Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

What’s behind the Trump administration’s interest in revisiting the Panama Canal Treaty?

Plenty.

Although Panama technically owns the canal, China operates ports at both ends of it. This gives Beijing the opportunity to militarize its control over it with dual-use infrastructure, potentially positioning it to deny access to the critical waterway, particularly to the United States.

Today, China is the canal’s second-largest customer, behind only the United States. Some believe that Beijing’s influence has already led to disproportionately higher transit costs for the United States and that it violates Panama’s neutrality policy that was negotiated by a treaty with the United States in 1978.

The Trump administration believes that the treaty has already been broken, so U.S. action is justified. It also believes that Beijing’s de facto control over the Panama Canal poses a direct threat to U.S. economic, military, and geopolitical interests in the region and the world.

The administration is correct in its assessment.

The ‘Panama Strategy’ Goes Global

In the larger picture, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has deepened its presence and influence in Latin America, as it has in many strategic areas around the globe. The BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road,” is a global infrastructure and investment scheme to insert Chinese money, influence, and personnel into nations worldwide by building needed infrastructure such as roads, railways, ports, and energy pipelines.

BRI participation typically weakens foreign governments by leaving them deep in debt to Beijing, resulting to some degree in a loss of sovereignty or control over Chinese-built ports and other infrastructure.

Panama’s relinquishment of economic control of the canal to Beijing is a great example of the CCP’s overarching strategy. Its “Panama Strategy” is a systematic way of gaining control over the world’s strategic waterways, shipping lanes, and ports.

This strategy’s main elements involve establishing a global naval presence, extending influence through its BRI deals, and building military sites and artificial islands in key locations around the world. The goal is to expand the Chinese regime’s power in order to overturn the U.S.-led global trading system and its open shipping lanes policy. The Panama Canal isn’t the first, but it is one of many strategic waterways that China controls through either infrastructure investments, or a military presence through its BRI program, or with both.

Beijing’s Big Board Game

For Beijing, the most critical area is the South China Sea. With about $3 trillion worth of trade (one-third of global shipping) passing through it annually, China has built artificial islands and military installations in the region to assert its dominance. Of course, this poses a direct challenge to U.S. security guarantees to nations in the region, from Taiwan to South Korea and Japan. This has led to rising tensions with neighboring countries and global powers, especially with the United States and Taiwan.

The Strait of Malacca is another narrow passage for global trade with a heavy Chinese naval commercial presence established through the BRI. With 60 percent of its imports and 80 percent of oil imports from the Middle East passing through the strait, it’s a strategic vulnerability to Beijing.

The CCP also exerts significant influence in the Suez Canal Economic Zone. Egypt is a BRI participant, and this vital passage linking the Mediterranean Sea to the top of the Red Sea enables China to monitor and potentially control trade between Europe, Asia, and Africa.

China is actively involved in several key waterways through the BRI and has military installations near or on them. These include the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil chokepoint connects the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea and the wider world, where China has a strategic partnership with Iran, which controls the strait. Beijing also has a strategic military presence near Djibouti, its first overseas military base, to project military power to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Will US ‘Trump’ Xi’s Grand Ambitions?

China’s sea power strategy has been in force since Chinese leader Xi Jinping took power in 2013. The takeover of key waterways reflects Xi’s broader ambition to assert control over and shape the flow of goods, energy, and military power across critical global chokepoints.

The plan is to secure China’s rise to global hegemon status based on four strategic areas: economic dominance, unrivaled strategic military power and presence, unchecked geopolitical influence across all global trading regions, and energy security.

By definition, for the CCPs plan to succeed, the United States must fail. The “China Dream” of global hegemony depends upon its ability to dethrone the United States as the supreme global power in each of those areas. Those are the true ambitions of Xi and the CCP.

It is apparent that the Trump administration is not only aware of those grand ambitions but is also prepared to challenge them. The Panama Canal seems like an obvious place to start.

Let us hope so.

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

Dr. Peter McCullough told The HighWire’s Del Bigtree that the current strain of bird flu likely resulted from gain-of-function research conducted at the USDA Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia.

