Last week we noted new report from the New York Federal Reserve, which showed that while Americans’ credit card debt is falling, credit scores are starting to decline due to an uptick in student loan delinquencies. 

The NY Fed’s Center for Macroeconomic Data’s quarterly report reveals that overall household debt rose by $167 billion – with credit card debt declining by $29 billion. Yet, the delinquency rate for student loans surged from below 1% to nearly 7.7% after a pandemic-era pause on student loan payments was lifted in September 2023.

While the payments were resumed, policymakers extended a one-year ramp-up period that shielded borrowers’ missed payments from being reported to credit bureaus. This extension expired in October 2024, with delinquencies starting to hit the first quarter of 2025. 

Needless to say, it’s total carnage among borrowers, as one can see from Reddit’s ‘StudentLoans‘ forum.

“My credit score dropped 240+ points. i dont know what to do!!” said one Redditor, who says she can’t pay her bills because she doesn’t have a job after graduating in 2024.

“My score was in the high 700s and dropped to about 480,” said another Redditor, who said they were notified by reporting agency Experian that their credit “took a massive hit.”

“My transunion and equifax scores took a -100 hit due to my loans “just being recognized this January,”” reported another borrower.

“My credit dropped from a 720 to a 550,” said yet another – who reported having “6 total loans from school” that have been “deferred for a while.”

“Credit Got Torched” reads a Friday post. “i am unfortunately 1 of the 9 million people who received delinquency marks on my credit report from the dept of education for student loans, which decreased my credit score by 118 points.”

Interestingly, several redditors said their scores tanked from loans taken out in their names that they were unaware of – including the first example, who said “I have 10 student loans overall, 5 sub, 5 unsub, and have never had anything else on my credit or anything, no cards or loans, etc. I did get my identity stolen, but I disputed the loans that were taken out fraudulently, and my score was barely affected at all from it.”

According to the NY Fed report, while over half of the newly delinquent borrowers already have subprime credit scores, around 2.4 million borrowers who entered delinquency this year had scores over 620 – which could have allowed them to qualify for auto loans, mortgages, and credit cards, prior to the delinquency being reported. 3.2 million borrowers whose scores were under 620 (56.6% of the newly delinquent population) saw their scores decline by an average of 74 points.

Another 2 million borrowers with scores between 620 – 719 (35.9% of new delinquencies) saw their credit scores fall by an average of 140 points – while there were 400,000 borrowers whose scores were above 720 (7.2% of new delinquencies) that saw their scores fall by over 100 points.

Over 1 million borrowers saw drops of at least 150 points. 

The report found that seven states have a conditional student loan delinquency rate — which excludes borrowers who don’t have a payment due — above 30%, including Mississippi (44.6%), Alabama (34.1%), West Virginia (34%), Kentucky (33.6%), Oklahoma (33.6%), Arkansas (33.5%) and Louisiana (31.8%).

At the end of the first quarter, over 20 million federal student loan borrowers weren’t in repayment and five million had a zero-dollar monthly payment. –Fox News

“After a five-year hiatus, student loan delinquency has returned to the pre-pandemic ‘normal’ with more than 10 percent of balances and roughly six million borrowers either past due or in default,” according to the NY Fed report, which noted that the collections process that resumed in May includes the “garnishment of wages, tax returns, and Social Security payments.”

“Additionally, millions of borrowers face steep declines in their credit standing which will increase borrowing costs or seriously limit their access to credit like mortgages and auto loans.”

Authored by Jill McLaughlin via The Epoch Times,

Los Angeles County is launching a new program to warn criminals and deter retail theft, according to District Attorney Nathan Hochman, who says local businesses have lost millions of dollars to theft since January.

Retailers can contact local law enforcement to obtain one of 10,000 yellow warning decals to post at their business and inform the public that thefts will be prosecuted by the regional retail theft task force.

The sticker also has a QR code for the public to use to report any crimes.

According to the National Retail Federation, the Los Angeles area is the worst in the nation for organized retail crime.

At a press conference on May 14 in front of a 7-Eleven convenience store in West Los Angeles, Hochman said ending the cycle of catch-and-release in recent years that sent serial retail thieves back on the streets to reoffend is a top priority.

“Small businesses, stores, and even big-box retailers constitute the lifeline of our communities, and the lifeblood of our communities are under attack,” Hochman said.

“They’ve had to deal over the last several years with criminals who had the mistaken belief that you can come into a 7-Eleven, for instance, take whatever you want, leave, and nothing would happen.

“We are here today to explain to them the exact opposite,” he said. “You will be held accountable, you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The district attorney said he intended to use new authority afforded by Proposition 36, passed by state voters last year, to prosecute thieves and repeat offenders.

The proposition—also known as the “Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act,” went into effect on Dec. 18, 2024.

The new law increased penalties for certain drug and theft crimes, and reclassified some misdemeanors as felonies for repeat offenders. The penalties can include sentences of up to three years in jail or prison if the defendant has already been convicted for certain thefts.

Since December, the county has filed over 1,000 Prop. 36 felony theft charges against repeat offenders, according to Hochman.

“We are armed with an additional set of laws under Prop. 36,” Hochman said.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said 10,000 warning decals will be available for local stores beginning May 16, 2025. Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office

Before Prop. 36 went into effect, petty thefts under $950 were classified as misdemeanors, and thefts could not be aggregated to meet the felony threshold, creating a “culture of impunity,” Hochman’s office stated.

One of the felony arrests made since the new law took effect was of Corry Summerville, 38, who was allegedly a serial shoplifter at the 7-Eleven featured in the news conference.

