Houthi Ballistic Missile Launches On Israel Now Daily, Despite US Operation
US aerial assaults on Yemen have been coming daily for two weeks now, but so have Houthi ballistic missile launches on Israel. Particularly the past week has seen constant direct launches on Israel.
Sunday has seen the eighth Houthi ballistic missile attack on Israel since March 18. This fresh launch, targeting central Israel, was reportedly intercepted by Israeli air defenses.
The Israel Defense Forces indicated the missile aimed at Israel was actually intercepted before crossing the country’s borders, as was the case with some prior missiles over the past days.
At least one woman was injured while trying to get to a bomb shelter, as alert sirens went off across central and southern Israel.
The Houthis have vowed to keep up their launces on Israel and warships in the Red Sea, after resuming the attacks in the wake of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire collapsing.
Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree in a Sunday statement said more attacks had been launched on the US aircraft carrier currently patrolling the Red Sea.
He said the group has “clashed with the USS Harry S. Truman three times in the preceding 24 hours, using missiles, drones, and naval forces.”
Saree pledged that Ansarallah forces will keep “supporting the oppressed Palestinian people until the aggression against Gaza is stopped.”
The Pentagon and US Central Command have largely kept silent on the details of these purported attacks on the carrier and US warships.
In prior instances the US has said such attacks didn’t even come close to hitting any US naval assets. However, CENTCOM has not provided daily updates, only tending to emphasize the ongoing US strikes on targets inside Yemen.
The White House has hailed the ongoing Yemen operations as successful, yet this is dubious given the Houthis have not relented in their own drone and missile launches, but have instead stepped up these attacks. There seems to be no clearly defined end-game, which is typically the case every time Washington gets bogged down in the Middle East.
U.S. officials transferred 17 accused Tren de Aragua and MS-13 terrorist gang members to El Salvador on Sunday evening, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on Monday morning.
Both gangs were designated by the Department of State as foreign terrorist organizations in February, as the Trump administration attempts to target illegal immigrants with criminal records.
Describing it as a “successful counter-terrorism operation,” Rubio said the U.S. military transferred 17 individuals from Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan-based gang, and MS-13, a Salvadoran gang, to the Central American country. U.S. officials worked alongside Salvadoran authorities to assist in the deportations, he added.
“These criminals will no longer terrorize our communities and citizens,” Rubio said.
“Once again, we extend our gratitude to … the government of El Salvador for their unparalleled partnership in making our countries safe against transnational crime and terrorism.”
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele confirmed the U.S. action on social media platform X, writing that all those who were deported from the United States “are confirmed murderers and high-profile offenders, including six child rapists.”
In the social media post, Bukele included a video of what appears to be U.S. military officials handing over the individuals to Salvadoran custody before their heads were shaved and they were transferred to a prison.
U.S. Transfers 17 Dangerous Criminals to El Salvador Prison in Joint Operation
In a coordinated effort between U.S. and Salvadoran authorities, 17 high-profile criminals linked to the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs have been transferred to a prison in El Salvador.
— Breaking News of the Day (@Breakingne66541) March 31, 2025
The Trump administration is currently challenging a federal judge’s order to prevent U.S. officials from using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to implement deportations of alleged members of both gangs.
Earlier in March, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg blocked the administration from using the law to implement the deportations and later sought details about why a deportation flight wasn’t turned around.
Last week, a U.S. appeals court declined to block Boasberg’s order that blocked the deportation of Venezuelan illegal immigrants to El Salvador, prompting the government to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.
“Here, the district court’s orders have rebuffed the President’s judgments as to how to protect the Nation against foreign terrorist organizations and risk debilitating effects for delicate foreign negotiations,” Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in the court filing to the high court.
In the legal spat, attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union initially filed their lawsuit on behalf of five Venezuelan illegal immigrants who were being held in Texas, hours after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act.
Aside from the appeals, the Trump administration has invoked a “state secrets privilege” and indicated it would not give Boasberg any additional information about the deportations. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump and some Republicans have called for Boasberg to be impeached and removed.