“This strain of bird flu is different. This looks like it actually came from serial passage research done at the USDA Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia … We’re so sure of it that we’ve published this in a peer-reviewed paper … and it hasn’t been disputed by any of the public health officials. We cite the USDA research.” McCullough told Bigtree. 

McCullough continued, “Serial passage is when a blend of viral strains is intentionally put in a mallard duck. They were trying to see which strain would pass to other mallard ducks. The mallard duck is studied because its gullet is where the virus attaches and doesn’t go into the lungs. And indeed, they found CLADE 23446 that looked like it transmitted … and sure enough, Athens was where the first cases were found.” 

“The mallard ducks could spread it all over and in migratory waterfowl. It quickly spread into mammals, and now up to 40 different species of mammals,” McCullough said. 

He pointed out that USDA officials have generally used biosecurity measures such as “sterilizing the entire farm” to stop the spread, adding, “Well, that doesn’t work because the mallard ducks would just continue to re-infect the farms.” 

FOWL PLAY | EP 414 @P_McCulloughMD on Bird Flu & Gain-of-Function research; @JeffereyJaxen on new spike protein science;@DelBigtree on RFK Jr.’s recent measles Op-Ed; @matthewlguthrie reveals stories of those silenced during COVID vaccine trials. https://t.co/lcNXmL5XlT

— The HighWire (@HighWireTalk) March 6, 2025

McCullough cited research by Nicolas Hulscher, an epidemiologist and foundation administrator at the McCullough Foundation… 

Yes, our study concluded that the current H5N1 bird flu outbreak may have originated from the USDA Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory—and not a single U.S. government agency has challenged our findings. https://t.co/vbGwDJ7ZVR pic.twitter.com/TOhZA1jPqq

— Nicolas Hulscher, MPH (@NicHulscher) March 8, 2025

“The current bird flu outbreak is likely the result of gain-of-function serial passage experiments at the USDA Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory—exacerbated by mass culling practices,” McCullough Foundation wrote on X. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Robert Malone previously commented on McCullough’s research on the origin of the virus.

I call BS. Mccullough has the same conflict of interest as scott gottleib, just that TWC is smaller than Pfizer

— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) January 1, 2025

The origin debate of the latest bird flu strain has been circulating social media in recent months after mass cullings of chickens by the Biden-Harris administration left the Trump administration with a historic mess…

US Scours World For Egg Supplies After Biden’s “Insane Slaughter Of 150 Million Chickens” https://t.co/5TOgzfe5sQ

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 7, 2025

Like Covid-19, perhaps decades of unelected bureaucrats funding gain-of-function research should be heavily scrutinized by the Trump administration. Perhaps it’s time for an executive order to put an end to this madness—before the next man-made outbreak emerges.

And now you know why egg prices are high… Maybe the blame should be placed on government scientists and response… 

.@elonmusk and @DOGE should investigate the @USDA “Mass Culling Cycle of Devastation” that has already wasted over $1.25 billion in taxpayer money, disrupted America’s food supply chain, led to chicken-to-human transmission, and failed to stop H5N1 bird flu. pic.twitter.com/bAmPGFdoed

— Nicolas Hulscher, MPH (@NicHulscher) March 9, 2025

CC Doge… 

The Trump administration on Sunday issued a statement of condemnation in response to the ongoing sectarian killings in Syria under the Jolani regime, which has also included foreign fighters going door to door and killing non-Sunni Muslims and in some instances Christians in and around Latakia on the coast.

The fresh words issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio call out the “radical Islamist terrorists” and “foreign jihadis” for the murderous rampage targeting the Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities.

As we detailed earlier, since Thursday and Friday over 1,000 civilians have been killed – though some regional correspondents say the numbers could be in the multiple thousands. Much of the atrocities are happening far away from any media cameras, though the jihadists themselves have photographed and filmed many of their brutal crimes.

Rubio’s full statement published to the State Department’s website reads as follows:

“The United States condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, that murdered people in western Syria in recent days. The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families. Syria’s interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria’s minority communities accountable.

However, the unfortunate recent history of the war in Syria is that it was Washington arming and training many of the very Sunni Islamist fanatics now doing the killing.

