Authored by Andrew Topf via OilPrice.com,

• A resurgence in nuclear energy is now underway, fueled by rising energy security concerns, climate goals, and soaring uranium prices.

• The U.S. and parts of Europe are embracing a nuclear revival, with President Trump targeting a quadrupling of U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050.

• European nations such as Denmark, Spain, and Germany are signaling renewed openness to advanced reactor technologies.

The Fukushima disaster soured the world on nuclear energy and the uranium industry after tsunami waves inundated Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex on March 11, 2011.

The tsunami, triggered by a major offshore earthquake, disabled the plant’s cooling systems, causing three reactors to overheat and partially melt down, with subsequent releases of radioactive materials into the air and ocean.

As the world watched in horror, public and government confidence in nuclear power plummeted, leading some countries to phase out or halt nuclear power development plans.

Germany, Belgium and Italy decided to phase out nuclear power or halt planned expansions, while Spain and Switzerland elected not to build new plants.

The accident led to stricter safety requirements and more thorough assessments of existing nuclear plants.

In Japan, nuclear power’s contribution to electricity generation dropped dramatically, with coal-fired plants filling the gap.

The accident spurred increased focus on alternative energy sources like gas, coal, and renewables, as well as a push for new reactor designs with improved safety features.

The event also took its toll on the uranium market and companies that explore for and mine the nuclear fuel. Post-Fukushima, the slump in demand cratered uranium prices, with the market bottoming out near $30 a pound in mid-2014.

Fast-forward to 2022, and the story changes. Spurred by renewed demand for nuclear energy and a leap in yellowcake prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, uranium miners began reviving mothballed uranium projects.

Uranium hit a 10-year high of $105.49/lb on Jan. 29, 2024, and closed out last year with a spot price of $72.63 and a long-term price of $80.50, according to Canadian uranium miner Cameco.  

Uranium futures rose to $72 per pound in late May, the highest in nearly three months, and extending the rebound from 18-month lows in March as the possibility of political support for the nuclear sector outweighed the view of ample supply, said Trading Economics.

Despite skepticism from some quarters on the safety of nuclear, there are just as many who believe it is a relatively benign form of baseload power that is necessary for the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Nuclear, the argument goes, is emissions-free but does not suffer the intermittency problem of wind and solar.

One of the more recent cheerleaders of nuclear is Donald Trump.

Last Friday the US president signed executive orders pledging to expand American nuclear energy capacity from approximately 100 gigawatts in 2024 to 400 GW by 2050.

“Swift and decisive action is required to jumpstart America’s nuclear energy industrial base and ensure our national and economic security by increasing fuel availability and production, securing civil nuclear supply chains, improving the efficiency with which advanced nuclear reactors are licensed, and preparing our workforce to establish America’s energy dominance and accelerate our path towards a more secure and independent energy future,” World Nuclear News quoted from the executive order ‘Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base’.

A Fox News article posted on the White House website states:

Through a series of executive orders signed this week, President Trump is taking action to usher in an American nuclear renaissance. For the first time in many years, America has a path forward for quickly and safely testing advanced nuclear reactor designs, constructing new nuclear reactors at scale, and building a strong domestic nuclear industrial base…

This week’s executive actions will help us reach that goal in four ways.

First, we are going to fully leverage our DOE national laboratories to increase the speed with which we test new nuclear reactor designs. There is a big difference between a paper reactor and a practical reactor. The only way to bridge that gap—understanding the challenges that must be surmounted to bring reactors to the market, and building public trust in their deployment—is to test and evaluate demonstration reactors. 

Second, for our national and economic security, we are going to leverage the Departments of Defense and Energy to build nuclear reactors on federally owned land. This will support critical national security needs which require reliable, high-density power sources that are invulnerable to external threats or grid failures.

Third, to lower regulatory burdens and shorten licensing timelines, we are asking the NRC to undergo broad cultural change and regulatory reform, requiring a decision on a reactor license to be issued within 18 months. This will reduce regulatory uncertainty while maintaining nuclear safety. We will also reconsider the use of radiation limits that are not science based, impossible to achieve, and do not increase the safety of the American people. 

There are currently 54 nuclear power plants operating in the United States, with 28 states having at least one reactor. According to the Energy Information Agency (EIA), Unit 3 at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia entered serviced on July 31, 2023 as part of a two-unit expansion project. It has 1,117 megawatts (MW) of net summer electricity generation capacity.

Unit 4, a Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized light water reactor, began commercial operations in April 2024. It is now the largest nuclear power plant in the United States, with four reactors and a total of 4,536 MW net summer electricity generation capacity.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the birthplace of the anti-nuclear movement, there has also been a rethink of nuclear power as countries pursue more energy independence.

As CNBC reports, In just the last few weeks, Denmark announced plans to reconsider a 40-year ban on nuclear power as part of a major policy shift, Spain reportedly signaled an openness to review a shutdown of its nuclear plants and Germany dropped its long-held opposition to atomic power.

