Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The State Department announced new vetting requirements on June 18, including social media screening for all student visa applicants.

“The State Department is committed to protecting our nation and our citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process. A U.S. visa is a privilege, not a right,” the State Department said in a press release.

While student visa interviews—previously paused as the government reviewed its visa policy—have resumed, applicants will now be expected to set their social media profiles to “public” to allow screening by U.S. diplomatic officials. Failure to do so could be interpreted as an effort to hide certain online activity.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that those who may cause trouble for the United States or its allies, including violence or harassment against certain ethnic groups or supporting designated terrorist groups, could have their student visa applications rejected.

“Every visa adjudication is a national security decision,” the State Department said. “The United States must be vigilant during the visa issuance process to ensure that those applying for admission into the United States do not intend to harm Americans and our national interests, and that all applicants credibly establish their eligibility for the visa sought, including that they intend to engage in activities consistent with the terms for their admission.”

The development comes roughly three weeks after a senior State Department official confirmed to The Epoch Times that it had ordered American embassies worldwide to pause student visa interviews as the agency works to enhance its vetting process.

In an internal cable signed by Rubio and leaked to the media on May 27, the agency said it was considering making strict social media vetting a requirement for all foreign students applying to study in the United States.

On Wednesday, ahead of the announcement, The Epoch Times learned that student visa interviews had resumed with the new rules in place.

Consular officers are also directed to review social media activity for signs of the applicant having possible disdain for the United States and its government, citizens, culture, founding principles, or institutions.

These changes will affect any applicants for the student (F), vocational (M), and exchange visitor (J) visas and are intended to bolster national security.

When the State Department paused student visa interviews late last month, agency spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said the Trump administration takes “very seriously the process of vetting who it is that comes into the country.”

“We’ve always vetted people trying to come in. We’ve always looked at visas seriously,” she said. “Whether they be students, or if you’re a tourist who needs a visa, or whoever you are, we’re going to be looking at you.”

The very next day, Rubio announced that the United States would begin revoking visas for Chinese students, including any with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in “critical fields.”

In a short statement, the State Department confirmed that it would work with the Department of Homeland Security to “aggressively revoke” the visas while revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications” from China and Hong Kong.

The State Department has accused the Chinese regime of monitoring its students abroad and mobilizing them through the Chinese Students and Scholars Association. Some of that group’s U.S. branches have openly admitted to being directed, supported, or financed by Chinese consulates.

Joseph Lord, Emel Akan, and T.J. Muscaro contributed to this report.

By John Kemp of JKempEnergy.com

Spain’s massive blackout was caused by overvoltage on the transmission system and the failure of the country’s generators to compensate by absorbing more reactive power, according to the official government investigation.

Investigators found no evidence a cyber-attack contributed to the nationwide blackout and did not directly blame the high share of renewable generation for causing a cascading failure across the network.

But investigators did note there was not enough synchronised generation connected to the network to maintain voltage within acceptable limits and those generators failed to behave as expected.

Efforts to connect an extra thermal generator came too late to prevent worsening instability and repeated overvoltage from causing the system to collapse.

Investigators recommended stricter enforcement of existing voltage control obligations for synchronised generators as well as the deployment of synchronised compensators across the network to improve stability.

The report also concluded that non-synchronous generators (including wind and solar generators) should be incentivised to contribute to voltage control in future.

The instability seems to have originated within Spain itself rather than being imported from the Europe-wide transmission network that stretches from Iberia all the way to Ukraine and Turkey.

Nonetheless, investigators noted Spain’s relative isolation from the continent-spanning transmission system may have made the instability worse.

Spain’s interconnections via France account for only 3% of capacity on the country’s network, well below the 15% recommended by EU regulations.

More interconnections with the rest of the European grid would probably not have averted the blackout but they have been a long-sought objective, one that investigators repeated.

EXCESSIVE VOLTAGE

Electricity demand on the morning of April 28 was relatively low, which contributed to the repeated overvoltage on the country’s transmission network.

Total demand on Spain’s peninsula network prior to the blackout was just 25,184 megawatts, well below the historical maximum of 44,876 megawatts.

Weather (temperatures were mild), time of day (noon) and day of the week (Monday) all contributed to relatively low demand.

But low demand can threaten grid stability because it can cause voltage to drift above the safe operating limits set by the system.

On Spain’s main transmission system, the target is 400 kilovolts, with regulations stipulating that voltage must be kept between 380 kV and 435 kV.

On the morning of April 28, voltage spiked repeatedly well above 400 kV, though it remained below the maximum threshold until just before the blackout.

Repeated spikes were a sign of problems. Surges were damped quickly. But investigators described the instability as “atypical and extraordinary.”

Grid controllers responded by connecting several additional transmission circuits to the network to reduce voltage across the system.

But with stability worsening, controllers contacted one of the country’s thermal generators with a request to start up and synchronise to the grid to improve voltage control.

The request was made at 12:26. The unidentified thermal power plant was scheduled to connect as soon as possible at 14:00. But entire transmission network collapsed just seven minutes later at 12:33.

CASCADING GRID FAILURE

According to the timeline established by the report, voltage spiked severely at 12:05 and again at 12:20, prompting the control room to contact the next-available thermal generator with a request to come online at 14:00.

But voltage started to climb again and at 12:32 surged above the maximum operational limit of 435 kV in parts of central and southern Spain.

Multiple small generators responded to excess voltage by disconnecting themselves from the network, causing a sudden dip in frequency.

In response, more generators disconnected themselves – either because voltage was too high or because frequency too low.

In the space of just 20 seconds so many generators disconnected that the system was on a path towards complete failure.

Like voltage, frequency must be kept close to target to avoid damaging the expensive machinery operated by generators and customers.

In Europe, target frequency is 50 cycles per second (Hertz) and relays are set to shed load automatically in stages when frequency drops to 49.0, 48.8, 48.6, 48.4, 48.2 and 48.0 Hz.

Load shedding is intended to protect the stability of the grid by disconnecting users and reducing demand to match the available generation.

In this instance, rapidly falling frequency triggered all six stages of under-frequency load shedding in less than 1.5 seconds, disconnecting users in a last-ditch attempt to stabilise the network.

Less than a second later, frequency crashed through the lower emergency limit of 47.5 and continued dropping to just over 46.1 Hz. By this time voltage had surged to 470 kV.

Load-shedding may have worsened the problem of overvoltage, adding to rather than reducing instability, according to the investigative report.

Faced with severe overvoltage and extreme underfrequency, all remaining generators raced to disconnect from the network and the grid collapsed.

Faced with the loss of stable external connections to the grid, nuclear generators shut down automatically as a safety precaution with the insertion of control rods into reactor cores to stop the reaction.

FREQUENCY AND INERTIA

After the blackout, many commentators, including me, asked whether the failure was caused by excessive reliance on inverter-based renewables and insufficient rotational inertia from synchronised thermal generators.

