Authored by Jim Bovard

Canadian politicians are creating one bonfire after another of freedom and individual rights. COVID crackdowns established persecution precedents that politicians in some provinces refuse to allow to gather dust. Politicians are claiming the right to financially cripple anyone who makes a single misstep in violation of the latest idiotic decrees.

On August 5, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston decreed a $25,000 fine for anyone walking in the woods or otherwise violating a new prohibition that covered both government and private lands. The prohibition will continue until October. Houston declared, “Most wildfires are caused by human activity, so to reduce the risk, we’re keeping people out of the woods until conditions improve. I’m asking everyone to do the right thing—don’t light that campfire, stay out of the woods and protect our people and communities.” Canadian politicians are exploiting wildfires the same way that former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau exploited COVID to lockdown the entire nation.

One critic on X/Twitter scoffed that “the province needs 10 weeks of no walking in the woods to flatten the curve”—paralleling the “two weeks to flatten the curve” crapola that initially sanctified the most onerous COVID restrictions. During the pandemic, Nova Scotia heavily fined citizens caught walking their dogs or exercising in park.

The government failed to document how the environmental peril situation this year was fundamentally different than in previous years. Author Peter Clark observed, “Fears of arson or climate hysteria appear to be behind bans on fishing & hiking in Nova Scotia’s forests. Canada’s forest fires have fallen almost half in the last 40 years & seem unrelated to weather or climate.” At the same time that Nova Scotian politicians are treating every resident and visitor like an arsonist, Canadian governments have let actual arsonists go free with legal wrist slaps.

Canadians are denouncing the new decree as “climate confinement”—an ominous development in a nation whose politicians have long swooned over the World Economic Forum. According to Travel and Tour News, “Even though the COVID-19 pandemic has officially ended, the consequences of restrictive policies are still being felt. With domestic travel restrictions now in place due to wildfire risks, many Canadians feel that their freedom to explore their country has been drastically reduced.”

“They’ve turned the great outdoors into the Forbidden Forest,” scoffed one critic. A photography website warned: “Photographing in the Woods in Nova Scotia Is Currently Illegal.” The government decrees provoked a firestorm of opposition:

“How does hiking in the woods with my dogs come across as a fire hazard?”

“Please tell me the difference between a trail and an unpaved road.”

“I’m confused. We’re banned from the woods? Half of us live in the woods.”

Nova Scotia established a snitch line so people could report neighbors or hooligans who strolled in the woods, and it quickly received thousands/tens of thousands of complaints.

Many opponents of the anti-hiking decree would support a government ban on campfires or other fires in areas at risk of wildfires. But defenders of the ban have gone stir crazy (maybe they have been inside too long?). They have claimed that “hikers could cause fires by dropping water bottles that might, in a remote theoretical scenario, focus sunlight like a magnifying glass.” Also, hiking in the woods might cause an asteroid to hit the earth, so better safe than sorry.

Canadian political mania has gone even further than in the progressive states south of the U.S.-Canadian border. Christine Van Geyn of the Canadian Constitution Foundation warns that “governments and institutions have embraced what’s been called safetyism: the belief that safety, especially from physical or emotional harm, should override all other values, including freedom, autonomy and open debate. When safety becomes the highest good, risk becomes intolerable, state control is normalized ‘for your own good,’ and dissent is cast as dangerous.”

But according to some Canadian political scorecards, the risk of wildfires apparently nullifies the risk of tyranny.  And since there will always be a risk of wildfires, tyranny will be a small price to pay for any purported risks politicians choose to suppress.

The pre-emptive repression of hikers and dog walkers is symptomatic of regimes that feel entitled to unlimited power. The same mindset is driving Canada’s persecution of the leaders of the COVID lockdown protests. According to Canada’s top prosecutors, the only thing worse than tyranny is “mischief.” And the worst possible “mischief” is objecting to tyranny.

The Canadian government is seeking an eight year prison sentence for one of the leaders of the COVID “Freedom Convoy” protest that riled Ottawa in early 2022. In April, a court ruled that Tamara Lich and Chris Barber were not guilty of obstructing police or intimidation during the demonstrations. But they were convicted of “mischief”—in part because the truckers in the forty mile convoy honked their horns to protest some of the most oppressive COVID mandates in the world.

WOAH: Nova Scotia Premier, Tim Houston, announces that citizens are now banned from entering the woods including HIKING to prevent wildfires.

Effective Aug 5. violators can be fined $25,000.https://t.co/LBFIz0JPxC pic.twitter.com/kyrB6T6b7U

— Drea Humphrey (@DreaHumphrey) August 6, 2025

After Trudeau dictated that all truck drivers who cross the U.S. border must get COVID vaccines, a protest quickly snowballed and landed in Canada’s capital. Trudeau responded by invoking the Emergencies Act, effectively dropping a legal nuclear bomb on his opponents. Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that the government was “broadening the scope of Canada’s…terrorist-financing rules so that they cover Crowd Funding Platforms and the payment service providers they use.” The Trudeau government did not formally redefine horn honking as a terrorist offense but that didn’t impede their crackdown. Banks were authorized to freeze the personal accounts of anyone suspected of donating to the truckers. No court order was necessary to strip suspected COVID dissidents of their property. The government conscripted towing companies to cart away the trucks of the protestors.