Summerville has been charged with 12 felony charges and one count of robbery related to alleged thefts at the convenience store owned by franchisee Jawad Ursani between January and March.

Four employees resigned, allegedly out of fear of continued encounters with Summerville, according to the Los Angeles Police Department Commanding Officer Capt. Richard Gabaldon.

One of the employees was allegedly violently assaulted when he asked Summerville to pay for items.

“We commend the victim for ultimately coming forward,” Gabaldon said at the news conference.

Los Angeles Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky, who represents the district where the 7-Eleven is located, said her family often frequented the store.

“When a store is repeatedly targeted or a theft turns violent, it does more than hurt the business,” Yaroslavsky said at the event. “It makes you wonder if it’s safe to send your kids in. It makes you worry that someone could get caught in the middle. And it makes you feel like no one is in charge.”

The district attorney is also partnering with local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute organized retail crime. Investigators are targeting serial shoplifters, smash-and-grab mobs, and large-scale criminal enterprises.

“This is a warning to all the criminals out there, if you come to these stores and think you’re going to come here and commit a crime, we’re going to arrest you and present a good case to the D.A., and you will go to jail for that,” said LAPD Capt. Francis Boateng, commanding officer of the department’s commercial crimes division.

Convenience store owner Ursani, who has operated the 7-Eleven featured at the news conference for more than 25 years, said he was grateful for the support from Hochman and the law enforcement communities.

“My store was targeted not once, but twice, by a smash-and-grab of about over 50 teenagers and a repeat [alleged] shoplifter who is now detained and will be held accountable by this D.A.’s office as we speak,” Ursani said. “Each incident costs us in stolen goods, broken equipment, staff morale, and personal safety.”

Ursani said he has had to spend thousands of dollars on protection for the store, instead of spending the money on inventory and community investments.

“It’s not just about theft, it’s about fear and instability it brings to everyone who depends on this store and our entire community,” Ursani added.

Prop. 36 has given law enforcement more tools to target operations that harm communities, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Detective Division Chief Joe Mendoza.

“While Proposition 36 promotes necessary criminal justice reform, it also allows us to focus resources on serious, organized theft operations that harm our communities,” Mendoza said.

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

The New York Times this week reports that the Trump administration has canceled many grants that were to fund “research” on “misinformation.” This is being presented by the media as a dastardly deed that will supposedly allow the spread of misleading or false information through various media channels.

Of course, if there were any genuine interest in studying the most egregious efforts to spread misinformation, media outlets like the Times would study themselves and their friends in the regime. After all, few organizations have been more complicit than the national American media and the US foreign policy establishment when it comes to spreading much of the worst propaganda in American history. I say “worst” because this propaganda has often been used in service to the worst ends: to gin up support for a variety of wars resulting in the deaths of thousands—sometimes even hundreds of thousands—of innocents.

Relatively recent media-regime partnerships in propagandistic misinformation include the “Russiagate” hoax, various efforts to obscure US meddling in Ukraine, and the nearly nonstop drumbeat of “news” stories over the past twenty years designed to push for regime change in various countries from Venezuela to Russia to Libya and to Syria—where the Assad regime, according to US design, was recently replaced by Islamist terrorists. And then, of course, there is the nonstop stream of misinformation designed to prop up the State of Israel and obscure its many war crimes. And let’s not forget the fictional “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq which the US presented to the United Nations as established fact.

Throughout all this, the interventionist “foreign policy blob” in Washington received near universal support from its friends at publications like the Times and the Washington Post.

The United States did not invent these tactics. Over the past 100-plus years, however, perhaps no regime was more innovative than the British when it came to inventing “facts” designed to manufacture popular consent for wars and more foreign intervention. The United States has done its best to adopt similar methods, however, and creating invented narratives in service to the regime’s foreign policy goals is now standard operating procedure for the American state as well.

The Great War: The Turning Point

Throughout history, most great powers world have long lied to buttress their war efforts, but these efforts greatly increased in magnitude and sophistication during the twentieth century, mostly with the assistance of increasingly centralized organs of mass media.

For an insightful narrative on how this new “propaganda state” developed, we can consult the works of historian Ralph Raico, who suggests that the true turning point came with the First World War when the British regime, with the help of the media, engaged in a propaganda campaign of impressive effectiveness. Specifically, Raico posits that modern wartime propaganda began with “the Belgian atrocity stories of 1914, which was maybe the first great propaganda success in modern times.”

The stories of which Raico speaks were part of a concerted British campaign to wildly exaggerate German aggression in Belgium and to send the message that the Germans were a barbaric race unlike the civilized French and British people of Europe. It was mostly based on an official British government report known as the Bryce Report. The report made countless unsubstantiated claims about mass rapes, children with their hands cut off, violated nuns, and Canadian soldiers crucified on barn doors. This produced horror and anti-German zealotry around much of the world.

But there was one problem: it was nearly all based on lies. Raico writes:

What is the story of the Belgian atrocities? The story of the Belgian atrocities is that they were faked. They were fabricated. They were phony. The pictures were photographed in particular buildings which are known in Paris. Th stage sets were designed by designers for the Parisian opera. The stories were made up out of … whole cloth and spread by British propaganda as another weapon in the war—especially in the war for the minds of the neutral countries. …[T]his turns a good deal of public opinion against the Germans.

Raico adds one especially ironical note, and quotes historian Thomas Fleming, who according to Raico,

to his credit, mentions that the real cases of people, including children, with their hands cut off occurred in the Congo beginning in the 1880s, at the behest of the Belgian king Leopold II. Because of their great extent and nearly incredible cruelty, it’s those that deserve to be called “the Belgian atrocities.”

