Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Commentary

The Trump administration has been urging a cut in interest rates. The reasons are obvious. This would make home loans more affordable, reduce pressure on government interest payments, and spur business investment.

But there is a genuine downside that should also be considered. Lower rates also risk fanning the flames of inflation. Even now, the devastation from the last five years is very obvious to all. And it’s hardly gone: the CPI came in fairly hot last week.

In three to four years, the prices of everything have shot up. You know the story with housing prices: double in many places. You feel it every time you go to the grocery store. Meat has again taken an upturn. Groceries in general are up nearly 40 percent in these strange years. They are not going back either. We are stuck and the American household is squeezed as never before.

Groceries are particularly painful because you feel it every day.

Wholesale prices reflected in the Producer Price Index (PPI) have shown new energy too. That’s particularly unsettling because it foreshadows new price pressure on the consumer side too.

The PPI came in at an intolerable 3.3 percent. That’s not entirely attributable to tariffs. In fact, all evidence points to the ways importers are eating the tariffs themselves via lower profit margins but this is not yet being passed on to consumers. The price energy on the wholesale side seems to have monetary origins.

David Stockman comments: “The wholesale price index excluding food and energy has risen by a fulsome 33.3 percent since January 2017 when the Trump Era began. That is, for the past eight and one-half years the basic wholesale price index has been climbing relentlessly higher at a 3.4 percent annual rate. Do that for two decades and a dollar earned or saved today will buy exactly 51 cents.”

Other indexes confirm some upward inflation pressure. The Truflation index has been the most credible of the last five years. It is also showing upward movement in consumer goods and services. It’s not over 2 percent in general but it is far higher than its low from January and February.

It’s a good time to check in on the main monetary aggregate, which is M2 (the Fed broke M1 back in 2020 for unknown reasons). This is the number to watch to see future price trends. The COVID period saw the biggest increases on record combined with zero interest rates. The Fed then vacuumed much of the excess out of the system. But those efforts then stopped before the 2024 election. The monetary aggregate now stands where it was at its peak.

That said, we have seen an upward trend in the rate of money creation. It is now trending toward 5 percent, which is very high and risky. This is without rate cuts. With more rate cuts, the trends would accelerate.

None of these numbers bode well for avoiding the worst fear of economists. The concern traces to the famous three waves of inflation from the 1970s. It kicked off, pulled back, came back higher and pulled back, and then the third wave hit with a ferocity that no one saw coming.

Anyone who lived through it will never forget. It came about following the end of the gold standard. The experts predicted the best monetary system ever. Once again, the experts were wrong. Then they blamed the American people for consuming too much.

Government was reduced to distributing WIN buttons: Whip Inflation Now.

None of this three-wave pattern was intentional. It traces to the arrogance of the central bankers in thinking that they had conquered the previous inflation. Once they believed the coast was clear, they lowered rates and pursued a looser policy. They could not control the machinery the way they believed and their actions kicked off a second wave.

One might suppose that would be enough to prevent yet another reckless cut but nope. They did it anyway. That’s when inflation hit double digits, gutted the U.S. capital stock, bankrupted households, and forced millions of young mothers into the workforce just to pay the bills. The finances of the American household never really recovered from this disaster.

We simply cannot afford to risk this yet again. Trump certainly does not want this on his watch. Another round of inflation would discredit the whole of his second term. It would likely be blamed on tariffs. This is the risk. One hopes that he does not get his wish of a Fed rate cut. Nothing could be worse for his presidency.

In this way, Jerome Powell is correct to resist the calls for a rate cut. He is not being ornery. He is the rare case of a responsible central banker, at least for now. The worry is that his replacement will have one job only and that is to lower rates further. Keep in mind that in real terms, short-term rates are not actually high right now once you consider inflation.

Monetary policy in general is an insidious influence over U.S. politics. Every new president wants lower rates in order to generate the appearance of higher growth. Also, lower rates reduce pressure to cut the budget because they cause the servicing of the debt to fall on the margin, thus freeing revenue for other forms of expenditures.

That said, there are always consequences to artificially low rates. They distort production structures toward capital goods industry, blow up housing prices with new demand, and further financialize an already highly leveraged financial industry. They also create the condition for more inflation down the line. It could be a year or two but it will eventually come.

This is the danger. The Trump administration needs to put a priority on killing inflation. The rumors of its death were greatly exaggerated, and the price pressure is already clawing its way out of the coffin and through the dirt. Beware! This is no time to lower rates. It’s in the long-term political interest of the Trump administration to generate economic growth the old-fashioned way: through saving and investment, not fiat money.

The second wave is not here yet. But there are already reasons to be on the lookout.

Amid an enduring soldier shortage, and as an all-out occupation of Gaza looms, the Israel Defense Forces are considering a campaign to recruit soldiers from Jewish populations living in the United States and other countries around the world. 

According to Israeli Army Radio, a state media outlet, Israel may mount an effort to recruit 600 to 700 Jews a year from the diaspora, a term referring to Jews living somewhere other than Israel. At first, Israel would concentrate its effort in the United States and France, the countries with the two largest Jewish populations, at roughly 6 million and 450,000, respectively.  

As of February, there were 3,500 diaspora soldiers serving in the IDF, with nearly 900 of them Americans. Israel calls such troops lone soldiers. “The majority of American lone soldiers are coming after high school, either directly after high school or after a gap year program,” said Noya Govrin, Director of the Lone Soldiers Program at Nefesh b’Nefesh, a nonprofit that encourages Americans and Canadians to “make aliyah” — that is, to move to Israel and become citizens. “In the past two years, there has been a notable increase in college graduates that come to Israel to serve as lone soldiers,” she told Times of Israel.

Earlier this month, one of those American lone soldiers who’d recently returned from service in Gaza was the target of an overnight arson attack on vehicles parked at his family’s house in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Graffiti painted on the street accused him of being a murderer and proclaimed DEATH TO THE IDF. 

