Authored by Peter Huessy via RealClearWire

Yes, there is a nuclear arms race. But the United States is not in it and has not been since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR.

On the contrary, the U.S. has significantly reduced both its reliance on nuclear weapons and its inventory of nuclear forces by over 90 percent.

Two major countries engaged in an accelerating nuclear arms race are Russia and China. Trouble remains as while thankfully, the United States has now taken critical steps to modernize its strategic nuclear forces, replacing its aging forces on a one-for one basis—the U.S. remains from 2.5 to 6 times worse off in the nuclear production business as the U.S. is racing only to stay in place.

Russia has not only modernized its strategic nuclear forces, (over 90 percent completed) they have also significantly increased the number of nuclear warheads they can deliver, replacing, for example the single warhead Topol ICBMs with multiwarhead Yars ICBMs, creating a warhead count potentially far in excess of New Start Treaty limits.

Russia currently has 168 Yars ICBMs (24 silo, 144 mobile), each carrying 4–6 RVs, 36 Yars-S each carrying three heavy re-entry vehicles (RVs); 46 SS-18 ICBMs each carrying 10 RVs, being replaced by the Sarmat each carrying up to 15–20 light (90–150 kt) RVs. The SS-19s are largely retired except for eighteen carrying the Avangard hypersonic vehicle. Current total ICBM warheads are between 1916–2190 if fully uploaded.

Russia has 5 Delta-IV SSBNs each carrying 16 Layner SLBMs and each capable of carrying 8–12 RVs. Russia also has 8 Borei SSBNs with two more under construction and two to four more planned after that. Each Borei caries 16 Bulava SLBMs, each SLBM carries 6 RVs for a total of 1312–1632 warheads. Votinsk, the production plant, can produce Yars and Bulava missiles at a rate of ~40/year.

Russia’s bomber force is rapidly decaying—The ~52 Tu-95 Bears were to be modernized with new engines and avionics, but that program is moving slowly due to sanctions, and the same is true for the 13 Tu-160 Blackjack bombers to be modernized to the Tu-160 M2 standard. Russia planned on building fifty additional Tu-160M2s, but that program is also delayed, as is Russia’s new stealth bomber the PAK-DA. Total current bomber weapon numbers are 964 bringing total Russian strategic nuclear force totals to 4192–4786 warheads.

China’s rapid nuclear build up has been characterized as “breath-taking” by U.S. officials. Although China continues to claim a minimum deterrent posture retaliatory only in nature, their forces as deployed enable them to execute any policy/strategy they wish.

China has 96 DF-31 mobile ICBMs each with 1–3 RVs; 84 DF-41 ICBMs with 2–10 RVs; 40 DF-5 B/C liquid fuel silo based ICBMs with 10 RVs (DF-5C); 320–360 silo based DF-31/41 in three ICBM fields. China recently show-cased the new DF-61 ICBM, close in size to the DF-41 and more technologically advanced. A recent DIA report stated that China would have 700 ICBMs by 2035, some 75 percent greater than the United States.

China’s sea leg of their nuclear TRIAD consists of 6 Type 094 Jin class SSBN, each with 12 JL-3 SLBMs with 1–3 RVs for a total of between 72–216 SLBM warheads. Another 6–8 Type 096 SSBNs are expected to be deployed by 2035, each carrying 16–20 JL-3 or new class SLBMs. Total current SLBM warhead count is 216, but the new 096 SSBN would add another 288–480 warheads.

China’s air leg of the TRIAD consists of 90–100 H-6K bombers carrying 6–7 CJ-20 cruise missiles (2000 km range) as well as 20–30 H-6N carrying one new JL-1 nuclear missile revealed in the recent military parade. China can produce 15–20 H-6 bombers/year, but H-6 production will likely be replaced by production of the H-20 stealth bomber. China’s stealth bomber is expected first flight in 2025/26 and will have a range of 8,500 km and be capable of carrying 10–16 weapons. Current total bomber weapon count is 630 warheads.

China’s current total strategic nuclear weapons count is 4846 if fully uploaded. This is in stark contrast to the U.S. Intelligence Community statement that China only has ~600 strategic nuclear weapons. However simple math shows that if you take the current Russian and Chinese missile numbers stated by FAS and the Intelligence community and multiply by the estimated WH carriage capability you produce far more WH numbers than 600.

The strategic nuclear modernization and build-up programs of China and Russia are largely completed, with Russia completing deployment of at least 46 Sarmat ICBMs with 15–20 RVs as well as the Arcturus SSBN with a 2035 IOC, and eventually the PAK-DA bomber.

China’s strategic nuclear force is forecast to continue to grow to 700 ICBMs by 2035 as well as the addition of the Type 096 SSBN, additional H-6 bombers and a new H-20 stealth bomber.

In contrast, the United States is only modernizing its TRIAD, not increasing its force size or capabilities, replacing ageing systems on a one-for-one basis with no increase in deployed nuclear warheads—in no way can these modernization actions be viewed as “Arms Racing.”

The Sentinel ICBM with one warhead will replace the existing 450 MM III ICBM which are 55 years old and armed with one warhead starting in the 2030’s and completed by 2040’s. The Columbia SSBN, with 16 D-5 SLBMs (Currently armed with ~4 RVs) will replace the OHIO SSBN with 20 D-5 SLBMs on a one-for-one basis starting in 2030–2 and completed by 2042. D-5 SLBMs from Ohio D-5 SSBNs will go into the Columbia SSBNs. The U.S. sea leg of the TRIAD could have 1536 warheads if fully uploaded w/8 RVs/SLBM.

The B-21 dual role conventional/nuclear bomber will enter the force in 2027 at a rate of 7–10/year for a total of 100 bombers. They can carry B-61 bombs or eight nuclear AGM-181 Long Range Stand-Off (LRSO) cruise missiles. They will replace the 45 B-1 conventional bomber and the 20 B-2 bombers. The 76 strong B-52 force will be modernized into the B-52J configuration with new engines and avionics and fly until ~2070, when it will be 100 years old. The B-52J will be capable of carrying up to 20 long range strike options or cruise missiles.