Chief among those neutral countries that were targets of British propaganda, of course, was the United States.

The British regime was desperate to have the Americans enter the war on the American side, and the British almost spared no trouble or expense convincing the Americans that the British were fighting against an enemy of untrammeled malice. The program was very successful. Raico notes that an

ingrained bias of the American political class and social elite was galvanized by British propaganda. On August 5, 1914, the Royal Navy cut the cables linking the United States and Germany. Now news for America had to be funneled through London, where the censors shaped and trimmed reports for the benefit of their government. Eventually, the British propaganda apparatus in the First World War became the greatest the world had seen to that time; later it was a model for the Nazi Propaganda Minster Josef Goebbels. Philip Knightley noted:

British efforts to bring the United States into the war on the Allied side penetrated every phase of American life. . . . It was one of the major propaganda efforts of history, and it was conducted so well and so secretly that little about it emerged until the eve of the Second World War, and the full story is yet to be told.

The Americans Adopt British Methods

Ultimately, the British propaganda effort worked and the United States government enthusiastically entered the war on the side of Britain. This went against what was still a very large portion of the American public’s antiwar preferences, but the British had won the American elites over to their side.

After all, as the British effort mounted, even the Republican party’s leadership began pressuring Woodrow Wilson to take a more hardline anti-German stance. As Raico puts it “Americans, who devoutly wished to avoid war, had no spokesmen within the leadership of either of the major parties.”

Once the US entered the war, the US’s implemented its own propaganda barrage, and now it took on an additional dimension of outright censorship. For this, the media and the nation’s intellectuals were enlisted to push the war message, and, as Raico writes,

public schools and the universities were turned into conduits for the government line. Postmaster General Albert Burleson censored and prohibited the circulation of newspapers critical of Wilson, the conduct of the war, or the Allies. The nation-wide campaign of repression was spurred on by the Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel, the U.S. government’s first propaganda agency.

Just one example of the regime’s capture of educational institutions could be found in how The New York Times praised the President of Columbia University for dismissing faculty members who opposed the regime on conscription.

American Propaganda After the Great War

The Second World War brought another resurgence in war propaganda, and this time, American cooperation with British forces was virtually guaranteed ahead of time. By 1939, Roosevelt was comfortable promising King George VI “full support for Britain in case of war,” as Raico puts it.

By 1940, even before the US entered the war, The US government was working hand in glove with the British government to convince Americans of the necessity of US involvement in the war. As Raico notes, the full extent of this collaboration was covered up for decades, although,

In 1976, the public finally learned the story of William Stephenson, the British agent code named “Intrepid,” sent by Churchill to the United States in 1940. Stephenson set up headquarters in Rockefeller Center, with orders to use any means necessary to bring the United States into the war. With the full knowledge and cooperation of Roosevelt and the collaboration of federal agencies, Stephenson and his 300 or so agents “intercepted mail, tapped wires, cracked safes, kidnapped, . . . rumor mongered” and incessantly smeared their favorite targets, the “isolationists.” Through Stephenson, Churchill was virtually in control of William Donovan’s organization, the embryonic U.S. intelligence service. Churchill even had a hand in the barrage of pro-British, anti-German propaganda that issued from Hollywood in the years before the United States entered the war. Gore Vidal, in Screening History, perceptively notes that starting around 1937, Americans were subjected to one film after another glorifying England and the warrior heroes who built the Empire. As spectators of these productions, Vidal says: “We served neither Lincoln nor Jefferson Davis; we served the Crown.”

Vidal was so impressed—in a bad way—by the continued success of British propagandists in this effort that he remarked:

For those who find disagreeable today’s Zionist propaganda, I can only say that gallant little Israel of today must have learned a great deal from the gallant little Englanders of the 1930s. The English kept up a propaganda barrage that was to permeate our entire culture…. Hollywood was subtly and not so subtly infiltrated by British propagandists.

Raico describes how closely the US and the UK collaborated in these efforts, and how successfully. By 1941, there was no doubt where the US regime would come down on the war issue. The primary question by then was how much Roosevelt would be able to drum up American hostility against Japan. In this respect, of course, he succeeded quite well.

A general worldview favoring endless international intervention was supplemented and cemented in the American mind for decades afterward by the ultimate purveyors of propaganda: the government schools. First and foremost was an effort to ensure that executive power was unlimited in international affairs claimed by Roosevelt and his successors. Raico writes:

Back in 1948, Charles Beard already noted the dismal ignorance among our people of the principles of our republican government: American education from the universities down to the grade schools is permeated with, if not dominated by, the theory of presidential supremacy in foreign affairs. Coupled with the flagrant neglect of instruction in constitutional government, this propaganda . . . has deeply implanted in the minds of rising generations the doctrine that the power of the president over international relations is, for all practical purposes, illimitable.

The US propaganda apparatus became less focused on British concerns after the war, but was deftly turned toward promoting US regime interests during the Cold War. In his work on the Truman years, Raico notes that by the late 1940s, Truman was also pressing for fresh hostilities, including open warfare, against the new enemy, the Soviet Union. Those who resisted, especially Republicans form the Taft wing of the party, were accused of being Stalin apologists.

