaging approach, however, ignores a citizen’s legitimate fear of disruption, like Mary’s concern over midnight power tools and hazardous oil spills. To reframe safety, we must communicate through shared values and show that top-down government solutions often create centralized points of failure.

Government bureaucracies often treat every situation as if it were identical because standardized rules are easier to administer than nuanced judgments. But human beings do not live standardized lives. Thus, the more distant the decision maker becomes, the less responsive the solution feels.

Self-government works best on a human scale, where people can actually see the consequences of their actions and where accountability is personal rather than bureaucratic. True safety comes from mutual responsibility, targeted rule enforcement, and community cooperation.

Leveling the Playing Field of Fairness

Fairness is one of the deepest values people carry, yet advocates of freedom often undermine their own message by speaking about inequality in cold, abstract terms. Telling people that life is unfair and that the market will sort everything out may be philosophically consistent, but it rarely connects with the lived experiences of ordinary people trying to build stable lives.

A far more human approach is to show how bureaucratic systems frequently tilt the playing field against the very people they claim to protect. Large corporations can absorb layers of regulations because they can afford teams of lawyers, accountants, and compliance officers. The ordinary small business cannot.

The single mother trying to open a small bookkeeping business, the neighborhood food vendor, or the one-person independent contractor often finds themselves buried under rules, fees, permits, and paperwork that quietly price them out before they even begin.

That is where the conversation about fairness becomes real. It is fundamentally unfair to create sweeping compliance laws that punish thousands of honest people simply to catch a handful of bad actors. In practice, those systems often protect the powerful while making it harder for everyday people to pursue independence, ownership, and self-determination.

Reclaiming the Monopoly on Compassion

Compassion is perhaps the most misaligned value in political discourse. Proponents of state expansion often claim a monopoly on caring for the vulnerable. The response should not be a cold dismissal of social safety nets, but rather a translation of principles into lived experience to demonstrate how true compassion requires human connection.

State programs are mechanical and transactional. Self-government enables communities, charities, and neighbors to provide personalized, dignified support. It recognizes that the best way to help a struggling neighbor is to remove the costly bureaucratic barriers that prevent them from earning an honest living.

The Power of Everyday Cooperation

Most people already participate in forms of self-government every day without calling it that. Parents coordinate carpools without state supervision. Neighbors shovel each other’s sidewalks after snowstorms. Churches organize meal deliveries for sick families. Open-source programmers scattered across the globe collaborate voluntarily to build software used by millions. Human beings are far more capable of peaceful cooperation than modern politics often assumes.

Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed that early Americans formed voluntary associations for nearly every social need imaginable. If a problem emerged, people gathered, organized, contributed, and worked together to solve it. Long before sprawling bureaucracies inserted themselves into everyday life, communities relied on cooperation, mutual responsibility, and local initiative to meet challenges directly.

That spirit has never fully disappeared. Across the nation today, people still step in to help neighbors after disasters, organize food drives, mentor children, support local businesses, build community organizations, and care for one another without waiting for distant institutions to intervene. The instinct toward voluntary cooperation remains deeply woven into the American character.

The Breakthrough

Equipped with a better understanding of how to speak in human terms, John resolved to try a completely different approach the following evening when he saw Mary tending her garden.

“Mary,” John said gently, “I was thinking about what you said yesterday about the neighbor with the car repair setup. You’re completely right that it is unfair when someone blocks your driveway and leaves oil everywhere. Everyone deserves to feel safe and comfortable in their own home.”

Mary looked up, surprised and pleased by his acknowledgment. “Exactly, John. It’s just stressful dealing with the noise and the mess.”

“I completely understand,” John replied. “That is actually why I am so concerned about this new city council permit proposal. I worry it is going to hurt the wrong people and fail to fix the real problem. My main concern is fairness. If the city passes this, your sister will have to pay hundreds of dollars and fill out mountains of paperwork just to do accounting in her spare bedroom. Meanwhile, the guy causing the actual disruption will probably just ignore the law anyway. It punishes the innocent while doing nothing to stop the bad actor.”

Mary frowned, processing this. “I had not thought about how it would affect my sister. She is barely scraping by as it is. It does seem unfair to penalize her.”

“Right,” John continued. “And true safety and peace in our neighborhood does not come from a city inspector who lives miles away. It comes from us. What if, instead of a sweeping new law that harms local families, we used existing nuisance ordinances to target the specific issues of noise and pollution? That way, we protect our neighborhood’s safety and cleanliness without destroying the livelihoods of honest people who just want to work from home.”

Mary smiled and nodded. “You know, John, that makes a lot of sense. Focus on the actual problem instead of making everyone pay the price. I think I’ll write an email to the council about that.”

Cultivating Capable Citizens

By changing his approach and rethinking his language, John was finally able to break through and capture Mary’s attention. He did not abandon his principles or water them down. He simply learned how to translate them into terms that connected with Mary’s existing values and lived experiences.

In doing so, he helped her see that self-government is not an anarchic void where chaos reigns unchecked, but a voluntary and cooperative social arrangement where people, families, and communities retain the freedom and responsibility to handle many of their own affairs fairly, peacefully, and effectively.

At its best, self-government fosters a culture where people no longer wait for permission to improve their lives, strengthen their neighborhoods, or solve problems within their communities. It cultivates capable, self-directed citizens rather than passive dependents conditioned to look outward for every solution.

Instead of automatically handing every disagreement, hardship, or social challenge over to distant bureaucracies and institutions, self-government encourages neighbors, families, and local communities to work together directly, voluntarily, and responsibly. In doing so, it strengthens not only individual freedom but also the bonds of trust, cooperation, and shared responsibility that hold healthy societies together.

Most importantly, self-government replaces a culture dominated by compliance, dependency, and coercion with one rooted in dignity, trust, initiative, creativity, personal agency, mutual respect, and shared responsibility. It calls people to become active participants in shaping their communities rather than passive recipients of directives handed down from afar.

If we truly want to build a society grounded in liberty and mutual respect, we must stop approaching every disagreement as a debate to be won. Instead, we must learn how to speak to the human heart, not just the political mind.

The next morning, the fence between John and Mary still stood physically, but something far more important had begun to disappear: the suspicion, the defensiveness, and the quiet instinct to see one another not as neighbors with shared concerns, but as ideological enemies living on opposite sides of the divide.

I believe this is how self-government actually begins, not in think tanks or comment sections, but in ordinary conversations where people feel heard instead of cornered.

The future of liberty will not be won through viral outrage or ideological purity tests. Victory will instead be won neighbor by neighbor, conversation by conversation, through people who demonstrate that freedom is not chaos, but mutual responsibility rooted in trust, dignity, and human cooperation.

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by Rebekah Barnett

If a scientific paper offers a counter-narrative conclusion, should it be deleted from the record?

Science publisher Elsevier says yes, if the topic is vaccines, because allowing doctors and parents to read it would pose a risk to public health.

This raises the question: Is censorship of science really the best way to ensure public health and safety?

The paper under scrutiny is a peer-reviewed analysis of three decades of vaccine adverse event reporting data which found that 75 percent of sudden infant deaths occurred within seven days of a vaccination, a statistically significant finding.

Author Neil Z. Miller reviewed the medical literature linking SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) to vaccines and proposed several pathogenic mechanisms, concluding that, “While the findings in this paper are not proof of an association between infant vaccines and infant deaths, they are highly suggestive of a causal relationship.”

The main finding from the paper, titled ‘Vaccines and sudden infant death: An analysis of the VAERS database 1990–2019 and review of the medical literature,’ is represented in the below image, which was widely shared on social media since its publication in the journal Toxicology Reports, in June 2021.

Nearly five years later, the paper has been removed, a highly unusual step reserved only for papers that may present legal risks to the publisher, Elsevier, or that could pose a serious health risk. Usually, serious concerns are dealt with either through the publication of a correction, an expression of concern or, in the most egregious cases, a retraction. Removal differs in that it essentially deletes the paper from the scientific record.¹

According to a 9 April notice, the removal was triggered by reader complaints over “potential research errors and methodological flaws,” leading an investigation by the journal. The main sticking point was the use of data from VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System), a passive reporting system to which anyone can make a report, to infer a correlation between vaccination and SIDS.

The notice states that Miller’s response during the investigation “did not satisfactorily address” concerns raised. “In light of these concerns, and given the potential implications for medical practice, the Editor-in-Chief has decided that the article should be removed. The author disagrees with this decision and disputes the grounds for removal.”

In a further comment to Retraction Watch, an Elsevier spokesperson confirmed that the paper was removed because “the recommendations and conclusions presented in the paper may pose potential risks to public health and could potentially be applied in clinical practice resulting in harm to patients.”

This is striking given that paper explicitly states that “this paper does not prove an association between infant vaccines and sudden infant deaths.”

Miller qualified that because the article “reveals unusual patterns and safety signals highly suggestive of a causal relationship,” “additional investigation is warranted,” as well as “finding ways to increase vaccine safety, reduce inaccurate or inconsistent cause-of-death certification practices, and support families in their quest to make genuinely informed healthcare decisions.”

It is hard to see how any of these recommendations could do anything other than improve public health and clinical practice.

In an email, Miller told me that he “strongly opposed the removal of my paper,” calling the decision “unjustified.”

The problem with VAERS data

VAERS is the US national passive vaccine surveillance system, the purpose of which is to “detect possible signals of adverse events associated with vaccines,” according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Anyone can submit a report to VAERS — patients, caregivers, doctors, pharmacists, even lawyers. On the other hand, if a patient experiences a post-vaccine side effect and a report is not voluntarily submitted to VAERS, it is a proverbial tree falling in the forest with no witness.

Thus, VAERS captures reports of adverse events that occurred after vaccination, but it does not capture all adverse events and it cannot establish that the vaccine caused the event.²

The CDC states that correlation alone does not constitute a signal, and regarding SIDS specifically, that clustering deaths close to infant vaccinations is likely coincidental because, “At this age, infants are at greatest risk for certain medical events, including high fevers, seizures, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).”

The fact is that public health agencies and their defenders want to highlight the limitations of VAERS when it benefits them, but gloss over them when it doesn’t:

Authorities and their sanctioned researchers are allowed to “investigate” correlations between VAERS reports and vaccines and produce findings that the vaccines had nothing to do with anything, but independent researchers are not to use the data at all.

As noted by Retraction Watch, Miller’s article is just one of a number of vaccine-critical studies featuring VAERS data that has come under scrutiny in recent years. These include one retracted by Cureus which called for a moratorium on mRNA Covid vaccines, and another retracted by Toxicology Reports which questioned, “Why are we vaccinating children against COVID-19?”

A third under investigation by publisher Taylor & Francis, was incorrectly described by Retraction Watch as “claiming to find DNA contamination in COVID-19 vaccines that was based on VAERS data.” In fact, the DNA contamination finding was based on lab work, however VAERS data provides specific lot information along with reports of medical incidents after vaccination, allowing the scientists to correlate batches with high DNA contamination reads with potential real-world impacts as reported to VAERS.

Cynics might speculate that it benefits the vaccine industry and public health agencies promoting vaccine uptake to keep VAERS exactly as is, limitations and all.

A 2007-2010 investigation into VAERS conducted by Harvard for the US Government which found that fewer than one percent of post-vaccine adverse events were reported to VAERS recommended that “proactive, spontaneous, automated adverse event reporting” linked with electronic health records and other information systems could improve the speed and accuracy of identifying the risks of pharmaceutical drugs.

Conspicuously, the researchers claimed that the CDC was “no longer responsive” to their “multiple requests” to continue the investigation, and a planned randomised trial comparing an improved surveillance system to the existing VAERS never happened.

No one in the US Government has since shown serious interest in improving VAERS until US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jnr. identified implementing recommendations from the Harvard investigation as a priority.

VAERS and SIDS

While VAERS data cannot prove a causal relationship between vaccination and SIDS deaths, Miller argues that temporal associations should be considered alongside potential biological explanations for any correlations that are apparent.

“The reason infants are at greatest risk for medical events at this age is precisely because they receive multiple vaccinations — that have never been tested in combination — at a time when their immune, neurological, and respiratory systems are still immature,” he told me (emphasis Miller’s).

Miller said that he acknowledged the potential of reporting bias — where parents and doctors may be more likely to report SIDS deaths closer to vaccination than weeks later — in the limitations section of his paper.

But that potential reporting bias should be taken alongside the biological plausibility of an “an incubation period,” whereby vaccinations can, according to various experts referenced in the paper, trigger a cascade of physiological responses that peak within 24-48 hours after vaccination.

Miller said that the smaller proportion of infant deaths reported on Day 1 and Day 3 post-vaccination compared to the peak on Day 2 was statistically significant and “strongly suggests that reporting bias cannot fully explain the clustering of infant deaths and SIDS cases in the early post-vaccination period.” If parents were simply reporting deaths near vaccination opportunistically, you would expect Day 1 to have the most reports, not Day 2.

Moreover, Miller references seven studies and two confidential reports which display similar distribution of sudden infant death reports following vaccination, highlighting that this finding is not unique to his analysis of VAERS data. These studies comprise of passive data collection and case reports across multiple countries in relation to a range of different vaccines.

The GSK (formerly GlaxoSmithKline) confidential post-marketing surveillance data relating to the Infanrix hexa vaccine, from 2011 and 2015, is the most damning. Miller attests that the manufacturer’s own internal reports showed that 97 percent and 98 percent, respectively, of sudden infant deaths occurred in the first 10 days post-vaccination.

According to a critique published in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (Puliyel & Sathyamala, 2018) and cited by Miller, GSK in a sleight of hand calculated the comparative ‘expected’ rate of SIDS deaths according to doses distributed, not administered, thus likely inflating the expected rate of deaths. Also, no active surveillance was conducted, and deaths acknowledged in an earlier report were eliminated from a later one. GSK concluded that SIDS deaths did not exceed the expected rate and that its vaccine was safe: regulators accepted this at face value.³

On the subject of expected background rates, Miller acknowledges that population-level SIDS rates would be a useful comparative metric, but notes that with immunisation coverage above 90 percent in the US, a meaningful unvaccinated baseline is challenging to quantify.

Miller also acknowledges that while some studies have found a correlation between vaccination and SIDS, other studies have not. One wonders if any papers in the latter category have been subject to campaigns for their deletion from the scientific record.

Timing suggests social media popularity was a factor in removal

According to Miller, whose LinkedIn page says he is a psychology graduate who has been researching and publishing on vaccine safety for some forty years, the complaints he was asked to respond to were brought from a single person soon after publication.

However, Miller was not notified of the complaints until December 2025. During that year, high-profile vaccine-skeptics Dr Peter McCullough and Dr Pierre Kory shared posts about Miller’s paper on their Substacks and discussed its findings on social media. The image at the top of this post showing the clustering of SIDS deaths within days of vaccination in particular was shared widely on social media sites.

In February 2026, Miller was informed by the publisher, Elsevier, that despite his thorough responses to concerns raised, Editor-in-Chief Professor Lawrence Lash had decided that the findings of the article “constitute potentially unsafe research for medical practice,” warranting a removal rather than a correction.

Is the Editor seriously suggesting that medical practitioners are too stupid to understand what VAERS is, and how the data should be weighed alongside other scientific data and in the broader context of the scientific discourse around vaccines and SIDS?

Lash, the Founding Editor of the journal, is a highly-cited Professor of Pharmacology at Wayne State University. It is unlikely that he genuinely believes his peers are so dumb.

More likely, this was a political retraction. Prior to its removal, Miller’s paper had been cited only 12 times in the scientific literature, according to Semantic Scholar. Its primary impact was clearly in the public sphere, not the scientific.

If this is the case — and we have seen journals remove valid peer-reviewed articles before due to social media virality, as I have previously reported — then this is yet another instance of politics dictating the bounds of scientific discourse.

EXCLUSIVE REPORT: Forced retraction of Covid vaccine cancer-risk study, scientist alleges

Rebekah Barnett

·

1 de junio de 2024

Read full story

It’s worth noting that the Editor-in-Chief of the journal at the time of the article’s peer-review and publication was not Professor Lash, but the extraordinarily highly-cited Greek Professor of Toxicology Aristidis Tsatsakis, senior author on the aforementioned and now retracted article, “Why are we vaccinating children against COVID-19?”

Professor Tsatsakis said in an email that he believed his paper had been “retracted unjustifiably” due to “the policy [of] that period.” He noted that he has published several books with Elsevier which is a “huge publisher” and that “people representing Elsevier at various times can do mistakes.” He characterised Professor Lash as reputable scientist who acted as a “kind of yes Sir” Editor-in-Chief under these circumstances.

The Streisand effect strikes again

Obviously, the purpose of removing or retracting a scientific paper is to delegitimise it. The fact that trust in science, public health, medicine, and the media is in decline suggests that the target audience for this kind of tactic is shrinking.

In fact, striking a paper from the scientific record can have the opposite effect, said Dr McCullough, who has himself been subject to apparently political retractions.

“We have found that retraction of valid papers results in greater awareness of the manuscript, more reads, downloads and citations, and intensified concern over bias and bio-pharmaceutical capture of the peer-review publication process,” Dr McCullough told me over email.

It is certainly the case that retracted papers can become internet lore, with the effort to suppress them creating a Streisand effect and sometimes propelling the authors into the social media influencer-sphere.

Dr McCullough is case in point: Several Covid vaccine-critical papers on which the prolifically cited Dr McCullough was a contributing author have been withdrawn or retracted. His board certifications in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease were recommended to be revoked by the American Board of Internal Medicine for “casting doubt on the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines,” though Dr McCullough says he resigned before any revocation took effect.⁴ Yet, his social media popularity continues to increase. He now boasts a following of 1.2 million on X and 137,000 subscribers on Substack

Nevertheless, not all authors are so naturally able to turn to social media to communicate their message to a more receptive audience. It is frustrating to authors who labor to contribute to the scientific discourse to have their work excluded. Papers citing articles that have been retracted or withdrawn must update their references accordingly, and the authors’ records are stained.

Most importantly, science cannot progress when inconvenient findings are deleted from the record.

Scientists, medical professionals and parents should be able to read about what VAERS data show, and Neil Z. Miller’s analysis of what this means for vaccination and SIDS. They should also be able to read rebuttals of Miller’s work in the peer-reviewed literature.

Unless science is a religion with unquestionable dogma, in which case Miller’s paper should be deleted and the catechism “we believe in vaccines” published in its place.

Miller is now turning his attention to a book, which will include the study removed from Toxicology Reports, and will give insight into the removal process with the publication of Miller’s correspondence with the Editor-in-Chief and a representative of Elsevier’s ethics committee.

Miller has previously published the books Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective? and Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies: 400 Important Scientific Papers Summarized for Parents and Researchers.

The paper ‘Vaccines and sudden infant death: An analysis of the VAERS database 1990–2019 and review of the medical literature’ by Neil Z. Miller (2021) is embedded in PDF form below. Feel free to download and share.

Children’s Health Defense did a good summary of the paper which you can read here.

Vaccinesandsuddeninfantdeathmillernzjune2021

1.36MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Amendment Tuesday 2 June 2026: This article has been amended to note that Dr McCullough disputes that his certifications in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease have been revoked by ABIM.