In a statement responding to those calls, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said earlier this month that he believes “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
Trump has made mass deportations and imposing stricter border controls a priority under his second term. In the early days of his administration, the president signed a number of executive orders and issued directives relating to the border and the removal of illegal immigrants, including ending the Biden-era CPB One app, declaring a national emergency at the southern U.S. border, and ending birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrant parents.
Going Bust: Hooters To Re-Jiggle After Filing Chapter 11 Bankruptcy In Founder-Led Buyout
Update (1925ET): Well that didn’t take long…
After months of speculation, Hooters has finally filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy – with a plan to bounce back that includes selling all of its company-owned restaurants to a franchise group backed by its original founders, while lenders will provide additional funds throughout the reorganization proceedings as it seeks to address its $376 million in debt.
The move comes after the chain failed to recover from the pandemic – doing $867 million in US sales in 2023 – just 1% more than the previous year, according to market research from Technomic reported by the WSJ.
The privately-owned company, which shares a private equity owner with recently-bankrupt TGI Fridays, intends to sell all corporate-owned locations to a buyer group comprised of two existing Hooters franchisees, who operate 30 high-performing Hooters locations in the U.S., mainly in Florida and Illinois.
The company currently directly owns and operates 151 locations, with another 154 operated by franchisees – mostly in the USA.
With Hooters on the verge of bankruptcy, the legendary restaurant where you can eat mediocre food and check out tits (and pay in cash so your wife doesn’t find out) is getting rid of Bikini Nights and skimpy outfits, and hopes that an improvement in the food will stave off doom.
Neil Kiefer, CEO of parent company HMC Hospitality Group, told Bloomberg he’s calling the ‘family friendly’ changes “re-Hooterization.”
“You go to some parts of the country and people say, ‘Oh, I could never go to Hooters, my wife would kill me,” said Kiefer. “That’s depressing to us. We want to change that.”
According to the report, Hooters also plans to use fresher ingredients in the kitchen and provide faster service.
The move comes after the chain has closed several locations across the country – with 40 shuttered last year, and the remaining 300 on the line. At its peak in 2008, there were 400 locations.
In 2021, the chain unveiled a new uniform featuring “wedgie” micro shorts – which resembled bikini bottoms, and which some waitresses called “porn.”
According to industry analyst Aaron Allen, “For a business to be successful and sustainable, it helps to appeal to more than just men.”
The turnaround plan would likely see HMC and other Hooters franchisees take over most of the US locations that are currently owned and run by Hooters of America, which would likely see the closure of some locations, according to people familiar with the discussions. HOA is currently owned by Nord Bay Capital and TriArtisan Capital Advisors, LLC.
The end result is that HMC, should the plan go through, would help oversee the overall brand and advise franchisees on how to operate. The fix, according to Kiefer, boils down to three principles: good food, good service and regular reinvestment in the stores’ operations, something he says has been lacking at the eateries owned by HOA.
“There’s a noticeable difference,” Kiefer said. “The food’s different, the service is different — I hope to correct it all.”
In 2022, HOA’s owners, among other things, added $50 million in subordinated debt, after issuing approximately $300 million in asset-backed bonds in 2014, which were packaged as ‘whole-business securitizations,’ pledging most of its assets, including franchise fees, as collateral. The current bankruptcy under consideration would see certain holders of its securitized debt team up with HMC to facilitate a change of control, according to the report. In this scenario, the debt holders would likely agree to restructure or roll their debt into securities with a longer maturity and the same or similar collateral pools.
The oral arguments before the Supreme Court earlier this month is a reminder that our nation has a 66-year-old nuclear energy problem—and there is a ready and available solution in recycling used nuclear fuel.
Nuclear energy produces nearly 20 percent of our electricity. The fuel used to run our reactor fleet loses its intensity over time. That used, but not yet depleted, fuel is called Used Nuclear Fuel (UNF). There are 90,000 metric tons of UNF currently stored at reactor sites across 39 states in America, including approximately 4,000 metric tons in my home State of Texas.