BREAKING:

🇮🇱🇺🇲 An Israeli soldier with US citizenship was attacked in Clayton, Missouri, his vehicles were set on fire and destroyed.

Graffiti outside the family’s home called for death to the IDF. pic.twitter.com/ZBOe3MRL6q

— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) August 6, 2025

“Awkward moment for some of my fellow Jews in the diaspora,” wrote Rafael Shimunov, New Yorker host of a “Jewish Left” radio show. “Cheerleading Israelis sending their kids to do genocide, but will never send their own.” 

The IDF is coping with a 10,000- to 12,000-soldier shortfall. There are two principal drivers: draft-dodging by ultra-Orthodox Israelis, and lower retention of current soldiers, who are leaving the IDF at an elevated rate as the war in Gaza nears its second anniversary. Some are voluntarily leaving via extreme means: At least 16 soldiers have killed themselves in 2025, and 54 since Oct 7. More than 3,700 have been diagnosed with PTSD. 

There are some 14,600 deserters, according to the Jerusalem Post, which appears to apply that term to draft-dodgers. The IDF is about to close the window on a sort of amnesty plan, which gives draft-dodgers until Thursday to sign up for service by phone or online and then be rapidly ushered into the IDF’s ranks in the coming weeks. If they do, they’ll be spared criminal charges and penalties that include a prohibition on foreign travel.  

The issue of ultra-Orthodox military conscription has threatened to topple Netanyahu’s government, as parties representing that community have demanded legislation that would grant them an exemption from military service. In June 2024, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the government must start drafting the Haredi, who’d previously enjoyed an exemption ever since Israel’s creation in 1948.  

Haredi men typically dedicate their entire lives to religious study in seminaries called Yeshivas and receive public welfare.  With Israel waging a multi-front war encompassing Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran, the exemption has become increasingly unpopular with the other segments of Israeli society that must heed the call. 

As public opinion among both American Jews and non-Jews grows increasingly negative toward Israel’s war in Gaza and the Zionist state in general, it remains to be seen how fruitful a recruitment campaign inside America would be. Priming the pump for IDF recruiters, Israel-catering members of the US Congress have controversially introduced a bill that would extend credit and employment privileges enjoyed by US military service members to American citizens serving in the IDF — with no such privilege for service in any other foreign army.    

Authored by Attorney Bobbie Anne Cox ‘Knowledge is Power’ Substack,

We are living in a point in history where so many, if not all, of the foundational pillars of our society are being questioned. In some cases, those pillars are almost wholly being cast aside. Once the cornerstones of our American backbone, we are finding ourselves doubting it all as we ask ourselves and one another… Can the government truly be that corrupt? Are the courts actually compromised? Are major media outlets really just mouthpieces for propaganda? Is modern medicine a sham?

It is difficult for people to question what they have known all their life to be something that is “good” or “honest” or “reliable”. Why would you doubt the things that everyone around you (including your trusted friends and beloved family members) are telling you are true, and pure, and good? Of course the government is there to protect us. Of course the legal system is designed to uphold our righteous laws and defend liberty. Of course the newscaster on the TV is telling us the truth. Of course the drugs our doctors prescribe to us are there to help us get well.

As hard as it is to question societal norms, it is even more difficult to do something about it. Indian author, Arundhati Roy, has said:

“The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.”

In questioning traditional, stalwart institutions, we find ourselves standing on the precipice of a rabbit hole so large and deep, it is better likened to a meteoric crater than simply a hole. There are so many craters all around us now – the government crater, the legal crater, the medical crater, the media crater, and so on. These craters are appearing one after the next, in parallel formation, and like Dominos, if one begins to fall, the chain reaction of full scale collapse is undeniable.

Let us, for a moment here, peer over the ridge of one of these craters as we ask ourselves…

Is modern medicine a sham?

Let’s first look at the learned, societal norm… When most people hear the word “medicine”, their mind immediately forms a positive opinion and thinks, “This will help me feel better and get well”. Like Pavlov’s dog, we have been trained to correlate medicine with the thing that cures your sickness when you are ailing. You have a malady, you go to the doctor, they give you medicine, and it will fix the malady from which you are suffering and restore your health. Right? Ehhhh, well, ummmm, not exactly. Sadly, in today’s world, “health” has become synonymous with “medicine”, and medicine has become an industry – and not just any industry. It is behemoth!

Did you know that the largest lobby we have in the United States is the pharmaceutical industry? It is the largest, by a long shot, as it solidly towers over all of the others. Let me share some numbers with you. Pharma spends approximately $380,000,000 (three hundred eighty million) every year lobbying Congress. To give you some perspective, the second largest lobby industry in our nation is the electronics manufacturing industry, and it spends about $250,000,000 million a year lobbying Congress. The third largest is the insurance industry which spends about $150,000,000 million a year lobbying Congress. All the other industries that lobby simply pale in comparison. These statistics alone reveal so much.

And so, health (which used to mean how well your body functions in relation to other natural interactions and happenings like sufficient sunlight, fresh water intake, clean air, sufficient sleep, what you eat, and how much you exercise) now means medicine. When you go to the doctor, do they ask you how much water you drink and the amount of sunlight you absorb every day, or do they ask you what pills you are popping? Whether because of the C-19 debacle, or perhaps through osmosis, the medical industry has recently garnered a reputation of being untrustworthy and ineffective – two adjectives that can surely take down the entire industry once they hit a critical breaking point in numbers of non-believers.

Let’s look at someone’s real-life example as a case study. Let’s look at mine. Quick caveat that I am of course not offering medical advice of any kind, but instead simply sharing my recent experiences.

A week or so ago I had to have surgery. I was informed that the procedure required general anesthesia and a couple weeks of “down time” thereafter to help with recovery. So the day of my surgery, as I sat in pre-op and the nurse prepped me, part of that prepping was her explaining to me all of the medications I would be taking post-surgery… all SIX of them. Thereafter, the anesthesiologist came in to speak with me, and then finally my surgeon came in to see if I was ready to go. He asked, “Are you all set? How are you feeling?” To which I replied that I was rather unnerved by the plethora of drugs the nurse said I would be on for several days following the procedure. There was one drug for pain, then another drug for “intense pain”, then another drug for bacterial growth, then another one for nausea, then a couple other topical applicants, etc. That was, of course, in addition to the anesthesia and antibiotic I would be getting during the surgery. So, I told my surgeon I didn’t want any of the post-op meds! He asked me why not… after all, they’re supposed to make you feel better.

