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Ukraine Just ‘Gave Putin A Reason To Bomb The Hell Out Of Them,’ Trump Says

Ukraine Just ‘Gave Putin A Reason To Bomb The Hell Out Of Them,’ Trump Says

On Friday Trump was asked whether Ukraine’s drone strikes deep inside Russia changed his view of Zelensky’s “cards”. For months, Trump has said that Kiev has no cards to play, but reporters wondered if last Sunday’s ‘Operation Spider’s Web’ – which involved Ukrainian drone attacks deep inside Russia and damage at five key airbases, including destruction of strategic bombers – has changed where things stand in Trump’s mind.

Trump responded to reporters aboard Air Force One by saying, “Well they gave Putin a reason to go in and bomb the hell out of them last night. That’s the thing I didn’t like about it.”

“When I saw it I said, ‘Here we go, now it’s going to be a strike'” – Trump continued, in reference to what has become major nightly tit-for-tat strikes this past week. Ukraine has lately scored direct drone hits on crucial Russian military-industrial sites.

A reporter then asked: “Are you worried that Russia-Ukraine could spiral into a nuclear conflict?” And Trump responded: “I don’t… I hope not. I hope not.”

The US President was then questioned on where he stands regarding Graham’s Russia sanctions bill. Trump said the following:

“We’re going to see. I think Russia will not be making a deal stopping …. Thousand a week soldiers being killed and people being killed, not just soldiers. People being killed…I’ll use it if it’s necessary.”

Trump then denied reports that he is seeking to intervene with the Senate in order to water down the Graham bill. “No, I haven’t spoken to them about it. They have the bill, it’s going to be up to me. It’s my option. They made it that way….its a very  strong bill,” he said.

Graham, who authored the legislation, has provocatively described it as “the most draconian bill I’ve ever seen in my life in the Senate” – and many analysts fear it could reverse current Trump progress toward restoring US-Russia bilateral relations, and it might kill the chance of a future Trump-Putin sit-down meeting.

 Over 80 Senators have signed on as cosponsors of the current form of the legislation, but some Republican senators have held off to give Trump-backed negotiations a chance.

As for the overnight Thursday, or early Friday morning hours attack on Ukraine by Russia, The NY Times has described:

Over the course of some five hours after midnight, Russia launched 407 drones and decoys, nearly 40 cruise missiles and six ballistic missiles from land, air and sea at towns and cities across the breadth of the nation, the Ukrainian Air Force said in a statement. It appeared to be the second-largest drone assault of the war, after Russia launched nearly 500 drones last weekend.

But interestingly, Trump’s aforementioned response to all these developments could invite more such attacks, given the president has framed it as merely the expected retaliatory response in war. Europe, however, has been seeking more vehement and direct condemnation of Moscow from the White House. Yet Trump is expressing a ‘realist’ position.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/07/2025 – 12:15

Trump Reportedly Urged Sen. Graham To Weaken Russian Sanctions Bill

Trump Reportedly Urged Sen. Graham To Weaken Russian Sanctions Bill

Authored by Kyle Anzalone via AntiWar.com,

President Donald Trump is quietly leaning on Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to “water down” the sanctions bill on Russia that could see China and India slapped with 500% tariffs. Trump believes he needs the flexibility to engage in talks with Moscow and Kiev on ending the war in Ukraine. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump wants Sen. Graham to change the provision on sanctioning Russia. The reworded legislation would allow the president to pick and choose who was black listed and make the sanctions less mandatory by changing the word “shall” to “may.” The White House is arguing that foreign policy is in the purview of the Executive Branch and Congress cannot tie the President’s hands

If passed into law, the bill would sanction countries that import Russian energy. The primary targets of the blacklist would be China and India. All countries placed on the blacklist would face 500% tariffs. 

Graham, who authored the legislation, has described it as “the most draconian bill I’ve ever seen in my life in the Senate.”

The bill, in its current form, has bipartisan support in the Upper Chamber, and over 80 Senators have signed on as cosponsors. The legislation has only been delayed as Republican senators do not want to upset Trump by interfering in negotiations

Trump has stopped short of endorsing the bill, but has used it in an attempt to threaten Russian President Vladimir Putin to quickly come to an agreement with Kiev. 

Advocates of the bill say it will force the Kremlin to end the war. “I have coordinated with the White House on the Russia sanctions bill since its inception. The bill would put Russia on a trade island, slapping 500% tariffs on any country that buys Moscow’s energy products. The consequences of its barbaric invasion must be made real to those that prop it up,” Graham wrote last week. Adding, “If China or India stopped buying cheap oil, Mr. Putin’s war machine would grind to a halt.”

Washington and its European partners have announced multiple rounds of sanctions on Russia that were intended to bankrupt Moscow and bring the Kremlin’s invasion to an end. However, Moscow has weathered the Western economic war while boosting its arms production capability. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said the bill could be passed by the Upper Chamber this month. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA)  has expressed support for the legislation. 

Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/07/2025 – 11:40

“I Just Wish Him Well”: Trump And Musk Turn Down The Temperature, But BBB Still Looms

“I Just Wish Him Well”: Trump And Musk Turn Down The Temperature, But BBB Still Looms

It was a turbulent week in American politics as the Trump–Musk feud erupted over the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ – shattering their alliance with little indication of reconciliation in the near term, though both men appear to have simmered down. 

(ABC News: Brianna Morris-Grant; Reuters: Nathan Howard; Reuters: Kent Nishimura)

Speaking to reporters Friday evening, Trump weighed in on Musk, saying: “I just wish him well.” 