Mostly this was under the Obama administration, with reports that Trump ordered a shutdown of the CIA side of the US program during his first term in office.

BREAKING🚨 protests erupt in Damascus over the genocide of alawites in the coastal areas. They are dispersed by gun fire from the new Al Qaeda regime. pic.twitter.com/fQSqECOQKM

— Syrian Girl (@Partisangirl) March 9, 2025

Many of these US-backed factions were persecuting and killing Christians, as we’ve also long documented, but following Assad’s ouster on December 8 many Syrian Christians have once again begun fleeing the country as the jihadists now have free reign over all territories previously protected by Assad forces.

The plight of Syria’s Christians has suddenly come back onto the West’s radar, after long being ignored. Tucker Carlson issued the below strong message this weekend:

As predictable as this is, it’s still infuriating to see it. For decades, Bashar al-Assad protected minority religious communities in Syria, including the country’s large Christian population. No one in the United States was allowed to notice this, and anyone who did was… https://t.co/bPsre7rRNO

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 7, 2025

“During the years that neocons in the west backed the war against Assad, the percentage of Christians in Syria went from ten percent to two percent,” Carlson accurately pointed out.

‘Now that Assad has been driven from power, many of the remaining Syrian Christians are being slaughtered and their holy places desecrated,” he added.

The topic began trending enough to get Elon Musk’s attention…

How many people are being killed? https://t.co/vdpCUL6aTE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 9, 2025

The jihadists have continued the killings through Sunday – in some cases burning villages, and going into the homes of non-Sunnis and massacring whole families. The terrorists haven’t been shy about uploading their killings on the internet as well as in livestreams. Men, women, children, and even babies are being brutally murdered.

The tragic situation, and the West’s role in it, has been summarized by a cleric of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is the predominant Christian faith of Syria and the Middle East. “As you see the unfolding tragedy in Syria, keep in mind, this is your tax dollars at work. This was brought to you by the US government, the State of Israel, and Turkey. They said Assad was bad. This is what they replaced Assad with,” Priest John Whiteford said on X.

Authored by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,

When plunder becomes a way of life, and when Control Fraud dominates, there’s really no reform possible. You just have to start over. I think this is where we’re headed, and it’s going to be really bumpy along the way…

When corruption IS the path, there is only one destination.

There comes a moment in time when you just have to sit back and ask, “Can this thing I’m trying to do even be done?”

When it comes to an entity, company, individual or country, there’s an invisible line of corruption beyond which there’s no recovery.

Today I am going to make the case that the US government, as an entity, is too far gone to recover.  Whole parts of it will have to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch.

The West collectively has passed over that invisible line.  An enormous amount of economic, legal and political pain is in our future.  If we’re really lucky and refuse to put up with their deflections and nonsense, we’ll be able to avoid WW III.  If not…well, you’d better take stock of your provisions and basic life skills and improve them where they are deficient.

Frederic Bastiat captured this well back in the 1800’s.

Once the fraud and corruption have been allowed to persist for too long, the people benefitting from it stand up an entire system to protect and advance their rackets.

That’s where we are.

A really good way to begin to understand and dig through the systemic mess we’re in is to familiarize yourself with William K Black’s concept of “Control Fraud.”

Mr. Black’s background was both as a lawyer and a PhD in criminology, spanning the two areas necessary to begin to unravel the Savings & Loan frauds of the 1980s where he served honorably, his efforts resulted in many prosecutions, and he developed the concept of Control Fraud.

Without enforcement, there can be no reform of an entity shot through with Control Fraud.  Consider USAID.  Who was going to investigate and prosecute the many frauds operating there?  The FBI?

From the above partial list of “failures” it’s patently clear that the FBI had somehow become the clean-up and cover-up arm of other agencies running their own frauds and illegal activities.

Would we turn then to the Department of Justice?  Again, the patterns we can surface there are deeply troubling:

With the top investigative and prosecutorial arms of the government not only neutered, but captured within a legal system that authorizes the frauds and a moral system the glorifies them, the game has been lost.

There’s not much left but the painful part.