Let’s realize that, at this point most people would have bowed to the “authority” of their doctor and the almighty medicine, and agreed to the battery of drugs being pushed on them. I will admit that I too would have caved but for the fact that I had, not long before this, experienced the industry’s heavy hand upon me in a post-op situation, which caused terrible results. So, I explained to my surgeon that the last time I had surgery, the doctor had prescribed me NINE medications to take post-op for 1-2 weeks. I went on to explain that in that episode I was a “good patient”, and I took the leviathan of medications prescribed to me for pain, nausea, bacterial growth, immune response, blah, blah, blah, which then wreaked untoward havoc on my body. My whole system went into overload mode as I was hit with a tsunami of negative issues – skin rash, muscle lethargy, nerve tingling, swelling, joint discomfort, gut issues, and so on. The debilitation was so great, I took myself off each medication one by one, despite my surgeon and/or his nurse repeatedly telling me in their overtly obvious you-should-really-listen-to-me tone, that I “should really stay on these medicines for the full course prescribed.”

At the end of my tale, my surgeon looked at me and without the slightest hint of sarcasm or elitism said, “No problem. If you don’t want to take the medicine I prescribe, then don’t. It’s up to you.” I was stunned. Instead of giving me a guilt trip or heavy handed warnings (as my prior surgeon had given me), he was genuinely telling me that I could choose which medications to take, if any at all. The stark contrast struck me immediately. Was this a cloaked admission that he knew the drugs weren’t necessary, but were instead a glaring example of the pharmaceutical industry stronghold that has creeped into modern medicine? Or was it because this surgery wasn’t as long or as invasive as my prior surgery? Or was it something else altogether? I don’t know. But I do know that my post-op experience with last week’s surgery was a walk in the park compared to my highly medicated, post-op experience with the prior surgery.

I will again reiterate here that I am not giving medical advice, nor am I suggesting that you should disregard your doctor’s medical advice. I am in no position to do either of those things. Instead, I share a real life experience to explain to you how I’ve seen something I cannot unsee: One medical professional pushed me to take an obscene amount of drugs post-op (and I suffered greatly), whilst this other medical professional said I needn’t take any post-op medications (and I used only two topicals, sparingly, and I suffered not at all).

Some may say it’s luck. Others may say it’s divine intervention. Still others will say it’s so obvious, the writing is on the wall. And so I ask, do you think that modern day medicine is a sham?

*  *  *

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

The eldest son of Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit has been indicted on multiple charges of rape and sexual abuse, Norwegian prosecutors announced on Monday.

Marios Borg Hoiby, 28, has been accused of raping four women over the course of six years – which he filmed. He has been indicted on 32 criminal counts, including abuse in close relationships, death threats, and traffic violations. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison, according to Oslo state attorney Sturla Henriksbø during a Monday presser. 

Hoiby – whose stepmother is heir to the throne, denies all charges of sexual abuse, “as well as the majority of the charges regarding violence,” his attorney, Petar Sekulic said in an email to the Washington Post. 

“He will present a detailed account of his version of events before the court,” the attorney added, noting that the trial will likely begin early next year.

The Monday indictment follows a year-long investigation that began in August 2024 following his arrest from an altercation with an ex-girlfriend in Oslo. Over the course of the investigation, Henriksbø said that the Oslo police reviewed thousands of media files and messages, and interviewed several witnesses. 

During a search, police recovered explicit videos and images of several women who have been identified – leading to charges of sex abuse and other violations. The case has been handed over to the state attorney’s office.

After he was charged with assault and battery last August, Hoiby told NRK that he was drunk and on cocaine, and had lashed out following an argument. He vowed to seek treatment for substance abuse. 

Yet, Hoiby was arrested again in September for violating a restraining order, and then in November on suspicion of rape. 

Hoiby, who was 4 years old when his mother married into the royal family in 2001, has no royal title or duties. He was raised alongside the royal couple’s two children, Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus, who are second and third in line for the throne, respectively. -WaPo

In an email, the royal palace said it was up to the courts to decide the case.

Crown Prince Haakon, meanwhile, framed the situation as ‘difficult,’ telling reporters “We will continue to carry out our duties as best we can, as we always do,” adding “Everyone involved in this case probably finds it challenging and difficult.”

Via Middle East Eye

The US ambassador to Israel told Israeli Army Radio on Monday that “massive” development of the occupied West Bank was not a violation of international law and the US would not oppose it. 

While Mike Huckabee’s comments referred to the occupied Palestinian territory in totality, he also specifically addressed the proposed settlement of the E1 area of occupied Jerusalem. “Whether or not there should be massive development in E1 is a decision for the government of Israel to make,” Huckabee said.

“We would not try to evaluate the good and the bad of that, but simply just say that, as a general rule, it is not a violation of international law.” He added: “It’s also, I think, incumbent on all of us to recognize that Israelis have a right to live in Israel.”

Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, told Middle East Eye that settlement expansion was a violation of international law and a war crime. “The answer is yes – the transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population to a militarily occupied territory violates the Fourth Geneva Convention and, under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, is a war crime.”

Shakir also said the US was a signatory to the Geneva Convention, but the Fourth Geneva Convention has “the status of customary international law, making it applicable universally”.

In 2020, the European Union and 15 European countries denounced the plans to develop E1 in a protest letter, the second of its kind.  “Settlements are illegal under International Humanitarian Law. Any further settlement construction in this strategically sensitive area will have a devastating impact on a contiguous Palestinian State, as well as severely undermining the possibility of a negotiated two-state solution in line with internationally agreed parameters,” the letter said.

