The latest USDA cattle report shows America’s cattle and calves herd population has fallen to 94.2 million, its lowest mid-year level since 1973. The nation’s shrinking herd size has pushed retail ground beef prices to record highs. While talk of a herd recovery cycle may be premature, Goldman Sachs analysts are eying a cyclical low in the cattle cycle. 

Bloomberg notes that while improved pasture conditions and higher beef prices at supermarkets and butcher shops have sparked some speculation about an incoming herd rebuilding cycle, there’s no clear evidence that this may materialize soon. 

Heifer numbers in animal feeding operations (known as feedlots) across the Midwest, used by the industry to feed a high-energy diet (mostly grains like corn … and growth-promoting hormones) to rapidly build weight before slaughter, have remained stable, but beef cow numbers continue to decline. This indicates stabilization, but not a recovery. And in any recovery scenario, the shape will unlikely be a “V”. 

Derrell Peel, a professor of agricultural economics at Oklahoma State University, commented on the latest USDA numbers. He said the data offers “very little indication of much herd rebuilding or anything very aggressive.” 

Peel noted that while the number of heifers in feedlots remains stable, their ratio to steers suggests ranchers are not holding back females to boost breeding operations.

“We are probably stabilizing cattle numbers, but we’re not growing yet,” he said.

Last month, Goldman analysts Leah Jordan and Eli Thompson signaled that the 12-year cattle herd cycle has likely reached a cyclical low, suggesting a rebuilding phase may be approaching. However, any eventual recovery is unlikely to be a sharp “V” and will more likely take the shape of a prolonged “U”.

“We also believe the cyclical low in beef profitability is creating an attractive entry point for patient investors in Buy-rated TSN,” the analysts noted.

The rebuilding phase will be rocky for the four mega-corporations (JBS, Tyson Foods, Cargill, and National Beef) that control 80% of beef processing in America because, as Senator Hawley warned in late June at an antitrust hearing on Capitol Hill, scrutiny on the meatpacker “monopoly” has begun, calling for the urgent need of more competition.

A total of 4 companies control a whopping 80% of the entire beef-processing industry. That’s a modern-day monopoly.

The winners here? The monopolists – like Tyson Foods. The losers? Farmers & grocery shoppers.

We need more industry competition in America pic.twitter.com/UxZc7eoAOZ

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) June 24, 2025

The path to rebuilding begins with revitalizing regional microprocessing plants nationwide and establishing a more resilient, decentralized food supply chain that’s less vulnerable to disruptions.

Next month, the ZeroHedge Store will unveil a refresh, featuring new ranches and MAHA-oriented products, including microplastic-free items and those proudly made in the USA. 

Thailand and Cambodia agreed to an unconditional ceasefire to halt the deadliest border clashes in over a decade. The agreement was reached on the fifth day of fighting, or about two days after President Trump threatened to withhold trade deals from both countries unless a swift resolution was reached.

Thailand’s Acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet met earlier in Malaysia, in talks hosted by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. Anwar facilitated a breakthrough, unconditional ceasefire deal between the two countries, which have been fighting over their highly disputed 500-mile land border.

Anwar serves as the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Washington and Beijing both deployed envoys to support talks.

“Both Cambodia and Thailand reached a common understanding as follows: One, an immediate and unconditional ceasefire with effect from 24 hours local time, midnight on 28th July 2025, tonight,” Anwar said after the talks. 

Thailand and Cambodia will enter into an unconditional ceasefire starting at midnight on Monday, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has announced.

“Both Cambodia and Thailand reached a common understanding as follows: One, an immediate and unconditional ceasefire with… pic.twitter.com/3CLydengUG

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) July 28, 2025

More here…

NOW – Cambodia and Thailand agree an “immediate and unconditional ceasefire” with effect from midnight tonight. pic.twitter.com/9UZUPSBPQ8

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) July 28, 2025

Anwar’s full transcript

Full transcript of PM @anwaribrahim‘s speech:
– immediate and unconditional ceasefire at 24:00h tonight
– meeting of regional military commanders on Tuesday morning
– General Border Committee on Aug 4, hosted by Cambodia https://t.co/sUOVZeJp76 pic.twitter.com/1M6BvrKXir

— Saksith Saiyasombut | ศักดิ์สิทธิ์ ไสยสมบัติ (@SaksithCNA) July 28, 2025

Reuters noted that the U.S. and Chinese ambassadors to Malaysia attended the meeting in Putrajaya, the administrative capital, held at Anwar’s residence. 

“The purpose of this meeting is to achieve an immediate ‘ceasefire’, initiated by President Donald Trump and agreed to by the Prime Ministers of Cambodia and Thailand,” Cambodian PM Hun Manet wrote in a post on X. 

Over the weekend, the conflict between Thailand and Cambodia intensified, with 34 dead and more than 168,000 displaced across the 500-mile land border between the two countries. 

President Donald Trump called both leaders on Saturday, warning that no trade agreements would be made with either country unless the fighting stops. 

Related:

• What’s Thailand’s Endgame If Its Conflict With Cambodia Escalates Into War?

• Thailand-Cambodia Ceasefire Talks Set As Trump Threatens To Withhold Trade Deals

• Thailand Warns Border Crisis With Cambodia “Could Escalate Into War”

• Geopolitical Powder Keg Erupts: Thai F-16s Strike Cambodian Targets In Border Clash

And days later, a ceasefire was just brokered, averting what could’ve escalated into war with spillover effects in the region. 