In this, Truman, in what had become a well established pattern of American life, was assisted by elite journalists at media outlets. Raico notes:

Truman’s campaign could not have succeeded without the enthusiastic cooperation of the American media. Led by the Times, the Herald Tribune, and Henry Luce’s magazines, the press acted as volunteer propagandists for the interventionist agenda, with all its calculated deceptions. (Thee principal exceptions were the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times–Herald, in the days of Colonel McCormick and Cissy Paterson.) In time, such subservience in foreign affairs became routine for the “fourth estate,” …. Overwhelmed by the propaganda blitz from the administration and the press, a Republican majority in Congress heeded the Secretary of State’s high-minded call to keep foreign policy “above politics” and voted full funding for the Marshall Plan.

Voices in favor of peace were shouted down and banished from public discourse. Historian Steven Ambrose sums up the Truman-media victory:

When Truman became president he led a nation anxious to return to traditional civil-military relations and the historic American foreign policy of noninvolvement. When he left the White House his legacy was an American presence on every continent of the world and an enormously expanded armament industry. Yet so successfully had he scared hell out of the American people, the only critics to receive any attention in the mass media were those who thought Truman had not gone far enough in standing up to the communists. For all his troubles, Truman had triumphed.

By the end of the Truman years, the pattern was well established, based largely on the earlier efforts of British propaganda that was developed years earlier. Here were all the elements of manufacturing consent that would be employed during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the arms wars of the 1960s and 1980s, and the new “regime change” wars of the post-Cold War world.

In this, we perhaps find the answer to a question posed by Raico during one of his lectures:

Isn’t it funny how, with the possible exception of Vietnam, all of America’s wars have been justified and have been right and good? I mean, what are the odds of something like that? A major power’s every war has been good, and the enemy has always been unbelievably horrible?

He already knew the answer. It was the state’s propaganda that made it possible for Americans to believe that virtually every new war is some kind of crusade against evil. Thanks to propaganda, the American thinking on foreign policy—which, in an earlier age had been more pragmatic and less moralistic—had taken on its modern tone of quasi-religious righteousness.

Indeed, in this contrast with America prior to the twentieth century, and the concomitant degeneration into an era of total war, we get some hint of just how much a century of relentless propaganda has fashioned the American mind.  Only in examining its history can we hope to fully understand the insidiousness and effectiveness of these methods.

It is necessary to also have knowledge of their origins and this allows us to better understand the transformation that took place in the first third of the twentieth century as the American mind became accustomed to a nonstop and creeping propaganda that is still so present in American foreign policy today.

At least one person is dead and five injured after a car exploded in front of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California.

“This was a powerful explosion,” a law enforcement source told NBC News, describing a very large debris field and damage to multiple nearby businesses.

Following President Trump’s endorsement of support for couples undergoing IVF, a blast devastated a fertility clinic. Was this explosion intentional?

The center, located close to Desert Regional Hospital in Palm Springs, California, suffered significant destruction. pic.twitter.com/xmZrXZh8AV

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) May 17, 2025

Source @_Mnimasworld

The explosion happened less than a mile from downtown Palm Springs, with a device that was either in or near a vehicle parked by American Reproductive Centers, mayor Ron deHarte said. Fortunately the clinic appeared not to be open on Saturday.

A car was on fire, I was driving by and took this. I can’t confirm the cause of the explosion (whether the explosion set the car on fire or vice versa) pic.twitter.com/0N8WyRLWeD

— malana (@meowbug) May 17, 2025

Reports of a loud boom and billowing smoke made their way around social media at about 11am local time, with some saying they heard or felt it miles away. A chunk of flesh could be seen on the street. 

A website for the clinic lists fertility treatments, such as IVF and egg freezing.

Dr. Maher Abdellah, who operates the clinic, told AP that the office was damaged, but the IVF lab and stored embryos were not.

“I really have no clue what happened,” he said, adding “Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients.”

Damn crazy explosion in Palm Springs. Literally right where it happend pic.twitter.com/c0Hlj9tLYz

— NimasWorld (@_nimasworld) May 17, 2025

Police, firefighters, and the FBI were on scene, according to deHarte.

Claudio Chavez, who works at a nearby upholstery shop, told the NY Times “I was just in my shop waiting for clients, and all of a sudden it felt like a big explosion,” adding “It took out our window. I just saw a bunch of smoke.”

Chavez said he saw people coming out of homes and businesses to see what happened.

“That was a very intense explosion,” said another local, Scott Pastorius, who was sitting in his vacation home four blocks from the site when he heard a large boom.

Authored by Larry Behrens via RealClearPolitics,

Give the devil his due: Senator Bernie Sanders never misses an opportunity to remind Americans about our planet’s supposed peril. In a 2023 MSNBC op-ed, he whined: “The climate crisis is not just an environmental issue. It is a matter of justice, of health, of economics, and of national security.” According to Sanders, climate change is a moral and existential threat demanding sweeping government intervention and dramatic changes in personal behavior.

Except, of course, when it comes to how he lives his own life.

Sanders’ recent “Fighting Oligarchy” tour paints a very different picture. While crisscrossing the country decrying the evils of capitalism, Sanders traveled by—you guessed it—private jet. According to a new analysis from Power The Future, the senator’s 16-stop tour spewed an estimated 62.15 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

To put in context, that’s more than the average American produces in five years.

In fact, Sanders’ emissions from just one tour equal the annual emissions from 15 gasoline-powered cars. It’s the carbon equivalent to driving a gas-powered SUV 150,000 miles, or more than 6 times around the Earth at the equator. And this from a man who wants to regulate what kind of stove you use in your kitchen.

When questioned about the blatant hypocrisy, Sanders didn’t offer contrition. He doubled down. “You think I’m gonna be sitting on a waiting line at United… while 30,000 people are waiting?” he snapped at Bret Baier.