Huckabee maintained in the interview that the US would not interfere in how Israel runs its country. “We will not dictate to Israel what to do, we will not interfere in the running of the country. It would be very strange to say that others can live in this area but Israelis cannot.”

Mike Huckabee’s comments come after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced on Thursday that he was planning to relaunch the E1 area settlement project that would see the construction of thousands of new housing units in the E1 area, east of Jerusalem.

Doing so would unite Jerusalem with the illegal Ma’ale Adumim settlement – several kilometers to the east – and cut the occupied West Bank in two, isolating Palestinian communities.

During his announcement, Smotrich praised the proposal as “a reality that buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there’s nothing to recognize and no one to recognize it”.

“This is Zionism at its best – building, settling and strengthening our sovereignty in the Land of Israel,” he added. The initial idea for E1 settlement was first touted decades ago, but was buried because of international condemnation – from both states and human right organizations.

“this reality finally buries the idea of a palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize.”
– israeli finance minister bezalel smotrich on controversial e1 project pic.twitter.com/rRlI34r40B

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) August 14, 2025

The Israeli government expected to approve construction plans for E1 this week. The United Nations urged Israel to not start any work on the settlement. The UN’s spokesperson for the secretary-general, Stephane Dujarric, told reporters that illegal E1 settlement expansion “would put an end to prospects of a two-state solution”.

“Settlements go against international law… [and] further entrench the occupation,” Dujarric said. Quds Network described the proposal as a “death sentence to establishing the Palestinian state”.

A Russian general has been seriously injured near the Ukrainian border, officials in Russia’s republic of Dagestan – which is where he’s from – have said, which is consistent with earlier reports sourced to Ukrainian intelligence.

Dagestan’s leader, Sergei Melikov, announced on Telegram that Gen. Esedulla Abachev was critically wounded several days ago in a border region. Regional media says he holds the honorary government-awarded title of ‘Hero of Russia’.

“He is currently receiving care at one of the country’s top military hospitals,” Melikov wrote, nothing that the general’s condition is serious but stable.

Ukraine’s military intelligence had previously claimed that 57-year-old Abachev lost both an arm and a leg after his convoy was attacked overnight in Russia’s Kursk region.

He was rushed to a hospital in the Moscow area, the reports said, where military doctors carried out the emergency amputations.

According to background via Reuters:

At least a dozen Russian generals have been killed in the war that started with Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Abachev graduated from the Higher Tank Command School in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1991. He received the Gold Star of the Hero of Russia for his role in combat missions during the current war.

Dagestani leader Melikov said he was the pride of the region, describing him as “a combat general and a wise commander who always tries to protect his personnel, sometimes neglecting his own safety”.

Ukrainian sources say that Abachev was serving as deputy commander of Russia’s “Sever” (North) group of forces at the time of the attack – although the Russian defense ministry has not confirmed such details.

Video allededly showing “The result of the Ukrainian strike on a Russian military column in the Kursk region. It is likely that this is where Russian Lieutenant General Abachev was seriously injured.”

The result of the Ukrainian strike on a Russian military column in the Kursk region. It is likely that this is where Russian Lieutenant General Abachev was seriously injured https://t.co/NK6j5S8cQw pic.twitter.com/dy3VgDCj5F

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 17, 2025

President Vladimir Putin had formally bestowed on Abachev the Hero of Russia title in July 2022 for leading the capture of Lysychansk while leading a vital unit of the Luhansk People’s Militia.

The drone war, and attacks on energy sites, has only continued to ramp up, with vital oil and gas locations being hit inside Russia in the last several days and weeks.

Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

The “Chat Control” law threatens to transform the Internet into an even more centrally controlled, surveilled environment. And it could be a legal reality by October…

Regular readers are by now familiar with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which we have covered on several occasions since July 2023. For those who aren’t, a quick primer: the DSA imposes a legal requirement on very large online platforms (VLOPs), and very large online search engines (VLOSEs) to take prompt action against illegal content hosted on their platforms, either by removing it, blocking it, or providing certain information to the authorities concerned.

VLOPs and VLOSEs are also required to take action against risks that extend beyond illegal content, including vague threats to “civic discourse”, “electoral processes” and “public health”. It is down to the Commission or national authorities to define what those threats might entail. This is where the EU’s mass censorship regime began to take form.

The overarching goal of the DSA is to combat — i.e., suppress — mis- and disinformation online, not just in Europe but potentially across the world. It is part of a broader trend of Western governments and UN institutions pushing to censor information on the Internet as they gradually lose control over key narrative threads.

Platforms that fall foul of the Act face potentially ruinous fines of up to 6% of their global annual turnover. As such, it’s probably safe to assume that they err on the side of caution, deleting content that could be considered harmful, even when it is entirely lawful. So begins the slippery slope of systemic online censorship.

As retired German judge Manfred Kölsch warned in an op-ed in Berliner Zeitung, the DSA not only poses an existential threat to the freedom of speech in Europe, it contravenes many of the EU’s own laws on freedom of expression and information:

A careful look behind the facade of the rule of law reveals that the DSA knowingly undermines the right to freedom of expression and information guaranteed by Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 5 of the Basic Law (Germany’s written constitution, agreed by the allies back in 1949 when the first post-war government was established in West Germany).

The text of Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights reads as follows:

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.

As we warned back in 2023, the reverberations of the DSA are likely to extend far beyond the EU’s borders and could even go global, much like its predecessor, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Those concerns were echoed by a report released in January by the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, which singled out the DSA as a “foreign censorship threat.” From Politico:

[The report] includes non-public information about how the European Commission and national authorities implement the rules, including confidential information from EU workshops, emails between the EU executive and companies, content takedown requests in France, Germany and Poland and readouts from Commission meetings with tech firms.

“On paper, the DSA is bad. In practice, it is even worse,” the report said.

“European censors” at the Commission and EU countries “target core political speech that is neither harmful nor illegal, attempting to stifle debate on topics such as immigration and the environment,” it said. Their censorship is “largely one-sided” against conservatives, it added.