Authored by T.J.Muscaro via The Epoch Times,

Three weeks have passed since a massive rainstorm triggered catastrophic floods across the Texas Hill Country, killing at least 135 men, women, and children.

Amid the rescue and recovery efforts, some blamed the deadly floods on cloud seeding company Rainmaker Technology Corporation and its CEO Augustus Doricko, who received death threats after his company’s cloud seeding operation 130 miles from the flood area on July 2 caught the attention of the public.

Cloud seeding is the act of making existing cumulus clouds rain over a particular area that would not have done so otherwise. It doesn’t add moisture to the atmosphere.

Doricko’s company conducted scheduled cloud seeding operations in Karnes County, southeast of where the storm hit, and both he and state authorities have explained that those activities had no effect on the flood.

However, persistent voices, along with the occurrence of other catastrophic flooding events in North Carolina and New Mexico, continue to push cloud seeding and weather modification methods into the spotlight.

“The floods in Texas are a tragedy … More than anything, we ought to be concerned with taking care of them [the victims],” Doricko told The Epoch Times. “But insofar as people who did think we were responsible, or did have questions about our operations, I’ve welcomed the chance to educate people.”

What Is Cloud Seeding?

Cloud seeding does not create clouds. Rather, it involves flying a plane or a drone into naturally forming clouds and releasing small amounts of silver iodide and table salt inside them.

Those added particles pull the water vapor out of the clouds, resulting in forced precipitation—either rain or snow.

“Silver iodide is a favored seeding agent because its crystalline structure is nearly identical to the natural ice crystal,” the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) states on its website. “When placed in the upper portion of the growing convective cloud rich with supercooled droplets, the silver iodide crystal can grow rapidly by tapping that vast field of available moisture.

“In a matter of moments, the ice crystal is transformed into a large raindrop which is heavy enough to fall through the cloud mass as a rain shaft,” the department added.

Under state law, the TDLR is responsible for regulating the use of cloud seeding through a licensing and permitting procedure, and is also charged with promoting its development and demonstration through research.

The technology debuted roughly 80 years ago, with the first tests being conducted to increase the snow pack in New York in 1945. Since then, it has been used in various states to increase snowpacks, as well as provide some relief for farmland in times of drought, and replenish aquifers.

In Rainmaker’s case, the team conducted a 19-minute flight on July 2 to seed two clouds on behalf of the South Texas Weather Modification Association, to increase aquifer levels. The association, a nonprofit covering 10 counties and based out of Pleasanton, Texas, is funded by local water districts and county commissions.

The two seeded clouds “persisted for about two hours after seeding before dissipating” between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. CDT, Doricko wrote in a July 5 post on X.

“Natural clouds typically have lifespans of 30 minutes to a few hours at most, with even the most persistent storm systems rarely maintaining the same cloud structure for more than 12–18 hours,” he said.

Doricko told The Epoch Times that, in many cases, cloud seeding is the only logical option to solve water needs across the western interior as well as coastal areas, despite attempts to use sea water through desalination.

“The vast majority of water that traverses the troposphere in the United States just gets recycled by the ocean and doesn’t precipitate over it,” Doricko said. “So we can just take a small percent more of that water right above our heads and radically change the water supply in the American West.”

Where Does Cloud Seeding Happen and When?

Doricko told The Epoch Times that his company also conducts cloud seeding operations in Utah, southern California, Colorado, and Oregon.

In the state of Texas alone, there are multiple weather modification projects that have been ongoing for decades, covering tens of millions of acres, but all activity has been suspended since the floods.

Cloud seeding can be undertaken at various times of the year. Doricko’s company runs a seasonal operation in Utah from October to April, supplementing the snowpack in anticipation of the resulting runoff.

“That’s the season with the most cold clouds, so they’re the most opportunity for seeding occurs during that window, and then the snow that we produce acts as sort of a natural battery of water that melts off and then is dispersed into the rivers and the aquifers over the course of the dry season.”

Doricko pointed out that the operations have an interstate effect.

“If we make more snow in Colorado, that doesn’t just benefit Colorado, right. That also benefits Utah and New Mexico, and every other state in the Colorado River Basin,” he told The Epoch Times.

“So is it natural that there would be interstate collaboration and possibly federal collaboration and oversight into these things, because the water does affect everybody in the basin.

“And to some extent, we already see that where the lower basin states like California, Nevada, and Arizona fund cloud seeding operations in the upper region states because they’re beneficiaries of the snow pack there,” he added.

However, all cloud seeding operations require what he called “qualified suspension criteria.”

“If there is risk of flooding, if there is a severe thunderstorm, if the reservoirs are too full, then you have to suspend operations even when your customers want more water, for the sake of doing no harm,” Doricko said.

All cloud seeding in Texas, for example, has been suspended due to the heavy rains the state has received so far this July.

Cloud Seeding Reporting and Regulations

Doricko explained that most of the clients he has are government entities of some level, such as state-level departments of agriculture, or municipal public works.

“Water is a public good,” he said.