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Etienne Note: See our investigation THE GREATEST THEFT IN HUMAN HISTORY! How the Banks and "Government" Will Steal At Least $2.73 Million From Every Working American… “Legally” at ArtOfLiberty.org/inflation

by Michael

U.S. households are being financially squeezed at a level that we have never seen before. I have often said that we are in a long-term cost of living crisis that never seems to end, and that is not an exaggeration at all. Just about everything has been getting more expensive in recent years, and as a result our standard of living has been going down. In many areas of the country, you now have to earn six figures just to live a basic middle class lifestyle. The numbers that I am going to share with you in this article may be hard to believe, but they are very real. Inflation has been out of control for many years, and hard working American families are being absolutely crushed.

For the first time in U.S. history, the average monthly mortgage payment now exceeds $2,000…

Homeowners faced a sticker shock at the end of 2025 as the average monthly mortgage payment topped $2,000 for the first time—a historic milestone reflecting the combined pressure of high home prices and elevated interest rates.

In the fourth quarter of last year, the average payment for existing mortgage holders climbed to $2,005, representing a striking 44% surge compared to 2021, according to the latest quarterly outstanding mortgage report from the Realtor.com® economic research team.

In other words, the typical homeowner saw their monthly mortgage payment jump by more than $600 in just three years, an eye-watering surge.

Take another look at those figures.

All along, federal bureaucrats have been feeding us numbers that show that the inflation rate is very low, but the average monthly mortgage payment has risen by 44 percent just since 2021.

Needless to say, someone is not telling us the truth.

But that isn’t even the worst part.

Today, what the average American family is paying for health insurance each month is even higher than the average monthly mortgage payment…

The numbers don’t lie. The average American family now pays over $2,200 a month for health insurance; surprisingly, that’s more than the average monthly mortgage payment of $2,000. Let that sink in. Keeping a roof over your head costs less than keeping your family covered.

That is not a market failure. That is a system rigged by liberals and government bureaucrats designed to benefit corporate giants at the expense of everyday Americans. Premiums are soaring, and insurers are cashing in. It needs to stop.

Americans are noticing. A recent poll found that a staggering 90 percent of Americans say health insurance companies have too much control and should be broken up, with 74 percent strongly agreeing. The overwhelming majority of Americans know there is a problem. They are screaming for justice.

That is outrageous.

Is there anyone out there that wants to attempt to defend how expensive health insurance has become?

Our system is so broken, and the politicians in Washington have given up on trying to fix it.

Meanwhile, pretty much everything else is becoming more expensive too.

And thanks to the war in Iran, American households have had to shell out an extra 100 billion dollars in just three months…

The war in Iran has cost US households $100 billion in three months, Moody’s Analytics says.

Now in its fourth month, the conflict has cost nearly $750 per household. The increased cost to consumers has mostly been felt in energy prices, but the inflation picture continues to deteriorate the longer the war drags on without a resolution in sight. What’s more, Moody’s says that tailwinds for household like Donald Trump’s tax cuts have been offset by war-fueled cost increased.

This is money that is coming directly out of your pockets.

The rising cost of gasoline alone has sucked an extra 400 dollars out of the typical U.S. household…

According to researchers at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs, Americans have paid an additional $51.7 billion in gasoline and diesel costs since the conflict began on February 28, equivalent to nearly $400 per household. And Moody’s Analytics, in findings shared with CNBC, puts this figure even higher, at $450.

There is no end in sight for the crisis in the Middle East, and that means gasoline prices are likely to go significantly higher.

Commercial oil inventories are being rapidly depleted, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is “dropping toward levels not seen since the 1980s”…

America’s emergency oil reserve is dropping toward levels not seen since the 1980s, as the United States rapidly drains its supplies to stabilize global energy markets rattled by the war with Iran.

According to the latest report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the U.S. has 365.1 million barrels of oil sitting in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in the week ending May 22, compared to 374.2 million a week prior and down by over 50 million barrels since the conflict began on February 28.

The price of oil has a direct impact on prices for just about everything else, and so that is really bad news.

As ordinary Americans are being squeezed harder and harder, household debt has been rising and the credit card delinquency rate has spiked to a very alarming level…

According to data released by the New York Fed in May, total U.S. household debt climbed to an all-time high of $18.8 trillion in the first quarter of 2026. Much of this is housing debt, and credit card balances dropped slightly over the period, but the rising total has coincided with an increase in late payments.

The percentage of credit card balances at least 90 days delinquent reached 13.1 percent in the first quarter, up 0.4 percent from the previous one and reaching its highest rate in 15 years.

Millions upon millions of Americans are working as hard as they can and it still isn’t enough.

To many people, it just seems like there is no way that they can win, and so many are choosing to simply drop out of the game.

In fact, one out of every three American men are no longer in the workforce at all…

The number of American men participating in the workforce has fallen to one of its lowest levels in nearly two decades, according to new federal labor statistics.

Just 66 percent of men age 20 and older were employed or actively seeking work as of April, according to data released earlier this month by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure has dropped sharply from 73 percent in 2006 and now sits near levels last seen during the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis.

The numbers mean roughly one in three American men are no longer in the workforce.

This is what a crumbling economy looks like.

Only 66 percent of American men that are at least 20 years old are working.

How low does that number have to drop for us to admit that we have a historic crisis on our hands?

I have heard from so many readers that are feeling more financial stress right now than they ever have in their entire lives.

That isn’t a coincidence.

Decades of incredibly foolish decisions have resulted in a sl0w-motion economic decline that has really started to pick up speed in recent years.

Now the pain is beginning to feel like it is unbearable, but the truth is that our problems are only going to intensify from here.

Continue reading…

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by Patrick Tucker

PRAGUE, Czech Republic–A small but growing number of European officials and analysts are saying what four years ago was unthinkable: Ukraine isn’t just surviving its grueling war with Russia, it is in some ways thriving and may even be on a path to victory.

This isn’t yet captured in headlines—for example, about last weekend’s barrage of Russian drones and missiles around Ukraine—but in the details, like how some 90 percent were intercepted.

Several long-term trends have shifted in Ukraine’s favor, and the core reason is its fierce focus on AI and robotics.

In the crucible of war, Ukraine has developed drones and ground robots that can hold territory—even take it back. Some are fully controlled by humans, like supply robots and medical-evacuation vehicles. But an increasing number are controlled in at least some aspects by dozens of AI products, from guidance packages on aerial drones to decision aids at the highest levels. Take the TFL-1 module, which can enable a one-way drone to function autonomously after a human has selected its target, reducing its susceptibility to jamming and other defenses. Its manufacturer, a Ukrainian company called The Fourth Law, says TFL-1 makes a drone four times more likely to hit its target.

Just as important as the tech are the new tactics. Given unusual latitude to experiment, Ukrainian fighters began to develop robot-forward infantry concepts, like combined-arms attacks by airborne and ground systems, “more than a year ago. Right now, we’re massively starting to implement this,” said Davyd Aloian, deputy secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, the coordinating body on domestic and international security, in an interview.

Ukraine and its partners are also steaming ahead on new concepts for highly autonomous defenses against Russian drones, combining ISR sensors and AI to detect and identify enemy drones in less time and with more certainty.

“All of the systems are being linked with each other and with people” to create a distributed network with interceptor drones at various locations to be activated when needed, Aloian said. “One day we will have only like 10 guys who are just going to be responsible for approving interception. And it will automatically go direct to the target.”

The human operators will be dispersed as well. “Everything can be controlled from Kyiv, Lviv, from cities in other countries,” he said.

Ukraine’s advantages go beyond weapons and tactics. It is more willing than Russia—or even Kyiv’s Western backers—to rebuild its doctrine, acquisition, and resupply systems around autonomous warfare.

Countries that fail to follow suit risk disaster, one of Ukraine’s top dronemakers warned attendees at the GLOBSEC conference here.

“It’s not what happened to Ukraine”—meaning Russia’s barrage of Shahed drones—that “should scare us in Europe,” said Swarmer CEO Serhii Kupriienko.

Instead, Kupriienko said, people should be scared by how quickly a middling military—in this case, Ukraine’s—developed the ability to inflict precise, devastating, and long-range damage.

“We are behind by literally 10 years or 20 years” in some defense-technology areas, such as satellite imagery, Kupriienko said, and yet his country has climbed a capability curve that just two years ago seemed insurmountable. So could others, he said.

“The answer is always AI solutions and integrating the AI into even the daily routine work within the bureaucracy,” he said.

Ukraine has also developed a defense industry that can keep up with the Russian threat. Its success is reflected not only on the battlefield, but in the growing number of foreign investors who see potential in defense products developed in and with Ukraine.

“We have evolved since 2022, the industry has and our defense has as well. Right now we are able to provide not only [large quantities of drone] assets but everything what is needed to build out the ecosystem,” including parts and production, training, modification, etc. Aloian said.

Strike drones FTW

Ukraine’s strike drones, more than any other factor, have helped counter a key Russian advantage: a large population of economically desperate young men and a comparative willingness to discount the cost of their deaths. Vladimir Putin has drawn hundreds of thousands into service with upfront bonuses and insurance benefits, which has provided numerical superiority on Ukrainian battlefields along with “considerable stimulus for the ailing Russian economy,” writes expatriate economist Vladislav Inozemtsev, who calls the system “deathonomics.”

But human waves are ineffective if drones kill soldiers faster than they can be replaced at the front—and that has become the case, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War wrote this week.

“Ukraine’s successful mid-range and frontline drone strike campaigns are limiting Russia’s ability to transport personnel to the frontline and to supply and sustain frontline positions,” they wrote.

Putin must now “convince an increasingly tired Russian populace not only to support a fifth year of war but also to accept involuntary mobilization for a war that has already cost Russia well over a million casualties.”

Ukraine’s deep-strike capabilities have changed the game in other ways as well. Oil infrastructure deep in Russian territory is no longer safe, giving Kyiv leverage over Moscow’s export revenues no matter what the White House does with sanctions relief. Even more humiliating, the drone threat forced Putin to hold his annual Victory Day parade this month without Soviet-esque ranks of tanks and missiles.

“Believe us. We were in the occupation of the Soviet Union for 50 years, and we know how important” the Victory Day parade is,” Estonian foreign minister Margus Tsahkna told the GLOBSEC audience. “For the first time, Putin was not able to wage this parade. This is the facade actually collapsing. And Putin is losing face among the Russian people, not only among us.”

“Putin thought that Ukraine was a question of five days. And, let’s be frank, we, too, we said, ‘Five days, and then it’s finished,’” said Xavier Bettel, Luxembourg’s deputy prime minister. “In fact, the resilience of the Ukrainians was a big surprise for all of us.”

Changing fortunes

To understand how dramatically Ukraine’s prospects have changed, consider that in March, then-ODNI director Tulsi Gabbard, testified that the U.S. intelligence community believed that Russia had the “upper hand” in the conflict.

Now Ukrainian officials and other observers have begun to worry about a premature sense of victory among Ukraine’s foreign backers. Kyiv still depends on aid and imported weapons. Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the government continues to be “very persistent” in its efforts to secure advanced Patriot missiles from the United States. “I believe [the U.S.] must act quicker,” he told reporters during a visit to Sweden.

Some European governments, however, are ever more eager to forge deeper ties with their continent’s new defense leader—not just for Ukraine’s sake but for their own.

“It means enlargement processes for the European Union, for NATO in the future,” Estonia’s Tsahkna said. It means security guarantees not only to Ukraine and for Ukraine, but the other way around, because actually Ukraine is the largest military power in Europe at the moment, and increasing as well its industrial base.”

As for the Ukrainian government, declaring victory will require more than the cessation of hostilities. The invading country must be left “much weaker,” so that it can’t re-arm as it did after its 2014 invasion of Crimea, Aloian said.

“If there’s going to be a ceasefire, there will be very harsh conditions and difficult negotiations for the taking off of the sanctions, and when it will be,” he said. Otherwise, Russia will “renew all of those processes [of military buildup] before the full-scale invasion.”

“Right now, they’re aiming like about 30 percent of their economy for the defense industry,” which is too much, he said.

Even the downfall of Putin, who has led Russia since the end of the 20th century, would be insufficient.

“The change of the regime shouldn’t just be only external. It should be also internal,” he said.

If it happens, much of the credit will go to the makers and operators of Ukraine’s drones.

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Etienne Note: The Central Banks are coordinating their inflation to keep the tax slaves from jumping ship into a safer boat

by Tyler Durden

Euro Area inflation topped 3% for the first time since September 2023, further cementing expectations for a rate hike when the ECB meets next week.

Consumer prices rose 3.2% from a year ago in May, and up from 3% the previous month, in line expectations. But core inflation, which excludes volatile items like food and energy, jumped more than anticipated to 2.5% (technically 2.55%), while the closely watched services gauge jumped to 3.5%, the highest since last November, and non-energy industrial goods inflation printing at 0.87%YoY.

Energy inflation increased to 10.9%YoY, while food, alcohol and tobacco inflation fell to 1.97%YoY, notably below the weak 2.2%YoY Goldman was expecting.

“The acceleration of headline and core inflation in May cements the case for a 25 basis-point rate increase from the ECB next week. Those moves have been driven by services prices, which have probably been pushed up by pass-through from oil prices. That may be used by the hawks on the Governing Council to argue broad-based inflation requires a follow-up move in September” said Bloomberg economist David Powell.

Incorporating the May flash release into the Euro area inflation path, but also accounting for the potential Easter-related nature of the outsized move in services which should not be fully persistent, Goldman’s medium-term path continues to show core inflation at a weak 2.5%yoy in 2026, peaking at 2.7%yoy in 2027Q2 before gradually declining to 2.0%yoy in 2028Q4, above the ECB staff March projections. As for headline inflation, Goldman expects it to peak at 3.4%YoY in Q4, using the bank’s latest baseline path for gas and oil prices.

The latest hot inflation print has cemented the ECB’s first rate hike since September 2023 on June 11, with officials appearing to conclude that they can no longer wait to respond to the fallout from the Middle East conflict. ECB rate hike odds are now at 98% on Polymarket. They’re worried chiefly about workers demanding steep pay rises and firms boosting selling prices, viewing such consequences as probably now inevitable as the war drags on.

Most policymakers, however, remain cautious on the path beyond June according to Bloomberg, as growth in the region’s 21-nation economy also takes a hit. Business activity shrank in May at the quickest pace since 2023.

ECB Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel, viewed as the most hawkish Governing Council member, suggested Monday that it’s too early to specify how many rate increases may be needed. Lithuania’s Gediminas Simkus has said a second move after June “is more likely than not,” though it’s unclear when.

“It’s quite important to react in a timely manner to this emerging inflationary environment so we can prevent a possible acceleration of inflation and the inflationary spiral, prevent it at its very beginning with the least possible impact on the economy,” Simkus said Tuesday in Vilnius.

His Finnish counterpart Olli Rehn described inflation expectations as still anchored so far, but said action is needed this month to keep prices under control. “While inflation risks have increased, a rate increase in June would be an insurance one, but not due to entrenched inflationary pressures,” he said in a speech.

Today’s CPI print should not have been a major surprise: data last week showed inflation gathering pace in three of the bloc’s biggest member states, and remaining well above the ECB’s 2% target in all of them. Propelled by the war-induced surge in energy costs, May readings for France, Italy and Spain quickened to 2.8%, 3.3% and 3.6%, while the headline number for Germany moderated to 2.7%.

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Hasta la vista?

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel reportedly moved his family from the US to Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires as a refuge from high taxes, political turmoil and potential catastrophes like nuclear war and an AI meltdown.

The PayPal co-founder and longtime Silicon Valley power player has met privately with Argentine President Javier Milei, purchased a mansion in one of Buenos Aires’ most exclusive neighborhoods and temporarily relocated his family to the South American nation, according to the New York Times.

Peter Thiel has reportedly relocated his family to Buenos Aires as he weighs Argentina as a potential “Plan B” amid concerns ranging from high taxes to nuclear war and artificial intelligence.REUTERS

Sources told the paper that Thiel made the move due to concerns about the political direction of the US, especially in California, where over half of voters support a proposed wealth tax on billionaires.

The investor became more interested in Argentina as the proposal gained traction and was considering cutting ties with California by the end of last year, the Times reported.

His private investment firm, Thiel Capital, opened an office in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood on Dec. 31 as Californians weighed the proposed tax — which threatened the investor with a whopping, 10-figure tax bill, according to Bloomberg.

Not least of Thiel’s concerns is the possibility of nuclear warfare in the Northern Hemisphere — making a relatively far-flung corner of South America an appealing option, the Times reported.

Other members of the global elite, like Thiel buddy Martin Varsavsky, are of the same mind, according to the article.

“The moment China takes Taiwan or Russia takes Lithuania, I’m in Buenos Aires,” Varsavsky, a Spanish-Argentine tech entrepreneur, was quoted as saying. “It’s good to have a Plan B for civilization.”

President Javier Milei (second from right) and Argentine officials welcome billionaire investor Peter Thiel (third from left) during a meeting at the Casa Rosada presidential palace in Buenos Aires last month.Oficina del Presidente / X

Thiel has reportedly enrolled his kids in a Buenos Aires school and bought a plot of land in nearby Uruguay, too.

Thiel, a supporter of President Trump’s, has also forged close ties with Milei, the libertarian whose crusade against taxes, regulation and government spending closely aligns with Thiel’s own worldview, according to the Times.

They first met in 2024, and Thiel has since held private meetings with the leader, the paper reported.

Argentina’s government is considering offering Thiel citizenship or permanent residency, a person familiar with his plans told the Times, though a Milei spokesperson denied that.

The move is in keeping with a life of globe-trotting for Thiel.

He was born in Germany, raised in the US and obtained New Zealand citizenship in 2011 under a special provision that allowed the government to grant him a passport despite not meeting the country’s usual residency requirements, the Times noted.

The billionaire investor has reportedly purchased a mansion in Buenos Aires.Getty Images for The Cambridge Union

He later sought citizenship in Malta, according to previous reports, fueling criticism that the billionaire was assembling a portfolio of fallback jurisdictions in the event conditions deteriorated elsewhere.

In recent years, Thiel has increasingly invoked religious and apocalyptic themes in public appearances.

During interviews and speeches, he has often spoken about the Antichrist and warned that fear of existential threats could be used to justify the creation of a “one-world” government with sweeping powers.

The Times reported that those interests have followed him to Buenos Aires.

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by Dr. Joseph Mercola

If you’ve been searching for a single activity that improves your physical health, calms your nervous system, and protects your brain as you age, the answer might be sitting right outside your door. Gardening is often dismissed as a casual hobby, but a growing body of research shows it functions more like a full-spectrum health intervention. It moves your body, exposes you to sunlight, lowers stress hormones, sharpens your thinking, and even shifts your eating habits in a lasting way.

What makes gardening unusual is how many systems it touches at once. Gardening blends physical activity, mental engagement, stress reduction, and lifestyle structure into a single routine.¹ Most health strategies ask you to optimize one variable at a time. Gardening reshapes several of them in parallel, which is part of why its effects show up across so many different studies.

This matters because the biggest threats to your long-term health rarely come from one source. Chronic stress, inactivity, and poor diet feed into each other. Elevated cortisol disrupts sleep, weakens immune function, and accelerates cognitive decline. Low physical activity reduces blood flow to your brain and limits the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a compound that supports memory and learning.