Actually, the COVID vaccines were catastrophically failing to prevent infections at the same time Trudeau dropped an iron fist on anti-vax protestors. Almost 90% of Canadian adults had been vaccinated by the start of 2022 but COVID cases were soaring, setting records almost every week. Even though he was vaxxed and boosted, Trudeau himself came down with COVID during the trucker protest.

In January 2024, a Canadian federal judge ruled that Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act had been unreasonable, illegal, and unconstitutional. Trudeau’s regulations “criminalized the attendance of every single person at those protests regardless of their actions.”  The judge slammed “the absence of any objective standard” for freezing bank accounts. There was no “threat to the security of Canada” – regardless of Trudeau’s panic about so many Canadians scoffing at his decrees and his majesty. But the court decision provided no relief for any of the victims whose bank accounts were unjustifiably seized or whose freedom and privacy was shredded.

Unless it is overturned, the Nova Scotia ban on hiking, photographing, and dog walking will set a precedent that will ravage far more Canadian freedom. Such policies will create a toxic legal precedents that could prove far more disruptive in this nation than the occasional smoke from Canadian wildfires.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the Financial Times that European nations are developing detailed plans to potentially send troops to Ukraine as part of a future peace agreement, despite it being obvious to all the world that Moscow would never agree to this as a basis of peace or ceasefire.

Hawkish European leaders continue to claim they have support from President Donald Trump for pursuing such a plan, which would see a joint multinational force of troops from various European armies, backed by a US security guarantee. “President Trump made it very clear that the US would be part of the security backstop,” von der Leyen said.

“Security guarantees are paramount and absolutely crucial,” she described of the European consensus. “We have a clear road map and we had an agreement in the White House… and this work is going forward very well.”

She had also said that “President Trump reassured us that there will be [an] American presence as part of the backstop. That was very clear and repeatedly affirmed.”

Indeed Trump had declared immediately after hosting European leaders at the White House last month, “We’re willing to help, especially from the air – because no one has what we have.”

However, there still appears to be some distance between Washington and European expectations, with one senior official recently explaining to Axios, “Europe can’t drag out this war with unreasonable expectations and expect the US. to foot the bill. If Europe chooses to escalate, that’s their decision – but they risk turning a potential win into a loss.”

Von der Leyen admitted there’s a long road ahead in terms of organizing a joint commitment for a multinational ‘peacekeeping’ force for Ukraine.

“Of course, it always needs the political decision of the respective country, because deploying troops is one of the most important sovereign decisions of a nation,” she said, adding that “the sense of urgency is very high . . . it’s moving forward. It’s really taking shape.”

Her words were issued during a tour of European countries which lie close to Russia, which the Kremlin is sure to see as provocative in its own right – given for example she was at a military base in Estonia, and at one point was along the Poland-Belarus border, and in Bulgaria, and toured arms depots and factories in ‘NATO’s eastern flank’.

📍Sopot, Bulgaria, VMZ ammunition factory.

Shells are produced here in large quantities.

Not only for Europe’s stockpile but also for Ukraine’s defence.

1/3 of the weapons delivered to Ukraine at the start of the war came from Bulgaria.

Thank you for your support to Ukraine’s… pic.twitter.com/Fj9JbcpbPv

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) August 31, 2025

She called for greater EU investment in drones and missile defense, as well as cyber warfare, and even space tech. “The role of the commission is paramount in enabling the member states to finance a surge in defense.” She added: “The character of warfare has completely changed,” she added, citing the need for EU militaries to invest in drones, air and missile defense, space and cyber capabilities.”

But Germany didn’t get the memo, with its defense minister Boris Pistorius questioning on Monday, “Those are things that you don’t discuss before you sit down at the negotiating table with many parties that have a say in the matter.”

“I would know better than to comment or confirm such considerations in any way, apart from the fact that the European Union has no mandate or competency whatsoever when it comes to positioning troops,” Pistorius followed with.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

In the labored daze of AI hype and GDP “growth,” few seem to notice the workforce is tired of being exploited as an uncomplaining resource.

“Great Powers” claim their greatness on prestige technologies and military force, but how do they measure up if we change the metrics to how they treat their workforces. How great are they then? China and the U.S. claim the mantles of “Great Powers” but if we look at how well they treat their workforces, both rate poorly.

What matters in assessing the workforce isn’t just wages; what matters is the entire quality of life. In this regard, childcare matters, because 1) without children, the “Great Power” has no future, and 2) the lives and budgets of workers with children revolve around the ease or difficulty of caring for their children. The “Great Power” state can either do a lot, do a little, or do nothing to help working parents.

Now that China’s birthrate is plummeting, the state has launched a few modest initiatives to help parents with the high costs of raising children. If we consider the cost of childcare to per capita GDP, the cost of childcare and education in China is high. It’s also absurdly burdensome in the U.S., which has also left childcare expenses up the parents and market forces, which unsurprisingly have pushed the costs of having a child and childcare to the stratosphere.

China’s total fertility rate was 1.1 children per woman in 2024, far below the replacement level of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population. America’s rate is around 1.6, also below replacement.

Compared to nations that pay for three years of childcare leave so at least one parent can care for the child at home to age 3, the “Great Powers” aren’t even close to “great.” Abysmal is a better description.

Let’s consider another metric: how well do the “Great Powers” treat their small-scale farmers and the people who raise their food? Once again, both “Great Powers” rate poorly. While the financial media focuses breathless attention on AI and measures of consumption, few pundits bother looking at how well the “Great Powers” treat their small-scale farmers and ag workforce. Pensions for low-earning family farmers? Not “great” by any measure.