“There are farms and ecosystems and residential utilities and hydroelectric utilities and industries, all of whom demand water. And the water that comes from cloud seeding, it doesn’t come into pipes and go to one specific house; it precipitates over a watershed, and then that water runs off into the rivers and everybody draws it from the reservoirs or the aquifers. And so it’s natural that a lot of our customers are the government,” Doricko added.

Federal law requires cloud seeding operations to be reported at least 10 days in advance to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). However, NOAA does not have the authority to regulate it.

Separate regulations are also enforced at the state level. In Texas, for instance, potential cloud-seeders need to acquire a state weather modification license and permit.

“A person or organization wanting to engage in weather modification has to apply to TDLR and show that they have sufficient meteorological expertise and meet the financial security and other requirements,” the department told The Epoch Times in an email.

“Texas law allows licensees to conduct contracted operations under certain circumstances, but we don’t oversee the process of licensees awarding the contracts beyond making sure that the person conducting the weather modification meets the necessary requirements.”

In terms of providing detailed transparency on the executed operations, there are no requirements. Doricko suggested that more transparency should be required at the federal level so that more concrete data can be provided to the public on how effective cloud seeding is for the country.

Doricko hopes that more federal regulations are established in the near future, and with the regulations, more research.

Cloud Seeding Research, Side Effects, Cost

Research has continued on cloud seeding and its effects since the practice began in the late 1940s.

The Salt River Project (SRP) in Arizona, for example, told The Epoch Times that it recently completed a project researching the “feasibility of winter cloud seeding” in the state, based on computer models.

“SRP is not participating in any cloud seeding flights at this time and there are no plans in the near future,” a project spokesperson said in an email.

“Our water experts are currently analyzing the data, and at this time we don’t have any information to share as it relates to drought and agricultural support.”

Doricko said that the amount of silver iodide used in cloud seeding operations is small, and that using 50 grams of it will cause precipitation to disperse over hundreds of square kilometers.

Thus far, research has shown no negative side effects from the use of silver iodide.

The TDLR states on its website that, “No significant environmental impacts have been observed around cloud-seeding operations, including those projects that have been existent for 30-40 years,” and that the amount of silver detected in the rainwater samples collected equaled a concentration of one part in 10 billion.

“That concentration is well below the acceptable concentration of 50 micrograms per liter, as established by the U. S. Public Health Service,” the TDLR said on its website. ”Many areas where cloud seeding is practiced have much higher concentrations of silver in the soil than are found in rainfall from seeded clouds.

“Moreover, the concentration of iodine in iodized salt used on food is far above the concentration found in rainwater from a seeded cloud.”

Utah’s Division of Water Resources, which operates under the state’s Department of Natural Resources, says cloud seeding has been cost effective. The division said that it costs between $5 and $10 per acre-foot of additional water to increase its average precipitation of its snowpack by 5 to 15 percent.

Cloud seeding “doesn’t work just anywhere,” the division said. “The conditions have to be right. Luckily, Utah’s topography, climate and reservoirs make winter snowpack enhancement cost-effective.”

The practice has also proved financially beneficial in North Dakota, according to a 2019 study released by North Dakota State University’s Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics. The study showed that cloud seeding operations of the North Dakota Cloud Modification Project increased precipitation for its farmland, but further benefited the agricultural industry when combined with efforts to suppress annual amounts of crop-destroying hail.

The university studied nine crops from 2008 to 2017 and found that cloud seeding yielded an annual benefit of $12.20 to $21.16 per planted acre while costing about $0.40 per planted acre.

“Rainfall enhancement at 10 percent and crop-hail per planted acre reduction of 45 percent yields estimated economic returns of more than $53 dollars for every $1 spent on the program,” the study noted.

When that rainfall enhancement is reduced to 5 percent, the return showed nearly $31 for every dollar spent.

Contrails and Geoengineering

Cloud seeding is different from condensation trails—also called contrails or chemtrails—and geo-engineering.

Doricko cited the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new webpage, which explains that contrails are a normal phenomenon of aircraft flying in cold air.

Geo-engineering, on the other hand, is a different matter. One kind is solar radiation modification, which involves putting reflective particles in the atmosphere to dim the sun’s rays and cool the Earth. Unlike contrails, it is something that Doricko said needs to be taken seriously.

“Dimming the sun like that is another real technology that we need to take very seriously,” he said. “It’s not cloud seeding. It does also happen in the atmosphere, but otherwise it’s not related to cloud seeding in any capacity.”

He said that while the small crystals used in cloud seeding are dropped back to earth after the clouds dissipate , and only affect one particular area for a short amount of time, these other particles stay in the atmosphere and have an immediate global effect.

“The people that are concerned about that happening are valid in their concern because that is a real technology that certain people are interested in deploying,” he said.

Change for Good

There are now moves in several states to ban, not just cloud seeding, but weather modification in general and to, at the very least, regain authority over the practice.

In May, Florida passed legislation banning all forms of weather modification within its borders, although it previously allowed cloud seeding, authorized through the state Department of Environmental Protection.

State Sen. Jay Collins said he voted in favor of the bill “to ensure we establish legal safeguards against unauthorized and unregulated attempts to alter the climate within the state.”

“This further protects public health sovereignty, and gives Floridians confidence that weather-modification activities cannot proceed without oversight,” Collins told The Epoch Times.

However, some lawmakers at the federal level, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) want the practice banned outright.