This assertion is supported by recent claims from Telegram founder Pavel Durov that French intelligence officials approached him earlier this year with requests to censor pro-conservative content ahead of the May 2025 Romanian election, a request he says he refused. As Le Monde notes, Durov hasn’t provided any evidence to support these claims. However, given the lengths to which the EU went to meddle in the Romanian election, they are hardly far-fetched.

Interestingly, diplomatic wrangling over the DSA’s wording is one of a number of ongoing issues holding up a trade statement formalising last month’s trade deal the EU and US. According to the FT, the EU is trying to prevent the US from targeting the bloc’s landmark digital rules as the two sides wrangle over the final details of a delayed statement:

EU officials said disagreements over language relating to “non-tariff barriers” — which the US has previously said includes the bloc’s ambitious digital rules — are among reasons for the hold-up of the joint statement.

It was originally expected days after European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and US President Donald Trump announced a tariff agreement on July 27 in Scotland. Two EU officials said the US wanted to keep the door open for possible concessions on the bloc’s Digital Services Act, which forces Big Tech companies to police their platforms more aggressively. The commission has said that relaxing these rules is a red line.

Chat Control

In the meantime, Brussels is pushing hard on another front: its so-called Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse. Dubbed the “Chat Control” law, the proposal seeks to curb the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online. While this is a commendable goal, the way the EU is going about it not only threatens fundamental rights and protections for everyone; it risks transforming the Internet into an even more centrally controlled, surveilled environment.

In its current form, the Chat Control law effectively mandates the scanning of private communications, including those currently protected by end-to-end encryption. If enacted, messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, would have to scan every message, photo and video sent by users, even when encrypted, starting in October.

As Brussels Signal notes, the mechanism at the heart of the proposal is called client-side scanning, and Denmark’s rotating six-month presidency of the EU council is determined to push it through — indeed the resubmission of the Chat Control legislation, first proposed in 2022, was the presidency’s very first formal step upon its assumption of duties in July:

Through [client-side scanning], content is analysed on a user’s device before encryption. What this means, for the less tech-savvy reader, is opening a permanent backdoor that bypasses the privacy guarantees of secure communication. This would be like having the state read your letters before you seal the envelope, and would subject every EU citizen’s private messages to automated scrutiny. East German readers may find such Stasiesque instruments familiar; most wouldn’t want them making a grand comeback, either in Germany or elsewhere.

Unfortunately, instead of reading the room and studying alternative, milder versions of the legislation, (Danish prime minister Mette) Frederiksen has instead chosen to double down on this major political and historical mistake. As many as 19 EU states now apparently back the proposal. Germany remains uncommitted for the moment, but will likely be pivotal. Indeed, if Berlin joins the “yes” camp, a qualified majority vote—requiring 15 states representing 65 per cent of the EU population—could see the law passed by mid-October. The Danish presidency is driving this process through Council working groups, with its objective being to finalise positions by September 12, 2025. The only step that would then be missing is the final vote in October.

The downsides of the EU’s Chat Control are self-obvious, notes the Brussels Signal article, and should suffice to prompt a sound rejection by European nations, which obviously isn’t happening:

Once it is in place, the system’s scope could expand beyond CSAM to virtually any other content, be it political dissent—surely a reasonable concern when, in Britain, Starmer is hard at work forbidding your VPN, France’s leading presidential candidate was barred from running in the next election or, in Germany, almost 10,000 are being charged every year for sharing “politically incorrect” memes and jokes online. Indeed, even as the Eurocrats are trying to snoop into your online conversations, Brussels is also pushing for aggressive content moderation under the Digital Services Act.  

So the downsides are self-obvious, and should by themselves illustrate why this legislation should be soundly rejected by European nations. How about its advantages? They’re way less clear. A year ago, Europol noted in a report that sophisticated criminals often use secretive, unregulated platforms, rendering mass scanning ineffective against the intended targets while burdening ordinary citizens with the full weight of a repressive Leviathan. Confidentiality-focused platforms like Signal have threatened to exit the EU market rather than comply. So they should, but what that will do is harm Europe’s digital economy while pushing users to less secure alternatives.

The EU’s “Chat Control” proposal is horrifying. There’s no way to implement this safely. It will destroy private communications online entirely.

If you’re in the EU, please fight this. pic.twitter.com/VVQtdC6p6e

— Theo – t3.gg (@theo) August 11, 2025

The UK’s experience so far with the Online Safety Act’s age verification rules offers a foretaste of how much chaos can by generated by government crackdowns on online access and speech. One of the most notable impacts so far has been a proliferation of work-arounds, including VPNs and other inventive ways of bypassing age verification systems.

As the Keir Starmer government is slowly learning, trying to restrict people’s access to the Internet is a game of whack-a-mole — and one that the government appears destined to lose. In the meantime, the OSA appears to have sparked a new wave of mass civil disobedience, particularly among young, tech-savvy users:

This is what happens when Western authoritarians attempt to assert regulatory, centralised dominance with ‘protect the children’ ™

You cannot age verify & control the entire internet. https://t.co/63aIM29OjK

— STOPCOMMONPASS 🛑 (@org_scp) August 17, 2025

“A Masterclass of Unintended Consequences”

As the Centre for European Policy Analysis notes, the unintended consequences are rapidly mounting:

By sending minors tunnelling through VPNs, the UK law may have inadvertently exposed them to riskier, less regulated online spaces. Many free VPN services are not privacy shields at all, but data harvesting tools that sell users’ information to unknown operators overseas. In trying to wall-off harmful content, governments may be nudging minors into darker, less-regulated corners of the internet.

The restrictions have also placed further strain on the UK’s “special” relationship with the US, which is determined to protect the financial interests of its largest companies, while opening up a Pandora’s Box of legal complications.

Even the BBC has reported that platforms are escalating their censorship of content as a result of the OSA, particularly on sensitive issues such as Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the war in Ukraine.