But investigators concluded the transmission system had enough inertia prior to the incident to meet planning requirements and ride through a reasonably foreseeable large-scale loss of generation.

Investigators instead identified problems with voltage control rather than frequency control as the root cause of the blackout.

Frequency deviations had been relatively small during the morning and frequency remained close to target until the cascading failure was already well underway.

Voltage and frequency are both aspects of power quality and intrinsically linked but are usually considered separately in the design and operation of transmission systems.

In this instance, it was overvoltage triggered the first disconnections, which then caused a problem with underfrequency and more disconnections.

Investigators determined the initial shock that sparked the cascading failure came from the generation side disconnecting in response to overvoltage.

There were sufficient levels of inertia and more than enough extra generation being held in reserve immediately before the blackout.

Investigators concluded no amount of extra inertia could have enabled the system to avert the cascading failure initially triggered by the overvoltage.

THERMAL GENERATORS

Immediately prior to the blackout, most generation on Spain’s peninsula system was coming from renewables (82%) with small shares from nuclear (10%), gas (3%), coal (1%) and cogeneration and waste (4%).

There were only 11 thermal power plants connected to the system with a specific obligation to help regulate voltage (6 gas-fired plants, 4 nuclear plants, and one coal-fired plant).

From a technical perspective, solar and wind generators can also contribute to voltage regulation, but there was no obligation on them to do so.

The report notes that the number of thermal generators connected to the grid (just 11) was the lowest so far this year.

Previously, the lowest number of generators connected to the grid had been 12 (on 13 days earlier in 2025) and there had usually been more.

The decision to order an extra thermal unit to connect to the network was too late to avert worsening voltage instability.

But investigators also noted that several already-connected thermal generators failed to respond as expected to the overvoltage.

Either they absorbed less reactive power than required (reducing voltage control) or in some cases actually generated reactive power (worsening the overvoltage).

The report observes one unnamed generator in the southern area “behaved visibly differently from other plants connected at the time” and concluded it exhibited “inappropriate behaviour for voltage control”.

Investigators also found that 20 out of 141 major electricity consumers that connect directly to the transmission network failed to meet their obligations to support voltage control.

Between 9% and 21% of nodes where local distribution networks connect to the high-voltage system also failed to behave as expected to support voltage control.

The report concluded a wide range of network participants “contributed to the increased voltage, or in any case, did not contribute to improve the situation to the extent expected by the transmission system operator.”

RENEWABLES VS THERMAL

Initial comment about the causes of the blackout polarised around the issue of whether the very high share of inverter-based renewable generation (specifically solar) was the root cause of the failure.

The other side of this argument was whether there was too little synchronised thermal generation connected to stabilise the network by providing rotational inertia.

The report dismisses the argument there was too much renewable generation and too little inertia on April 28.

But it does note thermal generators were the participants primarily responsible for voltage control and there were too few of them and they were not as effective as expected.

It reintroduced the question of grid stability when the share of inverter based renewables in the generation mix becomes very high via the backdoor.

Instead of renewables’ contribution to frequency control the report puts the spotlight on their contribution to voltage stability.

The report notes “there is a certain correlation between the stability of the voltages and the amount of solar generation or the amount of coupled synchronous generation, although this correlation is not equally strong in all locations.”

There is no inherent reason why renewable generators cannot be incentivised financially or required legally to contribute to voltage regulation any more than to frequency control.

The report notes synchronised condensers, static synchronous compensators (STATCOMs) and flexible alternating current transmission systems (FACTS) can all contribute to voltage regulation.

Some of these systems have already been embedded in Spain’s electricity systems.

The report recommends financial penalties for thermal generators who fail to comply with their existing voltage control obligations.

It urges the creation of a new auxiliary service market for voltage control that is technology neutral and open to any participants in the network, not just thermal generators.

It also urges the deployment of synchronous compensators across the peninsula and an update to FACTS systems to provide more damping of voltage operations.

Reflecting Spain’s prioritisation for renewables, the overall aim is to improve voltage control even as the share of renewables climbs and thermal generation declines.

The report’s authors claim there would be a four-fold benefit: lower costs, lower emissions, fewer curtailments of renewable generation, and new sources of income for all generators regardless of type.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The government’s report offers a comprehensive timeline and explanation of the factors that contributed to the peninsula-wide blackout on April 28.

Investigators blame problems with voltage control rather than frequency regulation as the root cause of the cascading power failure.

The report is careful to avoid attributing culpability for the failure to any one institution – avoiding difficult decisions about political and legal liability that are likely to be argued over in parliament and the courts for years.

Instead, it implies responsibility is diffused widely between the transmission operator, thermal power plants, major electricity consumers and local distribution companies.

No one institution was to blame; everyone contributed to the collective failure of the system to behave as it should have done.

Identifying voltage rather than frequency as the root cause the report mooted discussion about whether the system had sufficient rotational inertia and avoided taking sides in the emotive renewables versus thermal debate.

But it sharpened the closely related question about whether the system had enough voltage control and how to manage voltage fluctuations as the share of renewables increases and thermal generation declines.

As expected, many of the proposed solutions are very similar, creating and paying for new ancillary services, and greater use of technology to help balance the grid.

The report adopts a broadly pro-renewable perspective, absolving renewable generators from much of the blame for the blackout and focusing on how to supplement the declining voltage regulation from thermal generators.

The report recommends minor modifications to operations rather than fundamental changes to accommodate a high share of renewables in the generation mix rather than reverse it.

Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Energy Secretary Chris Wright justified the termination of 24 energy projects allocated $3.7 billion by Congress, during a Senate panel on Wednesday. Wright said the clawbacks were the first round of scrutiny by a newly created review board that is probing 500 authorized ventures set to receive $300 billion in funding through 2032.

“DOE is undertaking a thorough review of financial assistance that identifies waste of taxpayer dollars, protects America’s national security, and advances President Trump’s commitment to unleash American energy dominance,” he told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in a two-hour June 18 hearing on his department’s proposed $46.3 billion fiscal 2026 budget request.

“These projects failed to meet the economic, national security or energy security standards necessary to sustain DOE’s investment, and taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize them,” Wright said, noting the terminated projects were among “179 awards worth $15 billion” reviewed with all but 24 passing muster.

The hearing was the first before a Senate panel since the chamber’s Finance Committee on June 16 released its draft adaption of President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful” budget bill adopted May 22 by the House.

The Senate’s plan largely replicates the House’s terminations of tax credits for electric vehicles, heat pumps, energy-efficient domestic appliances, and “rooftop” solar while eliminating or scaling back wind and solar subsidies expanded under 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Wright said among the first things he did after his January confirmation was ferret through projects set to receive IRA-authorized funding through DOE’s Loan Program Office.