That said, he also reiterated a threat to ‘look at everything’ in regards to Musk’s government contracts.  

Vice President JD Vance weighed in on “This Past Weekend w/Theo Von”

“I’m always going to be loyal to the president and I hope that eventually Elon kind of comes back into the fold,” said Vance, adding “Maybe that’s not possible now because he’s gone so nuclear, but I hope it is.”

Vance also gave credit to DOGE for rooting out waste, fraud and abuse (which the BBB does nothing about):

Musk Deletes Posts

In the overnight hours, Jerry Dunleavy, chief investigative reporter at Just The News, cited now-deleted X posts from Elon Musk, in which Musk said he would “apologize” to the president for mean tweets “as soon as there is a full dump of the Epstein files.” 

It was unclear on Saturday morning whether a genuine détente had developed between Musk and the president, who had feuded throughout the day on Thursday. 

To recap the week (read more here): 

  • Thursday morning, Trump was asked about Musk’s opposition to the bill, telling reporters on Thursday that he’s ‘very disappointed in Elon,’ and that Musk only opposes the bill because they eliminated electric vehicle tax credits from it.
  • Trump then suggested he might pull government funding from Musk’s companies such as SpaceX, which owns the only operational US spacecraft capable of transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station.  “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!” -President Donald Trump via Truth Social

  • Musk went ballistic – announcing he would ‘immediately‘ decommission the Dragon program (which he later walked back Thursday night), proposed a new political party (that’s still his pinned post on X), endorsed another Trump impeachment, and said in a now-deleted post Trump is ‘in the Epstein files,’ which is why they haven’t been released. 

The optics of what happened last week between Musk and the president are wild, with Musk standing up for MAGA ideals that Trump campaigned on, and Trump peddling the Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBB) that came from the swamp. 

Musk’s key issue is that BBB raises the debt ceiling by another $5 trillion, while – and this part is in contention – the bill either raises the deficit by $2.4 trillion or lowers it by $1.4 trillion, depending on who you believe. We note that it also makes little to no effort to address the waste, fraud, or abuse identified by DOGE. 

What’s very concerning about some in the MAGA Republican team is the failure to codify DOGE spending cuts in a way that safeguards taxpayer dollars from wasteful and fraudulent spending. MAGA campaigned on this and has yet to act. 

Musk appears to be set on breaking away from the two-party duopoly and creating a new party.

We’re guessing the BBB will still pass – no doubt with some modifications. 

At least it’s going to be a quiet weeke– or not

Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/07/2025 – 11:05

The AI Arms Race Could Destroy Humanity As We Know It

The AI Arms Race Could Destroy Humanity As We Know It

Authored by Merav Ozair via CoinTelegraph.com,

The AI arms race is moving too fast for safety, with companies pushing boundaries and governments lagging. AI-driven dehumanization and the unchecked proliferation of autonomous weapons require responsible leadership before it’s too late.

The launch of ChatGPT in late 2023 sparked an arms race among Big Tech companies such as Meta, Google, Apple and Microsoft and startups like OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral and DeepSeek. All are rushing to deploy their models and products as fast as possible, announcing the next “shiny” toy in town and trying to claim superiority at the expense of our safety, privacy or autonomy.

After OpenAI’s ChatGPT spurred major growth in generative AI with the Studio Ghibli trend, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, urged his teams to make AI companions more “humanlike” and entertaining — even if it meant relaxing safeguards. “I missed out on Snapchat and TikTok, I won’t miss out on this,” Zuckerberg reportedly said during an internal meeting.

In the latest Meta AI bots project, launched on all their platforms, Meta loosened its guardrails to make the bots more engaging, allowing them to participate in romantic role-play and “fantasy sex,” even with underage users. Staff warned about the risks this posed, especially for minors.

They will stop at nothing. Not even the safety of our children, and all for the sake of profit and beating the competition.

The damage and destruction that AI can inflict upon humanity runs deeper than that.

Dehumanizing and loss of autonomy

The accelerated transformation of AI likely leads to full dehumanization, leaving us disempowered, easily manipulable and entirely dependent on companies that provide AI services.

The latest AI advances have accelerated the process of dehumanization. We have been experiencing it for more than 25 years since the first major AI-powered recommendation systems emerged, introduced by companies like Amazon, Netflix and YouTube.

Companies present AI-powered features as essential personalization tools, suggesting that users would be lost in a sea of irrelevant content or products without them. Allowing companies to dictate what people buy, watch and think has become globally normalized, with little to no regulatory or policy efforts to curb it. The consequences, however, could be significant.

Generative AI and dehumanization

Generative AI has taken this dehumanization to the next level. It became common practice to integrate GenAI features into existing applications, aiming to increase human productivity or enhance the human-made outcome. Behind this massive push is the idea that humans are not good enough and that AI assistance is preferable.

A 2024 paper, “Generative AI Can Harm Learning,” found that “access to GPT-4 significantly improves performance (48% improvement for GPT Base and 127% for GPT Tutor). We also find that when access is subsequently taken away, students perform worse than those who never had access (17% reduction for GPT Base). That is, access to GPT-4 can harm educational outcomes.”

This is alarming. GenAI disempowers people and makes them dependent on it.

People may not only lose the ability to produce the same results but also fail to invest time and effort in learning essential skills.

We are losing our autonomy to think, assess and create, resulting in complete dehumanization. Elon Musk’s statement that “AI will be way smarter than humans” is not surprising as dehumanization progresses, as we will no longer be what actually makes us human. 

AI-powered autonomous weapons

For decades, military forces have used autonomous weapons, including mines, torpedoes and heat-guided missiles that operate based on simple reactive feedback without human control. 