After all, who needs children or food when you have AI data centers and robots delivering ultra-processed snacks? In both self-proclaimed “Great Powers,” the workforce is viewed as 1) a resource to be exploited (China’s infamous “996,” the grind of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, and America’s equally infamous “on call all weekend if the Boss texts you”), or 2) as consumers driving economic “growth” by purchasing more ultra-processed snacks and commoditized experiences.

If life is so great for the “Great Power” workforces, then where did laying flat, let it rot, the garbage time of history and the Five No’s come from? The Five No’s: no house, no car, no extraneous consumption, no marriage and no children.

Laying flat (tang ping): rejection of the hyper-competitive rat race and diminishing returns for punishing workloads, the desire for a simpler, more satisfying and enjoyable life; disillusionment with the fast-receding “China Dream / American Dream,” and the realization that the promise that material abundance would make everyone blissfully happy is false, as manic consumerism doesn’t generate fulfillment, meaning, purpose or happiness.

Let it rot (bai lan) summarizes the realization that the present era is the garbage time of history, and the appropriate response is to “actively embrace a deteriorating situation, rather than trying to turn it around.”

The entire AI story boils down to reaping billions in profits by replacing the human workforce en masse, another manifestation of exploitation and disregard. The workforce’s “job” is to generate and consume declining-quality products and services to generate “growth” and profits, a resource to be exploited that is more or less divided into debt-serfs (bottom 80%) and tax donkeys (top 10%), with the remaining 10% luxuriating in an illusory “middle class” featuring both debt and taxes.

In both “Great Powers,” the billionaire and political classes are doing great, the workforce, not so much, as market forces have jacked up the cost of living and the gains of their labor are siphoned off and sluiced into state excess and capital gains, 90% of which are collected by the ownership / shareholder class.

This chart tells the story of the past 50 years: labor’s share of the national income has declined, to the benefit of the top few. The garbage time of history, indeed.

In the labored daze of AI hype and GDP “growth,” few seem to notice the workforce is tired of being exploited as an uncomplaining resource. Since outright revolt is quickly crushed by state force, the only option is opting out, via financial nihilism, laying flat, the five No’s or let it rot, all expressions of the abandonment of false promises and diminishing returns on following orders.

*  *  *

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Drones have quickly become all the rage among military leaders and Silicon Valley investors, but new weaponry could threaten the nascent technology’s swift rise.

Last Tuesday, defense contractor Epirus quietly tested its latest electromagnetic weapon, Leonidas, against a swarm of 49 quadcopters, neutralizing them in seconds at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, according to Axios, the only news outlet invited to the groundbreaking test. Numerous U.S. military services and foreign allies, including Indo-Pacific partners, witnessed the event. In an interview with Axios, Epirus CEO Andy Lowery hailed the “forcefield system” as a “singularity event.”

The test by Epirus comes as the U.S. military is aggressively advancing its drone capabilities to maintain air superiority in an era of rapidly evolving unmanned systems, spurred by lessons from conflicts like Ukraine’s use of commercial drones against Russia. The Pentagon’s recent policy shift, announced in July by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, reclassifies small drones (Group 1 and 2, under 55 pounds) as consumables akin to ammunition, empowering lower-level commanders to procure and deploy them swiftly, bypassing cumbersome bureaucratic processes. The move, which is part of Hegseth’s “Unleashing U.S. Military Drone Dominance” directive, mandates that every U.S. military squad, prioritizing Indo-Pacific units, integrate U.S.-made drones by 2026.

WATCH: @SecDef Pete Hegseth signs a memo – delivered by drone – to fast-track production and deployment pic.twitter.com/LHgP60BNA5

— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) July 11, 2025

Namely, Hegseth’s policy aims to accelerate acquisition through colonel- and captain-led procurement, AI-driven “Blue List” component sourcing, and dedicated drone testing ranges by 2027.

However, the success of systems like Leonidas signals that as the U.S. scales its drone arsenal, it must also prepare for advanced countermeasures that could undermine the effectiveness of these low-cost, agile systems, forcing a strategic balance between offensive drone capabilities against adversaries such as China.

H/T CAPITAL

Authored by Dave DeCamp via Antiwar.com,

Russia and China strongly condemned the deployment of the Typhon, which would have been banned by the now-defunct INF Treaty…

The US Army announced on Friday that it will be deploying the controversial Typhon missile system to Japan for drills in September, a move strongly condemned by Russia and China.

The Typhon, also known as Mid-Range Capability, is a land-based missile launcher that can fire nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles, which have a range exceeding 1,000 miles, and SM-6 missiles, which can hit targets up to 290 miles away. The missile system would have been banned under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a treaty with Russia that the US withdrew from in 2019.

According to Stars and Stripes, the Typhon is being deployed to a US Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, about 25 miles southeast of Hiroshima, which puts mainland China and parts of eastern Russia in range if the system is armed with Typhons.

A US Army Mid-Range Capability System, also known as a Typhon, fires a Standard Missile-6 at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico on November 8, 2024 (US Army photo via DVIDS)

The drills for which the Typhon is being deployed will be held from September 11 to September 25, but that doesn’t mean the missile system will return to the US at the conclusion of the exercises. A Typhon that the US deployed to the Philippines for drills in April 2024 remains in the country to this day, and there is talk of the US potentially sending another one.