“It’s deeply concerning how many billions of dollars were rushed out the door without proper due diligence in the final days of the Biden administration,” he said. DOE “shoveled out more than $100 billion … between Election Day and [Trump’s Jan. 20] inauguration.”

He cited several projects that provided little justification for federal funding, including one slated to receive $2.5 million but then sought, and garnered, $200 million without completing paperwork.

“In response to things like that, we created this program-review process where we have a team of cross-functional people to evaluate every project,” Wright said.

“There’s 500 such projects,” he continued. “We’re going to evaluate every one of them in a professional manner—not a political manner, not a self-interested manner, but a business-like manner.”

Wright issued the “case-by-case” review policy in a May 15 memorandum and, on May 30, announced “termination” of 24 awards granted by the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, clawing back $3.7 billion in allocations.

The projects include funding for carbon capture and sequestration, as well as “green energy” decarbonization with 16 awarded after President’s Trump’s Nov. 5 election.

Wright said more than 150 reviewed projects remain in the pipeline and those already begun will be funded. The department will review “at least 20 a week,” he said.

“We’re funding plenty of projects right now. When we evaluate them, plenty of projects will pass,” he said. “Other projects we’ll say, ‘Hey, can you modify it to make it more beneficial?’ Some will be modified, some will be ended.”

Constitutional Questions

Sens. Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nevada), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), and Angus King (I-Maine) questioned the constitutional legality of rescinding funding approved under bills passed by Congress.

“Those 24 programs, they were already enacted. Congress approved them,” Cortez-Masto said. “So what legal authority did you have to come back and terminate those?”

“All the contracts, just like in business, have cancelation clauses,” Wright said. “We are in dialog with every one of those parties. Some projects can be fixed to make them more viable.”

Heinrich said during Wright’s January confirmation hearing, “I asked you if the executive branch has the authority, without Congress’s approval, to withhold or terminate funding Congress approved in law. You said you’d, quote, ‘Follow the laws and statutes of the United States of America.’

“Cancellation of these awards crosses into impoundment territory and is certainly a breach of contract,” he added.

King was concerned with “a significant number of programs” being scrutinized: ”Can you assure me that review is professional and engineering-based and not political?”

“Absolutely, it is” apolitical, Wright said. “We’re evaluating the engineering, the science, the finance, and just the viability of the projects. Unfortunately, it wasn’t done when grants were given.”

Senators lobbied Wright to reevaluate rejected projects or fast-track others.

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said North Dakota natural gas operators see carbon capture and sequestration as a way to “crack the code” in boosting production.

Right now, he said, frackers extract “less than 10 percent of the oil out of Bakken shale and other shale plays” with “hot water and other things” ineffective in flushing more to the surface.

“CO2 will be much more effective,” Hoeven said, asking Wright to “make that happen” by reconsidering rejected and pending carbon projects.

“Glad you made that pitch,” Wright said, but added that carbon sequestration has not yet proven viable enough to justify taxpayer support.

“For a coal plant, for example, to do sequestration, basically you lose a third of the power out of the plant to inject the CO2 underground,” he said, but the science is evolving and “if we can spend $1 and get $2 of benefit, we’ll do that every day and on Sundays too.”

King pressed Wright to fast-track large-scale battery projects.

“One I’m particularly interested in is the largest grid-scale battery project being manufactured in West Virginia, but scheduled to be located in a small town in Maine,” he said. “That would make a huge difference” in advancing solar and wind energies.

“I’m very interested in that technology as well,” Wright said, promising “we’ll get onto that project.”

Critical Mineral Projects

Cortez-Masto and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Wright to ensure the reviews advance critical mineral development.

Cortez-Masto said President Trump on May 23 invoked the Defense Production Act, issuing a waiver for critical minerals. “I support it,” she said

Yet, when DOE canceled 24 projects a week later, among them was “one in Nevada using innovative solutions to create the country’s only all-domestic source of alumina,” she said, a critical mineral now imported from China, which controls 60 percent of global supply.

“So please explain to me how you’re making this decision when you identify critical minerals are necessary but, at the same time, you’re taking away essential funding for this country to be independent when it comes to these critical minerals?” Cortez-Masto asked.

“It really just comes down to the devil’s in the details,” Wright said. “We review every project we’re going through, just to say, ‘Is this project, at the end of the day, going to lead to a positive outcome?’”

Cotton said the DOE in September awarded Standard Lithium a $220.5 million grant to develop lithium reserves in Arkansas’ Smackover Formation, “where U.S. Geological Survey has found between 15 million and 19 million tons of lithium.”

“Demand for lithium is substantially increased in recent years, but the United States is currently only responsible for about 1 percent of lithium mining and less than 5 percent of advanced lithium chemical processing capacity globally,” he said. “When can Arkansans expect an answer on when the grant will be approved?”

“All the sizable projects will be done … by the end of August, for sure, maybe much sooner,” Wright said. “We want to be careful with American taxpayers’ monies, with monies you’ve allocated … that these projects are responsible, credible, and thoughtful, and going to lead to some good results.”

Via The Middle East Eye

A day before Israel attacked Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at the Knesset, welcoming Argentinian President Javier Milei with open arms. “Argentina became a safe haven for thousands of Jews,” Milei told Israeli politicians. “They sought refuge from economic hardship and antisemitic persecution. Not only in Eastern Europe, but also in the Ottoman Empire,” he said. “An empire that I don’t think will be renewed anytime soon, even though there are those who disagree with me.”

The remarks, which were clearly directed at Turkey and its long-serving President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, were not lost on officials in Ankara. A burgeoning regional power, Turkey has played an outsized role in the Middle East since the so-called Arab Spring uprisings of the 2010s.

Amid the new power dynamic that has taken shape in the region, Ankara has seen its stock increase in major western capitals. Such has been its rise that on Thursday, Turkey was among a small group of US allies notified in advance that Israel would be launching its attack on Iran.

Hours later, early on Friday, Israel began its assault on Iran’s military and nuclear facilities, and started assassinating high-profile security, intelligence and military commanders, along with nuclear scientists. The attacks, which also targeted residential areas and civilian infrastructure, have so far killed more than 500 people and wounded at least 1,300, many of them civilians.

In response, Iran has fired barrages of missiles towards Haifa, Tel Aviv and other major Israeli cities.

Turkey has lamented the escalation, describing Israel’s assault as unprovoked, especially at a time when US intelligence suggested Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. While the escalation has been characterized as sudden, and one that has caught many regional states by surprise, Ankara was long bracing for an Israeli attack on Iran.

In September, when Israel killed Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, Turkish officials studied possible scenarios in the event of a severe Israeli attack and a potential wider regional conflict. They prepared contingency plans, including measures against possible waves of refugees. 

In October, Ankara also initiated negotiations with the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, to prevent the group from being used as a proxy by either Iran or Israel.