In part II, I cover how these frauds are likely to unwind explosively, leading to massive economic and market pains, as well as legal and political turmoil.  My inescapable conclusion is that these system shocks could well result in The Great Taking machinery being activated, leading to legendary losses for those who are wrongly positioned or unprepared.

After all, if there’s one last thing fraudsters do on their way out the door, it’s to grab as much as they can in one last desperate act, damn the consequences for the nation or other people!

Since our Treasury no longer has any gold or silver in it, the last official act will be to seize control of your assets.  It’s nothing personal, it’s simply the moral code of these people.

Cut off from their government flows they’ll come after your house, stocks and bonds next.  Fortunately, there are many ways to avoid their predations, or at least to not be low-hanging fruit for them.

Authored by Kimberley Hayek via The Epoch Times,

Los Angeles City officials have lost track of billions in spending on homelessness services, according to an independent audit released on March 6.

The audit was commissioned by federal U.S. District Judge David O. Carter and completed by Alvarez & Marsal Public Sector Services, LLC. (A&M).

The report noted that A&M found it challenging to completely quantify how Los Angeles officials spent approximately $2.3 billion in funding meant to shelter, feed, and serve homeless people due to the incomplete and inaccurate manner the city’s homelessness program recorded and collected data.

The report painted a grim picture of Los Angeles’ homeless program managed by Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which was established in 1993.

“Repetitive information gaps, coupled with a lack of accurate and complete data and documentation, posed significant obstacles to this assessment,” the report states.

“Insufficient financial accountability led to an inability to trace substantial funds allocated to the City Programs. Fragmented data systems across LAHSA, the City, and the County and inconsistent reporting formats made it challenging to verify spending and the number of beds or units reported by the City and LAHSA, track participant outcomes, and align financial data with performance metrics.”

The report also cites a paucity of uniform data standards and real-time oversight, which limited the ability of the auditor to fully assess the true impact of homeless programs and raised concerns of resource misallocation.

A&M found that key stakeholders failed to monitor homelessness programs, and that LAHSA was unable to identify relevant service provider contracts and expenses. It also found gaps in documentation.

“Contracts between the City, LAHSA, and service providers frequently contained broad terms without clear definitions, which created ambiguity about the scope and type of service delivered,” the report reads.

The county and city of Los Angeles outsources the management and allocation of funds to the LAHSA, an agency that the city and county are responsible for overseeing.

Fragmented data across the city, county, and LAHSA posed challenges to verifying spending and aligning financial data with performance metrics. The audit also found that the LAHSA failed to corroborate whether services were provided for invoiced items.

“The lack of uniform data standards and realtime oversight increased the risk of resource misallocation and limited the ability to assess the true impact of homelessness assistance services,” according to the report.

A&M said it is now recommending the City of Los Angeles consider approving and appointing an independent financial manager to create a robust framework for reviewing and approving service provider invoices and LAHSA invoices or cash requests.

The auditor also recommended the city mandate that service providers produce detailed, itemized invoices outlining specific costs, along with clear supporting documentation for the verification of service delivery.

LAHSA has not returned a request for comment.

Homelessness has reached historic levels in Los Angeles, according to the report. In 2023, seven homeless individuals died per day in Los Angeles, according to a separate report released on March 6 by the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

People experiencing homelessness were 4.5 times more likely to die than the L.A. County population as a whole, according to the county’s report. The leading cause of death was a drug overdose.

Aaaaaannndd, he’s gone!

Ex-Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor and king of the globalists, Mark Carney, has tonight won the race to become Canada’s next prime minister, replacing globalist Justin Trudeau.

Carney won the contest to lead the Liberal Party of Canada with 85.9% of the vote. 

Throughout the leadership race, Carney portrayed himself as an experienced crisis manager who led major central banks at pivotal moments – in Canada, during the global financial crisis, and in the UK, during its tumultuous exit from the European Union. 

But he is relatively untested as a politician and does not currently hold a seat in Parliament. The first crisis he will face is a trade war.. which until now he has been quiet about.

“We have made this the greatest country in the world and now our neighbors want to take us,” Carney said in a brief speech before the results were announced on Sunday. 

“No way.”

The transfer of power from Justin Trudeau to Carney is expected to take place within days.