Now, it enters the arena of weapon design. 

AI-powered weapons involving drones and robots are actively being developed and deployed. Due to how easily such technology proliferates, they will only become more capable, sophisticated and widely used over time.

A major deterrent that keeps nations from starting wars is soldiers dying — a human cost to their citizens that can create domestic consequences for leaders. The current development of AI-powered weapons aims to remove human soldiers from harm’s way. If few soldiers die in offensive warfare, however, it weakens the association between acts of war and human cost, and it becomes politically easier to start wars, which, in turn, may lead to more death and destruction overall. 

Major geopolitical problems could quickly emerge as AI-powered arms races amp up and such technology continues to proliferate.

Robot “soldiers” are software that might be compromised. If hacked, the entire army of robots may act against a nation and lead to mass destruction. Stellar cybersecurity would be even more prudent than an autonomous army. 

Bear in mind that this cyberattack can occur on any autonomous system. You can destroy a nation simply by hacking its financial systems and depleting all its economic resources. No humans are harmed, but they may not be able to survive without financial resources.

The Armageddon scenario

“AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production,” Musk said in a Fox News interview. “In the sense that it has the potential — however small one may regard that probability, but it is non-trivial — it has the potential of civilization destruction,” Musk added.

Musk and Geoffrey Hinton have recently expressed concerns that the possibility of AI posing an existential threat is 10%-20%.

As these systems get more sophisticated, they may start acting against humans. A paper published by Anthropic researchers in December 2024 found that AI can fake alignment. If this could happen with the current AI models, imagine what it could do when these models become more powerful.

Can humanity be saved?

There is too much focus on profit and power and almost none on safety.

Leaders should be concerned more about public safety and the future of humanity than gaining supremacy in AI. “Responsible AI” is not just a buzzword, empty policies and promises. It should be at the top of the mind of any developer, company or leader and implemented by design in any AI system.

Collaboration between companies and nations is critical if we would like to prevent any doomsday scenario. And if leaders are not stepping up to the plate, the public should demand it. 

Our future as humanity as we know it is at stake. Either we ensure AI benefits us at scale or let it destroy us. 

Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/07/2025 – 10:30

Riots Erupt At LA ICE Facility As Mexican BLM Clone Unleashes Color Revolution Operation

Riots Erupt At LA ICE Facility As Mexican BLM Clone Unleashes Color Revolution Operation

After failing to ignite multiple color revolution-style protests earlier this year targeting Elon Musk and President Trump over DOGE-related efforts, Democrats and their rogue NGO network appear to be at it again—this time staging a new protest movement against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Los Angeles, hoping to spark another ‘Summer of Love’ nationwide riots like in 2020, when leftists used the useful idiots behind the Marxist group Black Lives Matter as a vehicle for chaos.

With BLM kicked to the curb by the Democratic Party, the Mexican version of BLM – Unión del Barrio – whose manifesto is filled with explicit Marxist and communist rhetoric—has become the next group Democrats will use as useful idiots.

On Friday, Unión del Barrio issued a call to action for the crazies on Facebook to stage a protest against “ICE Terrorists” in Downtown LA:

Emergency Protest TODAY in LA! 4:30PM

535 Alameda St LA, CA 90012

Join us to denounce ICE terrorizing our communities! Over 200 people are currently being held at this location in the basement of the courthouse. Today, there has been ICE activity all over the LA area.

LA EMERGENCY PROTEST!

535 Alameda St, LA, CA 90012

Friday, June 6, 2025 4:30PM

STOP DEPORTATIONS NOW!

ICE has hundreds of members of our community kidnapped and is holding them at this location.

Facebook posts… 

According to journalist Andy Ngo, multiple far-left groups, one being Antifa, amplified Unión del Barrio’s “emergency protest” at the “basement of the courthouse.” 

Chaos shortly erupted on the streets outside the  Edward R. Roybal Federal Building and United States Courthouse.  

A quick review of Unión del Barrio’s political program is absolutely alarming – and basically the Mexican version of BLM…

Core Beliefs & Goals:

  • Opposition to U.S. imperialism, capitalism, and settler colonialism

  • Advocacy for immigrant rights, against deportations and ICE raids

  • Promotion of community organizing in working-class Latino neighborhoods

  • Support for socialist and pan-Latino unity movements

  • Education and youth empowerment through political study and activism

Action campaigns:

  • Organizes rallies and protests, particularly against ICE and border enforcement

  • Runs community education programs like Escuelita Aztlán

  • Collaborates with other radical left-wing organizations in the U.S. and Latin America

  • Frequently involved in May Day demonstrations, anti-police protests, and immigration activism

What’s clear is that Unión del Barrio operates on a Marxist-Leninist and decolonial framework that wants to destroy the West and capitalism, or more importantly, destroy America. In other words, the org is just the Mexican version of BLM.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/07/2025 – 09:55

The House Education Committee Gets It Right: Restore Excellence; Dump DEI

The House Education Committee Gets It Right: Restore Excellence; Dump DEI

Authored by Teresa Manning via American Greatness,

On May 21, the House Education Committee held a hearing, Restoring Excellence: The Case Against DEI , or “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” a euphemism for neo-racism and therefore a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Thankfully, the hearing got this message across and the presiding chairman, Congressman Burgess Owens of South Carolina, should be commended for convening it.

The panel had four witnesses: a Manhattan Institute Fellow named Renu MukharjeeDr. Shaun Harper, a TProvost Professor from the University of Southern California; an attorney from the American Civil Rights Project, Dan Morenoff; and Kurt Miceli, a Medical Director of Do No Harm, an organization focused on protecting medical care from identity politics.