Israel-Turkey relations

Turkey has historically maintained good ties with Israel, despite ups and downs due to Israel’s wars with the region’s countries. Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel, in 1949, and gradually became an ally of Tel Aviv in the 1990s, when the Turkish security apparatus needed its help to counter the PKK during a period of domestic instability.

Since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took power in 2003, the relationship has gradually deteriorated from a strategic partnership to that of neighbours who frequently confront each other over the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere. 

Relations soured after Israel raided the Mavi Marmara ferry in 2010, killing 10 Turkish activists in international waters, but they later improved. But tensions heightened again in late 2023 when Ankara decided to walk back from the rapprochement due to the war on Gaza, which Turkish officials believe constitutes a genocide.

Since Israel’s campaigns to degrade Hezbollah last year and the fall of the Assad dynasty in Syria, the region has been transformed by Netanyahu’s actions. Where Iran once dominated, Israel is now increasingly the key regional power. 

Israeli officials have publicly begun to state that the only other player with significant resources they face is Turkey.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has reiterated several times since December that the region should not be dominated by any single power, including Turkey itself. The first significant challenge between Turkey and Israel was Syria, as Netanyahu’s government made sure to oppose any Turkish bases with radar and air defence installations in southern Syria. 

American officials, worried about possible incidents, encouraged both countries to hold talks, resulting in the establishment of a hotline between Turkey and Israel in April. 

Talks progressed to the point where Turkish officials included Syrian representatives in discussions with the Israelis, in the hope of finding a middle ground to stop Israeli attacks on Syrian territory. The main issue was control of Syrian airspace. Ankara delayed its plans to quickly take control of the bases until the deconfliction talks with Israel were completed, effectively later giving Israel a window of opportunity to attack Iran. 

For the Turks, this did not involve Turkish airspace. Turkish officials advised Israel to address its concerns over the airspace issues directly with Syria rather than Ankara.

Missile program accelerating

For decades, Turkey has viewed Iran as a destabilizing force and opposed Tehran’s ambitions to obtain a nuclear weapon. However, Israel’s unilateral attack on Iran, which has failed to provide convincing evidence that Tehran is close to developing one, was seen by the Turkish public as a sign that Israel could one day target Turkey, a Nato ally deeply integrated into the western security architecture.

This sense of threat was echoed by the head of Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Devlet Bahçeli, a key ally of Erdogan. 

On Tuesday, Bahçeli warned that Israel’s military campaign against Iran is part of a broader strategy to encircle Turkey and undermine its regional ambitions. “The political and strategic goal of Israel is clear,” he said. “To surround Anatolia and sabotage Turkey’s path toward a terrorism-free future on behalf of its masters.”

To reassure the Turkish public, officials began leaking certain details to the media. One Turkish columnist claimed that on the night of the initial attack, Turkish radars detected Israeli F-35s, prompting Turkey to scramble F-16s and AWACS early-warning aircraft to track the Israeli operation. 

Another columnist claimed that some of the Israeli jets that took off for the attack unintentionally violated Turkish airspace on the same night, and left rapidly after Turkey scrambled F-16s and warned them by radio. “This isn’t Turkey’s war,” said one Ankara insider close to the government. 

Below: People of Turkey have taken to the streets to protest against Israel & show support for Islamic Republic of Iran.

İstanbul’da işgalci İsrail’e karşı İran’a destek gösterisi. pic.twitter.com/3VUgr8Y0Yv

— Hasan Akaras (@hasanakaras) June 15, 2025

“Yet it shows that we should study this attack in depth and take relevant steps to prepare us for any possible future risk and options.” High-ranking Turkish officials held two rounds of security meetings to discuss further contingency plans. The Turkish military has also closely studied the war tactics employed by Israel. 

Erdogan himself responded to the attack by calling regional leaders, and US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. He also made specific calls to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani, both of whom lead Turkey’s land neighbours. 

Turkish readouts suggest Erdogan specifically advised them not to get involved in the recent escalation between Israel and Iran.

On Monday, Erdogan said that Turkey was accelerating its medium- and long-range ballistic missile programme and deepening its deterrence to make Turkey a country no one would dare to defy. He vowed on Wednesday that Turkey would make its defence industry completely independent.

He later shared his speech on X, featuring the Ottoman Imperial seal, as Netanyahu referenced last week. “The victorious army of the Ottoman Empire had a principle,” Erdogan said. 

“If you want independence, if you want freedom, if you want to live on this land with your honour, dignity, and integrity, if you want economic prosperity, if you want abundance, wealth, and harmony, if you want peace, you must always be ready for war.”

European diesel prices rallied for a fifth straight session, driven by mounting anxiety that critical Middle East shipping lanes could be choked off. The conflict between Israel and Iran has raised alarm bells across the EU, which has become increasingly dependent on fuel shipments transiting the Strait of Hormuz since losing access to Russian supplies. 

“Supply-security fears are driving the surge in European diesel prices,” Eugene Lindell, head of refined products at energy consultancy FGE NexantECA, told Bloomberg. “Many importers are rushing to restock now, in case a prolonged disruption occurs due to a potential blockade of the Strait of Hormuz,” he added.

Here are the key points of strength in the European diesel market because of Hormuz blockade fears:

• Diesel’s premium to crude jumped above $25 a barrel, highest since March 2024.

• Backwardation widened sharply, with July diesel now $21.25/ton above August, and December 2024 trading $45.25/ton above December 2025 — up from just $0.50 on June 9.

• Traders rushed to unwind bearish bets, closing out over 100,000 gasoil futures contracts, the most in any 4 days since 2021.

According to Bloomberg estimates, Europe imported approximately 850,000 barrels a day of diesel last year through the Strait of Hormuz. This critical maritime chokepoint leaves Europe highly vulnerable to regional instability and potential supply disruptions.

Europe has become more susceptible to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz due to a combination of increased structural dependency, limited local refining capacity, and a post-Russia supply realignment:

• Europe banned Russian diesel imports following the Ukraine invasion, cutting off its largest and most reliable supplier.

• As a result, Europe pivoted heavily to the Middle East, especially the UAE and Saudi Arabia, to fill the gap—much of that supply transits Hormuz.

Nice work, Brussels. The Strait of Hormuz stands as a massive single point of failure—any disruption in this critical chokepoint risks triggering a shockwave across European energy markets. Fresh data shows vessel traffic through the strait is already slowing (read more here). 

Authored by Vijay Prashad via Consortium News,

On June 24 and 25, the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will strut around the streets of The Hague for their annual summit – the first since Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency and the first under new NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

On March 13, Rutte visited Trump in the Oval Office, where he praised the U.S. president on a number of fronts, including the war in Ukraine. Rutte ended the meeting by telling Trump that he was looking forward to hosting him in The Hague, his “hometown,” and was eager to “work together to ensure that [the NATO summit] will be a splash, a real success projecting American power on the world stage.”