NEW: The BBC is now reporting that information about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, UK rape gangs, and more is being censored online due to the government’s new Online “Safety” Act.

WELL DONE LADS 🫠 pic.twitter.com/DnSyAxd1wx

— Silkie Carlo (@silkiecarlo) August 1, 2025

Newsweek has described the Online Safety Act “as a masterclass in unintended consequences and symbolic rulemaking”:

When U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently told President Donald Trump, “We’ve had free speech for a long time, so, er, we are very proud of that,” one had to wonder—what exactly is he proud of?

Is he referring to the 30 people a day his government arrests for posting “offensive” things online? Or perhaps he is proud of the fact that his government was threatening Americans with criminal charges for not complying with his government’s Online Safety Act?

And while the OSA was done under the guise of protecting kids online, the government is also inexplicably engaged in a Streisand effect moment, with its agency announcing it was investigating four companies operating 34 pornographic websites. Essentially, by calling it out, the regulator told minors where they can go to access pornographic content without the need to utilize age verification…

Britons are pushing back with a petition to repeal the law, which has already gathered over 450,000 signatures (NC: it now has over 500,000). American lawmakers would be wise to pay attention and avoid making the same mistakes in Congress. We can protect children without sacrificing the foundational principles of a free and open internet.

Trojan Horse

Since the implementation of the OSA’s age verification rules roughly a month ago, “all UK internet users only have access to a childproofed version of the web unless we’re willing to undergo intrusive age verification processes,” says Rebecca Vincent of the digital rights group Big Brother Watch. Or, of course, use work arounds.

This is a key point: as we’ve been warning since November last year, online age verification is the Trojan Horse for the mass adoption of digital identity systems, which very quietly became a legal reality in March, 2024.

With the enactment of the OSA, everyone must submit to an online passport check in order to access social media and other large user-to-user services, which the bill refers to as Category 1 services. Facial recognition technologies are also being used despite their myriad flaws. Once we sign up for these verification processes our access to content will be increasingly controlled, warns the tech writer Tim Hinchliffe, citing the UK government’s own explainer of the OSA:

“Adult users of such [Category 1] services will be able to verify their identity and access tools which enable them to reduce the likelihood that they see content from non-verified users and prevent non-verified users from interacting with their content. This will help stop anonymous trolls from contacting them.”

The EU’s Chat Control Legislation poses similar dangers. The Fight Chat Control website highlights six potential risks, intended or otherwise:

• Mass Surveillance. “Every private message, photo, and file scanned automatically: no suspicion required, no exceptions (apart from for EU politicians, who demand privacy for themselves), even encrypted communications.”

• Breaking Encryption. “Weakening or breaking end-to-end encryption exposes everyone’s communications—including sensitive financial, medical, and private data—to hackers, criminals, and hostile actors.”

• Fundamental Rights. “Undermines your fundamental rights to privacy and data protection, as guaranteed by Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter—rights considered core to European democratic values.”

• False Positives. “Automated scanners routinely misidentify innocent content, such as vacation photos or private jokes, as illegal, putting ordinary people at risk of false accusations and damaging investigations.”

• Ineffective Child Protection. “Child protection experts and organisations, including the UN, warn that mass surveillance fails to prevent abuse and actually makes children less safe—by weakening security for everyone and diverting resources from proven protective measures.”

• Global Precedent. “Creates a dangerous global precedent enabling authoritarian governments, citing EU policy, to roll out intrusive surveillance at home, undermining privacy and free expression worldwide.”

This is another key point — and it is one that was raised by Meredith Whitaker, the CEO of the Signal encrypted messaging app, in discussions regarding the UK’s Online Safety Act a couple of years ago. Whitaker warned that the UK’s implementation of the OSA would be seen as a precedent by more repressive regimes to double down on their own Internet surveillance and censorship activities. In the words of the UN Human Rights Commissioner, the trend is “unprecedented” and “paradigm shifting”:

The Online Safety Act’s age verification rules are just the tip of the iceberg. Far more alarming is clause 111, which mandates that platforms implement backdoors and spyware upon request, gutting end-to-end encryption and eviscerating privacy.@mer__edith, CEO at Signal,… https://t.co/SSY3vHsyPm pic.twitter.com/DNTx9Fd19d

— Henry Palmer (@HenryJPalmer) July 27, 2025

This also explains why the current direction of travel is so dangerous: it is occurring at a global level.

The online safety act didn’t happen in the UK in isolation. Remember it’s not a coincidence.

The head of Ofcom, Melanie Dawes, is a key member of WEF’s Global Coalition for Digital Safety, also pushing governments to censor anything labelled “misinformation” or “harm.”

The UK,… pic.twitter.com/IM9GE2U1pa

— Bernie (@Artemisfornow) July 30, 2025

While protecting the children serves as a handy pretext for remodelling the Internet, the real driving motivation for regulations like the OSA and the EU’s Chat Control is, well, control — not just for children but for everyone. As Juliet Samuel reports in the Times of London, UK officials even admitted in a recent high court case “that [the OSA] is ‘not primarily aimed at … the protection of children’, but is about regulating ‘services that have a significant influence over public discourse’, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act.”

Authored by Kurt Schlichter via Townhall.com,

Americans are more divided than we have been since the first time the Democrats started and lost a civil war, with every norm being tossed out and every legitimate exercise of lawfully attained power by us normals being shamelessly obstructed. The left rejects the idea that patriotic Americans have any moral right to participate in their own governance, to pursue their own interests, or to assert their own rights. To them,we are nothing but thralls, tax-generating slaves who must feed them, fuel them, fight for them, and obey their commands while meekly accepting their calumny. 

They are delusional. Things aren’t going to work out that way. 