In summary, while China, Russia, and North Kores have been “Arms Racing” since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been a side-line observer. The current long delayed U.S. strategic force modernization program is replacing systems ageing out on a one-for-one basis without increasing capability while Russia, China, and North Korea have not only modernized their force they have also significantly increased capabilities.

The chart represents the average annual production rate for three alternative nuclear forces if built over twenty years from 2025–45 based on projected force structures planned by the United States and in part planned and announced by Russia and China.

The United States is facing a two-peer deterrence dilemma—a Russia with as many as 4786 strategic nuclear warheads; China with potentially upwards of 4846 strategic nuclear weapons for a combined force of 9632 strategic nuclear warheads.

The United States will have 3010 strategic nuclear weapons and approximately 200 theater weapons if we upload all our missiles. As stated by the U.S. Strategic Posture Commission as well as a growing number of U.S. officials, the U.S. will have to increase its nuclear forces—but how and how fast?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Evidence collected by NASA’s Perseverance Rover, launched to Mars in 2020, suggests the possible existence of ancient life on the Red Planet.  The discovery, if verified, would be the first confirmation of life beyond the planet Earth.

After a year if review, scientists believe the leopard spots on rocks observed near a location called the Neretva Vallis river valley (which shows geological signs of large bodies of flowing water) are the potential remains of microscopic organisms.  The rover targeted a rock outcropping called the “Bright Angel” formation which proved to be a viable site.

The rover’s science instruments found that the formation’s sedimentary rocks are composed of clay and silt, which, on Earth, are excellent preservers of past microbial life. They also are rich in organic carbon, sulfur, oxidized iron (rust), and phosphorous. 

“The combination of chemical compounds we found in the Bright Angel formation could have been a rich source of energy for microbial metabolisms,” said Perseverance scientist Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University, “But just because we saw all these compelling chemical signatures in the data didn’t mean we had a potential biosignature. We needed to analyze what that data could mean.”

NASA’s team of scientists carefully reviewed the data over the course of a year.   

“After a year of review, they have come back and they said, listen, we can’t find another explanation,” said Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. “So this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars, which is incredibly exciting.” 

“The discovery of a potential biosignature, or a feature or signature that could be consistent with biological processes, but that requires further work and study to confirm a biological origin is something that we’re sharing with you all today that grows from years of hard work, dedication and collaboration between over 1,000 scientists and engineers here at the (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory and our partner institutions around the country and internationally,” said Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance project scientist at JPL, during a news conference Wednesday.

The new announcement Wednesday is the result of a long, peer-reviewed research process and the collection of more data, said lead study author Joel Hurowitz, a planetary scientist at Stony Brook University in New York. 

Similar announcements of possible life on Mars have occurred since the very beginning of exploration.  In 1976 the Viking 1 and Viking 2 landers took soil samples which yielded positive readings of microbial activity, but the evidence was later deemed “ambiguous”.  

In 1996 a team of NASA scientists claimed to have found microscopic fossils of living organisms 4 billion years old in a Mars meteorite, but the data was labeled inconclusive due to suspicions of contamination.

At one time, billions of years ago, Mars may have had a very similar environmental and atmospheric conditions to the Earth, with all the necessary ingredients to feed living organisms.  The long running theory is that Mars lost it’s magnetic field and solar winds destroyed it’s atmosphere, though this claim remains unproven.  The events that led to Mars becoming a vast scorched red desert are still a mystery.   

Authored by Peter C. Gøtzsche via The Brownstone Institute,

On 12 September, UK child and adolescent psychiatrist Sami Timimi published “When mental-health diagnoses become brands, the real drivers of our psychic pain are hidden” in the Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper.

In his superb article, Sami carefully explains how he arrives at his painful conclusion:

You see there is a truth that we (in the mental-health business) hope no one will notice – we literally don’t know what we are talking about when it comes to mental health.

An obvious problem is that all definitions of psychiatric disorders are subjective. They are not objective facts such as a broken bone is. This means they can be expanded in a myriad of ways to capture a kaleidoscope of distress, alienation, and dissatisfaction, and that psychiatric diagnoses are consumer brands, not medical diseases. 

In medicine, a diagnosis is aimed at determining which disease explains a person’s symptoms and signs, which enables effective matching of a treatment to address specific disease processes. 

This is not the case in psychiatry. And all psychiatric drugs have nonspecific effects that are not directed against some cause of a disease. Their effects are similar to those of alcohol, narcotics, and other brain-active substances. 

But, as Sami explains, increasingly, youngsters are getting diagnosed with ADHD, trauma, depression, anxiety, PTSD, autism, and often several such diagnoses. Their conversations may address gender identity, neurodiversity, and “having” a mental health disorder such as ADHD. 

The facts are that virtually no one is in doubt about whether they are male or female; neurodiversity is a meaningless concept used by psychiatrists to impress the public about how knowledgeable they are but it just means that all people are not the same; and one cannot “have” ADHD, which is just a name for a subjective description of rather common behaviours and therefore cannot explain anything. 

What people should realise is that it is part of being human to have difficulties that can be handled better if we don’t give people psychiatric diagnoses and drugs. Difficulties often have a cause that has nothing to do with being ill, e.g. poverty, trauma, inadequate housing, social injustice, marital problems, discrimination, exclusion, bereavement, unemployment, and financial insecurity. Life is not easy, but if you have difficulty coping with its challenges, you can easily get one or more psychiatric diagnoses. 

There is a lot of misinformation that leads people astray, in scientific articles, newspapers, TV, radio, and social media. When youngsters look up descriptions of people who say they “have” ADHD on social media, they may be convinced they “have” it too and may even self-diagnose. There is an element of social contagion in this, and the criteria for ADHD are so vague and ludicrous that when I lecture and ask people to use the adult ADHD test on themselves, it never fails that one quarter to half the audience test positive. 