Denmark banned the use of atomic energy in 1985. It is important to point out that the Danish government is not considering a return to traditional nuclear power plants. Rather, The renewables-heavy Scandinavian country said in mid-May that it plans to analyze the potential benefits and risks of new advanced nuclear technologies, such as small modular reactors, to complement solar and wind technologies.

Spain’s Environmental Transition Minister said in late April that, while the government is proceeding with plans to retire nuclear reactors over the next decade, extensions beyond 2035 could not be ruled out.

The statement by Minister Sara Aagesen followed a catastrophic power outage affecting much of Spain, Portugal and southern France.

Germany, which closed the last of its three remaining nuclear plants in 2023, recently dropped its objection to French efforts to ensure that nuclear power is treated on a par with renewables in EU legislation, the Financial Times reported on May 19, citing French and German officials.

Authored by Felix Abt via VoiceFromRussia.ch,

Why Hitler Never Invaded Switzerland: The Power of Armed Neutrality

Switzerland’s survival during World War II was no accident—it was the result of a deliberate and calculated strategy of armed neutrality. While Hitler conquered most of Europe, Switzerland remained independent, unoccupied, and defiantly neutral, despite being surrounded by hostile Axis forces.

Nazi Germany had an invasion plan (Operation Tannenbaum), and Hitler despised Switzerland’s democracy. Yet, the invasion never came. Why? Because Switzerland masterfully balanced defiance with pragmatism, ensuring that the cost of occupation far outweighed any potential gains for the Third Reich.

This was not passive neutrality—it was active, armed, and uncompromising.

1. Neutrality as a Shield—Backed by Strength

Switzerland’s neutrality was not merely a diplomatic posture—it was a military doctrine. Unlike other neutral nations such as Belgium or the Netherlands, Switzerland did not rely on promises or treaties for protection. Instead, it deterred aggression through:

• A fully mobilized citizen army (850,000 troops at its peak—nearly 20% of the population).
• The National Reduit strategy, which turned the Swiss Alps into an impregnable fortress.
• A policy of total resistance—General Guisan declared in 1940 that Switzerland would fight to the last bullet rather than surrender.

Hitler understood that invading Switzerland would result in:

✔ A prolonged guerrilla war in the mountains.
✔ Diverting half a million troops from the Eastern Front.
✔ Losing critical banking and trade links.

Neutrality only worked because Switzerland was prepared to defend it at all costs.

2. Economic Concessions—But Never Submission

Switzerland struck pragmatic deals with Nazi Germany, but it never became a puppet state.

• Swiss banks processed Nazi gold (including looted assets), yet the country refused full integration into Hitler’s financial system.
• Swiss factories sold machinery to Germany, but never ceded direct Nazi control over production.
• Germany used Swiss tunnels for supply routes, but Switzerland strictly regulated shipments, rejecting unrestricted access.

These concessions kept Nazi Germany dependent on Swiss cooperation—making invasion economically counterproductive.

3. Diplomatic Tightrope—Mastering Strategic Maneuvering

Switzerland’s neutrality was not blind idealism—it was cold, calculated realpolitik:

• Espionage hub – Both the Allies and Axis used Switzerland for intelligence operations, yet Switzerland never openly sided with either.

• Humanitarian leverage – The Red Cross, based in Geneva, provided aid to POWs (including Germans), granting Switzerland moral influence.

• Refugee policies—a dark compromise – While Switzerland rejected many Jewish refugees, it sheltered thousands, carefully navigating Nazi pressure and international scrutiny.

Switzerland survived by never leaning too far toward either side, maintaining just enough independence to stay intact.

4. The Lesson: Neutrality Must Be Defended

Switzerland’s WWII survival proves that neutrality is meaningless without the strength to uphold it. Hitler did not spare Switzerland out of respect—he avoided invasion because:

✔ The military cost was too high.
✔ The economic benefits were too valuable to lose.
✔ Swiss resistance made occupation impractical.

Other neutral nations like Belgium, Denmark, and Norway were overrun because they lacked Switzerland’s unique combination of geography, military readiness, and ruthless pragmatism.

Fazit: Warum die Neutralität der Schweiz funktionierte

Switzerland’s survival was a masterclass in realpolitik:

1. It armed itself to the teeth—neutrality without strength is surrender.

2. It made deals but never surrendered sovereignty—economic cooperation ≠ occupation.

3. It played both sides without committing—diplomatic agility kept it alive.

Switzerland’s independence was not a gift from Hitler—it was secured through steel, strategy, and sheer stubbornness.

Neutrality is not passive. It is a battle—and Switzerland fought to win.

A Warning from History: Switzerland’s Neutrality Under Threat

Switzerland’s WWII strategy remains deeply relevant today. In an era of shifting global power struggles, small nations do not survive by hoping for mercy—they endure by ensuring that aggression remains too costly to pursue.