In 1982, the federal government was made responsible by an act of Congress for removal and disposal of UNF from reactor sites, and has collected over $20 billion from reactor owners to pay for disposal of UNF. To date, the government has not removed any significant quantity of UNF from any site anywhere in America, including Texas, nor is there a current plan to do so.
As Secretary of Energy under President Trump’s first term, it became clear that any plan to move tonnage of UNF required some practical consent of the receiving state and local community, even if legal consent was not required by the 1982 Act.
The consequence of not solving this problem results in a financial loss to America and leaves the UNF at the numerous reactor sites across America. There have been private efforts to establish UNF interim storage facilities in West Texas and New Mexico. Though there has been some local acceptance of an interim storage facility in Texas or New Mexico, there has also been significant opposition. Resistance to those private interim storage proposals led to the NRC v. Texas case currently before the Supreme Court.
The Solution
We should rethink our approach. There are options we should consider other than storage of UNF, either temporarily on an interim basis or permanently. Our country should explore taking an entirely different path to achieve our ultimate goal: the removal of UNF from reactor sites. Recycling UNF makes much more sense than permanent storage and creates an energy source that is needed and currently unused.
The technology for recycling was first developed in the United States and has been used in France, Japan, Russia, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, China, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. I have personally toured many of these reprocessing facilities in other countries during my term as Energy Secretary.
The United States should establish a recycling policy so that the 90,000 metric tons of UNF in the country can be recycled and fabricated into mixed oxide fuel (“MOX fuel”). The resulting MOX fuel can be used in nuclear reactors to create reliable and clean energy.
Through establishing a recycling policy, the following four problems would be solved, and create economic opportunities:
First, the United States can solve the national problem of moving UNF away from reactor sites as it is obligated to do. Second, the U.S. can restart the discontinued payment program of the nuclear utilities for the removal of the UNF so that the Treasury can be replenished at the rate of $2 billion annually. Third, the concern of interim or long-term storage of UNF near our population centers is also addressed. Finally, MOX fuel can replace the 20 percent of U.S. nuclear fuel currently purchased from Russia.
The adoption of such a policy will create jobs and much needed energy for the grid as demand for energy skyrockets. Today, MOX fuel is widely used in Europe and Japan in their nuclear reactor fleet. America is behind its industrial neighbors in the treatment of UNF and needs to catch up.
Sometimes the greatest problems have simple and already discovered solutions.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Hegseth Circulated Secret Pentagon Memo On Preparing For War With China
Over the weekend The Washington Post revealed that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth distributed a memo in mid-March which ordered the Pentagon to prioritize its war-planning focus on potential future conflict with China.
The memo, called the Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance “outlines, in broad and sometimes partisan detail, the execution of President Donald Trump’s vision to prepare for and win a potential war against Beijing and defend the United States from threats in the ‘near abroad,’ including Greenland and the Panama Canal.”
It’s nothing new that the Pentagon considers China a ‘top pacing threat’ – but it does confirm that the Trump administration would likely be willing to go to war in the event of a mainland invasion of the self-ruled island.
The memo interestingly presented a strategy of “assuming risk” in Europe and other parts of the world, to refocus efforts on top nuclear-armed rivals.
The Pentagon’s force planning and new focus “will consider conflict only with Beijing when planning contingencies for a major power war” and leave the “threat from Moscow largely attended by European allies” – according to the report.
Hegseth wrote that China “is the Department’s sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the US homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario.”
The memo urges NATO allies take on a “far greater” burden-sharing on defense, and puts Europe on notice in the event of greater threats from Russia:
Hegseth’s guidance acknowledges that the U.S. is unlikely to provide substantial, if any, support to Europe in the case of Russian military advances, noting that Washington intends to push NATO allies to take primary defense of the region. The U.S. will support Europe with nuclear deterrence of Russia, and NATO should only count on U.S. forces not required for homeland defense or China deterrence missions, the document says.