Poor nutrition compounds both. When those systems break down together, your energy, focus, and resilience decline with them. That’s why a simple, hands-on activity like gardening stands out. It doesn’t target one problem in isolation. It rebuilds the foundation underneath several of them at once, from your muscles to your nervous system to your brain. To understand why that happens, it helps to start with what gardening actually does to your body physically, where the most immediate changes begin.

Gardening Works Your Body and Resets Your Stress at the Same Time

A report by The Seattle Times describes gardening as “quite simply, hard work,” involving lifting soil, digging trenches, and repeated squatting and bending.² These are the same movement patterns used in structured workouts. Instead of forcing yourself through a routine, you get strength training and cardio while doing something productive and engaging. The article frames gardening as a “green gym,” meaning your environment itself becomes your training space.

•You gain measurable increases in weekly activity without forcing it — Research published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal found people who started gardening increased their moderate-to-vigorous exercise by about 42 minutes per week.³ That’s a meaningful jump without adding a formal workout program. If you struggle to stay consistent with exercise, this gives you a built-in way to close the gap simply by maintaining a garden.

Gardening improves grip strength, flexibility, balance and stamina. These directly affect how well you move, reduce injury risk and support long-term mobility. Think about carrying bags of soil or pushing a wheelbarrow. Those actions train your body in ways machines often fail to replicate.

•Sun exposure during gardening supports key systems in your body — Spending time outside while gardening triggers vitamin D production through sunlight exposure while optimizing your cellular health. That process supports bone health, immune regulation, and function of your mitochondria, your cells’ energy factories. Instead of adding another supplement or routine, you build this into your day naturally. It ties your environment directly to your physiology in a way indoor lifestyles don’t.

•Gardening shifts your mental state by forcing you into the present moment and reducing stress — Gardening pulls your attention into the present in a way few activities can. You can’t weed a row of carrots while doomscrolling.

The task itself demands that your hands, eyes, and mind occupy the same moment, and your nervous system responds to that focused attention by easing off the stress accelerator. When you focus on physical tasks like planting or weeding, your mental chatter drops and your body moves into a calmer state.

A study published in the Journal of Health Psychology compared gardening to reading after a stressful task and found both reduced stress, but gardening led to a “significantly better mood” and “lower levels of cortisol.”⁴ Cortisol is your primary stress hormone. Lowering it reduces strain on your body, improves recovery, and stabilizes your mood.

Soil exposure even triggers brain chemistry changes that improve mood. The article highlights specific soil bacteria, including Streptomyces rimosus, which is linked to reduced inflammation markers. That means simply working with soil changes your internal chemistry in a way that supports mental health.

•Your senses do the calming work for you — The warmth of sun on your neck, the resistance of soil against your fingers, the smell of crushed basil; these signals tell your nervous system, in a language older than thought, that you’re safe. Researchers call this heightened body awareness interoception, and it’s one of the channels through which your body shifts out of fight-or-flight mode.

•Growing your own food rewires what ends up on your plate — When you’ve spent six weeks watching a tomato plant climb its trellis, you don’t let the fruit rot on the counter. You eat it. You plan meals around it. You hand one to your neighbor. The investment of time in growing food changes the calculation in ways willpower never could.

Gardening Challenges Your Brain and Builds Long-Term Mental Resilience

The most surprising effects of gardening may not happen in your muscles or your gut; they happen between your ears. The Washington Post framed gardening as an activity that “supports cognitive health” by combining several proven brain-protective behaviors into one routine.⁵ Gardening stacks multiple benefits together, which increases your odds of maintaining memory and mental sharpness as you age.

•Large-scale data shows a clear link between gardening and better brain function — One of the strongest findings highlighted in the article comes from a study involving nearly 137,000 adults age 45 and older.^6,7 People who engaged in regular activities like gardening reported fewer memory problems and fewer limitations in daily function tied to cognitive decline.

That translates into something very practical. You stay independent longer. You think more clearly. You handle daily tasks with less difficulty.

•Gardening influences multiple brain-related lifestyle factors at once — Experts quoted in the report emphasize that gardening touches “nearly every lifestyle factor brain-health research has already confirmed matters,” including movement, sleep quality, social interaction, and mental engagement.

Instead of trying to optimize each area separately, this gives you a single activity that improves all of them at once. That simplifies your approach and reduces the mental load of trying to manage your health.

•Long-term tracking shows benefits that carry into older age — A separate longitudinal study followed participants from childhood into their late 70s and beyond.⁸ Those who reported gardening at age 79 showed better thinking skills and stronger memory compared to their earlier baseline. This tells you the habit compounds over time. The earlier you start and the more consistent you stay, the more benefit you build.

•Gardening strengthens multiple types of thinking at the same time — Planning what to plant, remembering care schedules, and solving problems as plants grow all engage different parts of your brain. This includes memory, decision-making, and what researchers call executive function, meaning your ability to plan and follow through. Instead of passive activities, you actively train your brain each time you garden.

The article explains that engaging multiple brain systems at once “may help build the brain’s resilience against decline.” In simple terms, you create a stronger, more adaptable brain. This makes it easier to maintain function even as you age or face stress. It’s similar to cross-training for your mind rather than relying on one narrow activity.

•Physical movement from gardening feeds your brain at a biological level — Experts explain that movement increases blood flow to your brain and boosts levels of BDNF, which acts like fertilizer for your brain cells.

BDNF helps existing brain cells survive longer, encourages them to form new connections with each other, and supports the birth of new cells in the hippocampus, the brain region that turns short-term experiences into long-term memories. When BDNF levels rise, your brain becomes better at learning, adapting, and retaining information.

Use Gardening to Rebuild Your Energy, Focus, and Daily Health Habits

Modern life pulls you in the opposite direction of what your body and brain need. You sit more, move less, stay indoors, and stay mentally scattered. That combination drives stress, weakens your physical capacity, and dulls your mental edge over time. Gardening flips that pattern. It restores movement, sunlight, focus, and real-world engagement in one place. If you want a simple way to correct a root cause behind low energy, chronic stress, and cognitive decline, this is where you start.

1.Start small so you build consistency, not overwhelm — If you’ve never gardened, start simply. A few pots, a raised bed, or even herbs on a windowsill are enough. What matters is repetition. When you create a setup that fits your space and schedule, it makes it easier to show up daily, which is where the real benefits come from. Think of this as your baseline habit. You gain benefits by doing it often, not by doing it perfectly.

2.Turn gardening into your daily movement routine — Replace part of your exercise time with gardening tasks. Digging, planting, watering, and carrying supplies all count. If you already work out, treat gardening as functional training that improves how your body actually moves. If you’re sedentary, this becomes your entry point. Set a simple goal like 20 to 30 minutes per day. Track your time like a game. Watch your weekly total climb.

3.Use gardening to reset your stress response in real time — When your mind feels overloaded, step outside and work with your hands. Focus on the task in front of you. Feel the soil, notice your body position, and pay attention to your breathing. This acts as a physical reset. The more you practice this, the faster your body shifts out of stress mode. Treat each session like a reset button you can press anytime.

4.Engage your brain by planning and solving problems in your garden — Decide what to plant next. Track what grows well. Adjust your approach when something fails. This builds memory, decision-making, and problem-solving skills at the same time. If you like structure, keep a simple log or checklist. If you prefer flexibility, treat it like an experiment. Either way, you stay mentally engaged, which strengthens your brain over time.

5.Grow at least one food you will actually eat and enjoy — Choose something simple and rewarding like tomatoes, herbs, or leafy greens. When you harvest something you grew yourself, you value that food more. You eat it more often. That improves your daily nutrition without forcing it. If your fridge regularly fills with vegetables that wilt before you eat them, this is the fix that finally works. You don’t have to want kale more; you just have to grow lettuce, and the wanting takes care of itself.

FAQs About Gardening Health Benefits

Q: How much gardening do I need to see real health benefits?

A: Research shows even modest increases, like adding around 40 minutes of activity per week, lead to measurable improvements. What matters most is consistency. Short, regular sessions build strength, improve mood, and support long-term brain health more effectively than occasional long efforts.

Q: Does gardening really count as exercise?

A: Yes. Gardening includes movements like lifting, digging, squatting, and carrying, which mirror strength training and cardiovascular activity. These movements improve flexibility, balance, and endurance in ways that directly translate to better daily function and reduced injury risk.

Q: How does gardening reduce stress so quickly?

A: Gardening lowers cortisol, your main stress hormone, while shifting your attention into the present moment. The combination of physical movement, outdoor exposure, and sensory input helps your nervous system move out of stress mode and into a calmer, recovery-focused state.

Q: Can gardening actually improve my brain function as I age?

A: Evidence shows people who garden regularly report fewer memory problems and better daily functioning later in life. Gardening engages memory, decision-making, and problem-solving all at once, while also supporting brain chemistry through increased blood flow and higher levels of BDNF, which supports memory formation.

Q: Does growing my own food really change how I eat?

A: Yes. When you grow food yourself, you place higher value on it and are more likely to eat it regularly. This leads to higher intake of fresh, nutrient-rich foods without relying on willpower. Over time, this shifts your eating habits in a lasting and practical way.

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by The New American and AIPAC Tracker

Just as Americans sour on another Middle East war, and as Israel’s grip on Washington grows too obvious to politely ignore, Congress has found a way to make the relationship even harder to escape.

The House Armed Services Committee chairman released on Tuesday a record-breaking $1.15 trillion fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), presenting it as a bill to strengthen America’s defense industry.

But alongside the war-spending bonanza sits a far more consequential project: an unprecedented plan to pull the United States and Israel into deeper military integration across weapons development, emerging technology, manufacturing, data systems, stockpiles, drones, tunnels, and future-war capabilities.

A New Defense Technology Channel

The central provision is Section 224, titled the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.”

Its language is direct:

This section would require the Secretary of Defense to designate an executive agent responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts between the United States and Israel, including bilateral defense technology research, development, testing, evaluation, integration, and industrial cooperation.

The bill directs the Pentagon to identify “jointly developed or Israeli-origin technologies with operational utility” for possible “integration into United States systems and programs of record.” It also tells the Pentagon to move those technologies “from research and development into procurement and acquisition pathways.”

The bill then turns that pipeline into an operational structure. It directs coordination across major Pentagon components, including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Defense Innovation Unit, the Missile Defense Agency, U.S. Space Command, the military departments, and the U.S.-Israel Operations Technology Working Group.

It also calls for “joint training exercises and information-sharing mechanisms” to improve readiness to deploy jointly developed technologies.

That is how the proposal moves from research cooperation to military integration.

The Technology List

The bill does not limit cooperation to missile defense or battlefield lessons from the Middle East.

It lists the cooperative domains as:

1. “Counter-Unmanned Systems including aerial, maritime, and ground platforms”

2. “Anti-tunneling and subterranean threats”

3. “Missile and air defense technologies”

4. “Artificial intelligence, quantum, machine learning, and autonomous systems”

5. “Directed energy and advanced sensing”

6. “Cyber defense, electronic warfare, and digital resilience”

7. “Biotechnology, biomanufacturing, and medical defense”

8. “Network integration, data fusion, and contested logistics”

9. “Defense industrial base cooperation, manufacturing, and co-production”

10. “Other emerging technologies as jointly agreed by the United States and Israel”

The phrase “network integration” should draw special attention. So should “data fusion.” Those words point to shared systems, shared feeds, shared operational pictures, and possibly shared battlefield architecture.

The bill does not spell out the limits. It does require coordination with the State Department, the Commerce Department, and other agencies to ensure consistency with existing laws and regulations.

Industry, Manufacturing, and Co-production

Section 224 also reaches the defense industry itself.

The bill calls for “frameworks for joint ventures, licensing agreements, and United States-based co-production or manufacturing partnerships with Israeli industry.”

That would change the politics of the relationship.

A foreign partner would not simply receive American equipment. Israeli-origin or jointly developed technologies could move into U.S. programs. Israeli firms could gain a deeper role inside the U.S. defense industrial base. Joint products could move into formal Pentagon acquisition. Manufacturing could occur on U.S. soil.

Once factories, supply chains, jobs, and Pentagon dependencies form, the relationship stops looking like a policy choice. It starts looking like domestic infrastructure.

That is the quiet power of Section 224. Aid can be debated as foreign policy. Industrial integration is harder to see and harder to reverse.

Stockpiles, Tunnels, and Drones

The Israel-specific subtitle goes further.

Section 1221 would extend the “War Reserve Stockpile Authority for Israel” to January 1, 2029.

That stockpile has long allowed the United States to store weapons in Israel. In practice, it has also served as a wartime reserve Israel can access under certain conditions.

The bill does not require a new public inventory. It does not create a more transparent accounting system. It simply keeps the authority alive for several more years.

Section 1222 extends U.S.-Israel subterranean cooperation through December 31, 2029. The current authority already covers joint research, development, testing, and evaluation of anti-tunnel capabilities. The new text would expand the authority to include “subterranean threats of all types.”

Section 1223 then extends another joint program. It would continue U.S.-Israel cooperation to counter unmanned systems through December 31, 2029.

Here again, Congress broadens the scope. The provision covers unmanned systems “in all warfighting domains.”

Together, these sections point in one direction. Congress wants the Pentagon and Israel to build, test, and integrate the tools of future war together.

Budget

The budget language reinforces the point.

Under “Combating Terrorism Technology Support,” which includes three Israel-tied provisions, the request for 2027 is listed at $73.618 million. The House has already authorized $323.618 million.

The added items include $50 million for “Emerging Tech Cooperation,” $100 million for the “Israel Counter UXS [unmanned systems] Program,” and $100 million for “Israel Subterranean Cooperation.”

A separate line for “Israeli Cooperative Programs” lists $300 million requested and $300 million already authorized.

Reporting

Section 224 includes oversight language, but only within limits. The Pentagon must brief congressional defense committees within 180 days, identify the executive agent, describe coordination with Israeli counterparts, and list early technology areas for accelerated cooperation. It must also submit annual reports through 2030 on activities, technologies moved into U.S. acquisition programs or fielded systems, and partnerships with U.S. and Israeli industry. Those reports must be unclassified, but they “may include a classified annex.” The Pentagon must also post public updates “to the maximum extent practicable,” explaining how the cooperation supports “United States technological and military supremacy.” In practice, the public may get patriotic summaries, Congress may get more detail, and the most sensitive parts can move behind classified walls.

The Aid

None of this would replace the old aid model.

For decades, Washington has armed Israel through a relatively visible aid system. Congress appropriates the money. The executive branch administers it. Israel uses much of it to buy weapons from U.S. defense contractors. Officials defend the arrangement as support for an ally, protection of Israel’s “qualitative military edge,” and a way to keep U.S. defense dollars inside the American industrial base.

The scale was already extraordinary.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) says Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. In current dollars, the United States has provided Israel about $174 billion in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. In constant 2024 dollars, CRS cites a State Department and USAID estimate of roughly $298 billion in total U.S. aid obligated to Israel from 1946 through 2024.

The modern framework runs through 10-year memoranda of understanding. The current MOU covers fiscal years 2019 through 2028. It pledges $38 billion in military aid, including $33 billion in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) and $5 billion for missile defense. Last November, Axios reported that Israel had begun negotiating a new 20-year MOU, this time packaged in “America First” language. The New Americancovered the development here.

That was the official baseline.

After October 7, 2023, the numbers surged. A 2025 Costs of War report found that the United States provided at least $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel from October 7, 2023, through September 2025.

Broader U.S. military operations in the region cost another $9.65 billion to $12.07 billion. That puts total U.S. military aid to Israel and related regional war costs at roughly $31.35 billion to $33.77 billion over two years.

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by Hans van Leeuwen

Gold has overtaken US bonds to become central banks’ favourite investment, as Donald Trump rattles faith in America’s political stability and public finances.

The share of gold in central banks’ official holdings of foreign currencies climbed to 27pc last year, surpassing US Treasuries at 22pc, according to a report from the European Central Bank (ECB).

Gold’s soaring price is the main reason for its newfound dominance of central banks’ foreign reserves. The cost of a troy ounce rose by 65pc last year, finishing 2025 at a near-record $4,322 (£3,209).

But the ECB said central banks were also using gold to shore up their balance sheets against the headwinds of “geopolitics” – often used as code for Mr Trump’s tariffs, wars and territorial threats.

Gold has become central banks’ favourite investment

The bank cited a survey from late 2025 in which central banks said “geopolitics” was the third-biggest risk they faced, behind only “cybersecurity” and “other cyber incidents”. Three-quarters of central banks said geopolitical risk had increased last year.

In a fresh survey from April, a month after the US and Israel attacked Iran, 70pc of central banks said geopolitics was now the most significant risk they faced this year.

A third of central banks also said geopolitics would be the most important factor guiding the management of their foreign-currency reserves over the next five years.

Gold is traditionally viewed as a haven when markets or politics are stormy. But the ECB noted several disadvantages: its price is volatile, it is expensive to store and it cannot respond as quickly to shifts in demand.

This has traditionally led central banks to favour US bonds and other dollar-denominated investments, which are highly liquid and held in the world’s most widely used currency.

However, central banks have grown more cautious as Mr Trump has pursued unpredictable policy on the world stage and piled on more debt.

The US government’s debt is growing faster than demand for its bonds and faster than the American economy. The debt-to-GDP ratio has risen from just over 100pc in the 2010s to more than 120pc today.

The value of US Treasuries held in custody by central banks and other official institutions at the New York Federal Reserve declined by $82bn in March to $2.7tn, the lowest level since 2012.

Some central banks are wary about the potential weaponisation of those reserves after Russia’s central bank had its US assets frozen. A UBS survey last year found 49pc of reserve managers held this concern, up from 14pc in 2023.

The physical volume of gold central banks bought last year dropped to 850 tons, down from 1,000-plus tons in each of the previous three years.

The significant buyers in recent years have been the central banks of China, Poland, Turkey and India.

Turkey’s central bank has sold or lent out 130 tons of gold this year as it tried to prop up the value of the currency amid rising energy import costs. Russia’s central bank also sold gold, the ECB said, seemingly to bankroll its war against Ukraine.

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by Dave Monk

Monster cruise ships of today face being reduced to mere minnows by plans for a floating city that will carry 80,000 people around the world.

A mile-long, 800ft-wide and 30-deck-high, the £12bn Freedom Ship would house a research hospital as well as enough schools, shops and restaurants to serve a population as big as Chatham in Kent.

Likely to be powered by nuclear fuel, the 2.3-million-gross-ton giant will have homes for 50,000 permanent residents and space for another 10,000 cruisers and day visitors, all served by 20,000 crew.

Among the extensive facilities will be high-rise hotels, a 15,000-seat sports stadium, a convention centre, a water park, two museums and a symphony hall.

Divers will be able to swim in an enormous aquarium, while party-goers will dance the night away in a spacious club. A two-storey food hall will cater to residents who want a change from the wide range of dining venues.

Children will be educated from primary to college levels, while four decks will be given over to commercial services, financial branches, banks and retail. On top will be eight helipads

The leviathan will also move, with a plan to circumnavigate the globe every couple of years at a stately seven knots. Too big to dock in any port, the ship will stay in international waters, transferring passengers to and from land by a fleet of ferries – even other cruise vessels could moor alongside.