There are 32 full members of NATO, 30 from Europe and two from North America. The United States is only one among them, yet, as Rutte made clear in his statement, it is the one that defines NATO and is but a vehicle for the projection of US power.

There should be no doubt about that fact. It is precisely for this reason that the idea of the U.S. leaving NATO — as Trump threatened to do if the Europeans did not increase their military spending — is moot. NATO is the United States.

From Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the No Cold War collective, and its European partners at the Zetkin Forum for Social Research comes the June dossier, NATO: The Most Dangerous Organization on Earth.

The title is bold but not hyperbolic. It reflects the facts before us. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO has conducted some of the most lethal wars on the planet and now threatens us with the unthinkable possibility of nuclear conflict.

The dossier provides ample evidence of this. Here, we simply note two of the alliance’s more egregious acts over the past decades:

• It was NATO that dismembered Yugoslavia in 1999.
• It was NATO that destroyed the Libyan state in 2011.

It is erroneous to see NATO as an autonomous actor. NATO, as Rutte so eloquently stated, is an instrument of “projecting American power on the world stage.”

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has used NATO to incorporate Eastern Europe into a pliable set of states subordinate to its interests. When the European Union expanded eastward and sought to build autonomous European institutions, NATO came along and ensured that the United States would be the engine of any European expansion.

One might be forgiven for having forgotten the warning that came not from Russia’s current President Vladimir Putin but from his decidedly pro-U.S. predecessor Boris Yeltsin, who warned during NATO’s 1995 bombing of the Bosnian Serbs,

“this is the first sign of what could happen when NATO comes right up to the Russian Federation’s borders. …The game of war could burst out across the whole of Europe.”

In 1990, the Soviet Union reluctantly agreed to the reunification of Germany and its entry into NATO under assurances that the alliance would not expand eastward (the U.S. also used the move to “keep the Germans down” by keeping them anchored within NATO structures). [See Patrick Lawrence: A Culture of Submission]

But there was no agreement that the U.S. could use NATO as an instrument to project power right up to Russia’s borders. Nor was there any mandate for NATO to be used in far-off theatres like the South China Sea to confront the People’s Republic of China under the pretext of freedom of navigation and regional stability.

Shackling US Rivals

NATO — against the self-interest of its European member states — has been drawn into confrontations against Russia and China that are entirely about the U.S. wanting to shackle its “near-peer rivals.”

These confrontations have nothing to do with European security: neither Russia nor China have threatened Europe, with Russia repeatedly reiterating that its war in Ukraine has everything to do with threats on its borders and China emphasising that it is a defensive power with no aggressive intentions regarding Europe.

Before Donald Trump took office in January, his transition team told European officials that the president-elect would ask NATO member states to increase their military spending to 5 percent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), compared to the previous target of 2 percent.

Most states would not be able to comply with this dramatic increase without deep cuts to their social expenditure (as of late 2024, Poland is the only member state that spends more than 4 percent of its GDP on its military – 4.12 percent to be exact – while the United States officially spends 3.38 percent).

U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said that while this 5 percent demand would not come with a deadline, “the United States expects every ally to step up with concrete plans, budgets, timelines, [and] deliverables to meet the 5 percent target and close capability gaps.”

From NATO’s founding in 1949 — and even throughout the Cold War — there was no firm benchmark for military spending for member states (such as percentage of GDP).

The 1952 Lisbon Agreement on NATO force levels, which set targets for the number of conventional and reserve forces, simply could not be met due to the privations in post-war Europe.

In the 1970s, NATO members had to fill out a Defence Planning Questionnaire to assess national military spending efforts, but no targets could be set.

During Ronald Reagan’s presidency (1981–1989) — when the U.S. was spending around 6 percent of GDP on defence — questions were again raised about force level goals and defence spending, and there were calls for European members states to increase their share to as much as 4 percent of GDP.

In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington feared that NATO states would cut their military budgets. At the 2002 NATO Summit in Prague, alliance leaders adopted the Prague Capabilities Commitment, which once more called for the need to modernize forces in the context of the War on Terror, but no formal spending target was established.

It was not until the 2006 Riga Summit, when NATO officially endorsed the 2 percent target, that the first formal benchmark for military spending among member states emerged. Though pressure mounted at the 2014 Wales Summit to comply with this hitherto unmet goal, there was still no real enthusiasm for it.

Trump pushed hard during his first term, suggesting that the U.S. would leave NATO if the Europeans did not increase their military spending. Then, when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the 2 percent goal began to be seen — as then NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said — “not as a ceiling, but the minimum, a floor.”

In anticipation of this year’s summit in The Hague, current NATO Secretary General Rutte said that NATO members must “shift to a wartime mindset and turbo charge our defence production and defence spending.”

Various European institutes and movement platforms have already begun to release documents in anticipation of the upcoming NATO summit.

One is the annual report from the German Institutes of Peace and Conflict Research (Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies, Institut für Friedensforschung und Sicherheitspolitik, Institut für Entwicklung und Frieden, and the Leibniz Institut für Friedens-und Konfliktforschung), which argues that Europe must prepare for a post-U.S. NATO by increasing its own military spending and moving toward non-lethal forms of diplomacy such as arms control and peace-building measures.

This is one approach to the NATO crisis, but it suffers from two key flaws: first, it misunderstands Europe’s role in NATO by treating it as an equal partner, when NATO is in fact an instrument for the subordination of Europe to U.S. strategic aims, and second, even if member states in Europe increase their military spending to 5 percent of GDP, they simply do not have the capacity to do so.

The British government’s Strategic Defence Review 2025 is basically a recipe for bankruptcy. Britain simply does not have the resources to build a new “hybrid navy” with ‘”hybrid airwings,” provide housing for the working class, or refurbish its health care system. It is easy to write about a “whole-of-society” approach but hard to find the money to build a society strained by so many afflictions.

On the other hand, the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) make a perfectly reasonable case for “human security and common security,” as they write it in their Alternative Defence Review. They argue this can be achieved by:

1. Prioritizing diplomacy, global cooperation and conflict prevention.
2. Investing in health, education, climate resilience, social care and the creation of well-paid, secure, unionised, and socially useful jobs.
3. Significantly reducing military spending.
4. Immediately halting arms exports to countries involved in active conflict or human rights abuses (including Israel and the Gulf States).
5. Preparing and executing a just transition for defense-dependent workers and communities.

These are sensible, achievable goals in a world where most peoples want peace and progress, not war and waste.

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

Russian hardliners are urging President Vladimir Putin to officially declare war on Ukraine, arguing that the current “special military operation” is insufficient, especially in the wake Ukraine’s recent surprise strike on air bases near Moscow. President Zelensky had touted last month’s ‘Operation Spider’s Web’ as a huge success, and an unknown number of long-range strategic bombers, valuable assets in Russia’s air force, were reportedly destroyed.