A significant increase in Europe sharing its defense burden, the document says, “will also ensure NATO can reliably deter or defeat Russian aggression even if deterrence fails and the United States is already engaged in, or must withhold forces to deter, a primary conflict in another region.”
As for Taiwan specifically, it lays out ways the Pentagon intends to help its ally bolster defenses, short of outright entering any direct conflict.
WaPo and others have said the Heritage Foundation think tank is the driving force behind the strategic ideas presented in the memo.
Secret Pentagon strategy memo on China and homeland defense has Heritage Foundation fingerprintshttps://t.co/EeTzPhlzEl
Hegseth’s plans specify a “denial defense” of Taiwan – according to the memo – which will include “increasing the troop presence through submarines, bombers, unmanned ships, and specialty units from the Army and Marine Corps, as well as a greater focus on bombs that destroy reinforced and subterranean targets.”
Topline: The City of Bell, California faced several scandals in the 2010s, culminating in corruption convictions for City Administrator Robert Rizzo and six other officials.
The “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn recounts a state audit that found $293,000 in possibly illegal spending by Rizzo and the city, but that was only the beginning. Rizzo and his colleagues were eventually charged with siphoning $5.5 million away from the city. That money would be worth $8.1 million today.
Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.
Coburn’s Wastebook 2010 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $11.5 billion, including the beginning of Bell’s years of controversy.
Key facts: California Controller John Chiang found that Rizzo spent $293,000 in federal grants without approval from Bell’s city council and without signing actual contracts.
The total included $100,000 from a federal oil recycling program that Rizzo gave to a local company owned by Bell’s director of planning services.
Later investigations found absurd salaries for Rizzo and other Bell employees. Rizzo was paying himself an annual salary and benefits package of $1.5 million. Prosecutors alleged that at one point, his total pay had reached $12 million.
Four out of five city council members earned salaries above $100,000, even though the council met twice per year. The remaining councilman earned only $8,000.
At the time, a quarter of Bell’s population was living below the poverty line.
In 2014, Rizzo was sentenced to 10 to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay $8.8 million in restitution to the city. He got another 33 months in jail for federal tax fraud.
Summary: Today, Bell City Manager Michael Antwine II makes a salary of $205,000, while the poverty rate is still nearly 25%.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
Trade Options Like Wall Street Professionals With These Two New Tools
Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff deadline (April 2) is looming, with big implications for traders. This wildcard event could tip sector flows, shift hedging activity, and force institutions to adjust, fast. Yet this market catalyst comes with its own set of risks and opportunities. The difference comes down to how well you can see a setup before it happens.
For those still trading based on valuation or headlines alone, that’s like playing checkers on a chessboard. Successful traders have long known that there is much more behind market movements.
Just take a look at SPX, one of the most liquid market instruments in the world. What caused price to violently retract from intraday highs on March 19 and 20? And why did price suddenly become particularly stable on March 24 after a tumultuous prior two weeks? As our derivative expert friends from SpotGamma write, it’s clear that something else is behind this market — something we’ve been tracking for years: options flows.
So, as part of our ongoing partnership with SpotGamma, and ahead of SpotGamma’s launch of their new and powerful tools – the Synthetic OI Lens and Compass Screener – both of which offer readers option-trading tools which until now were reserved only for Wall Street professionals, they present five options-driven trading insights to “weaponize” right now for those who want to stay sharp, trade with precision, and frontrun the herd.
1. Growth in Options Trading Isn’t Just a Fad. It’s the Market Now.
Next expiry options — better known as 0DTEs — aren’t just for a handful of meme stock speculators anymore. They make up more than 50% of all SPX options volume, up from just 17% in 2020. That means intraday flows are influencing price action more than ever.
And here’s the kicker: 88.5% of all options trading is happening on-exchange and retail.
Translation? The pros are watching your moves. And if you don’t understand how your trades affect hedging flows, you’re the one getting played.