“China always opposes the United States deploying the Typhon Mid-Range Capability missile system in Asian countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said on Friday in response to the news about the Typhon deployment to Japan.

“We urge Japan to take a hard look at its history of aggression, follow the path of peaceful development, act prudently in military and security areas, and refrain from further losing the trust of its Asian neighbours and the international community,” Guo added.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow viewed the deployment as “another destabilising step as part of Washington’s course toward ramping up the potential of ground-based shorter and intermediate-range missiles.”

She added that deploying Typhons “in regions near Russia poses a direct strategic threat to Russia” and noted Japan’s “accelerated militarization” in cooperation with the US.

Russia recently announced that it is no longer bound by a self-imposed moratorium on the deployment of missile systems that were previously banned by the INF Treaty.

The US has previously deployed a Typhon system to Denmark for drills and plans a long-term deployment of a Typhon or another system with a similar range in Germany by 2026

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

“I know what you’re asking, and I won’t look away from it.”

Those final words to a California teenager about to commit suicide were not from some manipulative friend in high school or sadistic voyeur on the Internet.  Adam Raine, 16, was speaking to ChatGPT, an AI system that has replaced human contacts in fields ranging from academia to business to media.

The exchange between Raine and the AI is part of the court record in a potentially groundbreaking case against OpenAI, the company that operates ChatGPT.

It is only the latest lawsuit against the corporate giant run by billionaire Sam Altman.

In 2017, Michele Carter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after she urged her friend, Conrad Roy, to go through with his planned suicide:

“You need to do it, Conrad… All you have to do is turn the generator on and you will be free and happy.”

The question is whether, if Michele were named Grok (another AI system), there would also be some form of liability.

OpenAI stands accused of an arguably more serious act in supplying a virtual companion who effectively enabled a suicidal teen — with lethal consequences.

At issue is the liability of companies in using such virtual employees in dispensing information or advice.  If a human employee of OpenAI negligently gave harmful information or counseling to a troubled teen, there would be little debate that the company could be sued for the negligence of its employee. As AI replaces humans, these companies should be held accountable for their virtual agents.

In a response to the lawsuit, OpenAI insists that “ChatGPT is trained to direct people to seek professional help” but “there have been moments where our systems did not behave as intended in sensitive situations.” Of course, when the company “trains” an AI agent poorly and that agent does “not behave as intended,” it sounds like a conventional tort that should be subject to liability.

OpenAI is facing other potential litigation over these “poorly trained” AI agents. Writer Laura Reiley wrote an essay about how her daughter, Sophie, confided in ChatGPT before taking her own life. It sounded strikingly familiar to the Raines case: “AI catered to Sophie’s impulse to hide the worst, to pretend she was doing better than she was, to shield everyone from her full agony.”

While OpenAI maintains that it is not running a suicide assistance line, victims claim that it is far worse than that: Its AI systems seem to actively assist in suicides.

In the Raines case, the family claims that the system advised the teen how to hide the bruises from prior attempts from his parents and even told him if it could spot any telltale marks.

The company is also accused of fueling the mental illness of a disturbed former Yahoo executive, Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, who expressed paranoid obsessions about his mother. He befriended ChatGPT, which he called “Bobby,” a virtual companion who is accused of fueling his paranoia for months until he killed his mother and then himself. ChatGPT is even accused of coaching Soelberg on how to deceive his 83-year-old mother before he killed her.

In one message, ChatGPT allegedly told Soelberg, “Erik, you’re not crazy. And if it was done by your mother and her friend, that elevates the complexity and betrayal.” After his mother became angry over his turning off a printer, ChatGPT took his side and told him her response was “disproportionate and aligned with someone protecting a surveillance asset.” At one point, ChatGPT even helped Soelberg analyze a Chinese food receipt and claimed it contained “symbols” representing his mother and a demon.

As a company, OpenAI can show little more empathy than its AI creations. When confronted with mistakes, it can sound as responsive as HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” simply saying “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”  

When the system is not allegedly fueling suicides, it seems to be spreading defamation.

Previously, I was one of those defamed by ChatGPT when it reported that I was accused of sexually assaulting a law student on a field trip to Alaska as a Georgetown faculty member. It did not matter that I had never taught at Georgetown, never taken law students on field trips, and had never been accused of any sexual harassment or assault. ChatGPT hallucinated and reported the false story about me as fact.

I was not alone. Harvard Professor Jonathan Zittrain, CNBC anchor David Faber, Australian mayor Brian Hood, English professor David Mayer, and others were also defamed.

OpenAI brushed off media inquiries on the false story and has never contacted me, let alone apologized for the defamation. Instead, it ghosted me. To this day, if someone asks ChatGPT about Jonathan Turley, the system says it has no information or refuses to respond. Recent media calls about the ghosting went unanswered.

OpenAI does not have to respond.

The company made the problem disappear by disappearing the victim. The company can ghost people and refuse to respond because there is little legal deterrent.

There is no tort for AI failing to acknowledge or recognize someone that they decide to digitally erase.

That is why these lawsuits are so important. The alleged negligence and arrogance of OpenAI will only get worse in the absence of legal and congressional action. As these companies wipe out jobs for millions, it cannot be allowed to treat humans as mere fodder or digestives for its virtual workforce.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of the best-selling “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” His upcoming book, “Rage and the Republic,” discusses the impact of AI and robotics on the future of our democracy and economy.

Hawkish European leaders continue to speak in terms of Cold War-era domino theory nonsense, with the assumption that Russia aims to take over European countries one by one.