Often, authoritative information is also seriously misleading or even mendacious, which I have documented in my books and articles, most recently in my freely available book, “Is psychiatry a crime against humanity?” and in the freely available article, “The only medical specialty that survives on lies.” 

Sami mentions a patient information leaflet on antidepressants produced by a British national mental health service that includes the following advice: 

It can sometimes take weeks, months or even years, to get the right medicine at the right dose for you. Think of it as a bit like dating. Some make you feel sick or sleepy; some are great to start with but wear off; others may not be much to start with but after a while grow on you. Then you might have found the one that makes you feel good long-term. So don’t lose hope if the first one doesn’t work.

It is an illusion to think that if you wait long enough and try enough drugs, one will work for you. Most mental health issues become better with time, without any treatment, which is misinterpreted as a drug effect, and research has shown that it doesn’t help to change drugs or increase the dose of drugs (see my freely available “Critical Psychiatry Textbook”). 

The illusion that it helps to try several antidepressant drugs comes from the STAR*D trial, a $35 million fraud funded by the US National Institute of Mental Health.  

Sami writes that he is impressed by the extraordinary ability of even the most severely afflicted of the young patients he sees to recover functionality and meaning in their lives. His advice to parents with troubled kids is that they should not agree to having their children assessed for ADHD, autistic spectrum disorder, or anxiety (or depression, as depression drugs double suicides). We should be able to talk about how we feel without jumping into panic mode and imagining that what we’re describing could be the onset of some mental disorder. Sami goes on to say that,

As we are launched into a seemingly never-ending search for the right diagnosis and treatment, we start collecting labels and accompanying interventions. Each step in this journey has the potential to make it harder to accept your child (or yourself) just the way they are with all their uniqueness and the mysterious wonderful variety of ways they might thrive in this maddening world. Be patient and categorize psychological problems in the sphere of the ordinary and/or understandable…Our duty as parents (and to each other as adults) is not to prevent our children from experiencing distress (which is impossible), but to be there and take the time and have the patience to be with them and support them when they do.

Beware of concept creep. As what I call the Mental Health Industrial Complex has burrowed its way into day-to-day language and “common sense,” concepts have been popularized that encourage us to view behaviours and experiences in pathological ways. We no longer become sad or miserable, we get depressed…You and your children’s experiences nearly always sit in the realm of the ordinary and/or understandable…Arming yourself with some knowledge to help you avoid the prolific spread of scientism (faith masquerading as science) could save you or your child becoming another number in the growing crowds of those who are deemed to have lifelong and incapacitating mental disorder/illness. These conditions were never meant to be a life sentence.

If all doctors heeded Sami’s advice, fewer people would kill themselves and fewer people would become permanently disabled. But in a world where healthcare is heavily influenced by the drug industry’s corruption of doctors, it is reasonable to ask: Are psychiatrists more mad than their patients? I have responded in the affirmative. 

Like me, Sami is a member of the Critical Psychiatry Network based in England. My experience with lecturing for psychiatrists has led me to believe that over 99% of psychiatrists are uncritical towards their practice. Think about it. This is why psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death and why psychiatry as a profession does far more harm than good. 

Don’t our kids and friends deserve better than this?

Earlier this week, at the Australian Financial Review Cyber Summit, cybersecurity expert Alastair MacGibbon highlighted an alarming national security risk posed by millions of China-manufactured connected devices operating across Australia. He warned that particularly internet-connected electric vehicles (EVs) represent new threat vectors for hybrid warfare operations, one in which he said these vehicles could be transformed into “ticking time bombs.”

On Tuesday, MacGibbon, former cybersecurity adviser to Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and now chief strategy officer at CyberCX, warned, “Those cars that we talk about, whether they’re electric or not, are listening devices, and they’re surveillance devices in terms of cameras.”

But worse, he cautioned, “Take off the safety features of household batteries so that they overcharge. Take off those same safety features for electric vehicles. Just turn them off from the manufacturer so that those vehicles explode. Degrade their ability to drive at peak hour in select cities.”

A former cybersecurity chief has sounded the alarm on Chinese-made electric cars. Alastair MacGibbon says the government’s policies towards Chinese-made EVs are inconsistent with security priorities urging public officials not to use them. He says the cars are listening devices… pic.twitter.com/QZRyC7qGTj

— 7NEWS Australia (@7NewsAustralia) September 17, 2025

MacGibbon’s comments echo warnings in a recent note we penned, citing the book China’s Total War Strategy: Next-Generation Weapons of Mass Destruction – published by the CCP BioThreats Initiative and authored by Dr. Ryan Clarke, LJ Eads, Dr. Robert McCreight, and Dr. Xiaoxu Sean Lin, which outlines the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been pursuing an aggressive, multifaceted “total war” against the U.S. that leverages next-generation weapons, including synthetic narcotics (e.g., fentanyl and cannabinoids), bioweapons (e.g., Covid-19), psychological manipulation and influence (e.g., TikTok), and a broad arsenal of irregular warfare tools. 

Clarke and the other authors describe this strategy as the CCP’s “assassin’s mace”, an indirect, hybrid warfare doctrine designed to exploit U.S. vulnerabilities and collapse the nation from within. The results are already visible in the fentanyl epidemic and the broader drug crisis. Also, remember, “rogue” devices have been found in Chinese solar panels.

Last month, four Chinese brands – BYD Auto, GWM (Great Wall Motors), MG Motor (SAIC), and Chery – broke into Australia’s top ten in sales for the first time. Tens of thousands of Chinese EVs are now on Australian highways, alongside millions of other connected devices that could be weaponized in hybrid warfare. Remember when America faced the exploding Chinese scooter problem?

All it takes is one line of intentionally bad code to go boom. 