The testimonies made good, if basic, points, though no one mentioned President Trump’s January 21 Executive Order Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit Based Opportunity , an excellent backdrop and guide for the hearing, and only passing reference was made to the 2023 United States Supreme Court opinion banning racial preferences at universities, including when they’re rationalized for the sake of diversity.

But the witnesses did point out that a focus on diversity means competence and excellence take a back seat.

That’s bad for any activity, not just medical care, but also engineering (will bridges collapse?) and flight school (will planes crash?), as well as the arts, athletics, etc. Mediocrity takes over when excellence yields to the race industrial complex.

First, Ms. Mukharjee said that racial minorities are actually harmed by diversity practices, as others presume those minorities are less qualified, calling them “diversity admits” or “diversity hires,” which just reinforces destructive racial stereotypes. Medical Director Miceli also mentioned the concept of racial concordance creeping into medical practice, or the idea that black patients need black doctors.  That such nonsense gets any traction at all is a bit depressing. Patients obviously want competent doctors, just as Americans want competence generally.

Only one witness was an ardent defender of diversity ideology—Dr. Shaun Harper. He insisted that DEI had been proven to be beneficial on campus in “dozens of essays,” and in “dozens of books” and “hundreds of peer-reviewed academic journals.” His written remarks go so far as to suggest that abolishing DEI puts higher education at a greater risk of violence on the grounds that DEI reduces institutional susceptibility to racial crises, sexual harassment, and other abuses. This seems a stretch, as claims of racial discrimination and sexual harassment have increased alongside diversity initiatives.

Harper makes other questionable claims, insisting, for example, that attacks on DEI are “politicized.”

Actually, advocating a merit-based society is apolitical. The idea is to let the best man win or to have the cream rise to the top regardless of skin color.

Harper must know that it is diversity ideology itself that is simply politics—identity politics and racial politics designed to divide and conquer the American people, to destroy our national unity, and to keep us fighting each other instead of fighting for a stronger country. A strong America would include a strong national economy using our own, homegrown American students and workforce. For those unaware, diversity is often a moral-sounding cover for cheap labor. Foreigners flood schools and companies, taking seats and jobs from Americans, since they will work for less. This undercuts and depresses the compensation for workers at home, both blue- and white-collar. The recent H1B visa debate on X raised all these issues. In short, illegal immigration, coupled with top-down diversity ideology, has destroyed the national economy and workforce.

Second, no one should be wedded to labels such as “DEI,” since the labels change all the time. Congressman Burgess pointed this out, calling it the rebranding phenomenon. Not only are university DEI offices renaming themselves things like Access, Compliance, and Community offices, but the concept of diversity itself previously went by other terms, such as multiculturalism. But even before that, it was racial preferences, or affirmative action, or reverse discrimination. Americans reject them all. Americans believe in equal opportunity, not playing favorites, much less playing favorites based on skin color.

Third, Harper also seems oblivious to the real target of diversity ideology: Western Civilization and especially the Christian ethics that formed it. In his long list of groups that supposedly contribute to diversity, for example, Christians of European descent are conspicuously absent. DEI’s animus against Christianity is clear from its promotion of sexual degeneracy. DEI encourages all manner of sexual activity except within the context of marriage and family. But traditional Christian teaching specifically protected human sexuality by honoring it within marriage and ordering it toward children and family life. In short, DEI agitators covertly target Christian morals with race as cover.

Obsessing about race in the West is ironic since the West is probably the least racially bigoted region in the world. After all, most of the globe is beset by ethnic tension—India still informally has a caste system, for example; the Middle East and Africa are still largely tribal, as is much of Asia. Witness China’s subjection of the Uyghur people. Ugly tribalism is the norm, not just throughout human history but still in much of the world. While the West had different tribes or nations, its Christian heritage tried to unify them since Christianity was for “all nations” and depended on individual belief, not tribal supremacy.

Furthermore, millions of migrants risk their lives to live in the West and America. But we’re told we’re systemic racists in need of DEI?

Last, pointing to dozens of studies to rationalize DEI is unserious. First, such publications are self-serving; these authors often have academic positions dependent on DEI bureaucracies. But more importantly, everyone knows that universities were captured by the political left decades ago. “Republicans need not apply” is an understatement; many academic departments actually have zero registered Republicans.

The result is that the American college campus is now a place of left-wing political agitation, not a place of serious learning or research.

Consider that Harvard’s own former President Claudine Gay was a serial perjurer. And Oregon professor Pete Boghossian exposed fraud in academic journals when he famously accepted an essay on dog-on-dog sexual assaults in Portland public parks.

Modern academics cite studies because they get to conduct them—they ask the questions, they decide which findings to publish, and they decide what to promote, all the while pretending the content is objective or serious. It’s not. Witness the rise of fake science.

In saner times, academics used words such as reason, understanding, and even wisdom (philosophy), not studies, articles, and journals.

In the end, among the best and most real teachers are experience and reason. Reasonable people know that a country needs unity and excellence to be strong, not diversity—just as the title of the House Education Committee Hearing suggests.

 

Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/07/2025 – 09:20

How Inflation Undermines Culture And Values

How Inflation Undermines Culture And Values

Authored by Daniel Morena Vitonvia The Mises Institute,

In the previous article, I discussed the social consequences of the welfare state; now I want to focus on inflation—or more precisely, on central bank policy. Inflation can broadly be defined as an artificial increase in the money supply that ultimately drives up prices, but this definition overlooks the fact that it is a process in which prices first rise in the capital goods of industries furthest from final consumption and then gradually spread throughout the entire system. Therefore, in an inflationary process, there are a few winners who reap substantial profits, and many losers whose purchasing power declines.