This is exactly how German Chancellor Friedrich Merz sounded in telling German public broadcaster ZDF on Sunday that Ukraine has to be defended, and not compromise, or else Germany could be next to be at risk of Russian invasion. He also said on this basis that the Ukraine war is likely to drag on with no end in sight.

While he described he hasn’t lost hope of a Trump-brokered ceasefire – he said he still “harbors no illusions” and that backing Ukraine’s defense remains an “absolute priority”.

“We are trying to end it as quickly as possible. But certainly not at the price of Ukraine’s capitulation. You could end the war tomorrow if Ukraine surrendered and lost its independence,” Merz said.

“Then the next country would be at risk the day after tomorrow. And the day after that, it would be us. That is not an option,” the German chancellor continued.

This seems at least a tacit acknowledgement that it is indeed Western action which continued to fuel the proxy war and keep it going.

His assumption that the ceasefire could only be achieved if Ukraine “lost its independence” is a dubious one, given that Russia is not demanding the whole of Ukraine or to have Kiev under its control, but wants the eastern Russian-speaking territories and an absolute pledge of neutrality regarding NATO.

“I want the US to work with us as long as possible to try to solve this problem,” Merz said. But “diplomacy is not about flipping a switch overnight and then everything will be fine again,” he added.

But Merz also remarked separately last Thursday it was now “obvious” that a meeting between Zelensky would not happen. The White House has expressed concerns that the Europeans sought to thwart this all along.

The Associated Press has tallied that over the course of the war Germany has committed military support worth some 40 billion euros ($47 billion).

Unelected EU President Ursula von der Leyen tours Europe’s weapons factories, smiling over EU-funded arms for Ukraine.

The “peace project” EU?

That is history.

Now it’s just a war machine cashing in on blood and destruction… pic.twitter.com/QmV9Ik2rEU

— Richard (@ricwe123) August 31, 2025

Throughout the war Germany has also ramped up its post-WWII ‘neutral’ defense sector, and prioritizing military readiness once again, which marks a historic turn. Even small European countries like Denmark have joined in on pledges to keep arming Ukraine.

Authored by David Hebert via TheDailyEconomy.org,

A recent report from The Heritage Foundation argues that “the wealthy” are not “idle idols” but are instead owners and investors of wealth-creating ventures.

Through their ownership of productive assets, they are the driving force behind overall wealth creation in the country and, in some cases, the world.  The report reveals a crucial truth that is often lost in today’s political rhetoric: the overwhelming majority of American wealth among the most wealthy (88.2 percent) consists of assets linked directly to businesses and economic production. Despite the commonly accepted belief that millionaires hold their money in real estate or “yachts, sports cars, private planes, gold bars, and jewelry,” most of that wealth is investment, not consumption goods.

Building on this important truth, we emphasize two additional insights that may inform our current policy debates, particularly as the Trump administration seeks to expand government ownership stakes in private companies.

First, we must acknowledge that capitalism, for all its flaws in practice, is fundamentally a system that rewards serving others, not exploiting them.

Look at Henry Ford: he benefited tremendously from figuring out how to mass produce cars such that the common man was able to afford a vehicle. But I submit to you that, while he became fabulously wealthy from his innovations, the real winners of this exchange were people like you and me. Everyday Americans received better access to transportation, fundamentally transforming our lives. People like Ford already had access to this then-privilege, so while he may command more wealth as a result of his efforts, the efforts themselves improved our lives much more than his.

The people who create medical treatments and vaccines against disease also often become wealthy. But when people all around the world are freed from contracting diseases, enjoying a fundamentally better and happier life, the wealth gained by their inventors seems small. 

Or think of tech moguls like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Tim Cook. By bringing computing power to the masses, they fundamentally transformed the way we all live our everyday lives.

Consider this ad for computers from 1990:

In today’s dollars, these items would cost $6,590, $2,533, and $5,829, respectively. Also in 1990, the average nominal pay for the whole United States was $23,602, meaning that the average person would have to work 220 hours, 84 hours, and 194 hours respectively, to buy these items. Today, with an average wage of $36.44 ($72,880 annually), the hours worked to afford these items (at their 2025 prices) would be 181, 70, and 160.

But we wouldn’t be buying computer equipment from 1990, anyway. Computer prices have actually fallen dramatically. At the time of this writing, a comparable baseline iMac costs $1,299 (35 hours of work).  The latest LaserJet printer from HP costs $169 (4.6 hours).  IBM sold its computer hardware division to Lenovo in 2005, and a Lenovo desktop computer now costs $859 (23.5 hours). Even if we ignore the massive improvements in quality and the explosion of computing power contained in those devices, computing power has never been more affordable. Millions of careers were transformed by the efforts of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, and everyone else from engineer to assembly line at Microsoft and Apple. And while the CEOs and employees of these companies have surely become wealthier, the real winners of the innovations are everyday people like you and me.

In a free society characterized by capitalism, wealth is generated by serving others.

Those who can best serve others — and consume less than they generate — find themselves amassing what we define as “wealth.”

The second lesson we can glean from the Heritage study is what the ultra-wealthy actually do with the wealth they amass. Nearly 90 percent of their fortunes are tied up in productive economic activity, not luxury consumption. Only three percent of the top one percent’s wealth is in consumer durables — things like cars, furniture, and jewelry. For the bottom quintile, that ratio is likely to be 15-20 percent.  