Via Raw Egg Nationalist,

Microplastics are everywhere. They’ve invaded the darkest corners of our planet and of our bodies too.

More than 9 billion tons of plastic are estimated to have been produced between 1950 and 2017, with half of that total produced since 2004. The vast majority of plastic ends up in the environment in one form or another, where it breaks down, through weathering, exposure to UV light and organisms of all kinds, into smaller and smaller pieces—microplastics and  then nanoplastics. These are “secondary” microplastics, because they start off big and end up small, but there’s a whole class of “primary” microplastics which are small by design, like so-called “microbeads” used in cosmetics, and they’re no less serious a problem. Within our homes, microplastics are mainly produced when synthetic fibres from clothes, furnishings and carpets are shed. They accumulate in large quantities in dust and float around in the air, which we then inhale. 

Here are two studies that help to illustrate the threat in its fullest dimensions as we now understand it. I’m going to use the term “microplastics” as a catch-all, unless I have to talk about nanoplastics in particular.

The first study hit the news a couple of years ago, when it was revealed that thousands of tons of microplastics fall over Switzerland each year in snow. Researchers collected samples of snow from the tip of the Hoher Sonnenblick mountain in Austria, where there has been an observatory since 1886. They then used a mass spectrometer to identify precise quantities of microplastics in the snow.

According to the researchers’ calculations, 43 trillion pieces of microplastic land on Switzerland every year, or about 3,000 tons. Using meteorological data, the researchers estimated that around 30% of the microplastics identified came from mostly urban areas within a distance of 130 miles. Up to 10% of the microplastics may have come from winds and weather taking place in the Atlantic, 1,200 miles away.

The study illustrates two important points: i) that nowhere on earth, however remote, is untouched by microplastic pollution—not even the Antarctic—and ii) that microplastics circulate as a kind of “force of nature,” as part of natural systems—wind, precipitation, river and sea currents—on a grand scale. Animals, from birds and fish to insects like ants, bees and mosquitoes, are also natural vehicles for microplastics to be moved, even over long distances.

The second study, a more recent one, shows that microplastics are now to be found inside people’s eyeballs. 

Researchers from China took tissue samples from the eyes of 49 different people suffering from a range of eye conditions and subjected them to complicated analytical techniques. The results of the analysis showed that there were nearly 1800 plastic pieces, mainly of a size of 50 μm (1/20th of a millimetre) or less, in those samples. The plastic fibres were principally nylon, polyvinyl chloride and polystyrene. That’s an average of 35 fibres per sample. The real quantity in each eyeball is likely to have been much higher, because samples, rather than the whole eyeball, were used, and the samples were small. 

In addition to the presence of the plastic pieces, the researchers noted a close link between the numbers of microplastics in each sample and the severity of the visual problems suffered by the patient it was taken from. The more microplastics you have in your eyes, the more likely you’ll have problems with your sight. 

So how did the plastic get there in the first place?

Internally, via the blood, is the most obvious route. The eye has a massive network of blood vessels running over and through it, and we know that microplastics get into the blood, usually from the gut and lungs, and from there reach all the major organs of the body. Studies have shown that microplastics are found in human heart, liver, lung, genital and womb tissue. Animal studies have also shown that microplastics cross the blood-brain barrier, the brain’s only line of defence against pathogens and harmful substances. Polystyrene microplastics fed to mice ended up in their brains within two hours. Another study showed that inhaled nanoplastics also end up in the brains of mice.

Another possibility is that plastics enter the eye from its outer surface, first by coming into contact with the front of the eye and then migrating to the sides and back of the eye as a person blinks. There are large numbers of exposed blood vessels at the back of the eye. 

In addition to floating microplastics in the air, contact lenses could also transfer significant quantities of plastic onto the surface of the eye. A pair of reusable contact lenses has been estimated to shed over 90,000 plastic particles in a year of wear.

Microplastics may be in our eyes from birth. A recent study shows that when pregnant mice are fed polystyrene nanoplastics in drinking water at “environmentally realistic concentrations,” they end up in the eyes of their offspring, where they interfere with the proper development and function of the eyes. Microplastics have been shown to cross the placental barrier from mother to baby in humans, and they’ve also been found in the amneotic fluid in which baby floats for nine months.

The true depth of the microplastic problem, and its effects on our health, is only just starting to become apparent. New studies are appearing at a steady pace, linking microplastic exposure to virtually every disease and malady you can think of, from irritable bowel syndrome, obesity and autism, to cancer, Alzheimer’s and infertility. There’s a very real chance that the explosion of chronic disease we’ve seen over the last century in the developed world is a direct result of our growing exposure to plastic and plastic chemicals. It’s worth remembering that the first fully synthetic plastic—Bakelite—was only manufactured in 1907, but plastic didn’t really start to be used in massive quantities until the middle of the century.

The infertility crisis is particularly dire, with one reproductive health expert, Professor Shanna Swan, warning that as early as 2045, man could be unable to reproduce by natural means. On current trends, the median sperm count is set to reach zero in that year, which means that one half of all men will produce no sperm at all, and the other half will produce so few they might as well produce none—they certainly won’t be able to get a woman pregnant, no matter how much they try. Professor Swan believes exposure to plastics is a significant cause of the crisis, as she lays out in her recent book Count Down.

These wide-ranging negative effects happen for a number of reasons. First there are the actual properties of the microplastics themselves: they can physically block narrow tissues, cause inflammation and immune response and also absorb substances, including hormones like testosterone, rendering them unusable to the body. Then there’s the fact that plastics act as vectors for harmful endocrine-disrupting, obesogenic and carcinogenic chemicals, allowing them to be carried into every one of the body’s tissues, where they can cause all sorts of damage.

So what can we do?