It is concerning that some Swiss elites appear to have forgotten the lessons of history—the very principles that enabled Switzerland, a nation shaped by adversity, to prosper despite its scarcity of natural resources, insufficient arable land to feed its inhabitants, and lack of access to the sea.

Take the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Switzerland’s most influential newspaper. During WWII, its editor-in-chief, Willy Bretscher, was a staunch defender of neutrality, resisting both Nazi fascism and Soviet communism. Under his leadership, the NZZ balanced criticism with pragmatism, recognizing that Switzerland’s survival depended on rejecting ideological alignment.

Today, however, Eric Guyer, the NZZ’s editor-in-chief, has taken a sharply different stance. A fervent transatlanticist ideologue, he consistently targets Russia and China while openly dismissing neutrality—calling it a “burden” and leaning toward NATO integration. This shift is dangerous.

The Swiss people must push back!

Neutrality is not a relic—it is the foundation of Switzerland’s survival. If the country abandons its strategic independence, it risks becoming a pawn in great-power conflicts, much like smaller nations that fell to Hitler’s ambitions.

History’s warning is clear: A Switzerland that forgets its neutrality is a Switzerland that gambles with its survival.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico delivered a stark warning to fellow European leaders during his speech at CPAC Hungary in Budapest on Thursday, declaring that the European Union’s attempt to impose a “mandatory political opinion” on its member states signals the collapse of the European project and a departure from democratic values.

“The imposition of a mandatory political opinion, the abolition of the veto, the punishment of the sovereign and the brave, the new Iron Curtain, the preference for war over peace. This is the end of the common European project. This is a departure from democracy. This is the precursor of a huge military conflict,” he warned.

Fico’s remarks came as he revealed both he and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had received threats from “a particularly nervous new German chancellor,” who warned them that if they did not fall in line with Brussels’ uniform view on military support for Ukraine and sanctioning Russia, “‘You will be punished.’”

“No one in a peaceful and democratic project should have the right to treat other EU member states in this way, regardless of their size and economic strength,” he said.

🇸🇰🇭🇺 @RobertFicoSVK: “A particularly nervous new German chancellor recently told Hungary and Slovakia that if we do not obey and abandon our sovereign positions, we will be punished.

“The imposition of a mandatory political opinion is the end of the common European project.” pic.twitter.com/l9T1COU0YQ

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) May 29, 2025

Fico, a veteran of Slovak politics who survived an assassination attempt last year, framed his overall remarks as a defense of national sovereignty in the face of what he described as increasing aggression from Brussels and major EU powers.

“I do not want to see our sovereignty and the national identity melt away in the generalist supranational, international structures, especially those in Brussels,” he said.

While acknowledging his left-wing roots, Fico distanced himself from what he called the “Brussels kind” of social democracy, instead describing himself as a “rural socialist” focused on defending Slovakia’s traditions, Christian heritage, and national interests. “As a strong leftist, I have no problem spending the night with the people on the production line to support higher night shift allowances or wage increases,” he said.

Fico’s appearance at CPAC Hungary — and his warm praise for host Viktor Orbán — highlighted the growing alignment between parts of Europe’s left-wing populism and the nationalist right in opposition to Brussels orthodoxy.

The Slovak prime minister repeatedly returned to the idea that the EU is moving away from its founding principles. He warned against abolishing the veto rights of member states and moving toward qualified majority voting on key issues such as foreign policy and defense, which he said would further erode national sovereignty.

“We may have to expect unprecedented decisions such as, for example, the abolition of the right of veto of EU member states,” he said.

“The time may indeed come when there will be punishments for having a sovereign opinion.”

On Ukraine, Fico reiterated his government’s refusal to send military aid, criticizing the European Commission’s strategy of isolating Russia as economically self-defeating and geopolitically reckless. “If they have no realistic response to the war in Ukraine today… they cannot continue in their nervousness by suppressing the sovereignty of individual member states on legitimate issues.”

He ended his speech with a call to preserve diversity and sovereign decision-making within the EU. “Let our diversity, sovereignty, and national identity be our strength and not weakness,” he said.

Read more here…

Authored by Jacob Howland via UnHerd.com,.

Peter Thiel is a big thinker, and these days he’s been thinking about Doomsday.

In a series of four lectures he’s given three times, at Oxford, Harvard, and the University of Austin, he’s tried to understand human history, and particularly modernity, within the framework of biblical prophecies of the End of Days.

Thiel believes that the Antichrist, whose identity is uncertain – is it a person, a system, a global tyranny? – is “not just a medieval fantasy”.

His free-ranging lectures, moving rapidly between disparate texts (Gulliver’s Travels; Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen) and topics (sacred violence; high-velocity global financial systems), defy easy summary.

But their leading themes include the Antichrist’s relationship to Armageddon and the roles of technology and empire in the Antichrist’s rise. It’s an ambitious, thought-provoking attempt to weave, from seemingly unrelated strands of meaning, a theological/anthropological/historical narrative that aims to make sense of the whole of human experience.