“I want clean air, clean skies, clean rain water, clean ground water, and sunshine just like God created it,” she wrote in a post on X on July 5. “No person, company, entity, or government should ever be allowed to modify our weather by any means possible!!”

Still, Doricko is determined to push for more understanding, acceptance, and utilization of cloud seeding across the country. He sees harvesting the precipitation naturally lost to the ocean, not only as a means to eliminate drought and drying rivers, but to even green deserts and increase the amount of farmable landscape in the United States.

“The California Central Valley used to be nothing but desert and swamp, and we engineered canals and pumps and pipelines to move water around to supply those farms, and now it’s one of the most productive, productive agricultural regions in the world,” he said.

“I would say that on my deathbed, what I [want to] look back on having done for my children is extending the Great Plains from Texas through West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California—that all of that land is lush and green.”

Democrats are entering the early stages of the 2026 midterm cycle in a state of full-blown crisis mode. New polling shows the party’s support continuing to implode, as top party leaders double down on their commitment to the far-left woke ideology. At the same time, an increasing share of the party is openly embracing socialism, Marxism, and the destruction of America’s foundational values – not viable messaging to connect with law-abiding working-class citizens. 

A new Wall Street Journal poll shows the Democratic Party’s image has sunk to its lowest point in over three decades. About 63% of voters hold an unfavorable view of the party, the highest level since the survey began in 1990, while only 33% view it favorably. 

Democrats have orchestrated multiple color revolution-style movements against President Trump and Elon Musk facilitated through a web of dark-money-funded NGOs, some possibly backed by foreign adversaries and rogue leftist billionaires, to sway public opinion ahead of the 2026 midterms. However, these revolutionary operations have largely failed, and in many cases, backfired. Voters are increasingly fed up with the radical left’s division, rioting, car burnings, property destruction, and anti-American propaganda wars.

WSJ noted, “Democrats have been hoping that a voter backlash against the president will be powerful enough to restore their majority in the House in next year’s midterm elections, much as it did during Trump’s first term … however, the Journal poll shows that the party hasn’t yet accomplished a needed first step in that plan: persuading voters they can do a better job than Trump’s party.” 

Overall, voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, inflation, tariffs, and foreign policy. Yet, despite these concerns, the latest WSJ poll finds that voters still trust the GOP over Democrats to manage each of these issues in Congress. 

Here’s more from the report:

In some cases, the disparities are striking. Disapproval of Trump’s handling of inflation outweighs approval by 11 points, and yet the GOP is trusted more than Democrats to handle inflation by 10 points. By 17 points, voters disapprove rather than approve of Trump’s handling of tariffs, and yet Republicans are trusted more than Democrats on the issue by 7 points.

Voters have significant concerns about the centerpiece of Trump’s agenda—his immigration policies—opposing some of his deportation tactics by double-digit numbers. And yet they trust congressional Republicans more than Democrats on immigration by 17 points and on handling illegal immigration by 24 points.

The only issues on which voters prefer congressional Democrats to Republicans, among the 10 tested in the Journal survey, are healthcare and vaccine policy.

The problem with the Democratic Party is that they’re too focused on all things woke, government-funded grocery stores, and are increasingly getting more and more excited about socialist and Marxist policies. 

Weighing in on the imploding party of elite liberals, who, one would think, have the intelligence to recognize they’re steering their party toward deeper irrelevance, is Democratic pollster John Anzalone, who conducted the WSJ survey alongside Republican Tony Fabrizio.

Anzalone emphasized:

“The Democratic brand is so bad that they don’t have the credibility to be a critic of Trump or the Republican Party.

“Until they reconnect with real voters and working people on who they’re for and what their economic message is, they’re going to have problems.”

Democrats are losing touch with mainstream voters as the Overton Window has rapidly shifted from far-left to a more center-right position – confirmed last week with multiple ads from corporate America. A party that champions drag shows for kids, anti-family agendas, and anti-American rhetoric hasn’t had time to recalibrate its propaganda machine. If they keep pushing woke ideology, the fake climate crisis (remember the Inflation Reduction Act (i.e., Green New Deal) was basically a heist on the US Treasury, and openly supporting criminal illegal aliens, their unpopularity will only deepen. But hey… odds are they’ve hired DEI campaign strategists, so by all means, let them stay the course to zero.

“By your powers combined…I am Captain Planet!”  If you were a child growing up in the early 1990s then you probably remember flipping through Saturday morning cartoons and stumbling across a weird animated show about a “superhero” who fights pollution (and like most kids you quickly changed the channel to something else). 

Captain Planet, infamous for being one of the dorkiest and preachiest cartoons ever made, preached to kids about the virtues of environmental panic and progressive multiculturalism.  It was woke before woke was officially invented. 

The cartoon was created by globalist magnate Ted Turner and produced by Turner Program Services and DIC Enterprises.  It first aired in 1990 at the height of the children’s TV entertainment craze, but the show was decidedly less entertaining and more condescending in its message. 

Turner was oddly proud of the show and spoke about his hand in its creation with reverence (billionaire elites often like to imagine they have a deep creative streak even when they don’t).

One might have assumed the terrible property would remain buried in the past and well forgotten.  However, in the 2020s Hollywood has zero creativity, suffering immense failure in content creation and desperately digging up any old franchise they can find to rebrand and reboot.  Even Captain Planet, which was generally considered a failure in the 1990s, is getting a second chance. 

