Via The Cradle

The Israeli army has set up at least seven new military outposts in southern Syria, satellite imagery published by Haaretz newspaper on 18 February has revealed. 

The new military sites were established in Mount Hermon, Hader, Jubata al-Khashab, Al-Hamidiyah, Quneitra, Al-Qahtaniyah, and Tel Kudna. They aim to serve as “operational hubs for troops” in Syria as part of a reorganization of the Israeli presence in the south of the country, Haaretz said. 

The sites include living quarters, command centers, clinics, bathrooms, and showers. Israeli occupation forces swept across southern Syria after the fall of former president Bashar al-Assad’s government in December last year, moving past the demilitarized zone and expanding their decades-long illegal occupation in the country. 

Facing “harsh” and “uninhabitable” conditions, Tel Aviv’s forces began setting up infrastructure to allow for a prolonged stay, the newspaper adds. 

Earlier this month, Israeli Army Radio reported that occupation forces have discreetly established a security zone within Syrian territory, with nine permanent sites already under advanced construction. 

Three army brigades currently operate on Syrian territory, an increase from the one-and-a-half battalions stationed in the occupied Golan Heights before 7 October 2023, the army radio added.

Invading forces have recently seized precious water sources such as the Al-Wahda Dam on the Yarmouk River Basin and others. 

Hundreds of Israeli airstrikes have also destroyed former Syrian army air and naval bases, as well as aircraft, air defense systems, and missile stores.

“The IDF will remain at the summit of the Hermon and the security zone indefinitely to ensure the security of the communities of the Golan Heights and the north, and all the residents of Israel,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said late last month during a visit to the occupied Syrian territory. 

Satellite imagery reveals Israel has built at least seven new bases in Syria, all along the buffer zone, from the Syrian Mt Hermon, down south towards tri-border area with Jordan

w @yanivkub / Planet Labs PBChttps://t.co/Z4iaRxc5Ul pic.twitter.com/cKqKxPUIgF

— avi scharf (@avischarf) February 18, 2025

“We will not allow hostile forces to establish themselves in the security zone in southern Syria … we will act against any threat,” he added.

The Group of Seven is looking to send a big anti-Russia message on Feb. 24, the three-year anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, with a potential tightening of an oil price cap intended to further hurt revenue for Russia’s war machine.

Bloomberg has revealed a G7 draft statement Tuesday calling for member nations to collectively redraw the price limit, which is currently set at $60 a barrel for crude oil. The document spells out pressure for Russia to “incentivize it to negotiate a meaningful peace” in Ukraine; however, it’s anything but clear whether this is being called for in cooperation with Trump officials, who are engaged in direct talks with Moscow.

The draft at one point references “troops and resources on the ground, coupled with robust international oversight to monitor agreed-upon lines,” Bloomberg writes.

But based on the wording, it does seem a last-ditch parallel effort to jump-start a peace arrangement with Moscow, as European nations in particular seek a ‘seat at the table’ – given both Zelensky and EU officials were completely cut out of Tuesday’s meetings with Russian representatives in Saudi Arabia.

According to more of the content:

The draft indicates the allies would “recognize” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s “readiness to engage in talks to end the war,” while warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s terms for peace “have so far amounted to Ukraine’s complete capitulation.” The draft shows the allies are planning to meet with Zelenskiy on Feb. 24.

Allies will call, according to the draft, for a “common sense peace that is fair, a peace that lasts,” which would entail “a durable security guarantee.”

The initial oil price cap by the Western allies, first implemented in December 2022, proved too easy for Russia to work around, as India and China have remained the biggest buyers of Russian crude, and have proven not so compliant.

The outgoing Biden administration in December then sought to ratchet sanctions on Russian oil, including sanctions on Surgutneftgas and Gazprom Neft, two Russian oil firms which together account for 25% of exports. Middlemen who supply Russian oil have also been targeted.

This new planned G7 initiative would aim to severely disrupt Russian oil exports to India and China, and if successful could give Trump’s team more leverage in negotiations with Moscow. But Bloomberg also notes:

The allies will maintain their line that any negotiation to end the war “must involve Ukraine’s full participation,” and leave it open to pursuing Euro-Atlantic integration.