This isn’t the first time Sanders’ climate preaching has clashed with his jet-setting lifestyle. During the 2020 Democratic primary, his campaign shelled out over $1.2 million on private jet travel. Then, as now, the justification was the same: it’s okay when Bernie does it because his cause is righteous.

Let’s call this what it is: Mile High Marxism. Sanders flies high above the rest of us, belching carbon into the atmosphere while demanding working families pay more for energy and drive electric vehicles. He insists there’s a climate emergency but behaves like there’s no emergency at all.

The green movement is filled with elites just like Sanders—people who use the language of crisis to amass power while living above the consequences of their policies. They want to ban gas cars, restrict domestic energy production, and ration electricity, but they’ll never give up their jets, SUVs, or lakefront mansions. It’s not about saving the planet. It’s about control.

Consider this: if the planet were truly teetering on the edge of climate catastrophe, would the loudest alarmists be the least willing to change their own behavior? If climate change were the existential threat they claim, wouldn’t they at least attempt to lead by example? Instead, we get moral lectures from the tarmac.

In Bernie Sanders’ perfect world, Americans brace for rising utility bills, submit to EV mandates, and prepare for lifestyle sacrifices in the name of “climate justice.” But the hypocrisy is impossible to ignore. Jet fuel for Bernie. Unreliable solar panels for you. We get limits, they get luxury.

Perhaps the clearest signal of the climate emergency’s last gasps is how those who scream the loudest behave when the cameras are off. Sanders and his ilk want us to panic, comply, and pay up. But their actions—lavish travel, carbon excess, and indulgent living—reveal that even they don’t believe their own doomsday rhetoric.

When Bernie Sanders burns more fuel in one tour than a family does in half a decade, he’s not just undermining his credibility—he’s exposing the entire charade. It’s almost as amusing as a multimillionaire “socialist.”

So, the next time you hear Sanders railing about climate justice, remember this: the Mile High Marxist says the world is ending, but he’s still flying first class into the apocalypse. And that tells you everything you need to know.

Larry Behrens is an energy expert and the Communications Director for Power The Future. He has appeared on Fox News, ZeroHedge, and NewsMax speaking in defense of American energy workers. You can follow him on X/Twitter @larrybehrens

US officials who spoke to NBC News say that the Trump administration is looking to “permanently relocate” as many as one million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya.

Washington in return “would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars” that have been frozen since the NATO intervention of 2011, according to the claims of the anonymous sources.

“The plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libya’s leadership, two people with direct knowledge of the plans and a former US official said,” NBC writes in the fresh report.

“No final agreement has been reached, and Israel has been kept informed of the administration’s discussions,” it adds.

And yet this would see Palestinians go from war-ravaged and destroyed Gaza to being in a situation of another failed state, given Libya has experienced its own turmoil for well over a decade. 

NATO’s 2011 military intervention which led to the overthrow and summary street execution of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi resulted in anything but democracy and stability.

For a time, the country had at least three rival governments and power centers, and currently remains divided into an eastern half and western half. This past week has even seen rival warlords engaged in street gun battles in the capital of Libya, where a UN-backed government holds tenuous control.

NBC says that this ‘Libya option’ – which would be premised on the forced displacement of Palestinians would include offering “financial incentives such as free housing and even a stipend.” Ironically, Gaddafi’s Libya before the US-NATO bombings was a relatively secular place with plenty of state subsidized housing and benefits. 

But since the NATO war, orchestrated under then President Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, radical Islamic militant groups, and even a local ISIS affiliate, have caused chaos in many areas, which on some occasions have also brought oil exports to a halt.

Likely most Palestinians themselves would not want to relocate to North Africa, and the long destabilized political situation there of competing warlords would make this ‘offer’ even less appealing.

Post NATO-intervention Libya has remained in an internecine state of civil war:

a Libyan who bought into US-NATO-Israeli-Saudi-UAE propaganda and took up arms against Ghaddafi thinking he was actually fighting for freedom, democracy and “true Islam”, reflects on what he did after his fall: “If Ghaddafi were alive now, I would fight for him.” Syria soon. pic.twitter.com/zgNhRaesf3

— ☀️👀 (@zei_squirrel) December 7, 2024

Soon after entering his second term in office, President Trump began calling for regional Arab nations to take in Palestinians, such as Egypt and Jordan, despite the fact that they already have absorbed millions going back into the 20th century.

For example, in late January Trump described a call with Jordan’s King Abdullah II as follows:

“I’d like Egypt to take people,” Trump said at the time.

“You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’”

But Gaza is one historic issue, which also of course dovetails with religion and ancient grievances, that isn’t going to be solved by just handing out cash or free housing.

No simple American taxpayer funded quid pro quo can solve the Gaza crisis, recent history has demonstrated, also as the Israeli military and political leadership isn’t in the mood for swift deal-making.

President Trump raised eyebrows on Saturday – posting a ‘Clinton body count’ clip to Truth Social that suggests several mysterious deaths over the past few decades are linked to the Clintons.

Mentioned in the clip are former Clinton White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster, Clinton associate James McDougal, Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, and the mysterious death of JFK Jr. which paved the way for Hillary Clinton to become a US Senator.

Watch:

Holy Shit President Trump posted this on his TruthSocial! pic.twitter.com/xU51iw3tjX

— Karli Bonne’ 🇺🇸 (@KarluskaP) May 17, 2025

h/t Karli Bonne

Of note, Foster was a mentor to Hillary when they worked together at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas.  When Bill Clinton was confirmed as the 42nd President of the United States on January 20, 1993, Foster took a role as his Deputy White House Counsel. Six months later, to the day, Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park, along the Potomac River, of an apparent “suicide” resulting from a gun shot from a .38 caliber revolver. 