Although the conflict has entered its fourth year since Russia’s invasion, it still has never been formally recognized as a war, despite estimates of casualties in the hundreds of thousands on both sides. Kremlin officials have at times used language denoting all-out ‘war’, but the Kremlin still classified it as a ‘special military operation’ – which is a very limited designation in Russian law.

Members of Russia’s nationalist elite are calling for more drastic measures, evident also on popular Russian military blog and social media channels.

Kremlin insiders, speaking anonymously to The Telegraph, expressed concern that failing to escalate could lead to even greater risks for Russia – as NATO has very obviously grown more deeply involved. There’s an assumption that Western intelligence assisted in Ukraine’ Spider’s Web operation.

A full war declaration by Putin would mobilize all of society and the economy on a much bigger level, and would lead to a likely draft and mass military recruitment campaign. While Russian forces have lately expanded ground ops to the west of Donesk oblast, which they have almost full control over, it has been clear that the Russian army doesn’t seek to occupy Kiev or places deep into central or Western Ukraine.

Instead Putin has of late declared that his forces will establish a large buffer zone, to protect from the regular drone and artillery attacks on southern Russian, and into Crimea.

The Telegraph on Wednesday cited a Russian official as saying, “Like every thinking patriot, I took it as a personal tragedy.” 

And another high-ranking official characterized the mood in the Kremlin as “shock and outrage”.

“Explosions, drones, sabotage, and possibly even terrorist attacks are what the future may hold for us if the Zelenskyy regime is not completely destroyed,” the high-ranking official said. “If Ukraine ceases to exist in its current form, the criminal underground will be demoralized.”

Throughout the war Russian aerial attacks have not fully targeted Ukrainian HQ centers – only in some specific major retaliatory instances. Air strikes on Kiev have stepped up this month, however.

I’m in a bomb shelter, listening to explosions and checking the news about Russia’s attack on Kyiv. A building near my neighborhood is burning. A woman here got a call from a friend saying their apartment is gone, she’s in shock. The city is burning after massive Russian strikes pic.twitter.com/vavWs5Ch0Z

— Iryna Matviyishyn (@IMatviyishyn) June 17, 2025

But each side is still focusing on degrading the other’s military and industrial sectors and infrastructure, with the White House trying to keep an ‘energy’ ceasefire in place – that is, the US wants attacks on energy infrastructure halted.

The timing of these reports of hawks pressing Putin are interesting, given much of the globe’s attention is currently focused on the growing Iran-Israel war, and as Pentagon intervention remains a big open question.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us

One of the defining aspects of Ukraine’s strategy in the war against Russia is escalation – Not so much in terms of damage to Russia, but in terms of western involvement. Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has made it his primary mission to convince western allies that their direct intervention in the war is absolutely necessary. Why?  He asserts that Ukraine is the “guardian at the gate” supposedly preventing Russia from steamrolling through Europe.

The claim is absurd for a few reasons.

First, NATO officials and the establishment media have spent the better part of the last three years claiming that Russia was on the ropes and their military was crippled. Now, suddenly, as it becomes clear that Ukraine is losing the war badly (a result I predicted at the beginning of the conflict), those same people are asserting that Russia has the ability to invade multiple countries and rampage through the EU.

Second, we’ve heard the “domino effect” argument before. The public was fooled by the same idea during the Vietnam War. The notion that Americans MUST play world police in every fight or face a series of toppling catastrophes is a lie that has plagued our society for generations. The fact of the matter is, most wars have nothing to do with us.

Third, Ukraine is already a proxy nation; the real conflict has always been between NATO and Russia. The Ukrainians would have been overrun within the first year of the war without NATO intel and NATO weaponry. But what Zelensky and his handlers from globalist think-tanks want is US boots on the ground, and they will say or do ANYTHING to make that end result a reality.  They WANT world war.

The play for Ukraine during the Biden Administration was to assert that they are the vital buffer, the shield protecting the US and EU from harm.  The Trump Administration appears to be far less inclined to embrace or promote this narrative. In fact, Trump’s disgust for Zelensky has been made rather evident.

This leaves Europe to fill the gap, and if they do attempt deployments in the region a world war is assured. Whether or not the US gets involved at that point is hard to say, but the Europeans clearly seem to think they can lure America into the fray.

A similar scenario is developing in the Middle East right now. It’s an issue I have written about and warned about for many years, but this time it appears the escalation is entrenched and irreversible. Not to mention, unlike Ukraine, Donald Trump’s affinity for Israel is far more of a factor.

In April of 2024 in my article ‘World War III Is Now Inevitable – Here’s Why It Can’t Be Avoided’ published on April 5th I noted that:

“I warned months ago…that the war in Gaza would expand into a multi-front conflict that would probably include Iran. I also warned that it would be to Israel’s benefit if Iran entered the war because this would eventually force the US to become directly involved…”

Tensions ultimately diminished at the time as US elections approached and the world waited to see which way America would go in terms of domestic and foreign policy. Now that the White House has changed hands and the US stance is more evident, the situation has exploded again.  Everything that is happening in the Middle East revolves around Israel, and Israel’s activities are limited by how much or how little the US is willing to support them.

In my article ‘Iran vs Israel: What Happens Next Now That Shots Have Been Fired?’, published in April of 2024, I predicted:

“I have little doubt that Israel will commit to extensive aerial strikes on Iran this year or early in 2025, and we’ll see very quickly if Russian air defense technology sold to the Iranians is effective or ineffective…

The Israeli public position will be that their strikes are focused on taking down any existing Iranian nuclear labs. There is no solid evidence that Iran has made much headway in developing nukes (they might have dirty bombs), but the notion of nukes is more than enough in terms of public relations and justification for the war…”

Trump has always been the wild card, and he still is to some extent.  His comments on the nuclear negotiations suggest that he is continuing to push for a peace agreement, but Israel put the kibosh on any diplomatic plan when they assassinated multiple Iranian military leaders (Mohammad Bagheri, Hossein Salami, Gholamali Rashid, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, Fereydoon Abbasi). There’s no going back after the direct targeting of so many high ranking officials, and that may have been Israel’s intention.

This is the same strategy Israel used against Lebanon in the now infamous “pager bombings”. To be sure, Israel’s ability to infiltrate enemy governments and gain strike ready knowledge on their leadership is impressive, but in some ways it’s also desperate. These are guerrilla tactics, not the tactics of a country confident in its ability to win a conventional war.

The regime change in Syria and the decapitation strikes in Lebanon are part of an obvious long term guerrilla-style war on the part of Israel designed to weaken Iranian allies in preparation for the final conflict with Iran itself.  The idea that Iran is on the verge of a nuclear weapon and this is the trigger for the most recent bloodshed is nonsense.  The staging for war with Iran has been ongoing for the past several years.