Netflix has announced they will be developing a live action version of the cartoon with Greg Berlanti and Leonardo DiCaprio as executive producers (DiCaprio is a well known climate change obsessive).  In the show, Gaia, the spirit of the planet, assembles a team of five young and diverse ‘planeteers’ from nations around the world, who can summon Captain Planet to help them solve ecological and other global problems ‘by their powers combined.’ 

To understand Captain Planet one must understand Turner’s extreme ideology; an elitist environmental religion stemming from the Club Of Rome’s “Limits To Growth” studies in the 1970s and the launch of government funded “family planning” programs to reduce and control the human population.  

Captain Planet pushed population control propaganda often; telling kids that when they grow up they must not have large families or they will destroy the Earth.

Specifically, the show suggested that people in the first world (white westerners) need to stop reproducing because they “use more resources” than third world people.  In other words, the way to save the planet is to reduce everyone to third world economic conditions.  

The cartoon commonly terrified children with images of total destruction wrought by a future with global warming.

Ted Turner has long promoted global warming disinformation and incorrect doomsday predictions; lies which have been widely debunked by real data rather than the less-than-scientific theories of establishment funded climate researchers.  When looking at the long term climate conditions of the Earth, we see that today’s era is one of the coldest in the past 500 million years.

The main goal of the Club of Rome agenda was to convince the western populace that human beings are the “true enemy” and that global governance and control over reproduction was the only way to stop environmental Armageddon. 

In the 1990s the Club of Rome published a book titled “The First Global Revolution”. In that document they specifically discuss using global warming as a vehicle to form supranational governance: 

“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.”    

It is likely that any Netflix reboot of the Captain Planet property will continue the environmental propaganda initiatives of globalists like Ted Turner (who is still alive, by the way).  Though, children’s content from the 1990s is now often recreated and directed at adults.  In other words, the new Captain Planet will probably be rewritten to target the same people who grew up with the old Captain Planet.  

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

X users in Britain are reporting that footage of rapidly growing anti-mass migration protests in the country is being blocked.

The development comes as the so called Online Safety Act law came into force for social media companies on Friday.

The law was passed by the previous Conservative government, just one of the many disastrous policies they embraced that led to the leftist Labour Party coming back into power with a massive majority last year.

Videos of protests being restricted in the UK is Chinese tier censorship. Their end goal is to completely restrict access to X, it’s the only social media they don’t control pic.twitter.com/s0Y4oPuO5l

— Adam Wren (@G0ADM) July 25, 2025

British users of X shared screenshots of messages that popped up while they attempted to view footage from the protests, which started in Epping after a migrant sexually assaulted a teenage girl and have since spread around the country.

The Online Safety Act came into effect on Friday 25th July and we are already seeing the impact on Free Speech

My earlier post displaying police brutality involving 6 officers arresting a single male at the NO to Mass Immigration protest in Leeds has been heavily censored across… pic.twitter.com/FrlJAPn2EB

— Kiera Diss (@KieraDiss) July 25, 2025

“Due to local laws, we are temporarily restricting access to this content until X estimates your age,” one of the messages in question reads.

Took them less than 24 hours to start weaponizing it for Chinese-style censorship of political dissent. Quelle surprise! https://t.co/lJ6RPuOxD6

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) July 25, 2025

The Free Speech Union remarked “Our fears appear to have been vindicated on the very first day of the Online Safety Act’s enactment.”

“If you have a standard X account in the UK – presumably the majority of British users – it appears that you may not be able to see any protest footage that contains violence. We’re aware of one censored post that shows an arrest being made,” the post added.

“We warned repeatedly about how censorious this piece of legislation would be,” it concludes.

The age checks are purported to be in place to block children from seeing pornographic content, however, they seem to have been broadened to any content deemed to be violent, or misinformative, at least on X.

The film about Net Zero, The Agenda by @OracleFilmsUK is also age restricted now. So the act isn’t just targeting porn or violence. It’s targeting criticism of government policy. pic.twitter.com/mBWEzKsnzl

— Paul Faber (@censoredanonz) July 26, 2025

“The online safety bill is to protect kids,” we are told, as footage of police arresting people demanding protection for their kids is censored from the internet.

— Benedict Spence (@BenedictSpence) July 25, 2025

Even parliamentary speeches, this one being about Pakistani rape gangs, are now blocked.

UK: The Online Safety Act restricts the viewing of parliamentary speeches dealing with Britain’s Pakistani rape gang crisis. Orwell had no idea what a hellscape England would become.

h/t @ArchRose90 pic.twitter.com/wc4MYUQ5Rg

— @amuse (@amuse) July 27, 2025

The government has threatened to fine any social media platform up to £18 million or 10 per cent of its global turnover, if it is deemed to have contravened the law.

X owner Elon Musk, while not specifically addressing the restriction of protest footage, said on Saturday that the Online Safety Act’s “purpose is suppression of the people.”

It’s purpose is suppression of the people https://t.co/6rblxsGFis

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 26, 2025

Meanwhile, close to 300,000 people at time of writing have signed an  online petition calling for the repeal the Online Safety Act, surpassing the requirement for parliament to consider a motion for debate.

In response to the apparent censorship, searches for VPNs in Britain reportedly surged by over 700 per cent on Friday.