Trading Edge: Monitor 0DTE gamma positioning before the open. SpotGamma’s HIRO and TRACE tools show where dealers are getting pinned, or forced to chase.
* * *
2. Fundamentals Light the Fuse, Options Flows Decide the Blast Radius
Netflix’s post-earnings jump in January? The market expected a 7% move. It ripped 14% higher, directly toward a $1,000 call wall SpotGamma flagged the day before.
“There are large positions up at $1,000… there is enough gamma that NFLX could move more than just 7%” – SpotGamma Founder Brent Kochuba, January 21, 2025
Why was this?
By reading the options market, it was clear that options flows could exacerbate any price movement — with no overhead resistance until the $1,000 strike for NFLX.
Trading Edge: Use SpotGamma’s Equity Hub to track support/resistance levels defined by options open interest — not lagging technicals. If there’s a wall of gamma, you’d better believe price will bounce or stall there.
* * *
3. Market Makers Are the Real Movers
Every option trade needs a hedge, and that hedge moves markets. If 100,000 calls are bought by traders for 0.50 delta contracts, the dealer has to buy 50,000 shares to stay neutral. This is why it’s a good idea to pay attention to monthly options expiration (OPEX). These market makers establish huge positions that often need to be unwound post-OPEX.
What does this mean? Pent-up volatility often is released – and by knowing where market makers are positioned, you can tell which names will be most impacted.
Just last week, we saw SPX reverse after hitting intraday highs on both March 19th and 20th – exactly where dealers had to sell to hedge. That Friday (March 21st) was OPEX, and these positions were closed out. This cleared significant overhead resistance and created room for a 1.7% rally in SPX on March 24th.
Trading Edge: SpotGamma’s HIRO and TRACE tools visualize this in real-time. Learn to read delta and gamma pressure. If you see selling pressure building from dealer hedging, don’t go long into it blindly.
* * *
4. Correlations Are Breaking. So Where Are Trading Opportunity?
It used to be simple: VIX signaled fear, and traders paid attention when it jumped. But that era of tightly coupled movement is fading fast. Why? The predictable relationships that made sense in the past no longer hold true
Today, stocks are moving on their own terms. Sector-based trading is giving way to single-name volatility — and for traders who can spot the breakouts hiding under the surface, this is a major opportunity.
Why this matters for your trading? Volatility and direction are no longer synced across the board, and edge can be found in the names that are out of alignment. This makes it critical to check where your stock falls before you trade it to determine whether it is trading with the market or an outlier.
Trading Edge: When implied volatility is low, but sentiment or skew is shifting fast, it’s often a signal that the market is mispricing risk. And that’s where smart traders strike.
So how do you find these setups before they move?
* * *
5. You’re Not Fighting the Banks Anymore, They’re Coming to Us
For years, institutional desks had exclusive access to the kind of flow data that moves markets. That information edge is now at your fingertips.
SpotGamma’s exciting new tools — the Synthetic Open Interest (OI) Lens and Compass — are leveling the playing field by exposing real positioning, market pressure, and hidden high-conviction setups ahead of each trading day.
Most open interest models assume dealers sell options and hedge passively. But in 2025’s flow-driven market, that’s not good enough.
The Synthetic OI Lens breaks the mold. It tracks actual order flow with enhanced data feeds and SpotGamma’s proprietary classification system, so you know if market makers are really getting long or short, and how market makers are likely to react.
In short, this lens shows whether pressure is building with or against your trade, so you’re not flying blind.
Trading Edge:Use Synthetic OI to spot when large long positions are building at key levels. That’s your cue to size up and ride the dealer flow.
Compass: Pinpoint High-Conviction Setups in Seconds
Compass is SpotGamma’s powerful new tool that maps directional skew vs. volatility across the entire market. You’ll instantly see where options are expensive or cheap and where directional sentiment resides — giving you a constant stream of high-probability setups.