But things are going to work out some way, and you have to wonder what their endgame is. After all, the Democratic Party, which is entirely indistinguishable from the left, refuses to accept the legitimacy of Donald Trump or any of us and is doing everything it can to prevent us from exercising any self-governance. That specifically and notably includes enforcing laws that were passed through the proverbial Schoolhouse Rock “I’m Just a Bill” process. It’s not much of a democracy if democratically enacted laws are not enforced. We have very clear laws on illegal immigration, yet they’re doing everything they can, formally and informally, to prevent us from enforcing them to get rid of the millions of invaders they allowed into the country without our permission. We have very clear laws on racial discrimination, yet they’re doing everything they can, formally and informally, to prevent us from enforcing them, particularly when they might benefit people of pallor. We have very clear laws on crime, yet they’re doing everything they can, formally and informally, to prevent us from enforcing them to make our cities safe, like in Washington DC, where they’re perfectly happy to sacrifice hundreds of black lives, and a few white ones, to make sure Trump doesn’t score a victory by making that urban cesspool habitable again. 

Our government is gridlocked. We no longer even try to pass laws, thanks to the filibuster. You need 60 senators, and we only have about 51, 53 if you count Murkowski and McConnell, and there’s no real reason to do that. The only action coming out of Congress is the rare reconciliation bill, along with some investigations. Most of what’s happening is executive orders and a re-ordering of government priorities at the hands of Donald Trump. That’s important, and that’s something, but this all has the feeling of a jury-rigged contraption that’s barely held together with duct tape and spit rather than the kind of functional, balanced government the Founders envisioned. 

What can’t go on won’t go on, and this can’t go on. You can’t have half of America denying that the other half of America has any kind of moral right to participate in Our Democracy, and believing that the other side is so morally flawed, so obviously literally fascist in its love of attractive women, blue jeans, law and order, and not being discriminated against because its ancestors came from Europe, that to even consider their interests or rights is to embrace Hitler. 

The critical question is what the Dems think is going to happen. As noted, this is not going to remain the status quo forever. This is unsustainable. But do they believe that, if they hold their breath long enough, until their faces turn as blue as the Democrat enclaves on the election maps, we will just give up, and then they win? 

Will we just give up, shrug our shoulders, and decide to allow them to do whatever the hell they want? OK, here you go, here’s our hard-earned money to give to your deadbeat constituents and to launder to communist NGOs and your billionaire donors. Here you go, here are all our guns. We know how much you hate us having those. We’re not worried about what inevitably happens to people who disarm themselves. And we’ll just shut up now and not exercise free speech by pointing out how corrupt, stupid, venal, and ridiculous you and your ilk are. England can show us the way – if somebody hops on X (assuming it still operates after Elon Musk gets arrested for whatever made-up crime they make up) and points out that a dude with a penis can never be a woman, here comes the SWAT team! And we’ll just let you guys gerrymander your hearts out in the blue states, but we will make sure that every Jasmine Crockett-like borderline clinical moron in some bluish part of a red state gets a safe district. And we will stop expecting to have a say in everything, because of course, we’re not qualified to have a say in anything. We’re not qualified to raise our own kids. We’re not qualified to decide what injections we get. We’re not qualified to opine on weather policy, so take out cars, trucks and steaks. We’re certainly not qualified to decide whether or not we want tens of millions of Third World peasants invading our country and turning it into the kind of hellhole they fled from. So, yeah, you’re good. You pinkos take over and handle things. We’ll be here, ready to take your abuse, take the blame for anything that ever goes wrong, and obey all your commands. 

But if you believe that, you’re gobbling more of your SSRIs and washing them down with more oaky Chardonnay than usual. 

Surrender is not going to happen. We’re just not going to give up on this whole citizenship and freedom thing because you’re big mad that we demand respect and a say. Now, the left may have some hope that, once Trump goes away, the Republicans are devolve back to the old days of gentlemanly managing the decline as the ratchet of leftist advances keeps clicking forward, never to be pushed back again. 

But that isn’t going to happen. The crusty, impotent Republican Party is dead. It’s been killed in a murder/suicide in the sense that it killed itself while its opponents were killing it. That feeble, feminine Republican Party is gone, and it’s not coming back. So, the question is, “What are the Democrats going to do?” If history’s any judge, and it’s the best judge there is, they’re going to turn harder to the left. They did after Hubert Humphrey lost in ’68, and they did after Jimmy Carter lost in ’80. Their answer to a relative moderate losing is always to go harder left and get their butts punted through the goal posts of electoral history. They will certainly try that again in 2028 and likely lose. 

But their loss isn’t guaranteed. They could win. As we’ve seen, starting with Trump in 2016, anyone on a major ticket can win the presidency. And if they do, they’re going to do everything they possibly can to make sure they never lose power again. We’ve seen that the rules don’t matter. We’ve seen that the norms don’t matter. We’ve seen that the Constitution doesn’t matter. They, like the rest of the Western world’s ruling class, will abandon the mechanics of democracy, even as they claim to be protecting Our Democracy, in order to solidify their grip on power. And that’s very, very dangerous. 

That’s dangerous because we’re not going to ever be serfs. Our opponents on the left are evil, corrupt, and stupid, a flock of dumb people who think they’re smart but know nothing of history or human nature. They will push and push and push, not understanding that when you push somebody, he pushes back, mostly because they grew up in feminized schools where you don’t hit back. But we hit back. We’re not them. We’re not just going to take it if they dish it out. 

I write about this in my new novel, American Apocalypse: The Second American Civil War, out now. In it, through bad luck and assassinations – don’t put it past them giving it another good old college try – the left takes power and promptly decides it’s never giving it up again. And then things explode, and it’s very, very bad. We want to avoid that, but we want to avoid being enslaved even more. Better to die on a pile of brass than on your knees, piteously begging some blue-haired commissar for mercy.  

But the question remains: how does America get out of this? It’s not for us, the patriots, to get out of. We have a right to pursue our interests through the use of lawfully won political power; we did not waive our right to do so just because we elected generations of Republicans who refused to do so. No, this is a time for reflection by the Democrats. They need to figure out what they’re going to do. If they keep going to the left, even as they demonize the other half of America, it’s going to end badly for everyone, but even worse for them. That’s not a threat. That’s reality. 