It can be said that inflation is caused by governments, both through monetizing debt and by allowing commercial banks to violate general legal principles regarding the deposit contract. Inflation is a hidden tax with devastating economic and moral consequences; it encourages the population to go into debt by making credit cheaper, and it penalizes saving, increasing the length of time preference. Not only that, but it is also a spiritual burden. It drives people to seek ways to protect their savings, making society more materialistic, causing people to prioritize money over happiness, and often forcing them to migrate, thereby breaking family and patriotic ties.

As Jesús Huerta de Soto explains, the Peel Act of 1844 forms the foundation of modern banking systems. This law correctly prohibited the issuance of banknotes without 100 percent backing, but not that of deposits, as it failed to recognize that deposits are part of the monetary base (M). While issuing unbacked banknotes constitutes forgery and fraud, fractional reserve banking is a form of embezzlement. The ruling issued by Judge Lord Cottenham in 1848 in the case of Foley v. Hill concluded that deposits were under the custody of the banker and, therefore, considered his money to do with as he pleased. This jurisprudence was both binding and disastrous. Moreover, it occurred at a time when grain depositors who had appropriated their clients’ deposits to speculate on the Chicago market were declared to be engaging in fraudulent activity.

On the other hand, human creativity produced a solution that lasted for half a century until World War I: the gold standard. The classical gold standard is a rigid system that prevents disproportionate expansions of the money supply, since the gold stock grows by only about 1-2 percent per year. At the same time, it also prevents any sharp contraction of that supply, and the process of credit expansion through loans not backed by voluntary savings—which creates intertemporal discoordination—cannot occur. With productivity growing at about 3 percent during that period, the years from 1865 to 1896 were marked by deflation. Yet this did not prevent it from being a time of great capital accumulation.

While there were inflationary episodes when rulers manipulated the currency, society did not live under constant inflation as it has in the 20th and 21st centuries. The key difference lies in the central banks. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 granted the Fed the privilege of issuing banknotes and required all banks to hold their reserves in demand deposit accounts with it. The Fed, in Murray Rothbard’s words, is inherently inflationary because it acts as a lender of last resort and can expand its reserves without facing the constraints of a decentralized banking system.

It is no surprise that the Fed reduced the reserve requirements for commercial banks from an average of 21.1 percent to just 3 percent by 1917. Coincidentally, this system came into effect in 1914, and World War I greatly favored its implementation, just as the system facilitated the US entry into the war. Without the Fed, the government would have had to raise taxes directly or print greenbacks, which were highly unpopular. With this system, however, they managed to double the money supply between 1914 and 1919. By 1917, they had obtained permission to issue gold exchange notes and required banks to hold them as deposits with the Fed instead of in physical cash. These measures gradually detached the average American from the habit of using gold in daily life and accustomed them to checks and paper money.

Inflation caused by fiduciary media (although there are other types of inflation, which are neither as obvious nor as persistent over time) has the same redistributive effects as the welfare state, because credit expansion unfolds in several stages. New money enters the economy through specific channels, increasing the purchasing power of those particular actors, who can also consume goods at lower prices. Meanwhile, for the rest of the population, consumer prices rise, leaving them worse off and contributing to a redistribution of income. One could say that inflation promotes capital concentration.

Guido Hülsmann’s claim that the growth of the welfare state and the militarized state would not have been possible without inflation is entirely accurate. This phenomenon has transformed the economic structure since the 20th century. Industrial firms and corporations once relied on retained earnings for financing, with financial intermediaries playing a secondary role. But with the global regime of inflationary fiat money, the tables have turned, and debt has risen at all levels. This is because fractional reserve banking and fiat money violate the non-aggression principle: the latter does so by creating a product that would not survive in a free market and is only used because it is protected by legal tender laws.

As a result, the state’s potential monetary resources are unlimited, since the central bank has unlimited credit through the issuance of national paper money. Investors are aware of this, which is why they continue to buy government bonds even though they know that public debt will never truly be repaid. Credit offered at artificially low interest rates creates perverse incentives, whereby entrepreneurs take on massive debt—but the truth is that an entrepreneur-capitalist operating with only 10 percent equity and 90 percent debt is merely an executive. The real entrepreneur-capitalists are the banks, which act as creditors. Inflation reduces the number of true entrepreneurs—independent men operating with their own money.

The social consequences are numerous. Under inflation, Wilhelm Röpke describes the massive rise in consumer credit and installment purchases as a disorder worthy of parasites and freeloaders, contrary to the idea of living within one’s means—that is, maintaining a balance between income and expenses and living a coherent life. For him, the novelty of democratic-socialist inflation, brought about by the ideologies of mass democracy, is a moral disease stemming from mistaken beliefs about full employment. Inflation causes a vertical surge in investments not backed by real savings, thereby eliminating all incentives to save.

The culture of sacrifice is undermined. As Hülsmann states, “civilization crucially depends on the ability and willingness of at least some of its members to make genuine sacrifices, at least some of the time.” Saving, which is linked to sacrifice, also benefits the economy of giving, and deflation supports it—because falling prices discourage leverage, especially in households. As capital use becomes less profitable, the opportunity cost of making donations drops, which increases charitable giving both in absolute and relative terms. Inflation, by contrast, is harmful because it reduces the value of inheritances, and one of the strongest incentives to save before death is the desire to leave something to one’s loved ones. From this, it follows that one of the most powerful motivations for preserving wealth is the ability to make donations.