Traders not only need the data, they need to be able to zero-in on opportunities amidst the noise. With Compass, you don’t need to flip through dozens of charts or data tables to access volatility and directional information.
By adding your name to the chart, you can quickly see correlation between names and which stocks may be outliers, giving you critical information to inform your trades
Compass highlights names worth your attention with Guided Mode. Explorer Mode puts you in the driver’s seat to choose which stocks you want to watch.
Trading Tip: Scan for stocks in Compass’s low IV / high bullish skew quadrant. That combo often points to cheap upside trades before the crowd piles in.
See It in Action — Find Your Edge in Any Stock
So for those readers who want to find trades most traders miss, SpotGamma is offering a free webinar on April 2 (just in time for the day’s market rollercoaster) that shows you how. Learn how to find trades others miss, using the Synthetic OI Lens and Compass.
SpotGamma will cover:
How to uncover real support/resistance using actual positioning—not lagging charts
Where to find high-reward setups like bullish risk reversals
How to scan your entire watchlist for volatility shifts in seconds
So for those who want smarter entries, faster trade ideas, and the data edge institutions traditionally kept to themselve, this is one to watch.
Jeffrey Epstein Victim Says She’s In Renal Failure, Has ‘Four Days To Live’
Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, 41, says she’s got ‘days to live’ – writing on Instagram that she’s in renal failure as a result of injuries sustained after a collision with a bus.
“This year has been the worst start to a new year, but I won’t bore anyone with the details but I think it important to note that when a school bus driver comes at you driving 110km as we were slowing for a turn that no matter what your car is made of it might as well be a tin can,” she wrote on Sunday.
“I’ve gone into kidney renal failure, they’ve given me four days to live, transferring me to a specialist hospital in urology. I’m ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time, but you know what they say about wishes.”
Her father, Sky Roberts, responded to her post: “Virginia my daughter, I love you and praying for you to get the correct treatment to live a long and healthy life. If there is anything in this world I can do to help you, please let me know. My spirit with you now and holding your hand.”
According to Sky, a retired engineer living in Floriday, Virginia is “suffering.”
Giuffre’s representative, Dini von Meuffling, “Virginia has been in a serious accident and is receiving medical care in the hospital. She greatly appreciates the support and well wishes people are sending.”
As one of the most prominent Epstein victims, Giuffre has been speaking out for years about her sexual abuse at the hands of Epstein and friends. In 2021, she filed a civil lawsuit in New York against Prince Andrew, who she accused of rape. She also said that Epstein’s ‘madam’ Ghislaine Maxwell had trafficked her to London to have sex with Andrew when she was 17. She agreed to an out-of-court settlement with Andrew in 2022 – which is believed to be in the millions of dollars, while Andrew – who’s denied all allegations, has been forced to step down from royal duties (since the rest of the royal family totally aren’t longstanding uncaught pedophiles).
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking following her 2021 conviction. Following the settlement, Giuffre retreated from public life and moved to Perth, Australia with her husband Robert and their three children – though recent reports suggest that she and her husband have become estranged.
“The current conflict between Europe and America is not reducible towards contrasting approaches towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
– Frank Furedi on Substack
“Contrary to Western media’s trash talk, Russian military has not been degraded. If anything, it has been significantly upgraded.”
– Alex Krainer
You’re going to see what a truly consequential span of weeks, looks like, as Western Civ goes into full churn on April’s doorstep.
Remember, TS Eliot called it the “cruelest month.”
Too many uncomfortable things are converging, too many ongoing operations are unwinding, too many tensions are breaking.
The conclusion of “Joe Biden’s” Ukraine War fiasco looms. You can tell because The New York Times published a gigantic piece Sunday detailing how the Pentagon and the CIA actually ran all of Ukraine’s tactical operations out of a base in Wiesbaden, Germany — after building a colossal Ukraine war machine post our 2014 color revolution in Kiev. Since the very start of the hot war in 2022, we did all the targeting for the weapons we gave them and planned their every move. What a surprise! (Not.)