There’s an old saying: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In the case of microplastics, prevention may be worth even more than a pound of cure, because it’s not actually clear how you can cure microplastic exposure, at least if by “cure” you mean, “get microplastics out of your body once they’re already inside it.” There may be natural processes that slowly, or even quickly, rid the body’s tissues of accumulated plastic, but if they exist we don’t know about them yet. At present, we can only assume that whatever plastic is already in your brain or liver or eyes will stay there. We don’t know of any substances that can be taken to extract microplastics either, so don’t believe anybody who’s trying to sell you a supplement that will do that—at least not yet.

An important thing to know is that the microplastics you consume don’t necessarily stay inside your body. You may have seen the headline, “humans are swallowing a credit card’s worth of plastic a week,” but a lot of that credit card, if you swallow it in food or drink, will pass directly out of your body in your urine and feces. 

Even so, microplastics do get into your body via your food and drink, and they also get into your body by inhalation. Some microplastics that get into your lungs when you inhale may leave when you exhale, but otherwise they either remain in the tissues of the lungs or enter the bloodstream and migrate to other parts of the body. 

As the evidence mounts, it’s becoming more and more clear i) that the home is the site of greatest exposure to microplastics, and ii) that inhalation is probably the main route of exposure there. Early estimates of microplastic exposure at home have been revised after further research suggested exposure levels may be 100 times higher than previously thought.

Microplastics in the home generally come from synthetic fibres: clothing, carpets and furnishings. They accumulate in dust and circulate in the air. Babies and very young children are particularly at risk from microplastics in the home, because they’re close to the ground, where dust accumulates. They just crawl around, hoovering it up all day. Infants have ten times the numbers of microplastics in their feces than adults. The best thing you can is to reduce synthetic fibres throughout the home and also hoover more regularly. Babies are also at particular risk of plastic consumption because they’re given plastic toys to chew, fed with plastic utensils (that they also chew) and also, increasingly, given food that’s stored and then heated in “convenient” plastic pouches that release billions of plastic fragments into the food.

This brings us nicely on to food, and highlights the fact that food storage is probably the biggest issue when it comes to contamination of food with plastic. Food that comes into contact with plastic at any stage of its production, transport, sale or storage will be contaminated. How much depends on a variety of factors. A foundational piece of advice I give to anybody who asks me for advice is to ditch processed food. A nice working definition of processed food is “food that’s prepared outside the home, contains ingredients you wouldn’t typically find in a normal home kitchen”—additives like stabilisers, humectants, preservatives, colour dyes etc.—” and is sold to you pre-packaged, wrapped in plastic.” Processed food is laced with seed and vegetable oils, hidden sugars, toxic additives, endocrine disruptors and microplastics. If you prepare your own fresh, locally sourced food, you will significantly reduce your consumption of plastic, as well as lots of other harmful things.

Chuck out plastic Tupperware containers and buy some glass ones. Use brown-paper or silicone bags for storage rather than plastic bags. Instead of greaseproof paper, get some muslin and wax it with beeswax. Wherever there’s plastic in your kitchen, try and find an alternative: utensils, pans—especially “non-stick” coated pans—everything, or at least as much as you can. Chances are, there is at least one alternative and it’s not actually expensive or an inconvenience, not really.

The same applies to drink as to food. If it’s in plastic, don’t buy it. Don’t store liquids in plastics. If you want to take a drink to the gym, get a glass or metal bottle.

Municipal tap water isn’t actually much of a worry, at least as far as microplastics are concerned, but you should be filtering your drinking water, preferably with a reverse-osmosis filter. Bottled water, on the other hand, absolutely is a worry for microplastics. In fact, bottled water is one of the worst sources of microplastic exposure for anybody who drinks it regularly. Back in 2018, we were told that a litre of bottled water might contain 325 pieces of plastic on average, but new detection techniques have revealed the number is actually more like 250,000.

My own contribution to reducing your exposure to microplastics is my company Kindred Harvest, which sells the best quality tea in bags that are guaranteed to be totally free of plastic. The microplastics in tea don’t just come from the water or the kettle (if it’s plastic): they also come from the teabag itself. A significant proportion of teabags are now either made of plastic—the teabag is actually plastic—or contain plastic, usually in the glue that holds it together. A study of six tea brands in the UK revealed that four included polypropylene and one was made entirely of nylon.

Food-grade plastics deteriorate significantly at temperatures above 40 degrees centigrade. Put a food-grade plastic teabag in near-boiling water, and it rapidly starts to disintegrate, and you’ve got a drink that’s more plastic soup than tea. A 2019 study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology found that a cup of tea produced by one plastic teabag contained 11.6 billion—billion—microplastic pieces and 3.1 billion nanoplastic pieces. Nanoplastics are probably even worse than microplastics, because they’re smaller, which means they can get into places microplastics can’t inside the body.

Kindred Harvest teabags contain no plastic whatsoever. They’re also organic—no nasty pesticides—and independently tested for heavy metals, since many tea blends are heavily contaminated with lead and other toxic metals.

Kindred Harvest can be found on the ZeroHedge Store. 

Much of President Trump’s base has long demanded that he bring real pressure to bear on the Zelensky government, by halting weapons flows and American taxpayers’ billions going to Kiev’s coffers, and by urging territorial concessions in the east. Washington does have immense leverage over at least one side of this conflict which could be used to achieve lasting peace, but Trump acts as if this is not the case. Do average Americans really care enough about the fate of places like Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia (regions that most would fail to locate on a map) to keep risking build-up toward WW3? 

Instead of pushing hard for compromise, we get this…

President Donald Trump said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “let me down” by failing to resolve the war in Ukraine.

“I’m very honored to tell you that we’ve solved seven wars, wars that were unsolvable, wars that couldn’t be negotiated or done,” Trump said in his opening remarks in a joint news conference with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, vowing the U.S. and U.K. “will always be friends.”

“The US has done seven of them,” he again emphasized in the comments, while also making reference to Azerbaijan and “Albania” – when he meant to say Armenia.