Arriving visitors will be able to ride a tram system to a series of districts on board. Those who prefer to explore by foot can enjoy 15 miles of walkways and three acres of parks.

A concept 30 years in the making

While the Freedom Ship is yet to sail – or even begin construction – the idea behind it has been floating around for three decades.

It was first proposed in the 1990s by American engineer Norman Nixon, who died in 2012. The blueprints were dusted off publicly the following year, only to be mothballed again

So why has it resurfaced now? Roger Gooch, chief executive of Freedom Cruise Line International, has taken on a project manager, a designer and a naval architect among a 12-strong leadership team and insists the demand is strong, claiming: “We could almost justify building three ships!”

Now it’s just the small matter of raising the start-up money. “We feel very confident that we can put this together, but the capitalisation is key,” he admits on a Zoom call from his Florida office.

Build it and they will come

Once finance is in place, the next step would be to start constructing the ship in Indonesia, beginning with the hull, which would have to be built in pieces then assembled offshore.

Though it could take three or four years to finish, Gooch says people could start living on board midway through construction. Then all future upkeep would be carried out at sea: “Maintenance on our hull would actually be done while it’s in the water every day, even while it’s moored off shore. The ship will constantly circumnavigate the globe, it never has a home port.”

Part of the income would come from the retail ventures. “We want entrepreneurs to lease or buy space from us, just like they would in a land-based community,” he says

Gooch continues: “We’re not interested in owning every barber shop, every pizza outlet. There will be a few businesses that the holding company will have an interest in. One of them would be the casino, certainly.

“We also want a state-of-the-art hospital. We’ve been approached by medical research facilities because we would be outside the reach of regulatory bodies, so the Freedom Ship would be an ideal venue for that.”

Green ambitions and nuclear-powered travel

There will be a philanthropic side as well, with Gooch claiming the ship will clean the oceans as it crosses them. And using nuclear power would slash carbon emissions: “We want to prove we’re a green environment and we’re doing good for society in the world.”

The Freedom Ship would also not overwhelm small ports because it would remain offshore, and would actually attract visitors to enjoy its facilities at sea. “We want people to come out and enjoy the floating city while it’s in their area because it may not be back for another two and a half years,” says Gooch.

The master planner behind the ambitious project is Kevin Schopfer, who specialises in arcology – a mixture of architecture and ecology. His past designs for floating coastal communities to counter the effects of rising sea levels have included a 40,000-population project called the New Orleans arcology habitat – or Noah.

He tells The Telegraph: “We started with the view that the ship should not be a monolithic piece but visually comfortable, so we softened all the edges. We also want it to breathe, so we’ve gone to great lengths to allow walkways and green spaces

“We have a soccer pitch, too. It’s not a massive stadium, but it could also be used for events and concerts. Taylor Swift came up in the discussion at one point, but I said I don’t know if we can handle that!”

How it compares to today’s mega cruise ships

With capacity for 80,000 passengers and crew, the Freedom Ship would carry more than eight times the number of people who sail on what is now the world’s biggest passenger vessel, Royal Caribbean’s Star of the Seas

Over the years, many residential cruise ships have been proposed but so far, only millionaires’ haven The World and the much more affordable Villa Vie Odyssey have set sail.

However, the size of the task doesn’t faze project manager Sridev Mookerjea of Singapore’s Blossom Group. We meet at St Katharine Docks in London, where, over a cup of green tea, he reflects on a 30-year career in passenger and casino ship management.

“Perseverance and determination help people to achieve something in this world,” he says. “I believe that with Roger’s efforts, patience and desire to make this a success, the sky’s the limit. It’s a fantastic concept and I will put all my efforts into making it happen.”

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By Global Affairs

Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

Donald Trump promised to put America First. Yet right now, beneath the East Wing of the White House, something very different is taking shape. Trump himself described it plainly. A six-level underground complex with a military hospital, research facilities, bomb shelters, and hardened command installations. Two floors were already being dug by May. The glittering new ballroom above ground is little more than a capstone. A polished lid sitting over a much darker project.

The people funding that visible monument are the usual players in federal contracting. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Apple, Palantir, Lockheed Martin, and Booz Allen Hamilton all appear on the donor list. These are not random patriots writing checks for pretty architecture. These are the same companies already positioned to dominate federal cloud contracts, AI systems, surveillance tools, and data consolidation. To put it bluntly, they pay for the spectacle while wiring the machine running underneath it.

That same corporate world has now moved straight into the White House advisory structure. In March 2026, Trump named the first members of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Starting with Oracle’s Safra Catz and Larry Ellison, followed by Dell’s Michael Dell. Other tech barons whose companies control the cloud, the chips, the data, and the platforms. In late May, he added a safe pair of hands in former Attorney General Pam Bondi. David Sacks welcomed her specifically because she knows how to clear legal and regulatory barriers for the AI agenda. Builders, funders, and enforcers, all sitting in the same room.

Oracle’s Dual Track

No company sits more completely at the center of this emerging system than Oracle.

Through Catz and Ellison, Oracle holds formal seats on PCAST. Through the Genesis Mission, it partners directly with the White House national AI platform. Through the GSA OneGov agreement, it gets steep government-wide discounts on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The Oracle Health platform, formerly Cerner, already runs MHS GENESIS, the Pentagon’s central electronic health record system serving over 9.5 million beneficiaries, now moving deeper into the cloud. Back in 2015, Oracle even brought former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta onto its board.

Yet at the same time, Oracle has built a hardened parallel infrastructure for another sovereign power.

Safra Catz, born in Israel, has been brutally direct. She has repeatedly said that for Oracle, it is the U.S., Israel, and then the rest of the world. “We don’t hide it“. During the Gaza war, she visited Israel multiple times, met with Netanyahu and defense officials, and declared that Oracle was there to help the government, the military, and the Israeli economy. The company built and expanded underground cloud facilities in Jerusalem, one fifty meters deep, another planned nine floors underground, engineered to keep Israeli government and military clients running even under direct rocket and missile fire. Catz made it clear that employees who do not support this mission might not belong at Oracle. In response to inquiries regarding the protests against Israel that were organized by staff at Google and Apple, Catz remarked “when you connect with Oracle, you understand that we are committed to the U.S. and Israel. We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none.”

Larry Ellison’s relationship with Netanyahu runs even deeper. He hosted the Israeli leader and his family on his private Hawaiian island, Lanai. He reportedly offered Netanyahu a high-paying seat on Oracle’s board while serving as a witness in one of Netanyahu’s corruption trials. Ellison has also poured millions into Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Underground in Jerusalem and underground in Washington, the parallel is almost impossible to ignore. While Oracle digs deep fortified cloud facilities in Israel to protect that country’s military and government under fire, the Trump administration is digging a six-level fortified complex beneath the White House. One set of underground infrastructure serves Israeli defense priorities. The other expands American executive power with limited public scrutiny. Both are hardened. Both are built for continuity in crisis, and both are advancing with powerful backing from the same overlapping network.

The Pattern Repeats Across the Board

Michael Dell, the CEO of DELL, is another PCAST member who has, over the years, supplied the Israeli Ministry of Defense with major contracts, including a 150 million dollar-plus server deal in 2023. Palantir, Oracle’s close partner in the Genesis Mission and a ballroom donor, signed a strategic wartime agreement with Israel’s Ministry of Defense for war-related missions.

IMAGE: President Trump holds a rendering of the new White House ballroom to be built, October 22. (Source: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

The donor list coordinated by the Trust for the National Mall, which manages private donations for the project, makes the direction unmistakable. The Adelson Family Foundation, one of the largest and most aggressive pro-Israel funders in America, whose stated mission is to strengthen the State of Israel and the Jewish people, helped bankroll the White House ballroom and its underground complex. Howard Lutnick & Family and Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of the Blackstone Group, both with long records of substantial pro-Israel philanthropy, are also major contributors. These are not casual donors. They are core players in a network that consistently puts Israel first.

The Wiring

While the physical buildout advanced above and below ground, Audrey Henson’s Drey Dossier’s investigation caught the digital layer in mid-construction. Not in press releases or polished White House branding, but in the debris every fast-moving system leaves behind when it is being assembled live.

VIDEO: Investigation – I found a second vote.gov, and it’s registered to the White House (Source: The Drey Dossier)

Henson traced certificate transparency logs showing roughly forty additional subdomains tied to the National Design Studio, many of them sitting behind the same private Cloudflare wall and pointing toward functions spread across the State Department, NASA, Homeland Security, and a working preview of vote.gov. Passport-related domains started generating certificates in early May, with photo.passports.gov producing nine in roughly an hour. Months after the Charlie Kirk episode had already faded from view, an obscure FBI Kirk tip-line domain surfaced as well.

The pattern was not only in the domain names. Programs were sending data to PostHog analytics without stripping IP addresses. Nd studio.gov carried a 539-line custom script called AutoMonitor that appeared designed to intercept browser traffic and mirror it to a private backend. Passports.gov resolved to a bare sign-in page without agency branding or a privacy notice, while the usual privacy impact assessments and Federal Register notices were hard to find or missing altogether.

Personnel movements reveal the real continuity. Multiple key Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) operatives flowed straight into the National Design Studio. Greg Hogan moved from chief information officer at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), where he kept access to sensitive workforce records even during a court injunction, through the National Design Studio (NDS) and straight into the leadership of Login.gov.

Akash Bobba, another DOGE engineer, presented a federal voter registration system to state election officials and admitted he did not know what data the federal government would retain. Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, one of the most visible early DOGE operatives, moved into the studio as Head of Engineering. Kaitlyn Koller, a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee aide who served as a Senior Advisor at DOGE, joined as Director of Operations. This was not a clean handoff. It was a deliberate pipeline. Musk’s efficiency team quietly embedded itself inside the White House design and identity apparatus.

The DOGE migration represents the visible skin of a parallel system being built with thin oversight and domains routing back toward White House infrastructure. Greg Barbaccia, the federal chief information officer, said the goal was to make users feel they were interacting with “the same government.” The old seams between agencies are being deliberately erased. In February 2026, Barbcaccia was appointed as Acting Director for Technology Transformation Services (TTS) for the General Services Administration (GSA). His move into acting leadership of GSA’s TTS put him directly over the machinery that governs Login.gov, FedRAMP, and federal digital delivery, turning the White House’s cosmetic project into a structural one.

The Real Architecture

The ballroom is only the “capstone”. Beneath it sits a fortified six-level complex built for endurance and command. Around it operates a tight network of donors, advisors, and contractors whose commitments to Israel are open, aggressive, and deeply operational. Oracle builds wartime cloud fortresses for the Israeli military while helping shape America’s national AI and data systems. Major donors who prioritize Israel help pay for the President’s new security infrastructure. Executives with direct Israeli ties sit inside the White House advisory structure directing technology policy. The Drey Dossier simply caught the digital layer while it was still under construction.

IMAGE: President Donald Trump posted new renderings of the ballroom that is currently under construction, Feb. 10, 2026.
(Source: The White House)

While some may see this as a neutral modernisation, others like ourselves see this as a parallel architecture of power, built with limited oversight, thin accountability, and a clear, recurring tilt toward interests that go well beyond strict America First priorities. Let’s imagine for one second that the same pipeline of personnel, cloud authority, and identity control was linked to China instead of Israel. No serious security establishment would call that harmless modernization. That is the scale of the exposure here, with a deep, centralized digital layer being handed over to actors whose own commitments are openly non-neutral. The same people and companies pushing unified American data systems, centralized identity platforms, and massive AI infrastructure are the ones with the deepest, most open commitments to Israel.

The receipts are no longer hidden in the donor lists or the advisory boards. They are now entering the statute books. Section 224 of the FY27 National Defense Authorization Act, titled the United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative, would formalize deeper cooperation across AI, cyber, data fusion, and network systems. What was hidden in plain sight is now being written into law.

Americans who voted to end forever wars, foreign entanglements, and unaccountable bureaucracy have every right to look at this and demand answers. The ballroom was the distraction. Beneath it, power is being concentrated into a system built to govern without oversight.

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Etienne Note: Check out our article: How the CIA Created Google for the basics. Then check out these articles from The Liberator Dropbox: CIA Google from the Folder: Understanding the CIA Monopoly Media Propaganda Matrix: Audit Suggest Google Favors a Small Number of Major Outlets, CIA Google Spent $26 Billion to Hide this Phone Setting from You, Google Censoring Gmail and the Their AI Social Credit System, Google Gmail Favors Left Wing Candidates Sends Far More Conservative Emails to Spam, Research Proves that Google Manipulated Millions to Favor Clinton,

by Josh Milton

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s 32,000,000 mosquitoes.

That’s the vision behind a new public health project from Google in California and Florida.

Google is seeking federal approval to breed and release swarms of mosquitoes carrying an infection harmless to humans.

Mosquitoes are among the deadliest animals in the world, making millions sick every year with diseases including West Nile virus, St Louis encephalitis, dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever.

To tackle this, researchers aim to render the insects sterile.

How would it work?

Only female mosquitoes spread viruses when they bite an animal infected with the virus and then bite a person. Males only nibble on plant nectar.

Rather than tinker with their DNA or spray streets with insecticides, the Google team want to infect them with the parasitic bacteria Wolbachia.

Wolbachia lives quietly in almost all kinds of insects from bees to butterflies, and doesn’t harm humans.

In mosquitoes, Wolbachia burrows into the insect’s reproductive machinery and shields them from infections like the West Nile virus.

An infected female carries Wolbachia in her eggs, so her offspring are born infected – if they even hatch, as the bacteria can also make mosquito eggs non-viable.

This plan, called the Sterile Insect Technique, could cause the local wild mosquito population to plummet, according to Google.

The first year of the project, called Debug, would see up to 16million mosquitoes released in Florida.

The second year of the project would see another 16million let loose in California, according to a notice from the Federal Register.

Google hopes to use robots to rear the droning bugs and AI-powered visual sorting systems to separate them by sex.

These ‘good bugs’, as the company puts them, would then be released in the locations and quantities needed to outnumber wild mosquitoes.

The Debug website says: ‘We’re combining the Debug team’s scientific and engineering expertise with the help of international partners to raise and release lots of good bugs and stop bad mosquitoes that can spread disease.’

By wild mosquitoes, Google means Culex mosquitoes, infamous for carrying West Nile virus and St Louis encephalitis.

West Nile virus disease causes eye pain, skin rashes and fever and leaves people physically exhausted for months.

In rare cases, the mosquito-borne viral disease causes severe neurological disease, causing paralysis, meningitis and brain damage.

St Louis encephalitis, meanwhile, is a potentially fatal inflammation of the brain.

‘Mosquitoes may be small, but their global impact is anything but’

Rentokil, a pest control company, told Metro: ‘Mosquitoes may be small, but their global impact is anything but.

‘In today’s world, where climate change, travel, and urban growth are making mosquito-borne illnesses more common, staying protected is more important than ever.’

But Brent Nye, a Florida local, wasn’t sold.

‘I’m not sure whether I would want them in my backyard because there are going to be a lot of things that go wrong,’ he told 10 Tampa Bay News.

‘I’d rather have some other state to experiment on.’

Debug was launched by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, in 2016.

The Debug FAQ page says Google is ‘actively working with organisations like national and local governments, community leaders and research institutes’ to ensure it ‘understands local concerns and considerations’.

The Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing Google’s Experimental Use Permit application and is accepting public feedback until Friday.

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Summary

• Axios reports angry call between Trump and Netanyahu; Trump is said to have told Netanyahu “you’re fucking crazy’” while demanding Lebanon truce: “I’m saving your ass,”

• Trump has announced the “shooting will stop” in Lebanon, after phone calls with both sides. Says Iran talks back on “at rapid pace”; Lebanese presidency confirms Hezbollah agreed to US ceasefire proposal

• Iran announces halt to all exchanges with US, citing Israeli aggression in Lebanon. Trump says ‘haven’t heard’ this from Tehran, vows to keep US naval blockade in place.

• Iran overnight initiated fresh attacks on neighboring Kuwait and even released video showing footage of a ballistic missile launch.

• The US bombed radar & drone sites in Iran in response to the Iranians having shot down a US drone over the weekend. Reports of foreign jets over Iranian airspace.

• Iran negotiator Ghalibaf charges US with breaking the ceasefire: “the naval blockade and escalation of war crimes in Lebanon” were “clear evidence of US noncompliance with the ceasefire.”

• Trump Truth Social: “Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end - it always does!”

Trump Steamrolls Netanyahu: Axios

A bizarre and unexpected evening report from Axios says that President Trump ripped into Netanyahu during a phone call, cussing at him and essentially ‘steamrolled’ him - angry over breaking the Lebanon truce and demanding that Israel’s military not attack Beirut.

Trump is said to have told Netanyahu “you’re fucking crazy’” while demanding Lebanon truce: “I’m saving your ass,” he also reportedly said. Iran early Monday said it halted talks with Washington because of Israel’s escalation in Lebanon. From the report:

One U.S. official said Trump told Netanyahu that following through on his threats to bomb the Lebanese capital would further isolate Israel around the world.

• Two of the sources said Trump claimed he’d helped keep Netanyahu out of jail — a reference to his support during Netanyahu’s corruption trial.

• Summarizing Trump’s remarks to Netanyahu, the U.S. official said: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

• A second source briefed on the call said Trump was “pissed” and at one point yelled at Netanyahu: “What the fuck are you doing?”

And more:

The second U.S. official claimed that, in reality, Trump had “steamrolled” Netanyahu on the call. “Bibi said, ‘OK, OK, just make sure everything is taken care of,’” according to the official.

The level of detail in this call ‘leak’ is remarkable, suggesting it was an ‘official leak’ or intentional.

Reports of Ongoing Fighting in South Lebanon

Fresh reports of fighting, amid shaky truce declaration:

Sirens sound in the border community of Metula amid an apparent Hezbollah rocket attack from Lebanon.

The rocket fire comes despite US President Donald Trump announcing that Hezbollah would stop carrying out attacks on Israel amid the ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Iran claims it attacked a US container ship in the Sea of Oman (Fars News).

Lebanon Truce Affirmed

The Lebanese presidency has announced that Hezbollah agreed to a US proposal on the mutual cessation of attacks, which will expand to all Lebanese territory.

Per a regional Arab correspondent:

As we emphasized, the Israeli attack on Lebanon was obstructing the reaching of the agreement. The mediators exerted great effort today, and after the American pressure and the Israeli retreat, the doors are now open to return the negotiations to their natural and positive course, and there is no longer much left.

Iran Talks Back On?

Wishful thinking or already a reality? ...following a proclaimed Lebanon truce, uneasy at best:

Trump Suggests He is Forging Lebanon Ceasefire

Trump has announced the “shooting will stop” in Lebanon, after a flurry of phone calls, including with Netanyahu. This came shoon on the heels of Hezbollah signaling it is ready to agree to an immediate truce. Israel too has reportedly halted plans to begin new airstrikes on Beirut.

The Lebanon crisis caused Tehran to earlier announced it is halting all contacts with the US. Will the US-Iran talks now be back on?

Trump to CNBC: ‘I don’t care’ if talks are over

Trump has shrugged off the apparent collapse of talks with Iran, after Tehran earlier said it has halted all communications with Washington over Israel’s expanded assault on Lebanon and Hezbollah. Trump has freshly told CNBC by phone, “I don’t care if they’re over, honestly.”