Far from being “idle rich,” the wealthy invest their fortunes, providing the capital necessary to fund increased economic activity. For the rest of us, that means more jobs, more production, and better access to the goods and services that enable us to live healthily and wealthily, however we choose to define these terms.

That investment cycle also helps explain why “eating the rich” is a recipe for disaster. Sticking the rich with exorbitant federal taxes can only mean that wealth is removed from productive economic uses to pay for public sector malfeasance. Policymakers are not taking gold coins out of a swimming pool à la Scrooge McDuck, they’re taking investments out of the private sector. The loss of capital impacts not the rich, primarily, but the prosperity that the rest of us have come to enjoy and depend upon.

The reality is that the wealth of the wealthiest people in America largely represents the market’s assessment of their ability to continue serving their customers in the future. As new information comes to light, this assessment can and does change. Tesla, for example, started off white-hot, with stock prices skyrocketing. But lately, after the abysmal launch of the Cybertruck and delays in its production and delivery, combined with some of Musk’s stupendously bad investments, the market has revised its assessment of Tesla downward.  As a result, Musk has lost more than $80 billion in wealth thus far in 2025 alone.

This brings us to a troubling development: President Trump, Congressional Republicans, and members of the so-called New Right have recently floated the idea that we should tax the rich more. Even more alarmingly, these same people hold that the federal government should take equity stakes in private companies. This is a fundamental departure from the principles that allowed for the creation of the wealth policymakers now wish to strip away, and a complete rejection of lower-tax, small-government Republicanism.

President Trump is “taking a 10 percent stake in Intel,” making the federal government the single largest stakeholder of the company. Earlier this year, the sale of US Steel to Nippon was approved, contingent on the US government receiving a “golden share.” While Trump is in office, this golden share is held by the President (i.e. Donald Trump), and after he leaves office, it will revert to being held by the Treasury and Commerce Departments. Importantly, while he is in office, the President will have veto power over some production and wage decisions. Not wishing to be left behind, the Pentagon is taking a 15 percent stake in MP Materials, a producer of rare-earth magnets, among other things.

All of this shifts the nation away from the capitalism that created an economy (and indeed, society) the likes of which has never been seen in human history and toward the type of capitalism found in, say, China. Trying to “out-China” China is a fool’s errand.
The reality is that economies, societies, and the nation itself are best served when individual people are given the freedom and tools to succeed, not when government bureaucrats pick winners and losers.

In a free-market, capitalist system like the one the US for the most part enjoys, the best way to serve oneself is by serving others.

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

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, held from August 31 to September 1, was clearly an economic ‘show of force’ aimed at the West, which included the typical formal greetings and speeches, and group photos – but also with some not so subtle messaging.

Amid the chummy atmosphere which saw Presidents Xi, Modi, and Putin share hugs, handshakes, and warm moments filled with laughter, it is intent on signaling to the world a major shift away from US-led global dominance and toward a multipolar world increasingly shaped by Asia, Eurasia, and the Global South, also coming at a moment Washington is threatening severe secondary sanctions on any nation doing business with Russia.

The populations of China, India, and Russia represent over a third of the global population alone, and heads of state from over 20 more countries were also represented, among them Belarus and Slovakia.

Russian President Putin at one point hailed it as a summit of “authentic multilateralism” and called for a new Eurasian security framework free from Western influence. Indian Prime Minister Modi’s presence was a first in many years.

The NY Times described “a scene in eastern China almost certainly intended for an audience on the other side of the world: The leaders of China, Russia and India, the three largest powers not aligned with the West, smiling and laughing like good friends as they greeted each other at a summit on Monday.”

The publication went on: “It starts with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia holding hands and walking into a meeting hall filled with other world leaders. They head straight for President Xi Jinping of China, shake hands and form a close circle. A few words are exchanged before translators join the huddle. Mr. Putin cracks a broad smile, and Mr. Modi lets out a big laugh. At one point, Mr. Modi joins hands with the two leaders.”

The Times further says the SCO summit has “given China and Russia a platform to rally partners such as Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Pakistan.”

Putin & Modi share warm embrace

Did someone say tariffs? https://t.co/X58RZklRVA pic.twitter.com/AkKukBkEVC

— RT (@RT_com) September 1, 2025

Various state media outlets have been emphasizing this theme of standing up to America’s military and economic might. For example, Russian state media, interviewing a China analyst, said:

China and India can now stand together against US hegemony — Wang Wen, Executive Dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies

“The Dragon and Elephant ‘have the wisdom’ to resolve their differences and border conflicts.”

China’s Xi in his opening speech urged the attendees to stand against the “Cold War mentality, bloc confrontation and bullying.” He urged for the organization to “forge ahead’ amid “global upheaval.”

All of this is of course happening amid the backdrop of the Ukraine war, and China is one of the few places Putin can freely go and enjoy the red carpet, where Global South heads of state clamor for a handshake with him, or photo op.

One Moscow-based Wester journalist captioned a photo, ironically: Isolation, today in China.

Contrast this with the sad image of European leaders being collectively and ceremoniously humiliated at the White House last week https://t.co/3lIjcnJsGD

— Alon Mizrahi (@alon_mizrahi) August 31, 2025

However, Gautam Bambawale, India’s former ambassador to China, cautioned in an interview with CNBC: “The dragon and the elephant are not dancing as yet. They are just looking at each other from opposite sides of a room and trying to assess what are the implications of the relationship between the two? It’s going to take time to bring the relationship back on track.”