Though we are left wondering what the six other wars Trump is claiming to have put an end to were. It seems he’s claiming Iran-Israel too, though that was by actually bombing the Islamic Republic, which posed no direct threat to America. Perhaps Syria?… did ‘peace’ come by installing a ‘former’ ISIS/AQ leader?

Trump added, “The one that I thought would be easiest would be because of my relationship with President Putin. But he’s let me down. He’s really let me down.”

Trump: If oil prices come down, Putin will leave Ukraine. It’s very simple.

Trump: If oil prices fall, Putin will leave Ukraine. It’s very simple.

3X pic.twitter.com/o52nNqsTCc

— Tymofiy Mylovanov (@Mylovanov) September 18, 2025

Musing further on the issue, Trump explained, “You thought you were going to have an easy time or a hard time – and it turns out to be the reverse.” And he said further, “It doesn’t feel like the time to ask Putin for a ceasefire.”

Again, the reality remains that he’s unwilling to do what is necessary to actually solve it. There would be three easy steps:

• Agree for all time that Ukraine can never be in NATO
• Recognize Russia’s hold over the Donbass & Crimea, essentially give up the ‘annexed’ terriotiries
• Stop NATO’s military infrastructure in Ukraine by cutting off the arms

For the time being, Putin knows he’s winning the war, given superior firepower and manpower – though without doubt Russia is itself absorbing a high cost.

Trump is frustrated about Putin. Keeps repeating that Russian President let him down

Trump: Putin let me down. [first time]

Of all the wars, I thought this would be the easiest because of my relationship with Putin.

But he really let me down.

1/ pic.twitter.com/yprDI9fNQ0

— Tymofiy Mylovanov (@Mylovanov) September 18, 2025

As a reminder, below is some of our coverage of Jeffrey Sachs speaking to a Ron Paul conference in August. The war could end tomorrow if the US really wanted it to…

* * *

Sachs explained the war could end rather quickly: The Ukraine war could have been avoided – by simply stating that NATO would not expand to Ukraine. Even Jake Sullivan privately told me it wouldn’t happen. But when I asked him to say it publicly to avoid war, he refused.

The war can be ended tomorrow if the US declares NATO will not expand to Ukraine. That’s all. It’s not about territory. Russia didn’t demand land – just neutrality. Even in Crimea, Russia sought a lease renewal, not annexation – until the U.S.-backed coup. This war is entirely provoked and entirely avoidable.

We will, as the Rand Corporation wrote in 2019 in one of the most absurd, dangerous, ridiculous exemplars of American foreign policy, we will extend you. ‘Extending Russia’: a document of a think tank. How to annoy Russia in 27 different ways. Is this really what we pay them for? How to provoke the other nuclear superpower with 6,000 nuclear weapons and then wonder why the hand of the doomsday clock is 89 seconds to midnight? These people are crazy. Honestly, it’s very very dangerous. …Let me just say that all the major conflicts can be ended straightforwardly. The casus belli of the Ukraine war is NATO enlargement, and US coup operations all over Ukraine. Even the New York Times reported that one a couple of months ago.

All of these conflicts – Ukraine, Gaza, potential war with China – can be resolved quickly, if we tell the truth, act with courage, and demand accountability. Our government must stop listening to the war profiteers and start listening to the people.

We need brave leaders, honest media, and informed citizens. That’s how peace begins.

Authored by Gary Abernathy via The Empowerment Alliance,

As noted before, the “alternative energy” movement, rather than positioning itself as a partner with conventional energy, is instead devoted to the complete demise of reliable and affordable energy resources while framing itself as the only path forward. But there are three ongoing developments providing reasons to believe that its efforts are doomed to failure.

“Green” movement in retreat

“Renewables” are facing a combination of political and legal headwinds. With the election of Donald Trump as president and the pro-traditional energy Republicans now in Congress, the gravy train that was once rolling full steam ahead has come to an abrupt halt, leaving the “renewables” movement feeling stranded.

“The morale is destroyed,” Ramon Cruz, a former president of the Sierra Club recently told the New York Times. “I won’t try to sugar coat it. This is a generational loss.”

“With one election and one bill (Trump’s “Big, Beautiful” domestic legislation), most of the signature climate work that organizations, advocates and movements have been working toward is largely undone,” added Ruthy Gourevitch, a policy director at the Climate and Community Institute, a progressive research organization.

The legal hurdles facing the movement are daunting as well. As the Times reported, Greenpeace is facing nearly $670 million in damages from losing a lawsuit brought by Energy Transfer Partners, which accused the group of “an unlawful and violent scheme” to incite demonstrations against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club recently fired its executive director following budget deficits and numerous layoffs. And Sierra and three other environmental groups have been hit with a defamation lawsuit by Exxon Mobil in federal court in Texas.

“Renewables” workforce in short supply

The “renewables” movement is facing a workforce crisis in both white- and blue-collar jobs. The shortage has been years in the making, leading one analyst to conclude, “It’s unclear where these employees will come from in the future. There are too few people with specialized and relevant expertise and experience, and too many of them are departing for other companies or other industries.”

The ”green” movement blames the shortage on “a lack of awareness of career paths and opportunities,” according to one energy news source. But just as possible is a lack of enthusiasm among workers, “especially as political developments may discourage would-be jobseekers from placing their bets on a career in the renewables sector,” as the site noted.

The crisis is worldwide, with some governments such as Australia’s investing millions to entice workers and ramp up training. The European Union, meanwhile, finds its arbitrary “renewables” targets meeting the reality of an inability to recruit the workers necessary to get there.

“According to industry association SolarPower Europe, solar employment in the EU increased by 30% by 2022 to over 600,000 jobs, including indirect roles in materials and transportation,” the industry website Reccessary reported. “By 2030 the EU will need more than 1 million solar workers to meet higher renewable energy targets set recently by the EU to end the region’s reliance on Russian oil and gas, SolarPower Europe said.” Good luck.