“I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less,” he added, and indicated he was “going to ask” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “what’s going on with Lebanon.” This suggests Trump could pressure America’s ally to lower tensions.

Trump appears to be betting the US can ‘outlast’ the Islamic Republic, in terms of inflicting economic pain amid the growing global oil supply crisis due to the Hormuz Strait closure. On this, he reacted as follows:

He also said he wasn’t worried about oil prices, which spiked following the report in Iranian state media that Tehran is vowing to “completely block” the Strait of Hormuz in addition to halting negotiations.

“I think the oil will be dropping like a rock in the very near, you know, the very near distance,” Trump said.

Trump Reacts

President Trump tells NBC News that he’s not heard from Iran on reports they’re suspending talks, and on Iran, “I think we’ve been talking too much if you want to know the truth, going silent would be very good”

• We’ll keep the blockade in Hormuz.

• I think I can wait as long as they want. They’re losing a fortune.

His comments to NBC:

“It’s an appropriate thing to say, because they’re better negotiators than they are fighters,” he said in a brief phone call. “But they haven’t informed us of that.”

“It doesn’t mean we’re going to go and start dropping bombs all over there,” added Trump, who said Friday he would soon decide on a proposed deal to extend an ostensible ceasefire agreed to in early April. “We’ll keep the blockade.”

State Media: Iran Stops Exchanging Messages with US

Merely last week, Western MSM press reports were touting the usual ‘close to a deal’ headlines, but this morning demonstrates how illusory such claims were and are, as Iranian state media now suggests a total halt in communications between the sides.

Per state Tasnim, “Iran stops exchanging messages with the US in protest against Zionist crimes.” This as the IDF has sent ground forces deep into Lebanon, past the Litani River - in the deepest operation in decades. Tehran has insisted on linking up any US-Iran deal with a Israel-Lebanon peace. Tehran is now warning to “completely block the Strait of Hormuz, including the Bab al-Mandab Strait” - the latter with the cooperation of Yemen’s Houthis. All of this has direct impact on the US-Iran ceasefire:

IRAN’S STATE TV SAYS PROBABILITY OF CEASEFIRE BETWEEN IRAN AND U.S. ENDING IS HIGH IF ATTACKS ON LEBANON DO NOT STOP

Below is the full translated statement:

• “The determination of the Iranian armed forces and all axes of the resistance front to respond to Zionist crimes and open new fronts“.

• “Tasnim has obtained information indicating that, given the continuation of the Zionist regime’s crimes in Lebanon and considering that Lebanon was one of the preconditions for the ceasefire and that this ceasefire has now been violated on all fronts, including Lebanon, the Iranian negotiating team is stopping “talks and exchange of texts through a mediator”.”

• “The immediate cessation of the Zionist regime’s aggressive and brutal army operations in Gaza and Lebanon and the necessity of the regime’s complete withdrawal from the occupied areas in Lebanon have been emphasized by Iranian officials and negotiators, and there will be no talks until Iran and the resistance’s views on this matter are met”.

• “Also, the Resistance Front and Iran have set their agenda to completely block the Strait of Hormuz, and activate other fronts, including the Bab al-Mandab Strait, in order to punish the Zionists and their supporters”.

Oil jumps on the headline of halted talks...

Futures slide...

Author and University of Chicago professor of the ‘realist’ school Robert Pape says the following on Monday published report: “We will run out of our cushion of oil inventories in July, whether it’s the middle or end of July,” he said. “And Iran knows that. So what Iran is doing is just stringing out the clock to get a better deal.”

“What that tells me is they’re not interested in returning the price of oil back to where it was before the war,” he said. “I think what we need to understand is Iran’s goal is to continue instability, continue elevated price of the world’s oil because it gains from that.”

For more, read our:

“Approaching Unheard Of Inventory Levels”: Exxon, Chevron Issue Apocalyptic Warning About What Happens Next To Oil

CENTCOM: Intercepted Pair of Ballistic Missiles on Base

On Monday morning US Central Command issued its official statement and explanation over the earlier tit-for-tat brief flare-up in fighting, which appears to have ended...

“Last night at 11 p.m. ET, U.S. forces successfully intercepted two Iranian ballistic missiles targeting American forces based in Kuwait. These missiles were immediately defeated and no American personnel were harmed,” it said. “U.S. Central Command remains vigilant and will continue to protect our forces from Iranian aggression while supporting the ongoing ceasefire.”

Fresh Missiles on Kuwait

The extended US-Iran ceasefire is once again being severely tested, after Iran earlier in the daylight hours of Monday initiated fresh attacks on neighboring Kuwait and even released video showing footage of a ballistic missile launch. Kuwait in turn confirmed that has been intercepting inbound drone and missile fire.

It hosts a major American base, which is again being targeted, though it’s unclear if anything has been hit. The IRGC subsequently identified that it targeted the US base in response to weekend US strikes on Iranian sites. According to a description of the released propaganda video:

The start of the video includes a close-up of what looks to be a sticker on the body of a missile depicting a bruised US president Donald Trump, on the phone asking for help, and overlaid on a “closed” Strait of Hormuz. The caption reads: “Until the last American soldier leaves the region.”

Iran’s IRGC released footage showing the moment it launched missile attacks on what it claimed to be US airbases in Kuwait early Monday.

READ MORE: https://t.co/yRpPilUQ9S pic.twitter.com/f1Q2l5OnMu

— Rudaw English (@RudawEnglish) June 1, 2026

All sides, including the Iranians and Kuwaitis, are saying they have a right to defend themselves. The United States, for its part, has said that it bombed radar and drone sites in Iran in response to the Iranians having shot down a US drone over the weekend.

Kuwait, GCC Condemnation

After the US base in Kuwait was freshly targeted, Kuwait’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued the following: “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterates the State of Kuwait’s condemnation and denunciation, in the strongest terms, of the heinous and repeated Iranian attacks, which represent a dangerous escalation and a direct assault on the security and stability of the State of Kuwait, as well as a flagrant violation of the rules of international law, the United Nations Charter, and Security Council Resolution 2817 of 2026, not to mention the grave threat they pose to the safety of civilians and vital facilities in the country,” it said in a post on X.

“The continuation and repetition of these aggressions undermine efforts aimed at de-escalating tensions and threaten security and stability in the region, emphasizing the State of Kuwait’s categorical rejection of these aggressive practices,” it added.

Also, a swift reaction was issued by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It expressed its “strongest condemnation” of Iran for its attack on Kuwait, blasting it as a “dangerous and irresponsible escalation”. Saying Kuwait remains a crucial part of the GCC, the bloc stated it stands “united and firm” and they fully support “all the measures and procedures it [Kuwait] takes to protect its security, preserve its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and maintain the security of its citizens and residents.”

IRGC Navy seeks to flex with increasing fast boat patrols of Strait of Hormuz:

IRGC fast boats running 24/7 patrols in the Strait of Hormuz, per new footage from Iran’s navy. The boats are steering commercial vessels through the waterway and intercepting any that don’t follow orders. pic.twitter.com/tG5Vh71DMK

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 1, 2026

Iran Latest Warnings: “The Bill Comes Due”; Ceasefire Breached

Top Iranian negotiator and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has said that the continued American naval blockade of Iran’s ports and Israel’s intensifying offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon illustrate that the US is not truly complying with the ceasefire.

He wrote on X that “the naval blockade and escalation of war crimes in Lebanon” were “clear evidence of US noncompliance with the ceasefire.” He stressed by way of warning: “Every choice has a price, and the bill comes due. It will all fall into place.”

As things in Lebanon intensify, given the IDF has plunged past the Litani River and plans to expand its ground force occupation. Yemen’s Houthis say they are ready to join Hezbollah’s efforts against Israel, per Tasnim. Iran’s Foreign Ministry has also freshly addressed the Lebanon crisis:

For immediate attention:

The ceasefire between Iran and the US is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon.

Its violation on one front is a violation of the ceasefire on all fronts.

The US and Israel are responsible for the consequences of any violation.

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) June 1, 2026

More...

Iran’s FM Spokesperson Baghaei: The other side keeps shifting its demands and sending contradictory messages, which is dragging out negotiations. Israel’s escalation in Lebanon is aimed at destroying any chance diplomacy could work. The U.S. and Israel cannot be seen as separate.… pic.twitter.com/VFbOUwX9V2

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 1, 2026

Trump: “Sit Back & Relax”

Trump’s latest Truth Social: “Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end - it always does!”

And here’s pushback from Stephen Walt in Foreign Policy magazine:

Although we don’t know the details of the rumored agreement between the United States and Iran—or even if one will eventually be reached—anyone with a triple-digit IQ understands that Israel and the United States made a colossal blunder when they started the war. None of their stated goals have been achieved: The Iranian regime did not collapse, it did not surrender its nuclear stockpile, and its missile and drone capabilities are intact. It has demonstrated that it can shut down the Strait of Hormuz anytime it wants to inflict significant damage on its neighbors. All of U.S. President Donald Trump’s and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bragging and bluster over the past three months has been exposed as a lot of hot air.

Iran Touts More Breaches of US Blockade

A total of 15 vessels, including four oil tankers, have successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz over the last 24 hours, according to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

The IRGC navy confirmed that the ships only completed their passage after receiving explicit permission and coordinating directly with its command structure. Washington and its Gulf allies (with the exception of Oman) have repeatedly condemned any attempt to impose an ‘Iranian protocol’ involving the extraction of tolls.

In an official statement carried by Fars News, the IRGC issued a stark warning to the region, declaring that any cooperation with “hostile forces” would be viewed by Tehran as an “imminent security threat” that will be “dealt with accordingly”. This is tantamount to warning foreign vessels they could come under direct attack if they don’t comply.

More Latest Developments

via Newsquawk...

• Iran may propose changes to the US peace draft memorandum of understanding, according to Tasnim. This follows a report that President Trump proposed further changes to the existing text, while a source stated that text exchanges continue and that Iran may submit its own edits.

• Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi told state media that talks and message exchanges with the US are ongoing, and that the talks cannot be judged until a clear result is reached.

• Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson said the negotiation team’s visit to Qatar was positive.

• Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that they have a legal obligation to prevent aggressors from using their territory and facilities to attack another country.

• Iran’s Presidential Office denied reports that Iranian President Pezeshkian submitted his resignation to the Supreme Leader, and stated that the stories were spread by some foreign media.

• Iranian Supreme Leader’s military adviser Mohsen Rezaei said Iran has no intention of yielding or compromising with the US and will not place itself in a weak position, while he also stated that US President Trump is betraying diplomacy for the third time by continuing a naval blockade on Iran and making excessive demands.

• IRGC said following aggression of US Army on a communication tower on Sirik Island, located in the Homozgan province an hour ago, fighters of the IRGC Aerospace Force targeted airbase where aggression originated and predicted targets were destroyed.

• Iran’s top negotiator said “The naval blockade and escalation of war crimes in Lebanon by the genocidal Zionist regime are clear evidence of US noncompliance with the ceasefire”.

• Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson said at this moment they do not believe that the US has good intentions towards Iran.

• Iran’s FM Baghaei said “No negotiations have taken place on the details of the nuclear issue at this stage”. One point being discussed is the allocation of funds for reconstruction. We are considering options for responding to the escalation of Israeli attacks in Lebanon.

• Iran’s Baghaei said a ceasefire in Lebanon is an integral part of any agreement and end to the war; lack of trust and constant change in US and Israeli positions in Lebanon are causing a delay on the diplomatic process. The continuation of maritime piracy and attacks on Iranian shipping is an example of a violation of the ceasefire. The diplomatic apparatus is closely following developments and we will take every measure to defend Iran’s sovereignty. The exchange of messages is still ongoing.

• Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gharibabadi said Iran’s goal is not to hold ships in the Strait, but to declare a procedure that is not contrary to international law; these arrangements are not temporary and Iran will not back down. Stopping ships behind the Strait of Hormuz incurs storage and delay costs, and war insurance has increased by up to 500%. Accompanying Iranian forces costs less than war insurance and eliminates the risk of stoppage, inspection, and seizure. Iran’s goal is not to hold the ships, but to declare a procedure that is not contrary to international law; these arrangements are not temporary and Iran will not back down.

• “Three consecutive explosions were heard in Bandar Abbas”, Iran International reported.

• US President Trump reportedly sent tougher terms to Iran regarding the peace framework, according to officials cited by The New York Times.

• US President Trump posted “Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us”. Full post “Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us. But don’t the Dumocrats, and various seemingly unpatriotic Republicans, understand that it is MUCH tougher for me to properly do my job and negotiate, when political hacks keep negatively “chirping,” at levels never seen before, over and over again, that I should move faster, or move slower, or go to war, or not go to war, or whatever. Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end - It always does! President DJT”.

• US President Trump posted “Fake News CNN said today, routinely, that my Iran Nuclear Deal doesn’t talk about Nuclear, when actually it states, very clearly, that Iran will not have a Nuclear Weapon”. Full post “ScraperFake News CNN said today, routinely, that my Iran Nuclear Deal doesn’t talk about Nuclear, when actually it states, very clearly, that Iran will not have a Nuclear Weapon. It then goes on, in very strong and lengthy detail, to discuss various other aspects of Nuclear. In fact, that’s what most of the agreement is about. CNN, and so many others in the Fake News Media, is a Low Ratings disaster. Even with new ownership, it is unlikely to ever get better!!! President DJT”.

• US Secretary of State Rubio spoke in the last 48 hours with Lebanon’s President and Israel’s PM to try and promote a new ceasefire initiative, according to a senior US official cited by Axios’s Ravid. said:. US senior official said that the new initiative was proposed as part of the negotiations taking place between Israel and Lebanon, as another round of talks between diplomats from both sides is scheduled to take place this week in Washington. In order to advance the talks, US proposed that as a first step, Hezbollah stop all attacks on Israel, and in return, Israel will refrain from escalation in Beirut.

• US Central Command confirmed military forces conducted strikes against Iranian radar at command and control sites located in Goruk and Qeshm Island over the weekend.

• Kuwait Army said air defences are intercepting hostile missile and drone attacks.

  Continue reading…

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The lead story this week is Suspected Fed and Agent Provocateur Jeremy Kauffman’s Divisive Antics at the Libertarian Party Convention, with a short video where in an address to the plenary he calls the delegates: “Freaks,” “Loser Apes,” “Dumb,” “Stupid” and “Theatre Kids.” Simultaneously his accomplice, Andrew Allgood, is doing Sieg Heil, Heil Hitler salutes while he is speaking… Right before he is arrested for slapping a woman who tried to throw away giveaway literature that I understand they were leaving everywhere around the convention. Jeremy was latter kicked out, trespassed, and forbidden from returning.

In the article I include another especially prescient article I wrote in 2024 the last time the LP made libertarians look bad:, Libertarian Party Shoots Itself in the Foot… Again… at National Convention, where I wrote:

2. The LP is easily hijacked by fake libertarians like Bob Barr, Bill Weld and Nick Sarwark AND/Or embarrasses libertarians everywhere by its ridiculous candidates, some of whom may be controlled opposition. Some recent examples include a candidate for national chair, James Weeks, who stripped down to a thong during the nationally televised convention in 2016 or the fact that two of the 2020 presidential candidates campaigned in costume headgear, including “Vermin Supreme,” who wore a boot on his head and promised voters ponies.

The Facebook Group Jeremy Kauffman is a fed sent to destroy the liberty movement is now up to 157 207 225 members

Interestingly, Tom “Government is legitimate, vote harder” Woods had Jeremy on after the convention where he asked softball questions and gave Jeremy a platform to try to build his support. I’ll just leave this list of other Tom Woods guests right here for everyone to form their own opinions of who might be steering the liberty movement in NH away from voluntaryism (The “One Way Revolution”) into voting harder in rigged elections on unauditable black box voting machines.

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Democracy isn’t Liberty

Thomas Massie’s Loss to AIPAC Funded “CIA Republican” Ed Gallrein Proves Elections Rigged & “Government” A Scam

How AIPAC Money Bought Kentucky’s 4th District Primary Exposing Scam of Easily Rigged “Elections”

Top Stories of the Week

Suspected Fed and Agent Provocateur Jeremy Kauffman’s Antics at the Libertarian Party Convention

Etienne Note: As part of our support of the Free State Project, we have been covering Jeremy Kauffman’s divisive tactics, most recently in our article: What is the Deal with the Free State PARTY in New Hampshire?

Video: Jeremy Kauffman calls the Libertarian Party Convention attendees:



“Freaks,” “Loser Apes,” “Dumb,” “Stupid” and “Theatre Kids”

Kauffman is now back in the news dragging libertarianism in NH through the mud and causing division (Divide & Conquer) in the national Libertarian Party. One of his NHLP members, Andrew Allgood, was arrested for slapping a woman who threw some NHLP give-a-way brochures in the trash.

Continue reading...

Videos of the Week

Oklo COO Says Nuclear Waste Could Power America For 150 Years

by Tyler Durden

Earlier this week, we covered Oklo’s approval by Chris Wright’s DOE to convert plutonium previously set for disposal into new fuel. “Fuel supply constraints are a key throttle to advanced reactor development,” Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte said following the announcement.

Jacob’s wife and Oklo’s COO Caroline DeWitte joined ZeroHedge and Radiant Energy Group’s Madison Hilly. Caroline laid out Oklo’s ambitious vision: recycle spent nuclear fuel, build fleets of reactors for AI hyperscalers like Meta, and turn what the industry currently treats as a liability (nuclear waste) into a strategic asset.

And unlike many of the “PowerPoint reactor” startups flooding the space, she says they are already building.

One of the company’s core theses is that the U.S. is sitting on a massive untapped energy reserve in the form of spent nuclear fuel already stockpiled around the country.

Continue reading...

“Government”, Media and Academia

Criminality Exposed

These articles also appears in “Government”, Media and Academia Criminality Exposed, A digest of HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of articles exposing and suggesting inter-generational organized crime’s control of the “Government,” Media and Academia by the Art of Liberty Foundation. You can view the other articles or subscribe on Telegram: https://t.me/Government_Scams

Former CIA officer accused of stealing 300 gold bars, sources say

Etienne Note: WTF is going on at the CIA where an employee can request $40M in gold bars and get it? He also had $2M in cash... I have a feeling there is more to this story…

By Julia Ainsley, Dan De Luce and Gary Grumbach

WASHINGTON — A former CIA senior officer with top secret-level clearance has been accused of secretly stashing millions of dollars in gold bars in his home that he said he needed for “work-related expenses,” according to court documents and two people familiar with his employment history.

David Rush, who held a management position, was charged with criminal theft of public money in a complaint filed last week in the Eastern District of Virginia. His lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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Trump promotes unregulated online casino after $1 million Super PAC donation

by Judd Legum

On Truth Social, Trump has repeatedly promoted Stake, an unregulated online casino that, according to state gambling regulators, is operating illegally. Trump publicized Stake alongside the UFC match being held at the White House on his 80th birthday, June 14. He posted AI-generated images featuring himself, UFC CEO Dana White, and the Stake logo on April 9, May 8, and twice on May 20.

Stake is a major sponsor of the UFC, including prominent placement in the UFC octagon.