Some will find Thiel’s project very odd.

How could an enormously successful, mathematically-gifted, philosophically-educated tech entrepreneur seriously entertain Bible-thumping myths from the Apocalypse of John?

Here’s a better question: how could he — and we — not take them seriously?

As Dorian Lynskey writes in his book, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World, “apocalyptic angst has become a constant: all flow and no ebb.” Contemporary culture has long been saturated with post-apocalyptic novels, comic books, films, TV series, and video games. Zombie end-times fantasies do particularly well in all formats. The mindless, mechanical mob of the undead, who hunger insatiably for the brains of the living, has become a primary and pervasive cultural symbol — one that resonates with a widespread sense of impending catastrophe that’s been building steadily since the 2020 Covid lockdowns. And if bioweapons, climate change, nuclear bombs, or AI don’t drive the human species to extinction, drastic measures deemed necessary to forestall such dangers, such as the establishment of a single world government, might themselves bring an end to politics, morality, spiritual life, and culture. Thiel is driven to find a way between the binary alternative of No World or One World, the whirlpool of planetary destruction or the many-headed monster of global totalitarianism.

Thiel’s insight is that, unlike most contemporary imaginings of global catastrophe, the Bible’s prophecies do more than pluck our inner strings of existential dread.

They help us to understand our chaotic times. Matthew 24:24 predicts that “[T]here shall arise false Christs and false prophets … [and] they shall deceive the very elect.” In other words, the Antichrist will attempt to appear more Christian than Christ himself, even as it works to accomplish the wholesale destruction of the Christian underpinnings of Western civilisation. The Nazis pursued this strategy, but were hampered by the limited appeal of their antisemitic ideology. German theologians fashioned a new myth of Jesus as a spirited warrior who strove to destroy Judaism, and they elevated Hitler to the status of the second coming of Christ, who would finish the work Jesus failed to complete: the total extermination of Jews and Judaism. A more successful Antichrist would, like the French revolutionaries and the Marxists, promote values that seem more consistent with the Judeo-Christian foundations of civilisation, such as universal liberty, equality, and justice.

While the past displays a seemingly endless cycle of civilisational rises and falls, Thiel believes that modern science and technology have turned history into a linear progression, as the Bible teaches, with a beginning and a final, irreversible end. From its inception, technology — a political project as much as one of engineering — has dangled before us the shimmering promise of godhood, with which the serpent tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Francis Bacon and René Descartes, the project’s 16th- and 17th-century founders, rightly understood it to be an anti-Christian endeavour that needed to be cloaked with a veil of religious orthodoxy.

Bacon’s New Atlantis, which describes a secretive, ostensibly Christian community of scientists devoted to the experimental investigation of the properties and uses of all material things, features a prototype of the modern research university called the College of Six Days’ Works. Descartes’ Discourse on Method, which advances (with a similar veneer of piety) the bold promise of making human beings “the masters and possessors of nature”, has six parts in imitation of the first six days of God’s creation. In both books, the Sabbath — the seventh day devoted to God — falls by the wayside. The frontispiece of Bacon’s Great Instauration further hints at the transgressive nature of technology. It features a ship passing beyond the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar), a landmark the divine hero established to warned ancient sailors not to exit the Mediterranean into the unnavigable Atlantic. And the book’s epigraph, “Many shall go to and fro and knowledge shall be increased,” is from the prophecy of the End of Days in Daniel 12, as if to suggest that the expansion of technological power would bring history to its apocalyptic conclusion.

An early modern conceit that has in many respects become a late modern curse, technology underlies virtually every apocalyptic anxiety of our time. But Thiel is unsure of the role of advanced technology, and in particular AI, in the big picture of history he’s trying to work out. Is it the Antichrist? Does it prepare the way for the Antichrist? Or is it a katechon, the mysterious force mentioned at 2 Thessalonians 2:6 that forestalls the Antichrist (the Greek word katechein means “to hold down”)? The katechon plays a major part in Thiel’s analysis, because things capable of opposing the Antichrist can also advance its aims, and vice-versa. In the absence of the existential threat of Communism, for example, Western countries like the US and UK, aided by advanced digital technology, have turned psychological operations and disinformation tactics developed to fight foreign adversaries against their own citizens. This suggests deep cultural sickness, a crisis of confidence in the values that defeated totalitarianism in the 20th century.

Thiel nevertheless thinks that worries about AI taking over the world are more dangerous than AI itself, because the fear of existential threats plays directly into the cold hands of deracinated elites who are working to establish a global managerial state. Even so, there is something satanic about AI, a ghostly entity that is increasingly capable of hacking human minds on a very large scale. What Thiel said of Bacon seems to apply to the developers of Large Language Models (LLMs): they’ve “summoned a demon they don’t believe exists”.