Climate claims increasingly outrageous

It’s one thing to raise climate-related alarms about melting icebergs or more fires and floods. But the inability to coach tennis? That’s a complaint of a Wisconsin teenager who is one of eight children aged 8-17 who recently sued the state through two non-profit law firms over its fossil fuel policies.

The lawsuit claims that “in 2023, a large boulder rolled into her backyard and knocked over trees,” which she blames on “freeze-thaw events” driven by fossil fuels. If those fuels weren’t causing climate change, the suit claims, “the boulder that tumbled toward her home would probably have never become dislodged,” as the Guadian reported.

But her troubles didn’t stop even after the teen moved to a different part of the state, according to the suit.

“I coached tennis during the summer, but I recently did have to give it up due to such extreme weather and extreme climate events that don’t make it safe for me to be outside anymore,” the teen said. Presumably, tennis instruction in Wisconsin has continued thanks to others bravely stepping up.

Health impacts due to heat can be serious. But that’s been the case throughout human history. Blaming “climate change” for events or conditions many Americans experience in routine daily life is a gift to the traditional energy sector, as an increasing number of rational Americans recognize just how far into the deep end the eco-alarmist movement has waded.

The doomsday environmentalists’ low morale is a result of their inflated expectations in the face of fading public support. Their workforce crisis is exacerbated by an uncertain future as conventional energy is on the ascent. Their increasingly fringe cause-and-effect theories have led to a loss of credibility among the general public.

Because of its own penchant for overreach, coupled with both economic and political blowback, the climate cult is on its heels. A movement that tried to position itself as the only acceptable choice is on the verge of making itself an option of last resort.

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Empowerment Alliance.

They say a picture of destructive progressive policies is worth 1,000 pounds words. And today the world saw that picture. 

Outspoken Trump administration critic and generally useless liberal bureaucrat Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is facing backlash after proudly posing with a so-called “Peacekeeper” who days later was arrested for murder during a Louis Vuitton robbery. Because, of course. 

The man, 35-year-old Keller McMillan, was one of seven charged with murder, burglary, and retail theft after a brazen smash-and-grab at the luxury retailer, according to the Daily Mail. Or, “mostly peaceful”, as Democrats would likely label it. 

Prosecutors say the crew used stolen vehicles to ram the store before fleeing at high speed. McMillan and his accomplices allegedly caused the crash that killed 40-year-old father Mark Arceta, who was on his way to his last day of work before paternity leave. His partner gave birth to their son the following day.

Shockingly, McMillan was working as a state-funded “Peacekeeper” — a program Pritzker promotes as a solution to violent crime.

McMillan even sat at a roundtable with the governor earlier this month, where Pritzker praised him and others as examples of “community violence prevention.” A smiling photo of the two was circulated in a press release but quickly scrubbed from Pritzker’s website after McMillan’s arrest.

The Daily Mail writes that McMillan’s criminal past was no secret. His rap sheet stretches back a decade with charges including domestic battery, gang activity, and multiple fugitive warrants — the most recent issued just last October. Critics are now asking how such a figure was ever placed in a taxpayer-backed program supposedly aimed at reducing violence.

Former Riverside police chief Tom Weitzel blasted the governor’s office as “incompetent,” arguing that allowing McMillan into the program and posing with him revealed a “total lack of due diligence.” He called the Peacekeepers little more than a “feel-good” scheme that enlists violent felons instead of keeping neighborhoods safe.

Pritzker, meanwhile, has defended the initiative, claiming these programs make communities safer. But the reality is clear: under his watch, a so-called “peacekeeper” turned out to be a violent criminal, and an innocent father is dead.

Or as Pritzker calls it, your tax dollars at work…

Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times,

Masons laid the concrete foundation from “bare dirt” in 39 days and laborers were ready to frame and roof the skeletal superstructure so carpenters, plumbers, and electricians could complete the single-family home.

All that remained was approval of an “interior remodel,” a slight variation from the permit issued months earlier by the Kansas City Planning and Development Department’s Permits Division.

But it was April 2024, and things had changed.

The previous summer, the City Council adopted the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), in part because doing so made Kansas City eligible for grants under a $1 billion program authorized by 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

The standards went into effect on Oct. 1, 2023, meaning modifications from the original permit would now be evaluated under new IECC guidelines.

“Traditionally, a permit like this—covering a nonstructural basement finish—takes only a few days to process,” Patriot Homes President and owner Brian Tebbenkamp told a House panel on Tuesday. “Instead, it took 39 days.”

Tebbenkamp, speaking on behalf of the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City, was one of four witnesses to appear before the House Energy Subcommittee during a Sept. 16 hearing on eight proposed bills addressing building and appliance codes.

“During that time, the house sat with a completed foundation while our framing crew sat at home with no work,” he testified. “Our crews built that foundation from bare dirt in 39 days. Ultimately, it took a lengthy appeal to the mayor, the full City Council, and the city manager before the permit was finally approved—on the 39th day.”

The Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City and the National Home Builders Association are among trade groups calling on Congress to adopt HR 4758, the Homeowner Energy Freedom Act, which would repeal the IRA’s “high efficiency electric home” rebates and defund its grant program for state and local governments that adopt the unamended 2021 IECC.

“This program has distorted local processes, driven up costs, and discouraged investment in housing production—all while doing little to improve real-world energy performance,” Tebbenkamp said. “I urge Congress to move quickly on this legislation to restore balance and ensure housing policies support affordability rather than undermine it.”

Construction workers build a home in Hercules, Calif., on July 1, 2025. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Code Without Covenant

The Homeowner Energy Freedom Act, sponsored by Rep. Craig Goldman (R-Texas), was among six building code measures discussed during the five-hour hearing, which included Department of Energy (DOE) Acting General Counsel Jeff Novak providing testimony for more than three hours, followed by a 90-minute panel discussion sandwiched around a 45-minute pause for a House floor vote.