Globalist-er and globalist-er (but at least it wasn’t Christia Freeland).

Is a new Israel Defense Forces (IDF) assault on the Gaza Strip imminent? Israel has on Sunday cut all electricity to the Strip, in a move which typically signals some kind of escalation in military operations.

Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister announced in a video message that Israel would use “all means available … to ensure the return of all Israeli hostages” and to force Hamas out of Gaza.

“I just signed an order for the immediate halt of electricity to the Gaza Strip,” Cohen confirmed. There had already long been lengthy blackouts throughout the Hamas-Israel war.

Hardline Israeli politician Itamar Ben Gvir praised the move:

“The Gaza Strip must be completely and immediately blacked out as long as even one Israeli hostage is being held there,” he said.

“Israel must bomb the huge fuel depots that entered the Strip as part of the unfortunate deal, as well as the generators operated by Hamas.”

Some 2.3 million Palestinians are in the Gaza Strip, and those that have electricity supplies are mostly reliant on generators. The scant remaining supplies going into the Strip have effectively been cut by Israeli authorities.

Hamas is demanding access to all resources, and the return of humanitarian shipments from outside countries and international organizations.

“We call on mediators in Egypt and Qatar, as well as the guarantors in the US administration, to ensure that [Israel] complies with the agreement … and proceeds with the second phase according to the agreed-upon terms,” Hamas spokesperson, Hazem Qassem, told Agence France-Presse.

The White House seems to have grown more quiet on pushing the controversial Trump plan to push all Palestinians out of Gaza in order to build a “Rivera on the Mediterranean”.

Still, Trump has warned there will be “hell” to pay if all Israeli captives aren’t released. Media estimates commonly say the following of those that remain:

Fifty-nine hostages are thought to remain in Gaza, more than half of whom are thought to be dead, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. Five of the 59 are American Israelis, only one of whom – Edan Alexander – is still alive.

On Sunday, senior Hamas official Taher Al Nunu was quoted by Al Aqsa TV – a channel affiliated to the militant group – as saying that it did not oppose releasing Alexander as part of negotiations to end the war.

A phase one ceasefire deal has held and been completed, but it’s an open question whether it will hold into a phase two. For now, the guns have still remained silent, and there is an uneasy truce.

On Saturday a group of French feminists – who we’re sure are absolute peaches to be around, did what any woman trying to be taken seriously would do – whipped out their tits and finger paints, then decorated each other with various flags, swastikas, and the message “FASCIST EPIDEMIC.”

The group of around 40 women from the group “FEMEN” demonstrated on the streets of Paris in protest against “far-right” forces and “fascism” in Europe to coincide with the International Women’s Day celebrations. The group is calling for a ‘feminist Europe.’

They shouted: “HEIL DONALD TRUMP … HEIL VLADIMIR PUTIN … HEIL ELON MUSK … HEIL VIKTOR ORBAN … HEIL GIORGIA MELONI … HEIL MARINE LE PEN“

Action des FEMEN lors de la manifestation du 8 mars, journée internationale pour le droit des femmes.#8mars #8mars2025 #InternationalWomensDay pic.twitter.com/c3IeZ8UF7R

— CLPRESS / Agence de presse (@CLPRESSFR) March 8, 2025

Powerful.

“Our infantry, unarmed and nonviolent, will always be ready. We refuse to serve as a Trojan horse for the repugnant ideas of identitarian groups. We will not look away as the violent wave of masculinism sweeps across the world,” the group posted on Instagram.

Musk was not impressed…

5/10

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 8, 2025

pic.twitter.com/gB4mpMaYfl

— LilHumansBigImpact (@BigImpactHumans) March 9, 2025

* * *

We’ve sold a TON of these lighter / flashlight combos…

Special Deal: Buy 2 bags of coffee (or more), receive free ZeroHedge tumbler!

Is Romania the canary in the ‘death of democracy’ coalmine?

After today’s news, that canary – along with ‘democracy’ – is well and truly dead.

In a stunning turn of events – that we have a feeling could backfire disastrously on the elite establishment – Romania has barred far-right frontrunner Calin Georgescu from running in May’s presidential election, in a move that could worsen the country’s political turmoil.