Stake.us users play traditional casino games like slots and roulette. The company, which is based in Cyprus, claims it is a “safe and free gaming experience.” But gambling regulators across the country say it is an illegal online casino. Stake.us has two types of currency: 1. “Gold Coins” which cannot be converted into real money, and 2. “Stake Cash” which can be converted to crypto currency or gift cards. To obtain “Stake Cash” players buy “Gold Coins” and receive “Stake Cash” for free.

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Trump Accused of Insider Trading After Making 3,642 Stock Trades in Companies He Promoted

by AOL, AP, DropSite News and 60 Minutes

Trump’s personal financial activity from January through March 2026 shows about 3,700 individual stock transactions were made – more than 40 trades per market day .

The cumulative value of the trades is listed in broad ranges, as required by federal ethics rules, rather than exact figures. At the low end, total transactions exceed $220 million, and the ceiling approaches $750 million.

Trump’s account was buying stocks in companies whose fortunes are directly shaped by his own administration’s policy decisions. For example, Trump purchased millions of dollars of Oracle stock in early 2026, around the same time his administration was helping the company secure a deal to continue operating TikTok in the US.

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Trump’s ‘Golden’ Phone Hit With Savage Reviews

by Cameron Adam

The long-delayed golden Trump Mobile phone looks nothing like the advertised image, has a smaller screen than promised, and its color leaves a lot to be desired, according to one of the few people to lay eyes on a real one.

The $500 Trump phone has now been delivered to tech media for review, one year after it was announced and nine months after its hard launch to cash-rich MAGA diehards.

Not only is the screen smaller than expected, but the phone is also not made in America as promised, Patrick Holland, the managing editor of tech site CNET, told CNN. Rather, Holland added, the packaging says the phone is “designed with American values in mind.”

Continue reading...

The Art of Liberty Foundation... in Spanish!

We are adding a new section to Five Meme Friday to promote our new Substack, Telegram group, Instagram, and translations of To See the Cage is to Leave It - 25 Techniques the Few Use to Control the Many in Spanish. Please tell your Spanish speaking friends! “Go Paid” on our Spanish Substack to support getting voluntaryist ideas, books, and memes translated into Spanish AND get a free paperback copy of To See the Cage is To Leave It in Latin American Spanish.

¡Por qué es fundamental usar efectivo! (¡Y criptomonedas, oro/Goldbacks, plata e incluso monedas de cinco centavos!)

Con los bancos empezando a fallar, hay algunas cosas fáciles y específicas que usted puede hacer para fortalecer la capacidad de su comunidad local para sobrevivir a un colapso bancario o a una devaluación del dólar.

Use efectivo físico

¡Por qué deberíamos pagar con efectivo en todos los lugares que podamos con billetes en lugar de una tarjeta de crédito! — Adaptado de la publicación viral en “Fedbook” de Wren Hope Rose

Continuar leyendo...

“Daily News of The Week”

Has an Evil Milestone Been Reached?

by The Ghost of Matthew Lyon

The Scourge Of Aristocracy and Repository of Important Political Truth – Fair Haven, Vermont

Hello Everyone, I know it has been a while since my last message. It is not because there was not plenty to talk about.

More so, it was the fact that I was going to end up sending something thrice daily and burying your inbox. Out of respect for your busy lives. I decided against that level of nutty. As the pace of events picked-up over the last couple of months...

So, I thought I would maybe share a higher view. A summary of “system status”, if you will?

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Breaking: Federal Court Strikes Down Landmark Fluoride Ruling on Technicality — ‘Not the Science’

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.The Defender

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website.

A federal appeals court has vacated a landmark decision that found fluoridated drinking water poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s health under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not challenge the substance of the lower court’s findings — that fluoride is toxic to children and ought to be regulated. Instead, the court based its decision on procedural issues related to the lower court’s handling of the litigation.

The case will now go back to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where District Judge Edward Chen will be required to exclude all scientific evidence that became available after 2020.

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The Unvaccinated: Proof of What We Lost

by Unbekoming

The midwife’s words hang in the delivery room air like a casual afterthought: “We’ll just give baby the vitamin K shot now.” Just a vitamin. Nothing more than what you’d find in your morning orange juice. The language itself is the first deception - calling a synthetic blood-clotting agent manufactured by Pfizer’s subsidiary Hospira a “vitamin” transforms an industrial pharmaceutical intervention into something as wholesome as sunshine.

In those first raw hours after birth, when parents are overwhelmed by the miracle of new life, the medical system strikes with practiced precision. The entire infrastructure - from the delivery nurse to the pediatrician, from the hospital protocols to the documentation systems - has been calibrated for this moment. Every medical professional in that room has been trained, not in the science of whether a newborn needs synthetic phytonadione, but in the art of securing compliance. They’ve learned to frame it as routine, to present it as universal, to make refusal seem like dangerous eccentricity.

Murphy’s father, one of the few who came prepared, discovered what awaits those who dare say no. After his daughter was delivered using vacuum extraction five times - creating a visible blood-filled sac on her head - the red-shirted pediatrician entered within three minutes. Not to examine the baby. Not to celebrate the birth. But to begin the assault. When Murphy’s father cited the Australian Paediatric Surveillance Unit study showing only six deaths from vitamin K deficiency bleeding in five million babies over 25 years, with none occurring in hospital births where vitamin K was refused, the doctor didn’t engage with the data. Instead, he turned to the mother: “Do you feel differently?”

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Tulsi Gabbard Resigns As Director Of National Intelligence Week After Reported CIA “Raid”

by The Young Turks, Erin Molan, ZeroHedge and Chris Cillizza

Tulsi Gabbard announced that she is stepping down from her role as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to support her husband, Abraham, as he battles bone cancer.

CIA whistleblower, James Erdman III, recently made an explosive claim that the CIA seized several documents that included the JFK files and MK Ultra files that were being reviewed by Tulsi Gabbard’s office for declassification. Republican Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna expressed her absolute outrage over this. Direction and authority had been given by the president to declassify the files. The CIA denied that it raided the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

Four other officials in Trump’s cabinet have recently left, including former National Security Advisor Mike Walz, former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and former US Attorney General Pam Bondi. Joe Kent, who was the head of The National Counterterrorism Center that is located in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence led by Tulsi Gabbard, resigned his position in March and cited his opposition to the war in Iran. Joe Kent revealed that he was prohibited from investigating the murder of Charlie Kirk, who was also opposed to war with Iran, after Tyler Robinson was charged.

Ana Kasperian makes the case that DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard is denying that her office was raided by the CIA.

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Bobby Kennedy Fakes a Pandemic in One Easy Step - by Issuing a PREP Act Declaration for Hoax-a-Virus.

by Sasha Latypova

Readers, about a week ago I asked you to predict if this would happen, and most of you agreed this was coming. Did we nail this prediction, or what? And we didn’t even use a crystal ball…

My next prediction - Kennedy is getting fired/resigned before July 18th or thereabout. Read below why I think this is likely to happen.

Who here still believes that pandemics really do exist? I hope none of my audience are that dense and all have stopped buying the CIA-deep state baloney which they use to make bio-chemical poisons/ assassination weapons, and then “commercialize”/launder their accumulated intellectual property for profit extraction via “vaccines”, “public health” and “countermeasures” funded and purchased by the government cash laundromat. Can’t leave a zillion dollars on the table, can we? Win. Win.

Bobby knows pandemics are routinely faked by the government. “Except not covid! That one is real!” I am still laughing hysterically whenever I re-watch this clip:

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Synthetic Milk and the Collapse of Food Safety: Why Children Must Not Become Experimental Subjects

by Michelle Perro, MD

We have entered an era where “food” is no longer grown, raised, or even traditionally manufactured. Instead, it is now being engineered in labs through synthetic biology that create novel proteins and fermentation byproducts never before consumed in human history.

And now, these products are being offered as substitutes for one of the most biologically important foods in childhood: milk.

A newly published study in Scientific Reports should serve as a dire warning to regulators, physicians, parents, and public health officials alike. The paper directly challenges one of the central assumptions driving the synthetic milk industry: that these products are “substantially equivalent” to natural dairy and therefore safe enough to enter the food supply under existing regulatory frameworks.

The findings demonstrate otherwise.

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Sleepless Nights Linked to Comfort Eating and Overeating

by Dr. Joseph Mercola

A large study of more than 27,000 adults found that poor sleep quality and short sleep duration strongly increase emotional eating, overeating, and cravings for calorie-dense foods such as sweets and fried meals

People with the worst sleep were up to 3.5 times more likely to eat when stressed, bored or upset, showing how sleep loss shifts eating from hunger-driven behavior to comfort-driven behavior

Sleeping less than seven hours per night was linked to 24% higher odds of overeating and 47% higher odds of skipping meals, which often triggers stronger hunger later in the day

Poor sleep also changed food preferences, with people eating fried foods about 10% to 21% more often and sweet snacks about 10% to 39% more frequently compared with people who slept well

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Chemotherapy: Fraudulent and Deadly?

by Dr Vernon Coleman



Over the years I have repeatedly found that all medical recommendations are best treated with a large dose of scepticism.



Nowhere is this more true than in the treatment of cancer.



Patients who are diagnosed with cancer find themselves in a state of shock. And yet, while in a state of shock, they find themselves needing to make a number of vital decisions very quickly.

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James Corbett: The CIA Won: Everything You Believe Is False

by The Corbett Reportcorbettreport.comMay 24, 2026

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”



– ex-CIA Director William Casey

If you’ve been hanging out in conspiracy realist circles for any length of time, you’ve doubtless heard this infamous quote from ex-CIA director / unindicted Iran-Contra co-conspirator / Knight of Malta / Le Cercle member William Casey. And, unlike every internet-famous quotation purporting to record some incendiary confession from a conspirator, this one might actually be true!

At least, that’s what Barbara Honegger maintains. When pressed on the origin of the quote by one online sleuth, the former Reagan campaign staffer and policy analyst confirmed she heard Casey say those very words at a White House meeting in 1981.

I personally was the source for that William Casey quote. He said it at an early Feb. 1981 meeting in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House which I attended, and I immediately told my close friend and political godmother / Senior White House Correspondent Sarah McClendon, who then went public with it without naming the source.

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Which US States Gained The Most Residents In 2025

Etienne Note: People are beginning to vote with their feet and the pro-freedom states (New Hampshire (The Free State Project), Tennessee, Florida, and Idaho are winning. The “basket-cases of socialism” (Illinois, California, New York, Red-Flag Law Maryland, and Taxachussets are losing. Expect this dynamic to accelerate in the coming years on both the State level and the national level as US tax slaves leave for places like Prospera, St. Kitts, Nevis, and other low-tax, low-regulation. Illinois would have already collapsed already if not for the federal “government” robbing all the other states to prop up Illinois (Chicago) with bailouts…

by Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge

Nearly 15 million Americans moved in 2025, with many relocating across state lines in search of lower costs, job opportunities, and warmer climates.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, shows net migration per 10,000 residents across all 50 states in 2025, revealing where population inflows were strongest and which states saw the biggest outflows.

The data comes from HireAHelper.

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$150 Humanoid Robot House Cleaning Service Threatens To Undercut Maid Services

by Tyler Durden

It’s no secret that some humanoid robotics companies are training their machines for work on factory floors, while others are positioning their bots to enter homes in the coming years.

One of the first real signs of humanoids entering homes today is a new cleaning service in San Francisco that uses what appear to be Unitree humanoid robots trained to clean everything from floors and countertops to stovetops, mirrors, and nearly any surface in the house.

Called “Gatsby,” the new service deploys humanoid robots to homes for a flat service charge of $150.

“We just made U.S. history. Today, Gatsby ran the first-ever consumer cleaning by a humanoid robot in the United States,” Gatsby wrote in a press release earlier this month.

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Centralised Government vs Decentralised Governance

by Sotiris Rex

Centralised government, or the state, is a system founded on violence alone. Anything and everything the state does is driven by force or the threat of force. Whatever policy or “public good” the state presumes to impose on its populations, the imposition is backed by aggressive violence alone. Even fiat currency is “backed” by violence; violence that is paid for by fiat currency backed by the violence that backs it… in a chicken-and-egg psychopathy of a self-sustained system of nothingness, a bluff of authority.

Taxes are taken by force. Arbitrary laws are obeyed due to the fear of state violence, not the fear of missing privilege and opportunity in a community, or the fear of reciprocal violence by victims. We know this because almost all of state-defined “crimes” are victimless. You obey nonsense laws that keep useless people in pointless jobs.

The state does not function on incentives; only threats.

A threat takes what is already yours. An incentive offers you what you don’t have. The punishment of threat-based systems is the deprivation of what you already have. The “punishment” in incentive-based systems is the deprivation of an over-and-above privilege, an opportunity to gain something more than what you already have.

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US Collapses On Freedom Index Ranking of Most Free Countries:

by Tyler Durden

Global freedom declined for the 20th consecutive year in 2025, according to Freedom House. More than 50 countries saw political rights and civil liberties deteriorate, including the United States.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Gabriel Cohen, ranks the world’s most and least free countries using Freedom House’s 2026 Freedom in the World report, which evaluates political rights and civil liberties across 195 countries and territories.

Finland topped the rankings with a perfect score of 100, followed by New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden at 99. Meanwhile, South Sudan scored 0, the lowest possible rating, highlighting the widening divide between the world’s strongest democracies and most repressive regimes.

Europe accounts for most of the world’s highest-scoring countries, led by the Nordics and Western Europe. Strong electoral systems, independent courts, press freedom, and protections for civil liberties helped countries like Finland, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands rank near the top globally.

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How The Deep State Weaponizes AI To Control The Narrative

by Tyler Durden

The Deep State just upgraded from clunky human fact-checkers to AI that scales narrative control at lightspeed.

As Tony Seruga wrote on X:

No more paper trails, subpoenas, or exposed biases - just seamless manipulation.

AI floods zones with thousands of subtly varied “organic” rebuttals in seconds.

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Why cooking one meal a week at home reduces your dementia risk

by Phil Hilton

I wear the apron in my house. My tagliatelle ragù is a symphony in mince, and my griddled prawns transport you to the Amalfi Coast. My wife, you see, hates cooking. Now, it seems, despite my having taken up kitchen duties by default, I may have been unwittingly improving my long-term cognitive health.

New research carried out in Japan, and published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, suggests home cooking may reduce the risk of cognitive decline by 30 per cent, and that figure jumps to 70 per cent for novices learning for the first time. Participants in the study were at least 65 and drawn from the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study, a long-term age-and-health-monitoring project.

Research led by Dr. Yukako Tani tracked over 10,000 older people for six years and concluded: “Creating an environment where people can cook meals when they are older may be important for the prevention of dementia.” Yet, there’s a danger men may be missing out.

Anne Iarchy is a cooking tutor at Age UK Barnet, she says, “Today most of the men on my courses have left cooking to their wives and when they find themselves on their own, they have no clue. They eat processed food and ready meals. They don’t know how to chop or peel a vegetable.”

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Healthcare Is the #1 Cause of Death — and It’s Not Even Close

by Dr. Wojak, M.D.

The biggest threat to patient safety isn’t external disease—it’s the medical system itself.

If you search for the “leading causes of death” in the United States, you will be directed to CDC data listing heart disease and cancer at the top—healthcare-related deaths aren’t even included on the list. But those statistics come from death certificates and ICD codes (International Classification of Diseases) that are structurally incapable of recording the massive number of deaths caused by the medical system.

The CDC’s mortality statistics run on ICD codes that don’t properly track the medical system’s own failures. When a doctor or a pharmaceutical drug kills a patient, the cause is recorded as a biological endpoint—such as cardiac arrest or organ failure—and grouped under broader categories like heart disease or cancer, effectively erasing the medical system’s culpability in the death.

The scale of this erasure is massive. A 2000 study in The American Journal of Medicine compared two federal databases and found a 34-fold difference: the FDA’s own reporting system captured many more adverse drug reactions than were recorded on official death certificates—and it is those dramatically lower death certificate numbers that feed the CDC’s mortality rankings.

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TGIF: Democracy Is Not Liberty

by Sheldon Richman

Auberon Herbert (1838-1906) was a standout British advocate of self-ownership, individualism, and liberty. He promoted a fully free society marked by voluntary exchange and the exclusion of the initiation of physical force, which he understood to be contrary to reason and human flourishing. Herbert was an author and, briefly, a member of Parliament for the Liberal Party. Under the influence of the great laissez-faire social philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), he became a consummate libertarian, though his favored label was “voluntaryist.”

We are fortunate that in 1978, the Liberty Fund and Tulane University libertarian philosophy professor Eric Mack compiled Herbert’s best writings in The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays. As a young libertarian, I fondly recall seeing Mack lecture on Herbert, whom I was unfamiliar with, just as the book hit the market. I had not thought about Herbert since then, until I came across a three-year-old video from Harry Binswanger extolling Herbert. I am grateful for the reminder. (Trivia: young Murray Rothbard once used the pen name “Aubrey Herbert.”)

Mack’s excellent introduction to the volume sums up Herbert’s thinking well. During the late Victorian age, Mack writes,

[Herbert] formulated and expounded voluntaryism, his system of “thorough” individualism. Carrying natural rights theory to its logical limits, Herbert demanded complete social and economic freedom for all noncoercive individuals and the radical restriction of the use of force to the role of protecting those freedoms—including the freedom of peaceful persons to withhold support from any or all state activities. All cooperative activity, he argued, must be founded upon the free agreement of all those parties whose rightful possessions are involved.

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‘BusPatrol’ Put AI Cameras in Tens of Thousands of School Buses. Now They Want to Give Cops Access

by Joseph Cox

BusPatrol, a company that has installed AI-powered cameras in tens of thousands of school buses around the U.S., now plans to turn those cameras into automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), capturing the location of every vehicle the buses drive past, and give that data to law enforcement, 404 Media has learned. The plan will essentially transform school buses into roaming surveillance vehicles, taking a technology that was originally designed to issue tickets to people illegally passing stopped buses and using it for much wider and general law enforcement, likely without a warrant.

BusPatrol has already taken steps to share the collected data with law enforcement contracting giant Axon, according to leaked BusPatrol documents and a source with knowledge of the plans. Internally, BusPatrol has acknowledged how controversial its plan to collect and share this data is, pointing specifically to concerns about ICE using license plate data, but emphasizes the likely success of selling the angle of protecting children.

“Who would have thought that school buses would be turned into the mass surveillance state?,” Michael Soyfer, an attorney from the Institute for Justice, which has various ongoing ALPR-related lawsuits, told 404 Media in a phone call.

BusPatrol says it has cameras in more than 40,000 buses across 24 states. Ordinarily, those cameras track whether a vehicle illegally passes the school bus while it has its stop signs, or stop arms, extended. BusPatrol then reviews the footage and passes it to the police, who decide if the driver violated the law. BusPatrol then sends the ticket to the driver. For cities and counties, the attraction of BusPatrol is as a revenue generator while also theoretically making cars drive more safely near children. (In April, Bloomberg Businessweek published an investigation showing in one case there was no evidence of a decline in collisions near stopped school buses, and the respective county paid BusPatrol tens of millions of dollars.)