Interestingly, the “Clinton Body Count” phrase was originally coined by writer Danny Casolaro in the late 1980s. Casolaro “committed suicide” in 1991, while working on a story supposedly involving an international cabal.

The last time #ClintonBodyCount was trending on X (formerly Twitter) was when Clinton pal Jeffrey Epstein had reportedly attempted suicide (before he was found dead in his cell) while awaiting trial on underage sex-trafficking charges.

When #ClintonBodyCount is trending on Twitter as a reaction to the story that Epstein “attempted suicide” you know people are hip to the game. They need him gone at all costs. 😱 pic.twitter.com/uFKsLk3EFu

— Jordon 🕊️✨ (@miss_jordon) July 25, 2019

It’s a big list…

Sam Altman-backed Oklo says it is navigating what CEO Jacob DeWitte calls “good uncertainty” as potential Trump administration executive orders could accelerate Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing, expand military and Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear roles, and boost U.S. nuclear fuel supply chains, according to UtilityDive.

On Oklo’s Q1 2025 earnings call, DeWitte confirmed the company is engaged in a “pre-application readiness assessment” with the NRC, aiming to smooth its formal license submission for a newly upsized 75-MW reactor design in Q4 2025. The company still targets late 2027 or early 2028 for first power production at its Idaho National Laboratory (INL) site.

DeWitte noted the recent departure of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as Oklo board chair removes a potential conflict of interest should OpenAI become a future power customer. Oklo already holds about 14 GW in nonbinding agreements with data centers and industrial operators.

The White House is weighing four nuclear-related executive orders, including directives to overhaul NRC licensing with an 18-month deadline for new applications, reconsider radiation exposure limits, and authorize military and DOE property for reactor deployments—potentially bypassing standard NRC approvals.

These efforts aim to boost U.S. nuclear capacity to 400 GW by 2050, up from about 100 GW today. While the NRC is already implementing changes from last year’s ADVANCE Act, further reforms could shorten Oklo’s expected 24- to 30-month licensing timeline.

The UtilityDive report says that Oklo is also among eight companies eligible for the military’s Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations program, enabling on-base reactor deployments. It’s developing nuclear fuel fabrication facilities capable of reusing spent fuel that would otherwise sit in long-term storage.

Meanwhile, NuScale Power is actively pursuing contracts for its small modular reactor (SMR) technology, targeting a firm customer order by the end of 2025. CEO John Hopkins said the company could deliver an operational power plant by 2030 “if we get closure on a deal here soon.” NuScale is awaiting expected NRC approval in July for its uprated 77-MW design and has 12 modules in production through manufacturing partner Doosan, capable of delivering up to 20 per year.

Hopkins emphasized NuScale’s focus on finalizing real contracts rather than nonbinding agreements, stating, “We’re actually in the process of submitting and negotiating term sheets. We’ve got customers that [want] to … touch steel.” Potential buyers include data center operators, heavy industry, and utilities. CFO Ramsey Hamady added that a signed deal would likely involve multiple parties, including plant operators and tier-one data center or AI developers.

Unlike Oklo’s build-own-operate model, NuScale provides SMR technology and plant services, likening its role to “the chip in the Dell computer.” While NuScale has courted data center customers similar to Oklo, it also promotes its reactors for hydrogen production, desalination, carbon capture, and petrochemicals.

NuScale has about two years of financial runway but expects a committed project to significantly improve its outlook. “We’ll be in a great place if our biggest challenge is keeping up with orders,” Hamady said.

Authored by David Stockman via InternationalMan.com,

The title is a bit crude and is deliberately mocking in tone. But it has to be because there is a deeply-entrenched, almost sacred presumption embedded in the nation’s foreign policy catechism that “allies”, “alliances” and “coalitions of the willing” are the be-all-and-end-all of enlightened, necessary and effective foreign policy.

American policy-makers and diplomats perforce should therefore never leave these shores for the wider world without them. This dogma perhaps reached its epitome in Secretary of State James Baker’s “coalition of the willing” during the utterly pointless first Gulf War of 1991 and has plagued us ever since. Unfortunately.

In fact, the truth is more nearly the opposite–so it needs to be stated coarsely, almost defiantly. To wit, allies in today’s world are mostly an albatross, completely irrelevant to the military security of the American homeland and a major source of unnecessary friction and even outright conflict among the nations.

In a word, America is such an outsized economic and military Hegemon that all the little and mid-sized nation’s it has lined-up in formal and de facto alliances are inherently incentivized to pursue policies that minimize their own defense investments—even as they are also encouraged to throw diplomatic caution to the winds. That is, Washington’s “alliances” enable the domestic politicians or elected governments of these small allies to be more aggressive or confrontational vis-a-vis the “bad guys” designated by Washington than they surely would be if operating only upon their own steam.

For instance, the former Estonian prime minister between 2021 and 2024, Kaja Kallas, and now foreign affairs chief for the EU has been a loud-mouthed, vitriolic critic of Russia and hardline supporter of sending other people’s money [i.e. yours] to the support of the equally pointless proxy war against Russia on the Ukrainian steppes.

Of course, with a population of just 1.3 million, GDP of barely $40 billion and armed force of 8,000, Estonia amounts to a cipher of an ally in the scheme of things. So it does absolutely nothing for America’s homeland security, even as it has emboldened Kallas to become a loud irritant to the Big Bear of a country next door.