The Antichrist is, by definition, negative and dependent. It rejects Christ and Christian values while offering a spurious imitation of them. AI is a similarly dependent being. It is a simulacrum of human intelligence and language, capacities of thought and speech the Greeks called logos. But AI lacks essential elements of human logos: its embeddedness in the world through birth in a body bound for death, and the moral and intellectual interiority that makes the human being an image of God. Speech is a living voice that springs from the soul — to give interiority its biblical name — embedded in body of an existing individual. But AI is not a living being, and it replaces inner plenitude with mechanical, algorithmic emptiness. Embeddedness in space and time expresses itself as concern for, and responsiveness to, the actual conditions of existence, the biblical paradigm of which is Adam’s naming of the animals who live alongside him in Eden. But while AI requires material substrates — servers and other hardware — it inhabits them in purely occasional and contingent ways, like the demons that beg Christ to pass from the mad Galilean to the herd of pigs. Its relationship with actuality is equally contingent. It exists in a digital cloud of pure possibility, where it arranges information according to no criterion of truth besides probability and the rules of logic. That’s why ChatGPT and other LLMs are so prone to hallucinations, like citing books that exist only in Borges’s fictional, virtually infinite Library of Babel.

Yet, like the sham philosopher and bad citizen Plato calls “the sophist”, who is equally indifferent to truth, AI has a seemingly divine ability to imitate virtually anything with lifelike plausibility and vividness, and in multiple media. The market, whose whims have for decades guided the world’s best software engineers, has made this soulless capacity of representation, tailored to the tastes of the individual consumer, available to almost everyone on the planet. It has taught us to spend hours every day in its virtual reality, entertaining or distracting ourselves with the shadows it casts on the walls of our own private caves. Yet, using AI for more serious purposes is no less a Faustian bargain. Every advance AI makes in serving our desires degrades fundamental human capacities and gives it more mastery over human beings. Using AI to navigate makes us less capable navigators. Using AI to write makes us less capable writers. Using it to make decisions weakens our executive capacities of judgement and action. Peak AI, ministering to the inner emptiness and boredom of atomised, directionless selves, will mean peak human debility and enslavement. Aren’t these the goals of the Antichrist — which, whatever form it may take, always seeks to remake human beings in its own image?

Not so fast: perhaps AI is really a katechon. That is the argument of Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska in The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. Karp (a classmate of Thiel’s at Stanford who also studied philosophy and, with Thiel, founded Palantir Technologies) and Zamiska, his longtime deputy, insist that the enemies of the West will prevail unless software developers work in close collaboration with the American government to produce AI-powered military capabilities superior to that of our adversaries, as Palantir has done using LLMs. They acknowledge that this will require a massive cultural shift among our technological and cosmopolitan elites, who’ve embraced an “ethereal”, “post-national”, and “disembodied” morality that scorns patriotism, and who’ve learned “that belief itself, in anything other than oneself perhaps, is dangerous and to be avoided”. Yet it is the market’s deployment of advanced technology, including AI, that has above all promoted this “Hollowing Out of the American Mind” (the title of the book’s second part), not least by rapidly dissolving social bonds, encouraging pathological self-absorption, and making possible — even incentivising — digital swarms of doxxing and online cancellation.

Considered in the context of Karp’s and Zamiska’s urgent call to arms, the revelation of this contradiction is genuinely apocalyptic. Whether it will accelerate or slow the advent of the Antichrist and the bang or whimper of the world’s end depends on our individual and collective capacities to make informed decisions that call for moral courage — capacities that have been eroded by technologically-induced oblivion, historical, moral, and metaphysical forgetfulness, and our ingrained habit of “ced[ing] direction over our interior lives, the development of our moral selves, to the market”. Contemplating our predicament, it is hard not to feel discouraged. Hope alone remains in the Pandora’s box our clever man-gods have constructed — hope, without which the understanding (at least, for those whose prayers delivers no consolation) would be plagued by the perplexity and fear that have flown therefrom. It’s time to take it out of the box and hold it close to our hearts and minds, where it might inspire new growths of wisdom.

*  *  *

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

David Tregear, a Victoria man, saw his Equifax credit score unexpectedly drop to zero, leaving him unable to access loans or credit. He had stopped using credit to avoid debt but never expected to be penalized, according to CBC.

“I was just stunned,” Tregear said. “What do you mean I don’t have credit?”

Equifax only explained the issue after CBC’s Go Public got involved, citing a rarely publicized policy: credit scores may be reset to zero after long inactivity.

Tregear’s score was around 700 before it vanished, and now he must rebuild it from scratch — a catch-22, as lenders reject him without an existing score.

Go Public found no law governs how credit scores are calculated in Canada, giving private agencies like Equifax unchecked control.

CBC writes that consumer advocate Geoff White called this lack of transparency a major flaw in the system, saying, “A credit score is a very important piece of information. It shouldn’t be arbitrarily wiped out through lack of use of credit.”