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Americans Are About to Pay Even More at the Grocery Store

Etienne Note: This has nothing to do with weather.. The organized crime banks and “government” are stealing the value out of everyone’s money by letting the banks create money out of thin air using fractional reserve banking. They are waging economic warfare against the population and the monopoly media is helping them cover it up. See our expose at ArtOfLiberty.org/Inflation

by Mark Niquette and Lauren Rosenthal

(Bloomberg) -- As Americans confront a surge in prices at the pump, another inflation wave is headed for the grocery store.

A combination of factors including bad weather, tariffs and a dwindling cattle herd are already pushing up grocery prices at an above-average pace. In April, they rose by the most in nearly four years, and economists say the impact of the Iran war and a potential El Niño weather pattern will only add to pressures into 2027.

The hit to US household finances from higher grocery bills is set to intensify just ahead of the November midterm elections, amplifying affordability as a defining issue. And to a greater extent than the surge in gas prices, the slower-moving food shock will be difficult to reverse quickly because the size of autumn harvests is determined by planting decisions made in the spring.

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Weight-Loss Drugs Draw Thousands of Lawsuits Alleging Serious Harm

by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Thousands of lawsuits claim GLP-1 weight-loss drugs caused severe injuries, including digestive shutdown, organ damage, vision loss, and neurological complications tied to nutrient depletion

Rapid adoption — with more than 31 million U.S. adults using these medications — exposed safety patterns that were less visible when fewer people used them

New regulatory warnings highlight risks beyond digestion, including psychiatric symptoms, and reduced effectiveness of oral contraceptives due to altered drug absorption

The underlying mechanism behind both weight loss and harm centers on appetite suppression and slowed digestion, which disrupt nutrient intake, metabolic signaling and cellular energy

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Privacy Could Make or Break Milage-Based User Fees

by Marc Scribner

Proposed mileage-based user fees (MBUF) systems would charge roadway users per mile driven. This model offers advantages over traditional fuel excise taxes, in which road users are taxed per gallon of fuel consumed. With rising vehicle fuel economy, as well as hybrid-electric and battery-electric vehicles, MBUFs offer a propulsion-neutral alternative to ensure road users pay their fair share for their road use. User privacy in the collection of MBUFs has emerged as a major public concern. Fortunately, privacy can be protected when MBUF systems are designed properly.

The simplest way to address privacy concerns is to offer MBUF measurement and collection methods that do not rely on location information. This approach has been adopted in Hawaii, which assesses MBUFs through odometer readings as part of the state’s existing annual vehicle safety inspection process. Payment for the annual MBUF assessment is then due at the time of vehicle registration renewal. MBUF programs in Oregon and Utah offer customers the option to submit mileage assessments by capturing photos of their odometers.

While odometer readings ensure customer privacy because no location information is involved, there are drawbacks. Reporting requires more effort on the part of customers. In the case of annual or quarterly reporting, billed amounts will be higher and may be burdensome for lower-income customers. Auditing and billing disputes are necessarily more challenging. Miles driven out of state or on private property are also not exempt. Oregon does allow odometer-reading MBUF enrollees the option to submit a form annually requesting reimbursement for these miles driven, but this is hardly a seamless or precise system. And simple odometer readings would preclude more advanced pricing policies in the future that could vary charges by roadway and traffic flow characteristics.

To offer the best customer experience and realize the greatest benefits from MBUFs, location information is necessary. The question then is how to protect customer privacy when these more sophisticated MBUF collection methods are used.

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How American Israel-First Sayanim Enabled and Protected Epstein

by Jamal Kanj

In an article last week, I argued that Jeffrey Epstein was not a lone rogue predator. This week, I turn to the more troubling question: how did Epstein, a man with no credible résumé, no transparent wealth, or a conventional career path, manage such an unconventional ascent into America’s halls of power?

Epstein’s rise was not the result of financial brilliance. He was a college dropout, hired as a teacher at an elite Manhattan private school on dubious credentials. A former student later recalled wondering, “How did this guy get his job.” From there, Epstein invented the persona of a mathematical prodigy. A cover, uncertified qualification, designed to confer learning skills or deception to explain his rise into the world of high finance.

Epstein climbed the financial and social ladder through a singular relationship with the Israel-first Jewish billionaire Leslie Wexner. Without Wexner, there would be no Epstein as we know him. Leslie Wexner is the founder of L Brands (formerly Limited Brands), the retail conglomerate behind Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie & Fitch, and The Limited. Wexner accumulated considerable fortune, which he leveraged through tax-exempt mechanisms to cultivate pro-Israel Jewish leadership and strengthen Israel’s long-term political, cultural, and institutional influence in the U.S.

Epstein joined Wexner in the 1980s and suddenly became his most trusted financial adviser. What followed violates all norms of fiduciary responsibility between two parties. Epstein was granted sweeping power of attorney over Wexner’s fortune, real estate holdings, and business dealings. Epstein stayed at Wexner-owned mansions, and ran the family office, despite having little in the way of a proven financial track record prior to the relationship.

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They Are Building A UFC Arena On The White House Lawn

by Caitlin Johnstone

Reading by Tim Foley:

They are building a UFC arena

on the White House lawn,

because the world has gone insane,

and there are chatbots in our skulls,

and our eyes have been crossed out

with black ink.

They are building a UFC arena

on the White House lawn

so the president can watch men fight in a cage

while the Paramount Plus audience

watches military recruitment ads

that are marketed to teenagers

and a podcast plutocrat

interviews men with bloody hands

as shame-soaked survivors

sleep on the sidewalk

in Washington DC,

as Cuban parents light a candle

and skip another meal,

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Thomas Massie’s Loss to AIPAC Funded “CIA Republican” Ed Gallrein Proves Elections Rigged & “Government” A Scam

In “Government” – The Biggest Scam in History.. Exposed! I make the case that “government” is both completely illegitimate on its face and, obviously, being run as a criminal enterprise. The Con-stitution was either a scam from the beginning or the DUMBEST idea ever. Create a ruling class with a monopoly on violence that, supposedly, is restrained by what George Bush Jr. called a “God-Damn Piece of Paper.”

One of the reasons that “government” is such a dumb idea is that it is so easily rigged by monied interests and the recent primary election in Kentucky that saw one of the most popular congressional representatives of all time Thomas Massie, defeated in his primary by a no-name loser and “Ex” Navy SEAL: Ed Gallrein.

When you see over $30 million dumped into a single congressional primary to defeat one man, you are not watching “democracy”. You are watching the installation of a political puppet.

That is what happened to Thomas Massie — the Kentucky Republican who voted his conscience instead of taking orders. His crime? Refusing to rubber-stamp blank checks for Israel and questioning why Americans should fund foreign wars while inflation eats their paychecks and their savings.

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Who Owns the Airwaves and the Sea?

by Thiago V. S. Coelho•Mises Wire

Murray Rothbard’s discussion of the radio spectrum and waterways in Man, Economy, and State was an early and remarkably systematic attempt to drag two supposedly “exceptional” resources back into the ordinary law of property. In 1962, he argued that usable radio frequencies were scarce and therefore ownable, and that fishing areas in oceans could likewise be appropriated, bounded, and exchanged. He even said the relevant water areas could be marked off by latitude and longitude. Rothbard was not inventing these ideas out of thin air; in the footnotes of the text he cited Ronald Coase on spectrum and Jerome Milliman on water, showing that he knew he was entering a real but still small debate. What made Rothbard distinctive was not simply that he liked markets. It was that he insisted on asking the prior question: who has title?

That question mattered because the American legal regime for radio had been built to avoid answering it in property terms. The Radio Act of 1927 placed control over interstate and foreign radio transmission under federal authority, required applicants to waive claims of right against the United States, and declared that licenses created no right beyond their own limited terms. It also tied licensing to the vague standard of “public interest, convenience, or necessity.” The Communications Act of 1934 then created the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and centralized that administrative framework rather than abandoning it. Rothbard’s proposal, in this context, was a rejection of the architecture of command-and-license broadcasting itself.

On spectrum, Rothbard’s claim was simple and radical: ordinary breathable air is too abundant to be property, but the electromagnetic spectrum used for broadcasting is scarce, so it should be appropriated by first users “just like” land or livestock. He wrote that the first user of a frequency would own it for his relevant wave area, and that a later broadcaster transmitting on that same wavelength would be guilty of invasion in the same way a trespasser invades land. In the same passage he cited Coase’s 1959 article arguing that federal ownership of the airwaves had been justified less by true “chaos” than by the suppression of emerging common-law claims. Rothbard’s great move was to turn what Coase framed largely as an allocation problem into a deeper problem of justice, title, and trespass.

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Florida Governor Calls For Special Session To Eliminate Property Tax For Homeowners

by Tyler Durden

Authored by Jacki Thrapp via The Epoch Times,

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 27 called for a special legislative session to pass his plan to exempt homeowners from paying property taxes on their permanent residence.

The Republican governor revealed his plans to sign a proclamation that would require state lawmakers to convene in Tallahassee and discuss his “Save Our Homes” proposal starting on June 1.

“Taxing something that you own repeatedly, which is a property tax, is the worst way to do taxation,” DeSantis said in a news conference on May 27.

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Upcoming Liberty Events

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Join Etienne, the Art of Liberty Foundation and the crew from CounterForce Alliance in a free streaming event on June 14^th on how to find OR create OR grow a local liberty group in your area! You can register and peruse our list of local Liberty groups around the world on the same page: https://artofliberty.org/liberty-groups/

Honoring Hero Johnny Hurley, Arvada, CO, US, June 21st, 2026

Porcupine Freedom Festival - June 21st-28th, 2026

Why Is The Healthcare System Broken? - Windham, New Hampshire - June 27th

54th Annual Rainbow Gathering, Northern California, US, July 1st – 7th, 2026

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From Isolation to Action – Finding (OR Creating!) the Freedom Movement in Your Community! - June 14^th 2026 – On-line

Join Etienne, the Art of Liberty Foundation and the crew from CounterForce Alliance in a free streaming event on June 14^th on how to find OR create OR grow a local liberty group in your area! You can register and peruse our list of local Liberty groups around the world on the same page: https://artofliberty.org/liberty-groups/

Approaching Humanity - Phoenix Area, AZ - Join Larken and Amanda Rose for a live event and book launch focused on truth, freedom, and responsibility. Tickets and info at TheRoseChannel.com/humanity.

Memes Bonanza

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Check out ArtOfLiberty.org/White-Rose

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Truth Music of the Week

Yaima - Gajumaru (Acoustic)

No truth music today… Just an AMAZING acoustic version of Gajumaru by Yaima

NEW ALBUM TEASER | Prezence Studio Sessions

Prezence is finishing up a new album and I’m stoked to share a teaser with yall ⚡️ go subscribe to the Prezence email list at

https://www.prezencemusic.com/

if you wanna be first to know when the album drops!

libertarian Intentional Community Roundup

libertarian Intentional Community Roundup is where we cover libertarian and voluntaryist intentional communities and free private cities including Prospera (Honduras), The Free State Project (New Hampshire), Liberstad (Norway), Montelibero (Montenegro), Los Propietarios, (Argentina), Liberland (Croatia/Serbia border), Network States in general and Sea Steading (The Oceans). I am also covering secession movements including Greater Idaho, Please send details of any new happenings, projects or projects I am missing!

Liberland Update

This summer, as last year, we expect to welcome visitors to Liberland and to offer a daily Beach Bar experience, alongside our newly open shop in Batina. The Beach Bar is intended for daytime visits only.

Looking further ahead, subject to diplomatic, legal, and practical progress, our vision is to continue developing Liberty Island through additional settlement infrastructure, including a possible expansion of the existing treehouse area, airwalks connecting structures, shared visitor facilities, and improved port access.

Here’s Where Wealth Is Moving In America

Americans aren’t just moving, they’re bringing billions in wealth with them.

by Tyler Durden

Americans aren’t just moving, they’re bringing billions in wealth with them.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, visualizes net wealth migration by state in 2023, based on Realtor.com’s analysis of the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service.

Florida alone gained tens of billions in income from out-of-state residents. Meanwhile, states like California and New York saw massive outflows, highlighting how affordability is playing a central role in domestic migration trends.

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by Gale Pooley

ne morning in Boston in 1895, as K. C. Gillette stood before the mirror, a brilliant idea flashed across his mind. “As I stood there with the razor in my hand, my eyes resting on it as lightly as a bird settling down on its nest — the Gillette razor was born. I saw it all in a moment, and in that same moment many unvoiced questions were asked and answered more with the rapidity of a dream than by the slow process of reasoning. I stood there before that mirror in a trance of joy at what I saw.”

He quickly wrote a letter to his wife, “I have got it; our fortune is made.”

Simple ideas often appear obvious in retrospect, but simplicity is usually the far edge of genius.

Men’s facial fashions were shifting rapidly in the late 1800s: the beard was out, the clean-shaven chin was in, and the mustache had to be perfect. To maintain this look, men either visited the barber two or three times a week, or shaved themselves, a risky alternative. The “cutthroat” straight razors demanded constant sharpening, and punished even small mistakes — especially for beginners or anyone pressed for time.

Gillette’s insight was simple: don’t sharpen the blade — replace it with something safe, affordable, and convenient.

The Long Road to Innovation

King Camp Gillette was born in 1855 in Wisconsin and grew up in Chicago in a family of tinkerers. His father was a part-time patent agent who encouraged experimentation and invention, while his mother obsessed over efficiency and avoiding wasted time.

After the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the family business in 1871, Gillette went to work as a clerk before moving to New York City and becoming a traveling salesman. For nearly two decades he worked various jobs while constantly trying — and mostly failing — to invent useful products.

In 1890, he joined the Baltimore Seal Company, where the company president had invented the disposable Crown Cork bottle cap. He told Gillette: “Why don’t you invent something that, when once used, is thrown away, and the customer keeps coming back for more?” Gillette never forgot the advice.

It took Gillette six years to transform his brilliant shaving revelation in Boston into reality. Gillette noted, “The razor was looked upon as a joke by all my friends. A common greeting was, ‘Well, Gillette, how’s the razor?’ If I had been technically trained, I would have quit.” He visited metallurgists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who assured him his idea was impossible.

Building the Impossible Razor

He finally found engineer William Emery Nickerson, who believed the idea was possible, and together they worked several years to perfect the thin blade, double-edged safety razor.

Gillette applied for a patent in 1901, but struggled to raise the capital to begin production until John Joyce, an old friend and businessman, invested $5,000 in the venture.

An invention and a patent are only the beginning. They do not become true innovations until they can be produced profitably, and at scale. Perhaps even more important than the blade itself, Nickerson designed the machinery that made mass production possible. Gillette understood that learning curves, precision manufacturing, and scale would not merely improve shaving — they would revolutionize it.

The company produced its first razors in October 1903. Sales for the inaugural year: 51 razors and 168 blades. The patent was formally issued in 1904, and the company sold 91,000 razors and more than two million blades that year.

Transformation is often invisible before it becomes inevitable.

Mass Production Arrives

A big break came in World War I when Gillette was able to sell the US government 3.5 million razors and 32 million blades. Clean-shaven faces ensured a proper seal for gas masks. Gillette had to hire more than 500 new employees, who worked around the clock to fulfill the order.

An invention became infrastructure.

Gillette became forever associated with the famous phrase: “Give ’em the razor; sell ’em the blades.” There is no evidence he actually said it, but no sentence better captures the revolution he unleashed.

Engineering Repeat Consumption: a New Business Model

Ever obsessed with efficiency, Gillette viewed the old barber-shop culture as an enormous waste of human time and productive energy. One 1906 advertisement boldly claimed: “If the time, money, energy, and brain-power wasted in the barber shops of America were applied in direct effort, the Panama Canal would be dug in four hours.”

Gillette was not merely inventing a product to save time. He was inventing a business model. The razor was the platform; the blades created the recurring stream of revenue. More than a century before subscription software and hardware-as-a-service, Gillette understood the power of repeat consumption driven by convenience, affordability, and habit.

To sustain recurring blade sales, Gillette needed more than utility. He needed ritual, loyalty, and identity.

This is where advertising became his accelerator. His advertisements were among the first to harness the persuasive power of celebrity culture. One ad featured John McGraw, legendary manager of the New York Giants, declaring: “It makes shaving all to the merry.” Another showed George Washington holding a safety razor beside the slogan: “George Washington Gave an Era of Liberty to the Colonies. The Gillette Gives an Era of Personal Liberty to All Men.”

Gillette later enlisted baseball star Honus Wagner — perhaps the most famous athlete of his generation — and the campaign was a sensation. Gillette helped pioneer a new era of advertising in which products were no longer sold merely for their utility, but for the image and lifestyle they projected.

Under Gillette, shaving ceased to be a tedious chore performed with a dangerous blade. It became part of the modern masculine ideal. The right razor promised confidence, precision, cleanliness, and success — the same virtues embodied by the athletes and heroes in his advertisements.

Later, using an elaborate formula, Gillette figured that the monetary value of the time men saved each year using his razor was equal to the entire capital of US Steel, valued at around $1.5 billion at the time.

Unlocking Abundance Through Innovation

Yet beneath the marketing was a deeper insight: wealth is measured in liberated human time. Gillette’s true innovation was not the razor itself, but the gift of time — our scarcest resource.

Today, there are almost three billion adult men on the planet. If Gillette’s razor innovation saves each of them just five minutes a day, that amounts to 250 million hours liberated every single day.

Saving five minutes a day shaving was nice, but the biggest savings involved the time it took to earn the money to buy a shave.

In 1906, entry-level workers — equivalent to today’s fast-food restaurant employees — were earning around 10 cents an hour. At the time, it typically cost 10 cents to get a shave at a barber shop. Work an hour, get a shave. That year, you could buy the new Gillette safety razor with 12 blades for $5, a time-price of 50 hours. At the recommended ten shaves per blade, the price of a smooth face dropped 75 percent, to 2.4 cents.

There has been lots of razor innovation over the last 120 years. In fact, King Gillette said, “We’ll stop making razor blades when we can’t keep making them better.”

Today, you can get the Gillette Fusion5 ProGlide with six blade cartridges for $29.97. With average earnings at a limited-service restaurant today closer to $19.00 an hour, the time price is around an hour and 35 minutes for these workers. For the time it took to buy one in 1906, you get 31.6 today. Having tried one of the original Gillette blades and the Fusion 5, I can testify it’s like the difference between driving a ‘69 VW bug and a 2026 Lexus.

Believe it or not, there’s still a market for the original type of Gillette razor. Amazon sells a double-edged razor for $7.66. There are only five blades instead of 12, but the blades last much longer. This would put the time price for our limited-service restaurant workers at around 24 minutes. For the time it took to buy one in 1906, you get 125 today.

The best deal is Dollar General. They will sell you a 12-pack for $1.00, or 8.33 cents per razor. A five-pack would be around 42 cents. For the time it took to buy a Gillette in 1906, our capitalist friends at Dollar General will now sell you 2,262.

Depending on how you want to compare, since 1906 shaving-razor abundance has increased by a factor of 31.6 to 2,262. Anyone today can have a pretty good razor for just a few minutes of time.

From Luxury to Ubiquity

What began as a dull blade before a mirror in Boston became a revelation: knowledge can redeem time. Gillette became a global engine for transforming human ingenuity into billions of dollars of value and billions of liberated hours.