The other building code-related proposals include HR 3699, to prohibit state and local governments from banning natural gas; HR 5184, to eliminate “duplicative” energy standards for manufactured homes; HR 3474 and HR 4690, to terminate the “phase-out of fossil fuels” and repeal energy performance standards in federal buildings; and HR 1355, to reauthorize DOE’s weatherization program.

American Gas Association Vice President for Governmental Affairs George Lowe, in his testimony, also espoused support for the Homeowner Energy Freedom Act, as did Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers Vice President Jennifer Cleary in her testimony.

Tebbenkamp explained how “well-intentioned federal policies” adopted inside the Washington Beltway can have “very real and negative effects” on Main Street USA.

Residential and commercial buildings must comply with federal, state, and local laws and regulations implemented through building codes, performance standards, and fuel-use efficiency requirements generally developed from consensus input by the Washington-based International Code Council and the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, headquartered outside Atlanta.

The code council in 2021 updated its energy standards—the IECC—to include what many builders saw as model codes favoring electric furnaces and water heaters over those fired by natural gas or coal.

Under the Biden administration, especially after the IRA’s adoption, the federal role in what is traditionally the purview of state regulators and local planners expanded dramatically in pushing “net-zero” emissions requirements.

Tebbenkamp said “model building codes in federal legislation and regulatory programs is not new” and, while they may influence standards adopted by state and local governments, they’re rarely encoded without amendments.

The difference was IRA’s grant stipulation that eligibility required unamended adoption of the 2021 IECC, he said, calling the demand to “treat stricter codes as the universal solution … deeply concerning.”

President Joe Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act as Democratic lawmakers look on at the White House on Aug. 16, 2022. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Costly Lure

In April 2022, Kansas City introduced an ordinance to adopt the 2021 IECC, Tebbenkamp told the subcommittee, noting after months of “meetings, forums, and hearings to determine whether the model code was suitable for our community,” it appeared “consensus was forming that some localized amendments would be necessary.”

Then, in August 2022, Congress passed the IRA in a partisan vote hailed by Democrats as key to the nation’s transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. Its Section 50131 created the $1 billion grant fund for state and local governments to adopt the 2021 IECC “as written,” he said.

“From that moment on, supporters resisted all amendments—worried that even minor modifications might forfeit access to the grant program,” Tebbenkamp said.

The new code was adopted in summer 2023. Before it went into effect that October, 98 Kansas City companies pulled single-family home permits, he said. “By 2024, that number had fallen to just 22—a 78 percent reduction in builders willing or able to operate under the new code.”

Since the IRA’s adoption, a Home Builders Association of Kansas City study and National Home Builders Association analysis estimate that the additional regulations can add $31,000 to the price of a new home.

Tebbenkamp said his Patriot Homes uses the Home Energy Rating System (HERS) Index “to ensure our homes perform at a high level” of energy efficiency.

The home his crews were building in April 2024 would save “$2,548 a year in utilities compared to an average home,” he said. “But to comply with the 2021 IECC prescriptive path, our clients had to spend an additional $10,300. The payoff? A … saving [of] just $2 a year in additional operating costs.”

Let builders build, state regulators regulate, and local planners plan, Tebbenkamp said, without mandating adherence to “one-size-fits-all” codes.

“The lure of federal funding effectively shut down what had been a collaborative and constructive local process,” he said. “To our knowledge, Kansas City has not received a single dollar from the Department of Energy for adopting the code, yet the impact on local housing production has been severe.”

With oil trading just above multi-year lows – despite mounting speculation of peak shale – pessimism on oil prices has never been greater, and earlier this week sentiment hit rock bottom after WTI managed money spec positions hit a record low, the clearest sign yet of what speculators think of the future of oil.

And yet, this may prove to be one of the biggest conventional wisdom blunders yet because according to the International Energy Agency, the world needs to spend some $540 billion a year looking for oil and gas to maintain current output by 2050 as the pace of declines in existing fields increases. 

Faster decline rates, in part because of an increased global dependency on US shale, mean that the global oil and gas industry “has to run much faster just to stand still,” the agency’s executive director Fatih Birol said.

This means that any low prices for oil are only temporary, because as more drillers pull the plug (as they can’t break even on their investment) the less oil will be pumped out of the ground, resulting in a supply squeeze which in turn sends prices soaring. In this case, the old saying is true: the only cure for low oil prices is low oil prices.

The outlook also means that companies will need to tap reserves that haven’t yet been discovered, unless demand shifts away from fossil fuels, for production to remain where it is today in 25 years. It also marks a significant shift in tone for the IEA which, in recent years, has called on major producers to spend more on clean energy.

The outlook matters because there’s little sign of oil demand peaking soon, meaning that elevated output will be needed for years to come. While a global oil surplus is forecast for this year and next, BP Plc this year projected that supply growth outside of OPEC from early 2026 would remain largely flat for 12 to 18 months.

“In the case of oil, an absence of upstream investment would remove the equivalent of Brazil and Norway’s combined production each year from the global market balance,” the IEA’s Birol said in a statement, sounding uncharacteristically bullish. 

Its forecast is part of a report that analyzed more than 15,000 fields and how fast their output is declining. Without investment, global supply would fall by the combined production of Norway and Brazil – more than 5 million barrels a day – every year. That amount is around 40% higher than it was in 2010, partly because of more reliance on shale production, particularly from the US, which typically depletes faster than conventional reserves.

While global spending is likely to hit $570 billion this year — enough to keep production at current levels if sustained — the amount would be down slightly from 2024, Christophe McGlade, head of the IEA’s energy supply unit, said on a webinar.

What is notable here is that while oil has historically been a very capex-heavy industry, and offset such capex-light sectors as tech, in recent years the relationship had flipped with tech names now even more capex heavy than oil drillers. Which begs the question: with the world suddenly drowning in capex funding needs, just where will all this money come from, especially if and when the next global recession strikes?