We also have this news emerging today…

But they won’t stop burglars and thieves. Backwards. pic.twitter.com/Bas7F4MXb7

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) July 27, 2025

The Telegraph report states:

An elite team of police officers is to monitor social media for anti-migrant sentiment amid fears of summer riots.

Detectives will be drawn from forces across the country to take part in a new investigations unit that will flag up early signs of potential civil unrest.

The division, assembled by the Home Office, will aim to “maximise social media intelligence” gathering after police forces were criticised over their response to last year’s riots.

So there’s a whole new “elite” unit monitoring spicy tweets, but criminals are just roaming free to do as they please.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage urged last week that owing to rampant crime and the unwillingness to deal with it, the country is on the verge of societal collapse.

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Europe’s labor landscape reveals a clear regional split: wealthy nations in the North and West, including the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Denmark, thrive on flexibility, shorter workweeks, and robust employment rates exceeding 75%.

As Visual Capitalist reports, these countries strike a balance between prosperity and adaptability, highlighting how economic strength is aligned with modern, flexible working arrangements.

In contrast, Eastern and Southern European countries, including Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, and Hungary, as well as Mediterranean states such as Portugal, Malta, and Cyprus, strongly prefer traditional full-time schedules, with fewer than 10% of jobs being part-time.

Countries like the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany exemplify efficiency, consistently working up to four hours fewer than predicted by their GDP. Conversely, Luxembourg, Greece, and Iceland work longer hours than their wealth suggests.

Across most of Europe, prosperity tends to align with flexibility, reduced working hours, and higher employment rates, yet cultural traditions and unique economic factors continue to shape these exceptions.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

Germany is on a path to losing its reputation as a fiscally responsible state. Through unchecked spending, the federal government is steering the country into stormy waters. 

On Thursday, Handelsblatt reported a new budget gap. By 2029, previously unfunded additional debts are expected to grow from €144 billion to €150 billion, according to several government sources. These are not part of the planned federal debt but come on top of it. Most recently, the coalition agreed to bring forward a planned pension supplement for mothers to 2027, adding another €4.5 billion in spending.

Germany has just greenlighted the “largest sustained deficit in post-war history.” What is the Polymarket on the next ECB QE? pic.twitter.com/kIfS4E78AV

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 5, 2025

It must be said clearly: Under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Germany has abandoned its last efforts at fiscal seriousness and conservative budgeting. The costs of a shaky coalition’s political consensus, designed to avoid conflict, are being offloaded onto taxpayers.

A Predictable Crash

These numbers are already alarming—but we are still in the calm before the storm. In 2025, the net new debt ratio is expected to reach 3.2% of GDP. This includes roughly €82 billion in new federal debt, €15 billion in additional borrowing from states and municipalities, and about €37 billion in federal “special funds”—off-budget shadow debt.

This forecast will collapse the moment the German economy sinks deeper into recession. Rising unemployment and falling tax revenues will put further strain on the federal budget and social welfare funds. While politicians still feel safe with public debt at 63% of GDP, once we include the €1 trillion debt program of the Merz government, debt levels could surpass 90% of GDP by the end of the decade.

Germany is now practicing a kind of fiscal policy most citizens are unfamiliar with. Mediterranean habits have arrived—but not in the form of sunny weather, rather in the mismanagement of public finances.

Tax Revenues Can No Longer Fill the Gaps

In a display of unprecedented hubris, German politics has kept its welfare state wide open for migration-driven poverty over the past decade—causing not only fiscal but also cultural and economic disarray. Added to this is the aging population and a self-inflicted economic crisis. All signs in the welfare system now point toward disaster.

By 2025, a combined deficit of over €55 billion is expected — foremost in statutory health insurance, which will run a record shortfall of nearly €47 billion. Long-term care insurance adds a further €1.6 billion in losses, and the pension fund faces a shortfall of roughly €7 billion.

Once touted as a system “fit for future generations,” Germany’s welfare model has become a bottomless pit. Federal bailouts, emergency loans, and ever-higher contributions now characterize a social state entering the early phase of collapse.

Vae victis — woe to the vanquished — and blessed are those who foresaw this descent and had the means to escape the welfare-state trap. The bill is now being paid by the quietly suffering workforce — the heroes who absorb the fallout from the reckless debt policies through their labor and lost time.

Social policy today is primarily a repair shop for damage caused by political interventionism. In trying to fuse artificial social glue into society, the state’s share of GDP has risen to 50%. Despite massive tax hikes—think CO2 levies, road tolls, property taxes, and cold progression—the gap between government spending and actual tax revenue keeps widening.

Since pre-lockdown times, public spending has jumped by around one-third, while real tax revenues have only increased by 14%. Even an economic illiterate could deduce that this mismatch requires structural correction—urgently.

The Crossroads Ahead

But there’s no sign of retreat in Berlin. The political competition among statist parties—including the CDU—produces only one outcome: larger social budgets, endless benefit promises, and deeper interference in the economy.

With dogmatic loyalty to climate policy and open-border ideology, the German state stumbles blindly toward a crossroads. Budgetary crises can’t be timed—they arrive when governments lose the ability to borrow on the capital markets. As Hemingway once said about bankruptcy: “First slowly, then suddenly.”