In 1903, Gillette sold 51 razors. A century later, Procter & Gamble purchased the company for $57 billion. Steel did not become more valuable. Steel is abundant and nearly worthless without the mind. The value resided in the invisible architecture of human creativity — metallurgy, machinery, chemistry, branding, logistics, engineering, and trust — accumulated across generations and poured into a single morning ritual. Accumulated manufacturing knowledge compressed time prices downward, making what was once a luxury nearly universal.

I have three sons. One of my great pleasures as a father has been teaching them to shave when they first sprouted whiskers. In that simple act lives a century of accumulated discovery passed from one generation to the next.

Gillette did not merely improve shaving. He helped reveal the central truth of economic progress:

When free minds are allowed to create, knowledge compounds.

When knowledge compounds, time is liberated.

And when time is liberated, abundance pours outward to everyone.

(And we all look a little better.)

Continue reading…

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by Unbekoming

There is one study that would end the argument about childhood vaccination, and it has never been done. Take a large group of children given the full schedule, take a comparable group given none of it, and follow both for years across every measure of health. The design is simple, the groups exist, and the question is the most important one in pediatric medicine. It is also the one comparison the system cannot afford to run, which is why running it has been declared unethical.

The comparison ran itself anyway. Joy Garner’s Control Group Survey gathered health data on completely unexposed Americans across forty-eight states and found a chronic-condition rate of 2.64 percent. The general population, almost entirely exposed to the schedule, carries chronic conditions at roughly 60 percent. That gap is the subject of this book.

THE BOOK — The Unvaccinated makes the case against the childhood schedule completely, and on the establishment’s own ground: what is actually in the injections, the legal architecture that removed liability and let the schedule expand, the financial machinery that pays compliance, and the buried history showing that the great killers had already retreated by ninety-five to ninety-eight percent before the injections arrived. A reader who goes no further than the safety case will already have lost their illusions about the schedule.

But the safety case, on its own, leaves the foundation standing — and the foundation is where the real corruption lives.

THE TRAP MOST OF THIS SPACE IS STILL IN — Almost everyone who fights vaccination fights it on safety, and almost everyone does it while standing inside an assumption neither side examines: that the diseases are caused by transmissible viral particles a properly made product could defend against. Grant that, and the whole argument shrinks to a dispute about dosage.

I’ll be plain about this, because the book is. Much of the writing collected here, including some of my own, was done when I was still inside that frame. The safety points are sound and I’ve left them as they were. That a case against vaccination could persuade people who still believed in viruses, who accepted contagion without question, tells you how strong the safety evidence is. But persuading someone inside the frame is not the same as freeing them from it. Virology is the problem that vaccination was built to solve, and both are scientifically corrupt. It’s time everyone still working in this space did that deeper part of the work.

INSIDE — THE FIVE APPENDICES

Appendix 1 — The Refusal Toolkit. The prepared, wave-by-wave guide the delivery-room encounter is designed to defeat: what to print and bring, what the pressure sounds like at each stage from the casual assumption of consent through the turn to the mother to the threat of Child Protective Services, what is actually true underneath each wave, and how to answer without being drawn into a debate you were never meant to win.

Appendix 2 — What’s Actually in the Vial. The contents, named one substance at a time with their amounts. The vitamin K “vitamin” whose inactive ingredients outweigh the active one by more than fifty to one, the aluminium that accumulates in tissue and does not clear, the surfactant chosen for its ability to open the barrier that protects the brain, and the manufacturers’ own admission that none of it has been tested for cancer, mutation, or fertility effects.

Appendix 3 — The Legal Architecture: A Timeline. The protections laid out as a dated spine, from the 1969 warfare-program language through the 1986 liability shield to the 2022 court filing in which Pfizer reclassified its product as a Department of Defense prototype to which the ordinary rules did not apply. The same product, a vaccine in the messaging and a military prototype in the filing.

Appendix 4 — The Terrain Reading of the Schedule. What injection actually does, described in terms of what the body is rather than the military metaphor of defence and attack: Richet’s Nobel-honoured finding that injecting foreign protein sensitises rather than protects, the persistence of the metal load, and the slide from acute clearing into chronic management that Shelton mapped a century ago.

Appendix 5 — The Question Underneath. The piece no other book in this space writes. A tight executive summary of the case against virology and contagion: what “isolation” actually means and why it proves nothing, what the tests really detect, and the transmission experiments — Rosenau’s among them, 161 volunteers during the deadliest outbreak on record, a 1.2 percent rate of illness — that were designed to confirm contagion and failed. It ends by handing you the full case in No Virus, chapter by chapter.

WHY THIS ONE IS FREE — This book is not behind the paywall. Every subscriber gets it. The people who most need to read it are the ones still arguing about dosage while standing on a foundation that was never sound, and a paywall is the last thing that should sit between them and the argument. If it lands for you, send it to the person you know who is halfway out and doesn’t yet have the words for the rest of the way.

IF YOU WANT TO GO ALL THE WAY DOWN — Appendix 5 is the summary. No Virus is the full reckoning: the isolation studies, the failed contagion experiments, and the disease-by-disease examination of influenza, the childhood illnesses, measles, polio, HIV/AIDS, and COVID. It sits in the paid library alongside the rest of the work — the cancer compendium, the screening books, the heart-disease and genetics titles. The free book shows you the floor giving way. The library is where you find out how far down it goes.

The unvaccinated are not a fortunate minority who gambled and won. They are the evidence that the thing we were told was natural was done to us. Read it, and then decide how deep you want to look.

The Unvaccinated Book V1

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by Tyler Durden

Via Remix News,

The number of small retail stores in Germany has declined drastically since 2010. According to a recent analysis by the credit agency Creditreform and the Handelsblatt Research Institute, there were 236,143 small retail stores with annual sales of less than €250,000 in 2010. For 2025, the sales tax statistics show only 170,770 such stores, a drop of 28 percent, reports Junge Freiheit.

Across all size categories, the number of stores shrank by only 16 percent during the same period, meaning the smaller, owner-operated players are being hit far harder. Small and medium-sized enterprises have been left with barely any financial reserves, a bad sign for the country’s battle with continuous bankruptcies.

According to the report, just over 316,000 retail stores overall remain. The German Retail Federation (HDE) warns that the number of stores could drop below 300,000 in 2026, threatening the vitality of city centers.

“The retail sector is among the fastest-shrinking sectors of the German economy,” Creditreform states in its report, with specialty stores in city centers, on side streets, and in shopping malls affected the most. Creditreform economist Patrik-Ludwig Hantzsch points to a combination of factors: inflation, consumer weakness, rising operating costs, and increasing competitive pressure.

In 2025, 2,440 retailers went bankrupt — a 9 percent increase increase over 2024— with fashion stores, bookstores, and bakeries particularly affected.

HDE President Alexander von Preen argues that politicians should lower energy costs and payroll taxes, while landlords should adopt more flexible, revenue-based rents to reduce vacancies.

Research from the Institute for Retail Research in Cologne shows that empty storefronts damage city centers by discouraging visitors, weakening city image, reducing foot traffic, and causing financial losses for municipalities and nearby businesses.

At the same time, non-food discount chains such as Action, Tedi, Hema, Woolworth, and Thomas Philipps are gaining market share in household goods, toys, stationery, and other categories. An IfH survey found that 85 percent of Germans have shopped at such stores in the past two years.

Creditreform says cities and retailers must adapt.

Traditional shopping-focused city centers are no longer effective in many areas, so cities should better combine shopping, leisure, dining, and living spaces. Small retailers are encouraged to focus on specialization, customer service, digital presence, and unique shopping experiences to remain competitive.

But with these changes, much of the identity of cities may be threatened.

“With the decline of smaller specialist retailers, many city centers are losing their distinctiveness and thus their heart,” says HDE CEO Stefan Genth.

With Germany battling an overburdened social system, surging federal deficit, soaring energy prices, and a massive spike in crime and costs due to migration, the choice of retailers in city centers may be the least of its problems. And yet, this barometer pays testament to all the rest.

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by Liberty Advocate

“The Righteous, Seduced by Their Own Devices”

Carlos Whittaker recently completed a 7.5-week experiment with no screens:

• no phone,

• no television,

• no laptop,

• no smartwatch,

• no digital stimulation.

Before and after the experiment, neuroscientists scanned his brain.

The results stunned people.

He claimed his cognitive memory score jumped from roughly the 50th percentile to the 99th percentile among adult men. He described feeling clearer, sharper, calmer, more emotionally alive, and more present than he had in years.

Whether every detail of the experiment ultimately holds up scientifically is almost secondary to the deeper question it raises:

What exactly are these devices doing to us?

Most people intuitively feel something is happening.

We feel:

• distracted,

• fragmented,

• emotionally exhausted,

• unable to focus,

• restless in silence,

• anxious without stimulation,

• and increasingly unable to sit alone with our own thoughts.

We are hyperconnected digitally while simultaneously becoming emotionally isolated.

Something deeper is happening beneath the surface.

And perhaps the most frightening part is this:

We know it.

Yet we continue anyway.

The Smartphone Is Not Just a Tool

The smartphone is unlike any technology humanity has ever created.

It is:

• a communication device,

• a casino,

• a dopamine dispenser,

• a social identity mirror,

• a surveillance node,

• a propaganda delivery mechanism,

• an entertainment machine,

• a shopping mall,

• a wallet,

• a television,

• a map,

• a therapist,

• a distraction engine,

• and increasingly an artificial companion.

All in one object.

And it is always with us.

The smartphone is not merely something we use anymore.

It has become the environment we live inside.

Why Phones Feel So Addictive

People often reduce the problem to “dopamine.”

But the issue is deeper than pleasure alone.

The true hook is intermittent reward.

This is the same mechanism that powers slot machines.

You never know:

• what notification is coming,

• who liked your post,

• what new video appears,

• what outrage story drops next,

• what message arrives,

• or what emotional stimulation waits behind the next swipe.

The unpredictability itself becomes addictive.

Every scroll carries possibility.

And the brain begins wiring itself around anticipation.

This creates compulsion loops:

• boredom = scrolling,

• anxiety = scrolling,

• loneliness = scrolling,

• discomfort = scrolling,

• exhaustion = scrolling.

The very thing relieving the discomfort slowly becomes the source of the discomfort.

“Hurts So Good”

Many addictions operate through a paradox:
they soothe while simultaneously damaging.

That is why people say:

• “I know this is bad for me.”

• “I waste hours every day.”

• “I can’t stop scrolling.”

• “I feel terrible afterward.”

• “I can’t focus anymore.”

The pleasure is real.

The damage is gradual.

And gradual damage is often the hardest kind to recognize.

Nobody wakes up one morning suddenly destroyed by technology.

Instead:

• attention weakens,

• memory shortens,

• emotional resilience declines,

• relationships thin out,

• sleep erodes,

• silence becomes intolerable,

• contemplation disappears,

• and presence slowly dissolves.

One notification at a time.

The Attention Economy

Modern technology companies do not primarily sell products.

They sell human attention.

Every second you remain engaged:

• generates data,

• increases advertising value,

• trains algorithms,

• strengthens prediction systems,

• and improves behavioral modeling.

This creates a dangerous incentive structure.

The system rewards:

• outrage,

• novelty,

• stimulation,

• emotional activation,

• endless scrolling,

• tribal conflict,

• sexual imagery,

• fear,

• and compulsive engagement.

The algorithms do not necessarily “hate” humanity.

But optimization itself can drift toward exploitation.

If maximizing engagement produces addiction-like behavior, the system naturally evolves toward more addictive designs.

The incentives themselves push in that direction.

The Portable Idol

Ancient people worshipped idols made of:

• wood,

• gold,

• silver,

• stone,

• and carved images.

Modern people often imagine idolatry as primitive superstition.

But the Hebrew and Greek ideas behind “idolatry” were much deeper than statues.

The Hebrew word elil often implied:

• emptiness,

• vanity,

• worthlessness,

• a false thing people trust in.

The Greek word eidolon meant:

• image,

• apparition,

• phantom,

• false representation.

An idol was not merely an object.

It was something people oriented themselves around:

• emotionally,

• spiritually,

• psychologically,

• socially.

Something capturing:

• devotion,

• trust,

• attention,

• identity,

• or desire.

That is why smartphones feel symbolically powerful in the modern age.

They increasingly mediate:

• relationships,

• identity,

• emotions,

• commerce,

• memory,

• entertainment,

• validation,

• politics,

• and reality itself.

The phone becomes:

• the thing we reach for in silence,

• the thing we seek in discomfort,

• the thing we trust for stimulation,

• the thing we check compulsively,

• the thing we sleep beside,

• the thing we panic over when missing.

Not because it is literally divine,
but because it increasingly governs:

• attention,

• attachment,

• behavior,

• and emotional regulation.

Seduced by the Spoils

One of the most profound scriptures describing societal corruption appears in Helaman 6:38:

“…the Nephites did build them up and support them… until they had overspread all the land… and had seduced the more part of the righteous until they had come down to believe in their works and partake of their spoils…”

Notice the pattern.

The people were not conquered only by force.

They were seduced.

By:

• convenience,

• profit,

• comfort,

• belonging,

• incentives,

• and participation.

That pattern matters today.

The most powerful systems are often the ones people willingly embrace because those systems provide:

• stimulation,

• comfort,

• entertainment,

• identity,

• social belonging,

• and emotional escape.

The danger is not merely oppression.

The danger is dependency.

Phones as Attachment Technology

Developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld argues that modern digital technology has transformed from information technology into attachment technology.

This distinction is critical.

Children do not merely use phones for information.

They use them for:

• belonging,

• validation,

• emotional regulation,

• social hierarchy,

• and identity formation.

But human development requires:

• boredom,

• imagination,

• eye contact,

• struggle,

• hierarchy,

• embodied relationships,

• silence,

• and real-world attachment.

Without those things, emotional maturity weakens.

The phone becomes a substitute attachment system.

And once attachment migrates from:

• family,

• community,

• faith,

• and embodied relationships
  toward:

• algorithms,

• peer validation,

• and digital identity,
  society itself begins changing psychologically.

The Surrender of Attention Is the Surrender of Influence

One of the deepest questions of the digital age is this:

Who is shaping the minds, emotions, values, and identities of our children?

For most of human history, the primary influences on a child were:

• family,

• faith,

• community,

• local culture,

• real-world mentors,

• and lived experience.

Today, much of that formation is increasingly outsourced to screens.

Parents hand children devices for:

• entertainment,

• distraction,

• education,

• emotional regulation,

• and social belonging.

But attention is never neutral.

Whatever consistently captures attention eventually shapes:

• imagination,

• desires,

• fears,

• identity,

• behavior,

• and worldview.

That means phones and algorithms are not simply “tools.”

They are becoming behavioral environments.

The danger is not merely that technology entertains us.

The danger is that systems optimized for engagement increasingly shape:

• what people think about,

• how they feel,

• what they fear,

• what they desire,

• what outrages them,

• and what they believe is normal.

And unlike parents, families, or local communities, these systems are often optimized primarily for:

• attention extraction,

• emotional activation,

• advertising revenue,

• behavioral prediction,

• and engagement metrics.

The result is subtle but profound.

People slowly become easier to manipulate because their emotional worlds are increasingly mediated through algorithms.

Children especially become vulnerable because attachment itself migrates toward digital systems.

Phones become:

• emotional pacifiers,

• identity mirrors,

• social-status systems,

• and dopamine regulators.

In many ways, society is surrendering the molding of human consciousness to systems designed not primarily for wisdom or virtue, but for engagement and influence.

This does not require some cartoon villain secretly controlling everything.

The incentives themselves drive the outcome.

When the most profitable systems are the ones best able to:

• capture attention,

• predict behavior,

• maximize stimulation,

• and influence emotion,

then society naturally drifts toward increasingly addictive and psychologically immersive systems.

The frightening part is that much of this happens voluntarily.

People embrace the systems because they offer:

• comfort,

• belonging,

• entertainment,

• stimulation,

• convenience,

• and escape.

But over time, the tradeoff becomes clear:

The more attention we surrender, the more influence we surrender.

And eventually, a civilization distracted enough can become psychologically programmable without ever realizing it.

The Infantile Society

One of the strange paradoxes of modern technology is this:

Humanity has become technologically advanced while emotionally fragile.

We can:

• communicate globally,

• generate AI images,

• automate labor,

• and access infinite information.

Yet many people increasingly struggle with:

• loneliness,

• anxiety,

• attention,

• purpose,

• discipline,

• contemplation,

• and emotional resilience.

Why?

Because constant stimulation can freeze psychological maturation.

If every discomfort is escaped instantly:

• through scrolling,

• entertainment,

• pornography,

• shopping,

• outrage,

• or digital stimulation,
  then people never develop the internal muscles needed for:

• patience,

• reflection,

• endurance,

• and self-governance.

This creates what some thinkers describe as an increasingly infantile culture:

• emotionally reactive,

• dopamine dependent,

• unable to tolerate silence,

• and perpetually distracted.

AI and the Next Stage

Artificial intelligence amplifies this problem dramatically.

AI systems increasingly optimize:

• attention,

• emotional prediction,

• persuasion,

• behavioral manipulation,

• and personalization.

The phone is no longer simply displaying content.

It is learning you.

Your:

• fears,

• desires,

• emotional triggers,

• habits,

• politics,

• vulnerabilities,

• and behavioral patterns
  are increasingly measurable.

This is where concerns about:

• surveillance capitalism,

• digital identity,

• social credit systems,

• programmable incentives,

• and technocratic governance
  begin overlapping.

Because systems optimized for prediction naturally drift toward systems optimized for behavioral influence.

The Slow Surrender of Attention

The deepest danger may not be technological annihilation.

It may be voluntary surrender.

A civilization distracted into weakness.
Stimulated into passivity.
Entertained into dependency.

Not conquered primarily through chains,
but through endless comfort and stimulation.

The frightening part is that many people sense this already.

We feel:

• mentally fragmented,

• emotionally exhausted,

• spiritually numb,

• and unable to disconnect.

Yet the pull remains powerful.

Because the system is not merely rational.

It is neurological.
Psychological.
Emotional.
Social.
Spiritual.

Can Technology Serve Humanity?

Technology itself is not evil.

AI is not inherently evil.
Phones are not inherently evil.
The internet is not inherently evil.

The real question is:

Who shapes the incentives?

Do these systems strengthen:

• families,

• attention,

• local communities,

• wisdom,

• self-government,

• contemplation,

• and human flourishing?

Or do they optimize:

• addiction,

• engagement,

• emotional manipulation,

• dependency,

• surveillance,

• and behavioral control?

That is the true civilizational question of the digital age.

Will technology remain a tool serving humanity?

Or will humanity gradually reorganize itself around systems optimized for machine efficiency, prediction, and control?

Because whatever consistently captures human attention eventually shapes:

• human identity,

• human behavior,

• and ultimately civilization itself.

  Continue reading…

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Support us at the $250 Founding Member Level and get a signed high-resolution hardcover of “Government” - The Biggest Scam in History... Exposed! + Liberator flash drive + a signed high-resolution hardcover of Etienne’s new book: To See the Cage Is to Leave It - 25 Techniques the Few Use to Control the Many + everything else in our “Everything Bundle” of the best in voluntaryist thought delivered domestically. International pays shipping. Our only option for signed copies besides catching Etienne @ an event.