The Bucharest-based electoral bureau invalidated Georgescu’s candidacy, a spokesman from the bureau said on Sunday. 

It received more than 1,000 challenges to Georgescu’s candidacy mostly related to his so-called anti-democratic and extremist stances. 

The decision can still be appealed at the Constitutional Court.

The decision to eliminate Georgescu from the May 4 presidential race will likely deepen Romania’s anti-establishment mood and benefit the far-right. 

Polls showed that had Georgescu run, he would’ve garnered between 40% and 45% of the vote in the first round, giving him a real chance of becoming Romania’s president.

Georgescu submitted his candidacy for May’s election – as an independent – reminding voters of the utter farce he has been through over the last coupel of months:

“Everyone is watching Romania and how the corrupt system acted,” said Georgescu on Friday, adding that he thought it’s impossible for his name not to be on the ballot’s list of candidates.

“They can’t afford to repeat the mistake.”

Well, they did!

As a reminder, after emerging victorious from the first round of voting in November’s presidential election, Romania’s top court in December to annul the outcome of last year’s presidential vote, which cited suspicions of Russian meddling (via TikTok!?) in his campaign.

Following their decision, the Black Sea bordering nation tumbled into its biggest political crisis since the collapse of communism. 

The decision has also buoyed the success of Romania’s extremist parties, in a country already disillusioned with the political mainstream, prompting massive protests nationwide…

🇷🇴 Close to 100,000 people on the streets of Bucharest protesting against the decision to cancel the elections and in support of Georgescu

Man tries to find the end of the protest, gives up after he keeps running into masses of people pic.twitter.com/EEs7C2ga3P

— Daily Romania (@daily_romania) January 12, 2025

Two weeks ago, the prosecutor’s office has reportedly imposed the following restrictions on him and his campaign:

1) Barred from appearing on mass media

2) Forbidden from creating social media accounts

A Romanian Court Press Release cites “attempted incitement against the constitutional order” (coup), “spreading false information,” as well as “false statements on campaign funding,” and links to “fascist, xenophobic, and antisemitic organizations.”

And that prompted yet more large-scale protests.

The eu needs to be very careful with this powder keg https://t.co/AdrCmuQq22

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) February 26, 2025

While Georgescu planned to run as an independent, he is backed by two far-right opposition parties. Recent polls show he’d get about 40% of the vote in the first round of the May ballot.

It remains to be seen whether Georgescu will throw his support behind any of the other candidates, such as the leader of the largest far-right opposition party AUR, George Simion, who backed him after the cancellation of the elections.

🇷🇴🚨BREAKING NEWS

The candidacy of Calin Georgescu for the presidential elections has been rejected by the Electoral Commission.

The country is in chaos.

Democracy has officially died in Romania and the European Union.

Europe has fallen.

pic.twitter.com/iCYtC2JFdn

— Radio Europe (@RadioEuropes) March 9, 2025

Georgescu denies any wrongdoing and continues to claim that he received no funding for his campaign last year, which he says was exclusively volunteer-run.

“The Romanian people will always win,” Georgescu said in front of his supporters at the electoral bureau in Bucharest.

“Democracy was killed in December but we are reviving it today.”

The unprecedented move to annul last year’s election result is still viewed as controversial by most Romanians and was criticized by the Trump administration.

We suspect those criticisms will turn all the way up to 11 after today’s court decision to ban him from actually being on the ballot.

None of this should be a surprise – as shocking as it is for an elite establishment who constantly crow about “democracy”.

Simply put, from the perspective of western liberal world order, Georgescu cannot be allowed to win because he takes the common sense approach that confrontation with Moscow does much more harm to Romanians than to Russia.

And Romania is simply too important to NATO and the effort to weaken Russia. Washington and Brussels are already dealing with wayward governments in Hungary and Slovakia, but Romania is a different animal.

Romania is also the site of the $2.7 billion expansion of Mihail Kogălniceanu airbase to make it the largest one in Europe.

It’s entirely possible that Romania is just the start of annulled elections as the neoliberal war champions who call themselves the “center” would no doubt love the power to cancel elections wherever they see fit.