After the disaster that was leftist George McGovern, the Democrats found a winner in a relative moderate, Jimmy Carter. After losing with leftists Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, they found a winner in another relative moderate, Bill Clinton. They could do that again in 2032, after JD Vance wipes them out in 2028, but there’s a difference this time. This isn’t just politics for them. This is a pagan religion. They don’t think that we’re merely dumb. They think that we’re evil, and that our evil heresy of not being afraid of the weather, loving America, and having normal gender identities makes us the Huguenots, and they’re the French. But we won’t be massacred so easily. 

As Bismarck once observed, “There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.” Hopefully, we will find a way through this impasse, but make no mistake about the danger. Right now, half of America considers the rights and participation in our government and society of the other half of America to be absolutely illegitimate. That is unsustainable. They need to get it through their heads. We are not going to be ruled by them. We are not going to be second-class citizens. We are not going to be serfs. 

The Democrats better figure out their endgame, because it isn’t going to end with us giving up and forfeiting the game.

People like nothing better than to see an arrogant bureaucrat get cut down to size after screaming the words “Don’t you know who I am?”  This is essentially what Rhode Island State Prosecutor and Democrat, Devon Flanigan, did when she faced off with police after allegedly refusing to leave a Newport dining establishment.

The woman, seemingly under the influence, tried to order officers to shut off their body cams as she stood outside the restaurant, stating that she knew their protocols and that they were required to do so by law (there is no such law in Rhode Island).  Officers ignored the demand and asked Flanigan to leave the premises, only to be bombarded with arguments and declarations that “she is an AG”. 

When officers said they didn’t care, a meltdown ensued.

The officer body camera video released Monday by Newport police shows the arrests of Special Assistant Attorney General Devon Hogan Flanagan and her friend Veronica Hannan.  Hannan also displayed unhinged behavior and resisted police as she was placed in handcuffs.

Officers responded to outside the Clarke Cooke House on Bannister’s Wharf over a complaint of an “unwanted party.”  

Flanagan immediately engaged:  “Your protocol is, if I ask you to turn off the body cam, you have to turn it off. That’s your protocol.” 

Hannan says, “She’s a (expletive) lawyer. So she knows.” 

The officer replies, “Well, that’s bull (expletive) lawyer stuff. So that’s not true.” 

Hogan then says, “I’m an AG. I’m an AG,” to which the officer responds, “Good for you. I don’t give a (expletive). Let’s go.”

As the prosecutor was forced into a police vehicle she warned “You’re going to regret this…”  There’s no official word yet if the officers are feeling regret.  The attorney general’s office said it was reviewing the incident.

It’s probably not coincidence that we are seeing this kind of behavior from a Democrat appointed prosecutor.  Such officials have become the bane of blue cities across the US with their catch and release criminal policies and general distaste for legitimate law enforcement.  A “rules for thee but nor for me” attitude is also a common problem with leftist bureaucrats, making them some of the most despised people in the country.

Its one of the reasons Kamala Harris lost in a landslide in 2024.  Her antics as Attorney General in California were a stain on her campaign from the very beginning, even among Democrat voters.

The new era of no nonsense policing is refreshing.  Flanagan might have been let off the hook if her encounter had occurred a few years ago, but this is not the case today.  And, Democrats stubbornly demanded that police bodycams become a universal standard back in 2020, so now they have to deal with the very public repercussions when they get caught breaking the law.  

After years of ratcheting tensions between nuclear-armed rivals China and India, which actually came to literal blows along their disputed Himalayan border over the last several years – including the deadly 2020 Galwan valley clashes among rival troops, which left dozens dead and wounded – relations between the two Asian regional powers are thawing fast.

Monday and Tuesday have seen a major breakthrough during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s two-day visit to Delhi, where he declared that India and China should view each other as “partners” rather than “adversaries or threats”.

He further hailed a “positive trend” towards cooperation between the two economic superpowers of the region, ahead of a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday. Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar in turn confirmed that the countries are busy trying to “move ahead from a difficult period in our ties.“

Wang described, “We are happy to share that stability has now been restored at the borders” given that mutually the feeling is “the setbacks that we faced in the last few years were not in our interest.”

Several agreements on bilateral trade, investment, diplomatic coordination, religious pilgrimages, border and visa issues, and river data sharing were made among the sides. Per fresh Bloomberg reporting Tuesday, they agreed to…

• promote multilateralism and safeguard multilateral trade system to protect the interests of developing countries
• To enhance communication on major global and regional issues
• To resume direct flights between mainland China and India as soon as possible and revise civil aviation agreements
• To facilitate visas for personnel engaged in tourism, business and media activities
• A new consensus on border issues including normalization of border management, stability and peace protection, proper handling of sensitive areas, and start of boundary demarcation negotiations on certain areas

The timing of this growing rapprochement on the global stage is what is most interesting – given it comes as Washington is trying desperately to pressure and bully countries into halting purchases of Russian oil (and while seeking to put together a trilateral Putin-Trump-Zelensky meeting for peace), and imports of Russian energy and other goods generally.

For example, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro just at the start of this week decried India’s purchases of Russian crude, saying it’s funding Moscow’s war machine and that it must stop immediately.

“India acts as a global clearinghouse for Russian oil, converting embargoed crude into high-value exports while giving Moscow the dollars it needs,” Navarro wrote in a Financial Times op-ed published Monday.

🇮🇳 🇨🇳 India-China talks are going swimmingly and both countries have agreed to drop trade restrictions and keep improving diplomatic relations!

Good news for nearly 40% of the world’s population and many others by extension.

🗞️ Reuters pic.twitter.com/Go2P1hKBPo

— Dott. Orikron 🇵🇹 (@orikron) August 19, 2025

The top Trump trade official blasted India’s dependence on Russian crude as “opportunistic and deeply corrosive of the world’s efforts to isolate Putin’s war economy.” 

The irony in all of this – and especially given the top level India and China summit of warm relations this week – is that Beijing remains the biggest buyer of Russian oil, and India is the second largest.