Once that moment comes—when bond markets say no—a society faces two paths: total statism or radical economic liberalism. In the former, both energy and capital markets fall under state control, as economic management turns authoritarian. This is the road Germany is currently on.

The alternative is the one Argentina has chosen under President Javier Milei—symbolized by his now-famous chainsaw. That route returns to a civilization based on limited government, confined to protecting internal and external security.

Europe as a Laboratory

Whether we like it or not, we are all part of a vast social experiment. The question is: Can Europe shed its degenerative socialism—the ideology that has inflicted so much harm on the continent and the world—or will we fall back into infantile patterns, refusing reform out of fear and sentimentality?

France’s budget debate and political paralysis offer a preview of our own future. The French state quota has climbed to 57%. Its open-border policies have failed. Its bloated welfare state has made the country ungovernable.

All this culminates in a permanent state of government crisis—translating into a collapse in public trust. Economic volatility, long suppressed by the welfare state, is now erupting as social unrest in the streets.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Never underestimate the incoming tsunami of disruptive “analysis” and predictive programming already embedded in the Hybrid War on China – and the larger war on BRICS.

Never underestimate the incoming tsunami of disruptive “analysis” and predictive programming already embedded in the Hybrid War on China – and the larger war on BRICS.

Cue to the latest 128-page report by the Hudson Institute in D.C. titled oh so prophetically, China After Communism: Preparing for a Post-CCP China.

You are fully entitled to react in a “Knights Who Say ‘Ni!’” Monty Pythonish way when confronting this inane absurdity. But make no mistake, they take it very seriously. US Think Tankland is a master of telegraphing regime change dreams and existential fears years in advance, in excruciating detail.

That was the case of that tawdry RAND report on blowing up Russia on several fronts, or that tawdry Brookings report on dismembering Persia, actually Iran. Now it’s the turn of the most powerful of the new Primakov triangle (RIC) in BRICS: China.

They are really playing ‘Light my Fire’ on steroids, believing a “sudden regime collapse in China is not entirely unthinkable.” They hark back to the old OSS – the precursor to the CIA – and its ops in China during WWII to suggest that “US special operations forces (SOF) can help stabilize a post-CCP China.”

Mediocre Sinophobe Extraordinaire Gordon Chang advises D.C. to “get American businesses and citizens out of China” and to “remove” Beijing “entities” from important sectors of the US economy.

There’s the inevitable call for the US to “protect human rights during a transitional period” and US intervention “to prevent ethnic violence, civil wars, and political retribution, with a special focus on China’s five autonomous regions – Guangxi, Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia.” Yes, let’s build a Disneyland in Tibet.

After the color revolution/regime change op is on a roll, “post-Communist China can establish a constitutional democracy and draft a new constitution”. All supervised by the Empire of Chaos, of course, which will define “China’s relationship with Taiwan” and even “what the new country’s name should be”.

The high-speed train of yuan internationalization

It will be a blast to observe the reaction of Chinese citizens on Weibo, Tik Tok and Guancha to this oh so benign demolition enterprise. Of course this document cannot be taken seriously as a recommended strategic policy. It barely qualifies as shabby psy ops/shallow propaganda, carrying several embedded PhDs in Cognitive Dissonance.

The target is not Chinese public opinion, but actually masses of semi-illiterate Americans – brainwashed 24/7 for eons on the threat posed by evil commies. And evil Russkies. And “the ayatollahs”.

Talk about Clash of Civilizations for sub-dummies.

I propose as a realist antidote our recent conversation hosted by Guancha in Shanghai, involving Professor Huang Jing, Tricontinental founder Vijay Prashad and myself on the larger war of the Empire of Chaos against China and BRICS.

Add to it some fine observations by Miao Yanliang, who’s now chief strategist at the CICC investment bank, formerly with the China State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), part of the People’s Bank of China, and a connoisseur of the Empire, as he got his PhD in Princeton.

Miao recently delivered a quite intriguing speech at Peking University, published as a CICC report in early June.

So let’s start with de-dolarization. Miao argues that “building a multipolar currency system requires policy coordination and exchange rate flexibility among major currency-issuing economies.” Now ‘two key obstacles that once constrained the internationalisation of the renminbi—high US interest rates and persistent depreciation expectations during periods of trade tension—have begun to reverse.”

Translation: from now on China has a wealth of possibilities to leverage its global trade to promote the internationalization of the yuan.

On the American ability to maintain the US dollar’s reserve currency status, Miao points to two factors: “whether the United States can continue to lead the technological revolution”; and “whether it can preserve the advantages of its financial system, such as the Federal Reserve’s independence and the self-regulating and corrective capabilities of its financial markets.”

Yet what’s accelerating now is rather the “fragmentation of the international monetary system”. So we should expect increased use of yuan in payment settlements and as “a store of value”; that’s already happening all across BRICS.

Miao points to the key vector: the yuan is now “a low-interest currency, while the US dollar is high-interest.” Trump 2.0 tariffs “on all countries have contributed to the appreciation” of the yuan.

This high-speed train is now leaving the station: “By leveraging China’s manufacturing strengths in sectors such as machinery, electronics, and new energy equipment”, China is encouraging BRICS nations and partners to use the yuan “for trade settlement, thereby creating a self-sustaining cycle” driven by “real trade demand.”

This is the system those clowns want to regime-change.