Then again, if there were no such thing as NATO and the Article 5 military shield of the US, do you think Kallas would be noisily whooping it up for Zelensky? Would her people have tolerated her posturing as little David waving a sling-shot at the Goliath next door?

We dare say the very opposite would have prevailed. Estonia and its leader would have taken care to make nice to their extra large sized neighbor—as small countries have done from times immemorial.

And if making diplomatic nice and conducting mutually beneficial economic commerce wasn’t working for some reason, although it almost always does, they would have been obligated to arm themselves to the hilt. That is, mobilize 10-25% of GDP for defense, if necessary, rather than the pittance of 2.9% of GDP that Estonia actually spends. In turn, that would establish deterrence—the standing up to a potential aggressor the heavy cost in blood and treasure it would be obligated to face in breaching the borders and sovereignty of a smaller neighbor.

And, no, for crying out loud, the 21st century world is not unique when it comes to the relationships between big, small and middle sized nations. What we described above as making nice in diplomacy and economics and making deterrence clear is actually the way the world of nations is supposed to work, and, prior to the rise of the Hegemon on the Potomac, actually usually did.

Most certainly the gods of history have not conferred upon Washington’s politicians and apparatchiks a mandate to befriend and safeguard  from one end of the planet to the other every Little Guy from the heavy breathing of nearby Big Guys.

Kaja Kallas on X: “Ukraine’s brave and fierce fight for freedom has been an “inspiration” to the Estonian people. Many have joined the voluntary Defence League.

Indeed, in a world not dislocated by the Hegemon on the Potomac no one would think to describe the reckless foolishness of Kiev in militarily attacking and brutalizing the Russian speaking populations of the Donbas after the Maidan Coup of February 2014 as an “inspiration”. 

It was actually stupid beyond belief—something that neighbors not addled by the Hegemon’s military shield or egged on by the CIA, NED, USAID, the State Department and Pentagon would have no problem recognizing and observing.

Indeed that observation applies to the whole passel of little countries that have been admitted to NATO since the turn of the century.  For instance, when it comes to the five  small Balkan countries that do not even share the Black Sea shorelines with Russia, here is the pitiful military capacity and defense heft (measured as % of GDP) that they bring to America’s homeland security.

In order to put this pittance of military manpower in perspective, moreover, we first note by way of comparison the size of police forces in major US cities. While these domestic police men, women and theys may eat too many donuts on the job and thereby fail any combat readiness tests, when it comes to sheer human muscle the city police forces listed here outrank most of what these Balkan “allies” bring to the table.

Size of Police Forces In Major US Cities:

• New York City: 36,000.
• Chicago: 13,100.
• Los Angeles: 10,000.
• Philadelphia: 6,500.

This is by way of saying that all of the above cities have bigger forces of men in blue than do most of the small the NATO allies depicted below, where we show their active military manpower and their defense spending as a % of GDP.

• Croatia: 14,300/1.8% of GDP.
• North Macedonia: 8,000/1.7% of GDP.
• Slovenia: 7,300/1.5% of GDP.
• Albania: 6,600/1.7% of GDP.
• Montenegro: 2,350/1.6% of GDP.

Clearly, these countries are not shaking in their boots about the Russian Bear. In the most recent year of red hot proxy war between NATO and Russia on the hapless steppes of the Ukraine, none of these five even bothered to spend 2% of GDP on defense!

Indeed, even the bigger fry positioned cheek-by-jowl with Russia on the Black Sea didn’t evince any greater fear of the Bear. Romania spends only 2.2% of GDP on defense and its voters just elected a president who wanted to make friendly with Putin—which democratic chosen leader was, of course, ixnayed by Romania’s “allies” in Brussels and Washington.

Likewise, Bulgaria spends but 2.2% on defense, as well. And, understandably, Serbia has not even seen fit to join NATO. Well, not since its capital was bombed to smithereens in 1999 by NATO war planes, owing to its insistence that Kosovo not be severed from its sovereign territory owing to the writ of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Even then as Russia’s firm ally in the region, Serbia spends about 2.3% of GDP on defense and has about 28,000 active men in uniform in its armed forces. That is, Serbia’s neutral forces total about the same as the combined military might of the five small fry on the Adriatic side of the Balkans.

Moreover, it also turns out that these five wee NATO members actually spend about the same pittance for military capabilities as is hoovered-up by Ukraine-bordering Hungary and Slovakia. The former spends about 2.0% of GDP on defense while the latter’s military spending is 2.1% of GDP. Yet both governments next door to the  Russian Bear are militantly opposed to the NATO proxy war in Ukraine and successfully get along with Moscow quite well!

In short, none of these countries really seem to fear the Russian Bear or they would be spending double digit percentages of their GDP making themselves so well armed as to make a unappetizing meal for the alleged aggressor in Moscow. To the contrary, they have either joined NATO to get into the Atlantic Club or have simply eschewed the opportunity (Serbia) or gone along for the ride (Hungary and Slovakia).

The point is, extending NATO to the Balkans was a stupid joke perpetrated by Warfare State apparatchiks in Washington and Brussels. It does absolutely nothing for America’s homeland defense militarily, while enabling Russia’s small next door neighbors to spend a pittance for defense and from time to time squeak-up to the Bear in a provocative manner that they would not dream of doing on the strength of 8,000 lightly armed soldiers of their own.