The motive behind all that, as conceived by US neo-cons and NATO neo-morons, was to “weaken” Russia, bust it up, and seize its resources. All the sanctions piled on only induced Russia into an import-replacement campaign that actually strengthened its economy, while the war led to a revolution in Russian war-fighting tactics and advanced weaponry. Now, the whole thing is ending in Ukraine’s defeat and the West’s humiliation.
The Times could have published this in 2023-24, but it would have been a major embarrassment for “Joe Biden” and his shadow managers moving into the election. They put it out just now because the jig is up and the paper desperately needs to pretend that it’s ahead of events to preserve the last shreds of its credibility.
Mr. Trump, the uber-realist, knows that the Russians are going to roll up in Ukraine this spring and there is increasingly not much that can be done about that, except to try to put the best face on it — which is, that it wasn’t his war. As long as the coke freak Zelensky remains in charge, Ukraine will be negotiation-unworthy, as the Russian phrase goes. So, US-Russia peace talks were largely diplomatic showbiz. Both Putin and Mr. Trump were painfully aware of this, and hence, Mr. Trump’s latest performative bluster about “more sanctions” will probably not amount to anything.
And also hence, the synchronized idiocy on display in France, Germany, and the UK. They were all-in on the neo-con scheme that is now falling apart and its failure has driven them plumb crazy. As the US drops out of the stupid proxy war, they declare their intention to take it from here and go beat-up Russia. Their war-drums are teaspoons beating on so many quiches.
Soon-to-be chancellor Friedrich Merz proposes an 800-billion-Euro debt spree to finance the re-arming of Germany, which, just now, is utterly incapable of war. He is insane.
German industry is collapsing from a lack of affordable natural gas (as arranged by “Joe Biden” blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, danke schön). Turning Volkswagen factories to missile production will not help the German people one bit. It probably will remind them about the Weimar hyper-inflation, though.
Macron pledges to put French boots on the ground in Ukraine. Ain’t gonna happen.
Today, his stooge judiciary found political rival Marine LePen guilty of a Mickey Mouse offense in order to bar her from running against him in the next election. Ain’t gonna work. He will provoke the biggest national uprising since the Bastille. His government will be too busy putting down French Revolution 2.0 to play war games in history’s graveyard of armies. Maybe he’ll try nukes. I’m sure that’ll work — if you’re eager to see Russian hypersonic “hazelnuts” rain down on the Île-de-France.
And then, there is the amazing idiot PM Keir Starmer in the UK, calling on his “coalition of the willing” to step up and intervene in the lost cause that is Ukraine.
How many hands went up on that call? For practical purposes, the Brits have no war-fighting capacity whatsoever, and no resources for generating such capacity. And, anyway, they are facing some dreadful combo of a civil war / internal jihad against their own indigenous population, plus an economic collapse cherry-on-top.
In short, Europe has so many incipient existential problems that the whole story is about to shift its focus from the already-sealed fate of Ukraine to the very dark prospects for the core nations of Old-World Western Civ.
I wouldn’t plan a vacation there this year.
Meanwhile, expect a pile-up of consequence in our own sore-beset USA in the upcoming cruelest month. Today, the DOGE team visits the CIA. It could spell an end to decades of mad frolics emanating from that gigantic black box of black ops. Director John Ratcliffe has cordially invited Mr. Musk’s technicians and he is probably eager to discover exactly what mischief has been hidden from him by the immense, secretive, foul bureaucracy he lately assumed command over.
The Epstein materials recently recovered out of the FBI’s rogue New York offices of the agency are considered so critical by Director Patel that he assigned 1000 agents to review and process the docs full-time. That includes redacting names of many additional sex-trafficked children. Expect to see the release of a lot of that in the next thirty days with dire reverberations in the celebrity realms of politics, finance, and showbiz.