We give the last words to Andrew Korybko who summarized the importance of events in Romania (and their consequences):

The Romanian “deep state’s” latest attempt to take down Georgescu is essentially a gauntlet thrown at the Trump Administration by its liberal-globalist opponents in Brussels who fully back Bucharest. They want to test whether the US will do anything in response to the EU’s rolling coup in Romania…

…

What’s unfolding in this Balkan country is nothing less than the opening of another New Cold War front, albeit this time an ideological one between liberal-globalists and populist-nationalists, which also interestingly pits nominal NATO allies against one another as the EU and the US take opposite sides. It’s incumbent on the Trump Administration to do what’s needed to ensure that Georgescu is allowed to run as president in May’s election redux and that the vote is truly free and fair instead of flawed as usual.

To that end, targeted sanctions against Romanian figures, credibly threatening to withdraw its troops from Romania, suspending arms contracts, and extending full political support to populist-nationalist protesters could pressure the authorities into reconsidering the wisdom of doing Brussels’ bidding. At the same time, a comprehensive pressure campaign could also backfire if the German-led EU exploits it as the pretext for deepening its already immense control over Romania, though that could backfire too.

It was explained here in response to the likely next German chancellor’s pledge to “achieve independence” from the US that military, economic, and energy factors make that a lot easier said than done. If provoked, like could soon happen if the German-led EU pushes back against the US’ potentially impending pressure campaign on Romania, then Trump could weaponize each of them in his own such campaign against the EU and Germany that he stands a good chance of winning on both fronts.

Altogether, what just happened in Romania places the country at the center of the intra-Western ideological dimension of the New Cold War, which will determine the future of Europe. Liberal-globalists will either entrench their power in full defiance of Trump, possibly at enormous costs to their countries, or they’ll be democratically deposed by populist-nationalists who share the same worldview as his team. This struggle is historic and the consequences of its outcome will reverberate for decades.

Finally, we can’t help but feel like JD Vance should be jumping up and down on X right, posting a ‘told you so’ about Europe’s free-speech crushing, democracy-damaging self-implosion as he made cleAR THAT stands on the side of all populist-nationalist movements on the continent.

In the latest salvo of the second global trade war, on Saturday, China announced retaliatory tariffs on some Canadian farm and food imports, after Canada imposed duties in October on Chinese-made electric vehicles and steel and aluminum products.

Additional 100% tariffs will be imposed on Canadian rapeseed oil, oil cakes and peas, and additional 25% tariffs will apply to pork and some seafood imports. The new duties become effective March 20, according to a statement by the Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council.

China said it was responding to “discriminatory” tariffs of 100% on electric vehicles and 25% on steel and aluminium that Ottawa announced in August, which followed similar actions by the US.

China is an important market for Canadian rapeseed, a crop also known as canola. China bought $3.5bn worth of Canadian canola products, including oil and seeds, making it the largest market behind the US, according to the Canola Council of Canada trade group.

The duties come in retaliation for Ottawa imposing tariffs against Chinese imports in October, including a 100% surtax on all Chinese-made EVs and 25% on steel and aluminum imports.

“Despite China’s repeated opposition and dissuasion, Canada has taken unilateral restrictive measures on electric vehicles, steel, aluminum and other products imported from China without investigation, undermining China-Canada economic and trade relations,” read the statement by the customs authorities.

The decision to impose retaliatory duties comes after an “anti-discrimination probe, which found out that Canada’s restrictive measures against some Chinese products have disrupted normal trade order and harmed the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises,” it added.

Canada announced tariffs on Chinese goods last August following similar duties being imposed by the U.S. and the European Union against Chinese-made EVs and other products. The Western governments – and certainly Trump – say China’s subsidies give its industry an unfair advantage.

Canadian outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused China of “not playing by the same rules” when he announced the tariffs on Chinese EVs and metals in August. Carmaking is one of Canada’s most important manufacturing sectors, with plants supplying the US market.

The tariffs add to global trade tensions already high, with rounds of tariff announcements by the United States, China, Canada and Mexico. This week, Trump backtracked on his threat to impose sweeping 25 per cent tariffs on Mexico and Canada but maintained the possibility of the measures being imposed in April.