Tregear spent over a year filing complaints with multiple regulators, only to be referred in circles. It was only after media attention that B.C. consumer agencies agreed to investigate — after previously turning him away due to jurisdictional confusion.

“I’m being punished for living debt-free,” Tregear said, as he continues to face major barriers without a credit score.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

An executive order on science slipped through last week with almost no comment from the media. Its central concern is to set science on a better path after so many years of egregious abuses in which the core principles of science have been set aside in favor of political messaging.

The title is “Restoring Gold Standard Science.” It is an ambitious attempt to reframe what science is and does, not to politicize it but exactly the opposite. Only better science with the highest standards, the order says, is capable of restoring trust.

You have surely heard that the Trump administration is waging war on science. Read this order: the opposite is true.

“Over the last 5 years, confidence that scientists act in the best interests of the public has fallen significantly. A majority of researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics believe science is facing a reproducibility crisis. The falsification of data by leading researchers has led to high-profile retractions of federally funded research.”

To solve the problem, the order seeks to “restore the American people’s faith in the scientific enterprise and institutions that create and apply scientific knowledge in service of the public good. Reproducibility, rigor, and unbiased peer review must be maintained. This order restores the scientific integrity policies of my first Administration and ensures that agencies practice data transparency, acknowledge relevant scientific uncertainties, are transparent about the assumptions and likelihood of scenarios used, approach scientific findings objectively, and communicate scientific data accurately.”

The gold standard of science has the following features, say the order:

(i)   reproducible;

(ii)  transparent;

(iii)  communicative of error and uncertainty;

(iv)  collaborative and interdisciplinary;

(v)  skeptical of its findings and assumptions;

(vi)  structured for falsifiability of hypotheses;

(vii) subject to unbiased peer review;

(viii) accepting of negative results as positive outcomes; and

(ix)  without conflicts of interest.

If anything like this really began to govern scientific standards, many things would change. NIH will be using these standards for funding science for the next four years. One hopes it will last further. There is tremendous wisdom here. In the end, it will be up to journal editors and science reporters to adapt new standards of scrutiny over what is good science and what is not.

Consider just one principle: communicative of error and uncertainty. This profoundly affects the hypothetical models that have come to play a huge role in policy decisions. Nearly all the climate change papers rely on elaborate models that presume to reveal exactly what they presume. Once you dig through these things, you almost cannot believe that they were published.

‘Honey, can you take out the trash?”

“Not now. I’m working on a model to prove it is wholly unnecessary to do so. My model further reveals that the trash will never need to be taken out again, given the assumptions. It’s science.”

Models are also what drove the world to lock down for a virus. We all saw the drawings that urged us to flatten the curve. They presumed exactly what they were attempting to demonstrate. Instead of seeing the obvious fakery, most science reporters acted like the PhD’d prophets were contemporary versions of Nostradamus.

That was only the beginning of an amazing tsunami of fakery that lasted for years.

I’ve recently revisited the standards by which the initial vaccine trials for SARS-CoV-2 were run. We hear that they were placebo-controlled and randomized. That is supposed to make all other questions irrelevant.

Remember that there are two standards: effectiveness and safety. Most of the doubts about the shots these days focus on safety and rightly so. But even if we isolate the effective part of the question, we run into astonishing examples of manipulation and subterfuge.

* The trials lasted just long enough (2–4 months) to capture an immune response but not long enough to show that it evaporates quickly after. By 5 months and following, effectiveness wanes further and further. The trials simply could not capture this, though it is highly likely that the manufacturers knew this was inevitable. By the time people caught on, the shot salesmen had another product to hawk from their wagons. They called it a booster.

* The trials defined fully vaccinated as two weeks following the second dose, snagging the absolute peak of response but neglecting anything else. The protocols were laid out to succeed on paper even if they did not really succeed in real life.

* The trials seemed rigged to minimize participation from the population groups that were most vulnerable to significant medical consequences of infection while including as many non-vulnerable groups as possible, thus skewing the results.

* The trials claimed effectiveness against hospitalization and death but the number of unvaccinated people in those affected groups was so low as to be statistical noise. The studies were underpowered. In one trial, only 10 people in the unvaccinated group landed in the hospital. It was on this basis that the shot was said to prevent that.

* The trials wholly excluded accounting for asymptomatic infection, which means they did not test for transmission at all, thus deleting all concerns to stop the spread and so on. In other words, people who took the shot could still spread the virus but the trials were structured to ignore that signal. When it became obvious, the promoters pretended to be amazed and shocked.

* Many trials later unblinded placebo groups that were offered vaccines as early as December 2020, thus removing the control group. They deliberately eschewed following up on the best feature of the trial design, clearly with an attempt to cover up unfavorable results.

* Everyone knows that these viruses mutate very quickly but the rushed trials dealt only with the initial wild type, which, by the time the shot arrived, was already changing to a new variant. This was clearly not a mistake!