Iran’s active duty military is composed of at least 610,000 troops along with 310,000 reservists, and they do have ample conventional weaponry, hypersonic missiles and drones.  Israel only has 170,000 active duty personnel; their technological advantage is not going to be enough to balance the scales.  Unless there is a domestic breakdown in Iran that leads to an internal rebellion, there is no chance that Israel will be able to fight them on the ground.

The reality is, just like Ukraine, Israel cannot win a protracted war without aid from the US. In order for them to execute an actual ground invasion of Iran (not to mention Lebanon and a host of other regions throughout the Middle East) they will need US weapons and troops.

As I’ve mentioned over and over again, I really don’t care about either side. I don’t care about Gaza, I don’t care about Iran, I don’t care if Israel succeeds or fails. I also find Islamic fundamentalism to be authoritarian, degenerate and parasitic to the west, but if they stay in the Middle East then it’s not really my concern.  I don’t care about ancient tribal vendettas.

I find people with an overt hatred of Israel politically suspicious, and I find people who worship Israel as if their government is devoid of corruption politically suspicious.  I find anyone that demands I pick a side politically suspicious.  I find leftist activists that hijack Muslim causes suspicious and reprehensible.   I don’t care what goes on in the Middle East, and I think most conservatives agree with me.

What I do care about is America and Americans. It’s clear that Israel NEEDS the US deeply involved in any long term war with Iran, and this is where I have a problem. Everyone wants the US to fight their wars for them and the scheming is growing tiresome.

The nuclear question is the angle Israel is exploiting to appeal to Trump and it may very well work. Trump has said the US will not involve itself in the conflict, but he has also said that Iran “cannot be allowed to have a nuke”. Where is the evidence of Iran developing nukes? It’s nowhere to be found. Maybe it exists, but the American public certainly hasn’t seen it.  The claims are starting to sound familiar – “WMDs in Iraq” anyone?

If the problem was simply Iranian nuclear weapons then limited precision strikes on such facilities would have sufficed. However, that’s not what happened. Instead, Israel attacked a multitude of targets outside of possible nuclear labs and assassinated half a dozen military leaders. That’s an action designed to start a wider war, not stop the creation of a nuke.

One group that I believe is key in the attempt to get Trump onboard with a full spectrum war in Ukraine and Iran is the Atlantic Council. In my article ‘The Atlantic Council Has Big Plans For A War Between The US And Iran’, published in October of 2024, I noted that they had been pushing the narrative that Iran was behind at least one assassination plan against Trump and that the Iranians were behind a hacking attack on Trump’s election campaign in an effort to give his data over to Democrats.

It’s the same narrative that Benjamin Netanyahu and Neo-Cons pushed this past week, and again, there’s no tangible evidence to support the accusations so far.  Every narrative is carefully crafted to get MAGA voters to back a wider war.

In the article I noted:

“I believe the Atlantic Council is a root instigator behind every globalist scheme to trigger a larger war between the East and the West. Their ideal scenario seems to be the creation of a proxy conflict that acts as a first domino in a chain that leads to world war, a bit like DARPA’s “Linchpin Theory”…

To be clear, the council is not only interested in Ukraine and Russia. They’re happy to embroil Americans in a larger war wherever they can. This past week, the Atlantic Council published another war scenario report dealing with Iran titled ‘The Future of US Strategy Toward Iran: A Bipartisan Roadmap For The Next Administration’. The goal of the report is to influence a new defense doctrine with a mission to insert the US directly in the middle of the burgeoning war between Iran and Israel.”

They need conservatives to commit to boots on the ground in the near future (this has been Lindsey Graham’s sales pitch for the past several days).  I continued:

“The establishment media reports that Iran hacked the Trump campaign’s election strategies and gave them to the Harris camp. There are also rumors spread by US intelligence agencies that Iran was working to have Trump assassinated. Are these claims true? There’s little public evidence available to prove it.

Maybe Iran really wants to take Trump down. Or, maybe this is part of a plot to ensure that Trump backs a full blown war with Iran should he win the election. Trump has said repeatedly that he intends to end the war in Ukraine upon his return to the White House. This would ruin over a decade of planning by the Atlantic Council. But what if they can sink the US into a different conflict with the same potential for a world war? That’s what Iran is – Another linchpin…”

The Atlantic Council is a globalist institution and they’re relatively open about their intentions.  Their goal is regime change in Iran and their reasoning is that Iran is a primary obstacle to bringing the Middle East into the globalist fold.  It’s not about nukes.  It’s not about assassination threats against Trump.  These are mere justifications for a final war that will usher in a new era of global centralization.

Keep in mind that the US and UK engineered the overthrow of the democratically elected leadership of Iran in 1953 through Operation Ajax and put the Islamic fundamentalists in power.  The fact that the Atlantic Council pretends like this never happened tells us all we need to know about them.

What we have is a revolving dynamic of foreign governments and globalist think tanks working both sides of a con game designed to lure Americans into combat. They are trying to influence Trump through the typical pathways: Making him fear for his personal safety while painting a picture of nuclear catastrophe.

There is also the problem of skyrocketing oil prices, which Trump is deeply concerned about. Wider war will mean the Strait of Hormuz will become impassable and around 20% of global oil shipping will be delayed or obstructed. Oil prices will skyrocket. There may be nothing that can prevent that outcome now.

The problem is that everything Trump says he fears is more likely to come to pass if America gets involved in Israel’s war.

Iran is, at the very least, a perfect proxy for Russia and perhaps China. A place where the US could be trapped in a quagmire for years (just as Russia is trudging through the mud and blood in Ukraine).  The Neo-Cons are pretending as if the conflict can be won overnight, but this is delusional.  Israel is STILL trying to remove Hamas from Gaza with minimal success.  Think about how difficult it will be to invade Iran?  Using air strikes is not going to be enough.

Iran will receive ample weaponry and intel from Russian sources, prolonging the conflict. Iran will also be compelled to secure nuclear weapons if they have the ability. Why not? If they’re going to be destroyed over seeking nukes, they might as well get their hands on some nukes.  Chinese energy interests are tied to Iran’s oil exports.  Pakistan and other Muslim nations are invested in Iran’s survival.  War in Iran has the potential to spread far beyond the region.

On the political front there will be a deep divide between pro-Israel conservatives and anti-war conservatives. Trump will lose a large percentage of his base if the US deploys troops.  Americans might hate leftists enough that this won’t matter in 2026, but we’re not going to give Neo-Cons a free pass, either.  There will be an aggressive movement to get rid of warhawks in the next elections.  And if escalation leads to world war, Neo-Con politicians will suffer direct consequences.

Finally, I can’t help but smell another potential false flag event on the horizon. I simply can’t see how the elites are going to be able to convince Americans to rally around another ambiguous war in the Middle East without an attack on a US target blamed on Iran (or an Iranian proxy group). There’s no way the public will agree to support troop deployments or conscription unless something catastrophic occurs.