The reality is that human motivations are heavily influenced by the political and economic context. Hülsmann continues explaining that monetary expansion first reduces the incentives to save. Families are the school of love and virtue, and they are sources of sacrifice and generosity—but they are not only founded on spiritual grounds, but also on economic ones, rooted in the division of labor and capital accumulation. Inflation forces all participants to dedicate more time to money and investments rather than to starting a family. Under a debt-based system, family ties represent a far greater sacrifice, contributing to rising divorce rates, later ages of first marriage, and fewer children. Inflation has pushed women into the labor market, reduced the costs of leaving the family unit, and increased the number of single mothers and divorces.

To conclude, Hülsmann finally explains how inflationary culture also reduces the time spent on selfless activities like simply being with others, which becomes instrumentalized as “networking”—transforming friendships from relationships of trust into utilitarian arrangements. Every society has individuals with perverse attitudes, but they are usually few and must bear the consequences, including the cost and loss of good company. With inflation, however, these attitudes are subsidized, and the meaning of good and evil is reversed. It also creates tensions between taxpayers and recipients, employers and employees, men and women, or retirees and young professionals, fostering a sense of identity-based conflict or group polarization. Incentives to save in cash are eroded, and savings must either be spent on consumption or invested. In low-income households, the former is more common. The average worker, who only saves in ways he understands—namely, in cash—and who distrusts opening investment accounts with banks or brokers and knows nothing about financial markets, is left with no savings. Inflation has destroyed the working class’s culture of saving, erasing its sense of transcendence.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/07/2025 – 08:10

Globalists Go Radio Silent As NATO Flirts With World War III

Globalists Go Radio Silent As NATO Flirts With World War III

Where have all the globalists gone? Yes, unfortunately they’re still out there free when they should be rotting in a frozen gulag or fertilizing an unmarked field somewhere.  I get that.  However, if you’ve been tracking the elitist cabal as long as I have you might have noticed a sudden and abrupt shift in public activity among the most prominent globalist institutions.

From at least 2019 onward the mask had come completely off. The elites were flooding western media with woke propaganda through their NGO operations. You couldn’t go anywhere without being bombarded with multiculturalism, DEI and LGBT nonsense. There was a clear attempt to engineer a massive cultural shift in the western world; an expedited progressive coup.

Conservatives were relentlessly targeted as “insurrectionists” and a “threat to democracy”. Pandemic hysteria opened the door to an array of mandates as well as legislation designed to erase constitutional protections in the name of “health safety”. The plan was openly admitted: An endless cycle of covid lockdowns and vaccine passports. A perpetual loop of medical tyranny. Globalists were ecstatic, reveling in the fear and calling for the implementation of forced vaccinations, covid tracking apps and even covid camps for people who refused to comply.

In the midst of the frenzy the WEF and other organizations pushed their economic agenda, asserting that the world needed to go cashless, that carbon controls and “climate lockdowns” needed to become normalized.  They wanted what they called a “Great Reset” of the global financial framework. Everything was admitted, they barely tried to hide their intentions. It was the New World Order we “conspiracy” analysts had been warning about for decades.

In the past they would mention details of the plan in obscure white papers or in moments of unguarded discussion. Over the past five years the globalists were essentially dancing in the streets and advertising the NWO for all too see. Why? Because they thought they had already won.

Fast forward to 2025 – The covid mandates and lockdowns are defeated and abandoned. The multicultural invasion is being reversed with a majority of the American population in support of secure borders and deportations. Bans on the transing of kids are being established across the US and LGBT propaganda is being removed from schools. DOGE and Trump instituted cuts which have greatly damaged the government-to-NGO revolving door (which is why many DEI programs are disappearing).

BLM is dead. Pride Month is a dud (so far). Covid is being exposed as the nothingburger it always was. The climate change agenda is fading. The masses are generally suspicious of organizations like the WEF and no one supports a cashless CBDC based system. The globalist ideal has been relegated to the garbage heap and we didn’t even need to fire a shot. Is this what winning looks like?

Not quite.

We have won the information war in the US (for the most part). Europe is taking longer, but conservatives movements are gaining ground; so much ground, in fact, that the elites are arresting people for speech, not to mention arresting their political opponents for being right leaning. This is a sign of panic, not power.

The globalists flew too close to the sun too fast and they got burned. Nearly every major elitist institution has stopped openly promoting “Great Reset” related policies. They’ve limited their media interviews and their think tanks have stopped releasing revealing white papers. Some globalists have suggested in media encounters that globalism is dead. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink even used a Financial Times op-ed to argue that “globalization is over”.

I’ve never seen them back off from their agenda so completely, and I’m highly suspicious of the radio silence.

As I warned in my article ‘World War III Is Now Inevitable – Here’s Why It Can’t Be Avoided’, the globalist plan for a Bolshevik coup has failed, but this only means they will move on to more historically predictable tactics. Meaning, exponential economic crisis and world war.

European political leaders have made it nearly impossible to negotiate a legitimate ceasefire in Ukraine because they continue to give Kyiv hope that NATO will step in with boots on the ground. Even if the US completely pulls all support, the Ukrainians believe Europe will fill the gap. This is ridiculous, of course; the EU has no capacity to fight an attrition war with the Russians and they are much more likely to trigger a nuclear event than liberate Ukraine.

What concerns me more, though, is a specific strategy being used by NATO and Kyiv:  I’m talking about the deliberate targeting of Russian nuclear infrastructure. This has been an ongoing problem since the beginning of the conflict and it seems to me as if the elites WANT some kind of catastrophic escalation.