Experts published all these criticisms as it was happening. It was extremely difficult for nonspecialists to keep up. I can personally recall receiving a flood of submissions detailing each of these points. It was overwhelming, especially since all these criticisms pertain only to whether the shot even worked to do what they claimed. Safety then became another problem.

It was like watching a magic show: you know it is not real but everything is moving too quickly to debunk it in real time. In any case, there is zero chance that all these issues and problems were mere mistakes. They were all designed to do exactly what they did, but even then the public was skeptical. At that point, the politicians decided to assist industry and force everyone to take the shot.

And yet it gets better. All other boosters for variants were approved based on the old results of the presumably unimpeachable trials. The boosters were never tested in any rigorous way. They would inject a few mice, observe an immune response, and call it a day. Top officials at the FDA even resigned because they could not stand by and watch this unfold as it did.

I’m still gobsmacked that all this happened.

Very clearly, the pharmaceutical companies are genuine experts in how to deploy the appearance of science without the reality.

The new executive order should prevent this sort of thing in the future. Indeed, the new head of the FDA has specifically said that no more shots will be approved without well-constructed and transparent trials using the highest standards. Given what we know, there is no chance that any more versions of this shot will even be approved. The manufacturers won’t even attempt to try. Indeed, Moderna has already stopped its work on a combination COVID/Flu shot, knowing full well that they cannot get it through.

The new standards are highly welcome but the long-term solution is to erect a much higher wall between government and science. Ideally, government would stop funding research altogether simply because the effort has proven to be so dangerous.

Science in the first and second industrial revolutions was largely decentralized. Innovation came not from government but from private tinkerers and practitioners with real-world experience. The period from 1850 to 1900 gave us the world we know today, born not of agencies with huge budgets but businessmen, doctors, engineers, and builders, looking for better ways to serve humanity at a profit or at least with minimal losses. In those days, we did not call the results “technology” but rather the fruit of the “practical arts.”

I’ve always adored that term and wish we could take it back.

What changed about science in the 20th century is that it began to serve the cause of powerful interests rather than the people. After the Second World War and following the ominous deployment of nuclear weapons, there was no turning back.

This is what must be fixed. The ultimate goal of gold-standard science must be to restore the rigors of past achievements without the corruptions that come with politics.

In this way, the cause of science should welcome a pull back in government backing of science. The funding by industry posing another unique set of problems but at least in this case there is no doubt about the purpose and drive. It’s validity can be assessed in light of that.

If you want to travel back in history and get a glimpse of the spread of violent Bolshevism across Europe in the early 20th Century, the west coast of the US in 2025 is a close parallel.  Seattle in particular has become a cesspool of extreme Antifa activism and apathetic local governance.  It’s a place where zero tolerance is displayed for differing political views and violence is considered an acceptable strategy to silence opponents.  Seattle is a glimpse back to the height of the woke era, and a warning of what could happen if the political left is ever allowed to gain real power again.

As we covered last week, Antifa groups organized and descended on a Christian event held by Mayday USA in Cal Anderson Park, within the same area that was once the “CHAZ autonomous zone” during the riots of 2020.  The reaction from the woke mob to the peaceful free speech event was vicious and at least 23 arrests were made by police. 

What the local news does not mention, however, is the fact that these kinds of disruptive actions are a regular occurrence in the Seattle area.  Any visit from a conservative group or speaker in a public venue is immediately swarmed and attacked; people who attend the events are specifically targeted for harassment.  Antifa isn’t only seeking to intimidate the speakers or the organizers, they go after anyone who shows up to listen.  The establishment media will never show you most of these incidents.

Breaking: Violent Trantifa members attacked a detransitioned gay man (in the glasses and grey suit) who was attempting to go to the Christian worship event at City Hall in Seattle. Video by @camhigby: pic.twitter.com/ItwL6vX2cw

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) May 28, 2025

What activists get away with is astonishing. The behavior on display is grotesque and the Seattle police have done very little to stop it.  To put it plainly, 23 arrests is nowhere near enough.  No one is safe from these people, including women, children, the elderly and journalists.

Antifa targets mother and baby at Christian worship event in Seattle. Send in the National Guard! pic.twitter.com/dakqrxzaD4

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) May 28, 2025

In some cases, the police yell at those filming the activists and their crimes, instead of forcing the activists to behave.

I was just physically chased by Antifa militants and trans activists outside the pro-Christian rally in Seattle.

Dozens of Seattle PD officers came to my rescue. I was told I am no longer allowed to be on the outskirts from my own safety. pic.twitter.com/6VPYTVt3XS

— Katie Daviscourt 📸 (@KatieDaviscourt) May 28, 2025

A common methodology of Antifa groups is to provoke – They surround a target to harass and intimidate, blocking their path or herding them in another direction.  If the target strikes back to defend themselves, the protesters then cry “assault”. 

Breaking — Journalist @choeshow was just assaulted by trans Antifa activists outside of Seattle City Hall.@SeattlePD made two arrests.