My point is, be vigilant. The best case scenario is that the US provides material support for Israel including anti-missile defense, but we stay out of the fighting. Worst case scenario? A calamitous attack is tied to Iran and in a haze of vengeance Americans rally around an ill conceived plan that will lead to global disaster.

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

Trump has repeatedly expressed his displeasure with the ECB cutting rates 8 times since the end of the central bank’s hiking cycle one year ago; he certainly won’t be happy that three other European central banks joined the easing fray overnight as the global economy once again careens toward the abyss.

In the span of less than 24 hours, three rate cuts by three central banks in Europe underscored the dramatic global shift toward policy easing as monetary officials seek to manage “the fallout from Trump’s unpredictable trade policies” as Bloomberg puts it, but really that’s just a diversion for the real cause: global economic slowdown now that the last traces of stimulus from the post-covid monetary and fiscal bonanza fade away.

Central bankers in Switzerland and Sweden had suggested as recently as March that they were likely done easing, but the Swiss National Bank instead trimmed borrowing costs by 25 basis points on Thursday – and becoming the first major bank to cut rates back to zero (and in some cases, negative) – following a similar move by Sweden’s Riksbank a day earlier. And an easing pivot by Norway, also on Thursday, was altogether more dramatic, with another quarter-point cut that none of the economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicted.

With policy decisions from at least 18 central banks managing more than 40% of the global economy scheduled for this week, the easing across much of Europe contrasted with a wait-and-see approach predominating around the world. Also on Thursday, the Bank of England held rates but the much more dovish than expected decision (6-3 voted to keep rates unchanged, while expectations were for a 7-2 split) sent the pound sliding. 

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve, and Bank of Japan both held, the first however because it has a political vendetta against Trump…

The day is August 27, 2019. Former NY Fed president Bill Dudley writes a Bloomberg oped saying “the Fed shouldn’t enable Donald Trump” and urged the central bank not to “provide offsetting stimulus” in Trump’s trade war with China.

Six years later, here we are pic.twitter.com/H6WT5O0cMD

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 11, 2025

… and the second because it has no idea how to grow rice anymore and the local population has been crushed by surging food prices which somehow a stronger yen is expected to make better. 

All that comes against the backdrop of a July 9 deadline that could see the US reintroduce punitive trade tariffs across the world. Combined with continued uncertainty over the war in Ukraine and a potential US strike on Iran, it’s left some policymakers unwilling or unable to move.

Meanwhile, the reasons for the rate cuts in Sweden, Norway and Switzerland are all linked to inflation, even if the situations diverge.

Swiss consumer prices fell 0.1% from a year ago in May and new SNB forecasts published Thursday show inflation will average just 0.2% this year. That’s primarily due to the haven franc, which has appreciated against the dollar and euro since Trump took office.

Price pressure in Sweden, whose currency has soared against the dollar in 2025, has eased after a temporary spike at the start of the year and as a nascent rebound in the largest Nordic nation has fizzled out. That’s allowing space for more stimulus, Riksbank Governor Erik Thedeen said Wednesday.

The krona has been the best performer this year in the G-10 of major currency holders, surging 15% against the dollar, and also helping to reduce the risk of imported inflation.

In Norway, price growth has been stickier over the last year, partly due to a weaker performance of the krone. Even so, the local core CPI last month matched this year’s lowest level, at 2.8%. The Norwegian central bank now sees headline price growth next year at 2.2%, down from 2.7% seen in March, while this year’s inflation is still seen at 3%.

The three institutions are also at very different stages in their policy paths: Norway’s Thursday move is its first post-pandemic reduction in borrowing costs, while Sweden and Switzerland carried out their seventh and six moves respectively. 

Uniting them, however, is the fact that they all may cut again. Riksbank’s Thedeen and Norges Bank Governor Ida Wolden Bache both told reporters as much, while SNB President Martin Schlegel wouldn’t exclude such an option, even if that would push the Swiss rate into negative territory.

Which again begs the question: just how deflationary are tariffs anyway?

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said her office has seized more than $225.3 million in cryptocurrency linked to a sprawling international fraud and money laundering network responsible for defrauding hundreds of victims through online investment scams.

Pirro announced at a June 18 news conference in Washington that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has filed a civil forfeiture complaint in federal court.

The action targets the proceeds of a vast international fraud operation with ties to organized crime syndicates and human trafficking networks operating out of scam compounds in Southeast Asia.

The $225.3 million seizure, now in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, is “the largest cryptocurrency seizure in U.S. Secret Service history,” according to Special Agent in Charge Shawn Bradstreet of the Secret Service’s San Francisco Field Office.

The U.S. Secret Service and FBI used blockchain analysis to trace a complex laundering network involving more than 144 cryptoexchange accounts, 263,000 transactions, and more than $3 billion in digital currency, according to the complaint.

Funds were routed through layers of intermediary “pass-through” accounts to obscure their origin, with evidence pointing to scam centers operated with trafficked labor.

The schemes—also known as “pig butchering” scams—typically involve criminals luring victims into sending funds for purported investments, often in the form of cryptocurrency, which turn out to be fraudulent.

One notable case cited in the complaint involved a Kansas bank CEO who was persuaded by scammers running a cryptocurrency confidence scheme to embezzle $47 million from the bank to invest in a fake crypto platform—through which the criminals then defrauded him of the embezzled funds.

In another case, a Texas victim lost $7 million after being persuaded to invest in a platform that he realized was fraudulent when he tried to withdraw his funds.

More than 430 individuals fell victim to the scams detailed in the complaint.

“This is about quick money,“ Pirro said. ”It’s about old crimes being committed in new ways. Every fast and loose criminal for centuries knows how it’s done, and they’ve done it over and over again, and they continue to do it today.”

Criminals begin by identifying targets—often on social media, through deceptive job postings or fraudulent investment pitches. They work to earn the victim’s trust, then exploit that trust to siphon funds under the guise of legitimate investment opportunities.

The perpetrators behind the scams often use techniques such as “peel chains”—in which crypto is broken into smaller amounts and passed through hundreds of wallets—and “chain hopping” to move assets across blockchains and currencies to mask their movement and origin, according to the complaint.

What sets today’s schemes apart, Pirro said, is the unprecedented speed and scale made possible by digital platforms and emerging technologies.

“So the hopeful investor now enters the Wild West on an international scale, where the crime is global, where there are no borders, and where the crypto criminals avoid the rules because this is an unregulated Wild West,” Pirro said.

Bradstreet said in a statement: “These scams prey on trust, often resulting in extreme financial hardship for the victims.

“The U.S. Secret Service, FBI, and our private partners worked diligently to trace these illicit transactions, identify victims, and seize these funds so that they can eventually be returned to their rightful owners.”