Of course, the same thing is true up north on the Baltic. The three Baltic republics both experienced and do remember their decades of Soviet occupation. Yet their present day budgetary statements make abundantly clear that they do not really perceive post-communist Russia to be the same existential same threat at all. That’s why they spend nickels and dimes on make-pretend militaries, even as their politicians like Kallas demagogue about Putin in order to stir up the home voters and incur the favor of the warmongering neocon apparatchiks who dominate the NATO and the EU.

Still, no countries with the wafer-thin military capacities depicted in the numbers below truly fear their Russian neighbor. If they did, with or without NATO, they’d put their budgetary dollars where the unfortunate rhetoric of some of the loud-mouthed politicians lies.

Armed Forces Size and Defense % of GDP:

• Lithuania: 14,100/2.8% of GDP.
• Estonia: 7,700/2.9% of GDP.
• Latvia: 6,750/2.4% of GDP.

In short, the Donald’s observations about the state of the world usually amount to a random collection of the true, the false and the foolish. But in the case of all these pipsqueak NATO allies he surely hit the nail on the head.

Washington’s “Allies” in The Baltics

That is to say, all of these allies are far more trouble than they are worth. The military security of the American homeland can be secured by an invincible strategic nuclear triad based on bombers, land-based ICBMs and its deep sea nuclear subs–none of which require foreign bases or foreign “allies”. That, and a powerful conventional Fortress America defense of its shorelines and air space would more than do the job of maintaining the military security of the American homeland in today’s world.

Neither of these military capabilities are enhanced in the slightest by the pipsqueak allies that have been drafted into NATO since 1999. Nor in today’s world is there any risk that a larger power as economically lame as Russia or Ponzi-based as Red China could attack, conquer and roll-up tens of trillions of GDP, military age manpower and defense production capacities among large numbers of their small fry neighbors.

Indeed, both Russia and China well know that the cost of invasion, conquest and pacification in today’s world would not remotely be worth the candle. That’s perhaps why the answer to the question as to how many countries Red China has conquered in the last four decades is, well,  zero!

To the contrary, what America’s 750 bases and 160,000 servicemen positioned abroad from Japan to Germany, Italy and the UK actually amount to are dangerous “trip wires”designed to:

• Provide an excuse for US defense contractors to sell weapons to the allied nations where US forces are based.
• Create an excuse to meddle in foreign conflicts owing to the fact that American servicemen are in harms’ way.

Suffice it here to note that during the heyday of America’s development as the greatest nation on earth—from the cancellation of the treaty with France in 1797 to the ratification of the NATO Treaty in 1949—America had no alliances, no military treaties and no allies empowered to provoke conflicts with their neighbors on the understanding that Uncle Sam had their backs.

He didn’t and during those 152 years everything worked out for America as well as any nation in history before or since. And absolutely nothing has changed to alter the wisdom of Washington and Jefferson about avoidance of Entangling Alliances.

*  *  *

The amount of money the US government spends on foreign aid, wars, the so-called intelligence community, and other aspects of foreign policy is enormous and ever-growing. It’s an established trend in motion that is accelerating, and now approaching a breaking point. It could cause the most significant disaster since the 1930s. Most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming. That’s precisely why bestselling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent video with all the details. Click here to watch it now.

Vietnam led Southeast Asia’s auto sales growth in Q1 2025, with a 24% year-on-year surge, outpacing larger markets thanks to strong economic momentum and rising public investment, according to Nikkei Asia.

Nikkei Asia data shows total sales across Southeast Asia’s five biggest markets—Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam—fell 1.7% to 732,898 vehicles.

In Vietnam, hybrid vehicle sales soared 80% to 2,562 units, driven by new models from Toyota and Suzuki. Commercial vehicles and trucks also saw strong gains, rising 22% and 21% to 15,445 and 13,400 units, respectively, supported by a 19.8% jump in public investment to $4.67 billion.

“We expect Vietnam’s passenger car sales, excluding VinFast and some luxury brands, to grow 15% year on year in 2025,” said Thuc Than, an analyst at Vietcap Securities. “Our forecast does not take into account a possible negative outcome of the tariff negotiations,” she added, warning that higher tariffs could pose risks to growth.

Vietnam’s official auto sales stood at 118,813 vehicles, but including VinFast’s 35,100 units and Hyundai’s 11,464 units, total sales would surpass the Philippines’ 117,074 units.

The Philippines saw solid 7% growth, led by a 13.9% rise in commercial vehicle sales, even as passenger car sales fell 13.7%. EV and hybrid sales accounted for 5.73% of the market.

Thailand’s market shrank 7% to 153,193 vehicles, with ICE passenger car sales down 14% and pickup truck sales down 13%. EV sales, however, grew 19% to 22,737 units, boosted by Chinese brands like BYD, which saw March sales jump nearly threefold.

Nikkei Asia writes that despite the yearly decline, Thailand’s Q1 sales rose 14% quarter-on-quarter, topping 150,000 units for the first time in a year, aided by price cuts and promotions.

Malaysia, Southeast Asia’s second-largest market, also slowed. Sales fell 7.4% to 188,100 vehicles as backlogs cleared and the market normalized. March sales rose slightly by 2.2%, supported by aggressive marketing campaigns.

Chinese brands are making rapid inroads in Malaysia’s EV market. Proton’s first EV, the e.MAS 7, launched in December, has already received over 5,500 orders, with a second model, the e.MAS 5, expected later this year.

“The Chinese brands are offering very competitive and affordable prices,” said Periasamy Arumugam of Great Wall Motors. Jerry Chan of Jetour added, “Malaysian customers prefer big cars like SUVs,” noting that Jetour plans to manufacture vehicles locally in Johor to meet demand.