It’s hard to be sure what tightening or adapting the cap would look like in practice. While a lower price could be one option, another could be to try to bolster enforcement of the current measure.

The incoming Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, says he believes the Biden Administration’s sanctions on Russia were not aggressive enough, and he would support imposing harsher sanctions on Russian oil companies pic.twitter.com/8zw8QzlRBm

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 16, 2025

During a late Tuesday afternoon press Q&A from Mar-a-Lago, Trump blasted critics of his peace plan, saying “I hear they’re upset about not having a seat. Well, they’ve had a seat for three years.” This was in response to Ukrainians feeling ‘betrayed’ by being left out of current talks with Moscow.

Meanwhile, there are reports saying Trump and Putin could finally meet face-to-face by month’s end, as the sides potentially progress toward a firm deal.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

He said that nobody in Europe knows what Trump’s plan actually is, they’re unable to assemble the approximately 100,000 troops that a prolonged peacekeeping mission in Ukraine would require, and Poland still remains reluctant to participate in any such mission even if it’s heavily pressured to do so.

Chief of Poland’s National Security Bureau Dariusz Lukowski gave an interview to Radio ZET on Monday about his country’s position towards the Ukrainian Conflict. According to him, it shouldn’t send peacekeepers to Ukraine, but this still can’t be ruled out in the future despite Prime Minister Donald Tusk once again explicitly saying that it won’t do so. That’s because there’d be a lot of pressure on Poland to get involved if others dispatch their peacekeepers there first, but he’s still unsure whether it’ll happen.

He assessed that Europe as a whole doesn’t have the 100,000 troops ready that would be required for patrolling the over 1,000-kilometer-long frontline for the decade that he expects such a mission to last at minimum. Even if Poland doesn’t participate on the ground, however, he said that it could still “secure the airspace over Ukraine. A form of air policing. Aircraft based in Poland could patrol the airspace of Ukraine.” Such scenarios would naturally depend on the outcome of the Russian-US talks though.

About that, Lukowski said that new US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth didn’t brief his hosts about the details of Trump’s envisaged peace plan during last week’s visit nor request them to participate in any peacekeeping mission. He added that “We tried to ask the American side such a question (about their negotiating strategy), because we are interested in what types of instruments they would like to use to convince Putin to adopt such and such a solution and not others, but no specifics were given.”

Another point that this top security official made was that outgoing President Andrzej Duda “tried to convey in a very clear way how Poland perceives Russian issues, that Russia cannot be trusted”, but he didn’t say whether he thought that Hegseth will listen to what the Polish leader had to say. 

Lukowski continued by claiming that Russia could attack Poland at any moment but said that he doesn’t believe that the US would betray Poland even if that happens by abandoning it to face Russia all on its own.

Even so, he warned that Poland still needs three years “to have the capabilities to effectively resist or deter a potential adversary from attacking our country”, likely in a nod to the “East Shield” part of the “European Defense Line” that his country is building along its borders with Kaliningrad and Belarus. 

In any case, Lukowski said that his country’s plan is to survive for 2-3 weeks until support can arrive from its allies, which interestingly suggests a much longer delay in NATO aid than most observers expect.

Perhaps the top takeaway from his interview though was his admission that Poland failed in its plans to produce its own ammo. 

In his words, “It’s bad. In many areas we don’t have independence. This is a classic situation that we observe in Ukraine and a lesson that needs to be learned. If we do not have our own potential, guaranteed supplies, others will decide on the pace and manner of conducting war.” 

He then said that he doesn’t understand why this problem persists and warned about its consequences.

Lukowski’s interview confirmed Poland’s hesitation to directly involve itself in the Ukrainian Conflict exactly as Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski signaled last November when warning that Zelensky wants to provoke a war between them and Russia. 

It’s also out of the loop when it comes to the ongoing Russian-US peace talks despite Hegseth describing Poland as America’s “model ally” during last week’s visit. 