Ukraine has used multiple drone attacks to strike nuclear power plants, including its OWN Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl plants. The Kursk offensive (now failed) pushed towards a nuclear power plant in the region and Russia accused Ukraine of trying to hit the plant with drones. In early 2024, Ukraine long range drone and missile attacks hit two separate Russian “over the horizon” early warning nuclear radar installations.

The Voronezh-DM stations were positioned outside the city of Orsk and the region of Krasnodar (Armavir); far away from the front lines in Ukraine. I warned about this development in June of last year in my article ‘False Flag On The Horizon? The Strange Case Of The Destroyed Russian Nuclear Radar’.

This past week confirmed my suspicions when Ukraine initiated a complex covert strike on a base holding Russian long range bombers. These bombers were primarily nuclear readiness aircraft and are not generally used to launch FABs or other weapons against Ukrainian targets. The attack could not have been achieved without NATO aid and once again follows the odd pattern of targeting Russian nuclear infrastructure.

There are two obvious dangers attached to this scenario: First, Russia responds with a devastating bombardment of population centers to prove the strike on the bombers did nothing to prevent them from hitting Ukrainian cities from afar. Second, Russia assumes that NATO’s plan is to weaken their nuclear readiness in preparation for European troops entering the war, or in preparation for a nuclear exchange.

In either case, WWIII is the result. Establishment commentators have tried to spin the bomber attack as a Ukrainian victory without consequence, but they deliberately omit the primary purpose of the aircraft.  Best case scenario, Russia pounds a few Ukrainian cities with massive ordnance. At worst, the nuclear threat becomes tangible and we edge towards a missile exchange.

I continue to believe that the globalists want to avoid full spectrum nuclear war.  Why would they deliberately vaporize the very control grid it took them decades to build?  But I do think we will see a limited nuclear event in the near future (perhaps a limited nuke event in Ukraine).

The continuing attacks on nuke related armaments and infrastructure suggest to me an attempt by Kyiv and NATO to create a situation so chaotic that it opens the door to troop deployments and direct confrontation with Moscow before anyone can catch up to what is happening.

Without war, the globalists have nothing. Maybe they can pull off an economic crisis (all the pieces are certainly in place), but in a vacuum they could get the blame. War offers a valuable distraction for the masses and an ever adaptable scapegoat. People broke and starving? Well, that’s just war. The dollar crashing? Currencies are at risk during war. Freedoms being curtailed? Hey, people need to set aside their liberties for the sake of “security”.

There’s a reason why multi-nation wars almost always occur just after historic economic declines.  The two crises feed into each other, but the wars also provide cover for extensive centralization schemes.  Each successive world war brings us a step closer to world government and a centrally controlled global economic system.

The globalists in Europe are doing everything in their power to prolong the conflagration. They know Ukraine is never going to get their lost territory back. They know that Russia is generating a massive breakout on the front lines in the east. They have no peace plan. Their purpose is to force a direct confrontation between NATO forces and Russian troops. It’s the only explanation for the attacks on Russian nuclear armaments. It’s a provocation designed to end all chances of a ceasefire and take the war to the next level.

The unsettling quiet from normally boisterous NWO reps within think tanks and the media suggests to me that a memo has been posted from on high.  All other programs have been scrapped and all eyes are on Ukraine and Russia.  Perhaps the globalists have suddenly gone quiet because they’ve set Plan B in motion, and this time they don’t want any of their people talking out of turn until total war is accomplished?

As the old saying goes, loose lips sink ships…

Of course, there’s always the chance we see escalation in Iran, or a Chinese move on Taiwan.  There are more than a few precarious powder kegs in place right now.  What I see, though, is an inordinate amount amount of financial and political energy going into the Ukraine affair.  The elitists are mostly tight lipped about it, but an inordinate amount of financial and political energy is flowing into the region.  It’s clear that the next couple of months will be highly unstable as tensions mount.

Diplomatic pathways are fading fast.

Most likely scenario?  Ukraine cities get hammered in a relentless Russian bombardment and Europe vows to deploy its forces to intervene.  Even if Trump cuts off all US ties to Ukraine and walks away, there’s little that can be done to prevent the disaster that comes next. 

It’s not necessarily a scorched earth option for the globalists, but it certainly seems like a last resort – Conjuring a calamity big enough to distract the masses while total centralization is instituted.  I’m not saying the plan will work, I’m just saying that this is their most viable strategy.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/06/2025 – 23:25

The Ongoing Fight Against US Child Labor

The Ongoing Fight Against US Child Labor

Child labor law violations in the United States rose in recent years in a manner the Department of Labor has called “alarming“.

As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, in the fiscal year of 2024, there were more than 4,000 of these infractions recorded, down from a recent peak of almost 5,800 in FY 2023.

According to the most recent DOL report on the topic, the general increase might have been in connection with more effective enforcement and awareness.

Infographic: The Ongoing Fight Against U.S. Child Labor | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

The peak was at least in part connected to a high-profile case of child labor uncovered at a meat production plant cleaning company, which has now been found to have employed more than 100 minors in hazardous, overnight cleaning operations in Nebraska and Minnesota.

The case that opened the eyes of many for the harsh realities of present-day child labor ended in February 2023 when Packers Sanitation Services Inc. paid $1.5 million in civil penalties on top of taking mandated steps to strengthen compliance within the company. Meat packing is an industry that has been notorious for employing children in hazardous conditions in the United States, with 145 compliance actions taken in the fiscal years 2023 and 2024 combined. A much bigger general violator of child labor laws is the hospitality industry at more than 1,100 compliance actions over the two given years. Other industries with many infractions were janitorial services and retail, where like in hospitality children run the risk of working inapproriate hours.