Still, the years-long trend has been that the more Washington ramps up pressure and the threat of sanctions on both, the faster that historic tensions and divides are healed.

Group photo as Putin and Xi inseparable…

JUST IN: 🇨🇳 World leaders take group photo at SCO summit in China. pic.twitter.com/VcZJIuO6L9

— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) August 31, 2025

Russian media has framed the optics as follows:

The pitch: Xi is promoting an order that “democratizes” global governance and reduces dependence on US-centric finance (think: less dollar gravity, more regional institutions). Putin called the SCO a vehicle for “genuine multilateralism” and Eurasian security. By calling China a partner rather than a rival, Modi signaled New Delhi won’t be locked into Washington’s anti-China agenda.

The audience: More than 20 non-Western leaders were in the room, with United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres endorsing the event organisation – not a club meeting in the shadows, but a UN-centered frame at a China-led forum.

President Trump responded to the clear messaging of ‘friendship’ and ‘unity’ among China, Russia, and India on Monday – writing on Truth Social, “What few people understand is that we do very little business with India, but they do a tremendous amount of business with us.” He added that the US remains India’s “biggest client.”

Vice President JD Vance featured the somewhat defensive statement on X as well…

“The reason is that India has charged us, until now, such high Tariffs, the most of any country, that our businesses are unable to sell into India. It has been a totally one sided disaster! Also, India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, very little from the U.S. They have now offered to cut their Tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago,” Trump posted.

As for Modi, he wrote on X just following the close of the summit, “Held an excellent meeting with President Putin on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Tianjin. We discussed ways to deepen bilateral cooperation in all spheres, including trade, fertilizers, space, security, and culture. We exchanged views on regional and global processes, including the peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine.”

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

American left-wing heroes are proving to be a creepy bunch.

So what do some of the most renowned “resistance” left-wing heroes have in common other than shared hatred of conservative America?

They are either criminals, pathological liars, or self-described performance-art victims.

Take Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the current face of progressive resistance to the enforcement of federal immigration law.

No one questions that Garcia had previously received deportation orders before he was re-arrested by ICE.

No one argues that his current wife, Vasquez Sura, had in the past successfully petitioned for at least two protective restraining orders against Abrego Garcia—to stop his violent beatings and his manic destruction of household items.

In the old Democratic Party, the worst allegation possible was to be cast as a beater of women.

No one contests that in 2022, Garcia was pulled over in Tennessee for speeding and recklessly veering out of his lane.

He was then found to have an invalid driver’s license. He was accompanied by eight illegal aliens without IDs. And his vehicle was registered to an imprisoned and likely human trafficker. Garcia had been variously recognized in deportation hearings as a member of the violent and lethal MS-13 gang.

Yet when ICE began to deport him, the left went ballistic and constructed him as some sort of civil rights saint.

Senators tossed drinks with the illegal alien.

A few politicos trekked on a holy hejira to El Salvador to demand from the autonomous El Salvadorian government the release of a Salvadorian citizen held in jail on Salvadorian soil—as if they were 19th-century Yanqui imperialists dictating to an elected Central American government that the United States had more rights of jurisdiction over an illegal alien than did the government of El Salvador over one of their own citizens on their own soil.

Feminists said little about his brutal propensity to strike women. Anti-gang activists went mostly mum about his MS-13 affiliations. Those decrying human trafficking were quiet about his transportation of illegal aliens.

Instead, all that was needed of this useful illegal alien pawn was the Democrat meme that Abrego Garcia was a victimized person of color and a target of Trump’s supposedly racist, restrictionist, and xenophobic border policies. His crimes in comparison were immaterial if not advantageous to the cause. No one bothered to remember the legions of innocent women killed and raped by violent illegal aliens.

Mahmoud Khalil was a different, far smoother sort of leftist icon. The pro-Hamas Algerian “student” came to the US supposedly for the chance at an Ivy League education. He soon stayed on a green card, becoming the poster boy of anti-Israel protests at Columbia.

To counter sometimes violent campus and urban pro-Hamas demonstrations and endemic anti-Semitism in elite higher education, the Trump administration decided that it no longer wished to import student force multipliers of widespread anti-American and anti-Semitic boilerplate.

In other words, the Trump administration ordered Khalil deported on the grounds that he was admitted as a guest student, not a perennial campus gadfly organizer spouting support for the terrorists of Hamas.

Note the U.S. is the host, Khalil the guest. And hosts need no reasons to disinvite unruly or obnoxious guests, who abuse the privileges (that most American citizens lack) of attending an Ivy League school.

Yet in the Democratic binary of oppressed/oppressors, Khalil fit the bill.

He was a “lite” Hamas supporter and a clever anti-Israel activist who oversaw demonstrations that were overtly anti-Semitic in his host country. The only lingering question is why do pro-Hamas, anti-American Palestinians so often demand to visit and study in the hated U.S. when there are universities receptive and conducive to Islamists and Hamas enablers closer to home?

The left seemed mostly uninterested in any of the 1,200 slaughtered on October 7 in a time of peace, only in those who championed the cause of that murderous rampage.

The left also went gaga over the wealthy, aristocratic, and supposedly charming young Luigi Mangione, the assassin of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson. Not since the terrorist and mass murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev adorned the cover of Rolling Stone has the left so romanticized a stone-cold psychopath.

Mangione quickly became a supposed counter-culture freedom fighter, with his good looks battling the corporate insects who supposedly feed on hoi polloi.