JudgeGate is moving toward its climax at the same time. Tuesday this week, Rep. Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on the DC circuit’s lawfare offensive against Mr. Trump’s executive authority. It would be nice to hear from DC district judges James Boasberg, Amy Berman Jackson, Tanya Chutkan, Beryl Howell, and Amir Ali, who have been zealously active in what looks like a coordinated lawfare campaign against the chief executive. Norm Eisen is not a judge, but he is the central conductor of the lawfare orchestra, and he has a bit of ‘splainin’ to do. One can even imagine something like a RICO referral emerge from that rather brazen operation. Anyway, the whole matter is going to land in the Supreme Court before April is out.
Also expect a lot of movement in the Covid-19 story coming out of the newly-reorganized CDC, NIH, FDA, NIAID, and other corners of the public health bureaucracy. Evidence is piling up fast of tragic and awful blowback from the Covid vaccine. There is too much to be ignored any longer and momentous decisions must follow, starting with taking the Pfizer and Moderna shots off-line. The entire regime of data collection, processing, and public release is about to change and the nation will be shocked by what gets disclosed.
Then there are the financial markets.
They do not like the kind of shifts in public perception that return of consequence must bring. Gold alone is sending out a very vivid distress signal for everything else pretending to be an asset or a form of collateral. The equity markets have been wobbling for weeks. Look out below as the Easter eggs roll.
Mark Zuckerberg is back in the hot seat, this time facing explosive allegations that Meta deliberately swiped millions of books from notorious digital pirate sites LibGen and Anna’s Archive to train its cutting-edge AI model, Llama 3.
According to recently filed court documents, Meta executives were allegedly openly discussing their desperate need for high-quality content, acknowledging in a damning email, “Books are actually more important than web data.” To that end, the company allegedly turned straight to piracy hubs stacked high with stolen literary treasures – without a second thought or a single cent paid to their rightful owners, according to Forbes.
Meta staff turned to LibGen, home to more than 7.5 million pirated books and 81 million stolen research papers, to fill that gap. They did the same with Anna’s Archive.
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In recently filed court documents, Meta, led by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is alleged to have deliberately and explicitly authorized a raid on LibGen—and Anna’s Archive, another massive digital pirate haven—to train its latest AI model, Llama 3.
The fallout has infuriated authors worldwide whose life’s work may have been quietly scooped up and fed into Zuckerberg’s latest technological brainchild without credit, consent, or compensation.
As the article notes, Meta’s 2024 financial statements showcase revenues topping a staggering $164 billion, with profits nearing $62 billion. Clearly, Meta had the means and muscle to fairly compensate creators, publishers, and researchers. Instead, they allegedly chose to steal that content for training purposes.
Critics argue this saga is more than just corporate greed;
They might even have acted as the leader in LLM input data and created licensed arrangements that respected an author’s rights. Imagine if the company had the corporate culture to be a leader on one of society’s latest and most important questions: Who owns content in the LLM?
Coincidentally, Meta’s “focus on long-term impact” core value states: “We emphasize long-term thinking that encourages us to extend the timeline for the impact we have, rather than optimizing for near-term wins.”
It seems very clear that Meta was indeed optimizing for near-term wins in this case, instead of outlining a corporate culture and leadership position of collaboration and authenticity.
Meta’s defense, meanwhile, leans on the “fair use” argument – suggesting their AI transforms stolen content into something sufficiently new. But legal experts stress fair use typically applies to educators, reviewers, and critics – not trillion-dollar tech giants profiteering off mass commercial data harvesting.
The author of the Forbes piece checked The Atlantic‘s Alex Reisner’s LibGen tracking tool and made a disturbing discovery: all five of their own published books were found pirated and included in Meta’s dataset.
A major class-action lawsuit has been filed alleging copyright infringement and unfair competition – while other firms “are likely guilty of similar sins,” according to the author.
Ultimately, this saga goes beyond Meta alone. The entire AI industry’s insatiable thirst for data urgently needs clear ethical guardrails. Tech giants must form sustainable, fair partnerships with content creators or risk stifling creativity, undermining intellectual property rights, and eroding public trust.