Human trafficking is another aspect that is sadly intertwined with child labor and in the fiscal years 2023 and 2024, the DOL notified the Department of Health and Human Services in relation to the suspected human trafficking of 43 workers they suspected were minors as well as making 11 other referrals. A recent survey found that around 60 percent of youths affected by child labor trafficking were form other countries, while around 40 percent were from the United States. The research found that victims commonly knew their trafficker and that in 40 percent of cases they were a family member. This could lead in some cases to the problem being overlooked, the report found. It also advocated for providing official and appropriate vocational opportunities for minors as well as safe housing for all young people in the country to make them less vulnerable to laboral exploitation.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/06/2025 – 23:00

D-Day: The Great Crusade And The Men Who Made It Work

D-Day: The Great Crusade And The Men Who Made It Work

Authored by Daniel Oliver via American Greatness,

Seventy-one years ago next month, a young man went with his parents and siblings to Europe on a Cunard liner, the MV Britannic.

On the liner with them was a middle-aged couple going to France to visit, for the first time, their son’s grave in Normandy, France.

The beaches of Normandy are where thousands of soldiers, including their son, landed and died on D-Day: June 6, 1944.

The young man, then aged fifteen, had, at best and generously, little understanding of what that couple was doing. Oh yes, he remembered the war from his earliest childhood: he remembered blackouts in New York City, remembered his mother putting the heavy blue paper that cotton came in those days over the windows of their apartment so the “Jerries” (Germans) wouldn’t see any light, remembered hearing planes fly overhead, wondering whether they were “ours” or “theirs,” and remembered his father going at night to stand on the roofs of buildings to be a spotter of German aircraft.

And he remembered hearing the church bells ring when the war in Europe ended—but he was only six then, so his memory was, and is… sketchy.

Seventeen years later, when he was serving in the army in Germany, the horror of war intruded into his faint memory—and almost entirely literary understanding—of armed conflict.

He was a linguist, trained to understand Russian, and particularly Russian military language and jargon. In the unit he was serving with, the best duty, but only for the best linguists, was “plane duty”: the soldiers flew along the East German border most of an afternoon and night, listening to whatever they could pick up, and then had several days off! Our young man was selected for plane duty but was scrubbed from it, permanently, because he was going home for a few weeks of leave.

One night after he returned from leave, the plane crashed. All on board were killed. The official explanation was engine failure, but all the soldiers on the base “knew” it had been shot down by the East Germans (probably the pilot had strayed over the border) and that the U.S. government (the Kennedy administration) had decided not to make a cause célèbre out of it.

Our then-young man remembers seeing the married men’s wives (some of them no more than about eighteen years old) come to the base and collect their husbands’ belongings. That’s when the horror of war hit home.

No movie, not even Saving Private Ryan, could produce the effect of seeing those young girls collecting, grasping at the scanty memorabilia that remained from their very short married lives.

Twenty-seven years later, on a Sunday afternoon, our young man, by then middle-aged, took his children to Coleville-sur-Mer, which is where the Normandy American Cemetery is located. It was officially dedicated on July 19, 1956. Before 1956, the remains of American soldiers who died during the Normandy campaign were temporarily interred at various sites, including the original cemetery established at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer shortly after D-Day. It was to one of those sites that the couple on the Cunard liner were going.

That Sunday afternoon, the sun was bright and the weather warm, not at all like D-Day, when the temperature there had been around 55 degrees and the water temperature 59 degrees. (When was the last time you went swimming in 59-degree water?) The wind had been blowing 10 to 20 mph, gusting higher at times, which created the waves and surf that complicated the beach landings and made airborne drops difficult—facts you know if you’ve seen the movies.

But on that sunny day so many years later, our middle-aged man watched two of his sons stroll up from the landing beach in their Brooks Brothers blazers and loafers. He stood transfixed, watching, appreciating the study in contrast—and his good luck of not being on the army plane that had crashed in the line of duty.

Today, the cemetery at Coleville-sur-Mer, burial ground of 9,387 soldiers, is, some of its visitors think, the eighth wonder of the world. Rows and rows of graves marked by crosses, and some by Stars of David, remind us that greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his life for a friend.

Yes, yes, those soldiers didn’t plan to lay down their lives. Most were drafted, although about a quarter had volunteered. But still, they did lay down their lives, and you can, and should, visit their graves at the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer before you… join them. And if you can’t get to Normandy, there are 156 military cemeteries in the U.S.—one of which is bound to be near enough to you to coax a visit.

Can those of us today, in our Brooks Brothers suits, or BB look-alikes, ever really appreciate the grind and sacrifice of war? Or is it all simply beyond most of our ability to imagine?

There’s a museum at the Normandy cemetery that displays letters from some of the young soldiers who went from America to those beaches, so many of them to die. Their letters show that many had no idea where they were going or even where Normandy was. But there they were, nevertheless, saving Western Civilization.

World War I was called “the war to end all wars.”

But of course it wasn’t, as the world discovered only twenty-one years later.

Can wars ever end? Probably not, because some things are worth fighting for. And dying for. Is Western Civilization one of those things? Do most Americans think it is? Do enough Americans think it is worth dying for? Will we have to find out?

That is worth contemplating on June 6 this year, as we remember—as the once-young, and then middle-aged, and now old man remembers—those who died for us eighty-one years ago, some of whom are buried in the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 06/06/2025 – 22:35