They never learn

Well, they did not learn anything out of the collective West humiliation in the proxy war in Ukraine. A top old school hand of the Deep State, now retired, and familiar with the glory days of the OSS, sums it all up. Relevant excerpts of our conversation:

“The US and Europe are already at war with Russia and they are losing it. The US has 20,000 armed troops in Europe to face Russia. NATO forces are largely a figment of the imagination.

Ukraine is nothing but a front in the US battle for control of the Eurasian land mass a la Mackinder. The US cannot supply both Israel and Europe at the same time. It has overstretched itself. As for Europe, it has no army of any consequence and most of its equipment is antiquated. All of it is pure bluff.”

He adds, “the Europeans are waking up to the fact that the US has a moat around it so that it can be reached only by ICBMs and submarine missiles but Europe is in itself indefensible as short range conventional missiles can destroy it. Nukes are not required to destroy Europe in one day but a rain of Russian missiles.”

Now compare that with Russia’s top negotiator in the Istanbul kabuki, historian Medinsky, when asked whether Moscow fears new sanctions by the EU and the US:

“This is not a question for us, not for the negotiating group. I can tell you this. After the revolution and civil war in 1920, again, another historical reference, we had not only sanctions, we had an absolute diplomatic and economic blockade of Soviet Russia from everyone. Everyone! It did not prevent us from winning World War II (…) Nothing will prevent Russia from winning now, The only question is the price of victory and the time it takes to achieve it.”

This is something that will never sink in amongst Think Tankland in D.C. As much as the technological accomplishments – now visible – of the Made in China 2025 plan will never sink in.

Enter bluster, hubris, the regime change obsession – and worse. Because if the US ruling class psycho killers finally conclude they cannot maintain their unilateral world hegemony even via war, they will abandon their cherished Think Tankland “reports” for good and even resort, in despair, to a Samson option.

A retired US Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel who worked as a contractor at an aid distribution point in Gaza has gone on-the-record with claims that he personally witnessed war crimes perpetrated by the Israel Defense Forces and by American contractors working for the shadowy Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). 

“I witnessed the Israeli forces shooting at the crowds of Palestinians,” Anthony Aguilar told BBC. “I witnessed the Israeli forces firing a main gun tank round from the Merkava tank into a crowd of people, destroying a car of civilians that was simply driving away from the site. I witnessed mortar rounds being fired at the crowd… to keep them controlled.” 

The GHF is led by an evangelical Christian leader with close ties to Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump. The organization was established in Israel in a collaboration of American evangelicals and private security contractors. Soon after the GHF began distributing aid to war-torn Gaza in May, disturbing reports emerged of Israeli soldiers killing unarmed Palestinians approaching aid points for food. Reports of dozens of Palestinians being killed in single incidents have become common. Last week, the UN human rights office said more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while trying to receive food at the distribution points. 

Aguilar was blunt in characterizing what he observed in the context of his US military service: 

“In my entire career, I have never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population…an unarmed, starving population. I’ve never witnessed that in all the places I’ve been deployed to war until I was in Gaza, at the hands of the IDF and US contractors … Without question, I witnessed war crimes.”

He also condemned the GHF and its hired American guns:    

“My professional opinion of how the sites were established was what I would describe as ‘amateur.’ Inexperienced, untrained, no idea of how to conduct operations of this magnitude. That would be my most benign assessment. In my most frank assessment, I would say that they’re criminal.”

The GHF said Aguilar’s allegations were “categorically false,” telling BBC that the retired Green Beret is “a disgruntled former contractor who was terminated for misconduct.” In a separate statement, GHF said its own investigation concluded his claims are “false and have no basis in reality.” 

Former U.S. Army Green Beret who worked for the GHF says he witnessed the IDF commit war crimes, including using a tank to fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians.
pic.twitter.com/glUmbXf5aF

— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) July 26, 2025

However, Aguilar’s description of lethal weapons being used to control unarmed civilian crowds is consistent with recent accounts given by IDF soldiers and other US contractors. Here’s how one of several IDF soldiers and officers described the senseless killing in an exposé published by Israeli newspaper Haaretz: 

“It’s a killing field. Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

“We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces. I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire. There’s no enemy, no weapons.”

There are also many videos circulating on social media that corroborate claims of lethal weapons being used to control crowds. This one was included in the BBC’s new report, with the network saying it verified the footage: 

‘It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid #Haaretz pic.twitter.com/Gx6rVEHyDM

— Faisal Warraich (@FSWarraich) July 14, 2025

The IDF said it would review Aguilar’s allegations. Meanwhile, responding to a widening uproar over massacres at food sites and rising malnutrition and starvation in blockaded Gaza, the IDF early on Sunday announced it had begun making food airdrops, describing them as part of “a series of actions aimed at improving the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip.”

https://t.co/m37rminQU7 pic.twitter.com/2o2y6Hyv30

— timothy faust 🇵🇸 (@crulge) July 25, 2025

More ZeroHedge reporting on the IDF’s conduct in Gaza: 

• IDF Soldiers Say Grenade-Drones Being Used On Civilians: ‘None Of Them Were Armed
• Israel Defense Minister Unveils Plan For ‘Concentration Camp’ In Gaza
• IDF Soldiers Confirm Lethal Weapons Routinely Used On Crowds At Gaza Aid Sites