The incident occurred ahead at the pro-Christian rally calling for Mayor Harrell’s resignation. pic.twitter.com/JaxCFR2LLk

— Katie Daviscourt 📸 (@KatieDaviscourt) May 27, 2025

At a Riley Gaines speaking event at the University of Washington in Seattle, Antifa freaks stalked attendees as they left and threatened them with death.  The police did nothing.

“It would be so beautiful to see your bodies hanging from the tree”

Trantifa/Antifa members threatened an elderly couple leaving a @Riley_Gaines_ event at the @UW campus. Police had to escort them as the militants followed. Video by @KatieDaviscourt: pic.twitter.com/ZapSmwQo8y

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) May 7, 2025

The intimidation tactic skirts the line of free speech and protest in every way, but activists are given considerable legal immunity by the city government. 

Antifa followed a woman walking with a cane & encouraged her to kill herself for attending a women’s rights event at @UW in Seattle featuring ex-collegiate swimmer @Riley_Gaines_. The extremists followed attendees to their cars to broadcast plate numbers. pic.twitter.com/hCY3lNR2XW

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) May 7, 2025

The notion that Antifa is just an “idea” rather than an organized group of people is nonsense.  These mobs are highly coordinated and they are clearly trained in provocateur strategies.  Whether or not they are being paid to show up is something that should be investigated.  FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino says the agency is looking into the targeted violence against the Christian event last week, but he should also look into the complicity of city officials as well as the possibility that NGOs are funding the activists in question.

Antifa and other woke groups have become accustomed to doing whatever they please without real consequences and this needs to change.  Violent leftists thrive in environments where permission is assumed; in other words, they expect to receive special treatment from the government and police.  The fact that 23 of them were arrested is a kind of miracle given the complicity of Seattle’s Mayor Bruce Harrell, but it is a limited measure.  The reality is that most of those people will likely be released with a slap on the wrist, and the cycle begins all over again.

Keep in mind, any conservative group using the same tactics would be met with an aggressive response from the city and they would be labeled domestic terrorists in the process.  Seattle’s Antifa problem is a symptom of a greater disease; the wokeness trickles down from the government and poisons the rest of the community.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Federal government scientists will likely be told to stop publishing in medical journals such as The Lancet, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a new podcast.

Kennedy said that if that happens, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will launch its own journals to publish research from its scientists.

Kennedy was speaking on the Ultimate Human Podcast in an interview released on May 27.

The health secretary said existing journals have serious problems, including not publishing datasets. That makes it hard to replicate studies and incentivizes cheating, he said.

“What we’re going to do is we’re going to devote probably 20 percent of NIH’s budget to replication; every study has to be replicated,” Kennedy said.

“We’re going to publish the peer review for the first time. We’re probably going to stop publishing in The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals because they’re all corrupt.”

Kennedy cited Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet. Horton has written that “much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue,” with issues such as conflicts of interest and small sample sizes plaguing the field.

Kennedy also referenced comments from former New England Journal of Medicine editor Marcia Angell, who wrote in 2009 that “it is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines.”

The current publication system means researchers must pay to get their research published, and often involves pharmaceutical companies funding research that supports their products, Kennedy said.

“Unless these journals change dramatically, we are going to stop NIH scientists from publishing there, and we’re going to create our own journals in-house in each of the institutions,” he added later. “And they’re going to become the preeminent journals.”

A spokesperson for the New England Journal of Medicine told The Epoch Times in an email that the journal has “an impeccable record of scientific rigor and independence.”

“We use rigorous peer review and editorial processes to ensure the objectivity and reliability of the research we publish, whether the work comes from academic or industry authors,” the spokesperson said.

“NEJM will continue to focus on publishing scientific breakthroughs to improve the health of Americans and people around the world.”

The Lancet and JAMA did not return requests for comment by publication time.

The NIH did not respond to an inquiry by publication time.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the NIH’s director, and Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, are on the editorial board of a publication, the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, that was founded earlier this year. The journal centers on open access, open peer review, paying and acknowledging reviewers, and letting any members of the academy publish their research “without article gatekeeping,” Martin Kulldorff, one of the founders, said in its first issue.

Both Bhattacharya and Makary are listed as on leave from the board.

The Make America Healthy Again Commission, which is chaired by Kennedy, recently said in its first report that American children have been getting sicker in part because of “overmedicalization” that is driven by “‘corporate capture,’ in which industry interests dominate and distort scientific literature, legislative actions, academic institutions, regulatory agencies, medical journals, physician organizations, clinical guidelines, and the news media.”

Assumptions about scientific literature, such as that the journals have confirmed the articles are accurate, are incorrect, the commission said. For instance, journals often don’t have access to patient-level data from researchers, which makes them unable to verify the accuracy of the reported data.

One of the commission’s 10 recommendations was that the NIH launch an initiative “to confront the replication crisis, investing in reproducibility efforts to improve trust and reliability in basic science and interventions for childhood chronic disease.”