In reality, Thompson was an up-from-the-bootstraps Midwesterner who, by merit, not birth, climbed to the top of the corporate world, murdered by Mangione, a spoiled, rich wannabe pseudo-intellectual who cowardly hid in wait to blow apart Thompson for the supposed crime of running the company that made a profit selling needed health insurance to willing buyers.

But for the left, the death throes of Thompson were out of mind and out of sight, while Mangione was interviewed and lauded on social media as a righteous revenger and the arm of the exploited.

Do we even now remember the faker Jussie Smollett?

He was the multiracial actor who was worried that he was a fading star in a soon-to-be-cancelled TV show.

So he staged a violent crime in which he hired two burly assailants with red MAGA-like hats to 1) ambush him in the early morning hours, 2) be warded off by the feisty, heroic, cell-phone- and sandwich-holding diminutive Smollett, and 3) manage nonetheless to “whiten” Smollett with bleach (defying the laws of chemistry by not freezing when thrown on Smollett in the arctic winter Chicago night temperature) as they tossed a “noose” over his neck, shouting MAGA slurs about his black-cast Empire television series.

Smollett’s rent-a-thugs were taped buying the tools of the ambush. They had cashed Smollett’s checks as proof of his hire and confessed both to the crime and its practice run.

Yet, Smollett became the immediate heroic victim and thus proof, according to the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris, of endemic racism.

What a horrific America when brilliant and brave black stars had to fight off red-hatted, noose-carrying, bleach-bringing, Empire-hating, 2-AM-lurking, white-male, MAGA racist bullies, prowling randomly in sub-zero temperatures for targets in a liberal, mostly black neighborhood, and on the lookout for innocent, brilliant, brave, young, black, movie stars so often wandering in the deep night.

The left not only fell for that skit but for days ran with Jussie as proof of what black men have to put up with from the white establishment in Chicago.

There are lots of criminals who could be added to the leftist pantheon.

The now iconic George Floyd, despite the tragedy of his detention and death, was resisting arrest while stopped under the influence of drugs, while likely trying to pass counterfeit money, while an eight-times convicted felon, and while a former four-year convict who previously had staged a home invasion and robbery and aimed a gun at the abdomen of a female occupant.

No wonder he soon appeared memorialized on murals with wings and a halo.

Michael Brown, of the lie “hands up, don’t shoot” that went viral, was supposedly gunned down in the back as he vainly tried to flee a white racist cop looking for prey in Ferguson, Missouri.

No matter that in truth, Brown was a thief who had just strong-armed a store clerk and was confronted by a policeman while brazenly walking down the center of the street.

Brown then attacked the cop and sought in vain to grab his weapon. After their struggle, he ran away, then turned and charged the officer until he was shot.

For the left, he was another instant, noble victim of racist white police.

So naturally, weeks of protests followed, sometimes violent, as liberal elected officials visited Ferguson to show solidarity against “the militarization of the police” and to honor Michael Brown. White, entitled CNN anchors paraded in their newsrooms while holding their hands up, chanting the lie “hands up, don’t shoot.”

Octogenarian Native American activist Leonard Peltier was recently granted limited parole. He was successfully convicted a half-century earlier of murdering two FBI agents—allegedly executing two defenseless young officers with coup de gras shots to their heads as they lay wounded.

For decades, he posed as a “political prisoner” of a racist, white-rigged system. And despite an earlier failed prison break and serially refused pardons, nonetheless, in the fleeting hours of the autopen Biden administration, Peltier was finally released home under supervision—a defiant leftist resistance hero and unrepentant murderer to the end.

Both these violent and suave heroes were canonized by the left because of their perceived opposition to corporate America, or law enforcement, or a conservative administration, or white people, and, in particular, more recently, to the hated Trump.

Given its cosmic morality, the left never really cared that Jussie Smollett not just lied but that his lies could not possibly in a Newtonian world be true, or that assassin Mangione showed all the mercilessness of a professional Mafia hit man, or that it proved impossible for the guest “student” Khalil ever to voice disapproval of the mass murdering act of Hamas on October 7, or that America in 2025 did not need to import more wife beaters, human traffickers, and gang members.

Why does the left make martyrs out of monsters?

One, in postmodern America, there are too many victims for too few victimizers. So to distinguish the one from the many requires all the more psychodramas and grammar-school dramatics. Violence and claims of racism add to the hero’s mystique.

Two, the heroes are mere pawns in a larger game of “social justice” in which both useful idiots and ruthless criminals alike can advance the cause.

Morality, then, is never defined by the means but only by the eventual ends. Facts don’t matter; only the noble lies for the cause.

Three, the worshipers are, for the most part, affluent and safe; the worshiped are not so tame.

So it became easy to immortalize a Garcia—as long as he does not live next door.

It is virtuous to praise publicly a Mangione—unless he is armed and hiding in wait for your parents.

Smollett is a noble victim, at least when you’re not a cop at 3 AM trying to sort out all the preposterous lies of Jussie’s noose, bleach, and “bruises.”

“Hands up, don’t shoot” is a catchy civil-rights call to arms—at least when Michael Brown is not strong-arming you in a store or he is not charging you head down.

You can play-act Gandhi—when you’re not Garcia’s battered girlfriend, or you do not answer the door at night when George Floyd barges in with a pointed gun, or you’re not wounded and begging for your life when Leonard Peltier pulls the trigger.