Poland therefore isn’t expected to make any dramatic or rash moves for the time being.

Back in October 2023, when we pointed out that China’s FX outflows had just hit a whopping $75BN – the single biggest monthly outflow since the 2015 currency devaluation – we concluded that the “unfavorable interest rate spread between China and the US will likely imply persistent depreciation and outflow pressures in coming months”, or in other words, “September’s biggest FX outflow in years is just the beginning, and very soon – in addition to geopolitics and central banks – the world will also be freaking out about the capital flight out of China… not to mention where all those billions in Chinese savings are going and which digital currency the Chinese are using to launder said outflows.”

We wrote that on October 20, 2023, when Bitcoin was trading just under $30,000, a level it had been for much of 2023. And, just as we correctly predicted at the time…

Clockwork: every time China FX outflows surge, bitcoin erupts.

From last Friday: China Capital Flight Panic Eruptshttps://t.co/j0eWLnbFMq

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 24, 2023

… following this surge in Chinese FX outflows, bitcoin – traditionally China’s preferred means to circumvent Beijing’s great capital firewall since gold is, how should one put it, a bit more obvious when crossing borders – promptly soared more than 100% in the next 4 months.

That was just the start, because only a few months later, in July 2024, we wrote the follow up as China’s capital flight returned with a vengeance, namely “China FX Outflows Soar As Beijing Dumps Record US Securities, Priming Next Bitcoin Surge” which coincided with a Reuters report according to which, it was China’s massive wall of inert capital that has been one of the key drivers of bitcoin moves, and never more so than during periods of FX and capital outflows which usually precede some form of capital controls… which regular (and hopefully very rich) readers will of course, recall has been our core, and unwavering, bitcoin thesis since 2015!

In any event, the sharp resumption of Chinese capital outflows, which we also highlighted in July, is why we also predicted at the time that “almost a year after our first correct prediction that China’s spike in FX outflows would send bitcoin surging, it’s time to do it again.”

You’ll never guess what happened next! And in case you really can’t, here is the answer: bitcoin exploded again, nearly doubling again over the next 5 months!

We bring all this up because more than a year after our first correct prediction that China’s spike in FX outflows would send bitcoin surging, and almost six months after our second correct prediction that China’s spike in FX outflows would send bitcoin surging (sic), it’s time to do it again.

One wouldn’t know it, however, if one merely looked at the official Chinese FX reserve data published by the PBOC, here nothing sticks out. In fact, at $3.2 trillion, reported Chinese reserves are now near the highest level in past nine years, and monthly flows are very much stable as shown in the chart below, with the latest month indicating a modest uptick in Fx reserves.

The problem, of course, is that as we have explained previously China’s officially reported reserves – and any official economic “data” for that matter – are woefully and purposefully inaccurate.

Instead, if one uses our preferred gauge of FX flows, one which looks at i) onshore outright spot transactions; ii) freshly entered and canceled forward transactions, and iii) the SAFE dataset on “cross-border RMB flows, we find that China’s net outflows were a massive $82 billion in January, which is a staggering burst of capital flight, one larger than the spike in FX outflows we first highlighted in October 2023, and the second biggest going back all the way to the great Chinese devaluation of 2015!

The data shows roughly equal contributions from both the current account channel showed, which sizeable FX outflows in January, as well as what has been dubbed “unusual cross-border RMB flow.”

Here are the details: in January, we saw $42bn in net outflows via onshore outright spot transactions, and slight outflows via freshly entered and canceled forward transactions. Another SAFE dataset on “cross-border RMB flows” showed outflows of $40bn in the month, suggesting net receipts of RMB from onshore to offshore. Combined, our preferred FX flow measure therefore suggests $82 billion in net FX outflows in January, in comparison with US$8bn net FX outflows in December.

The current account channel showed sizable net outflows (US$21bn in January vs. US$2bn inflows in December). There was a net inflow of US$14bn related to goods trade in January vs. an inflow of US$35bn in December. While we do not yet have the January goods trade data (which will be released along with February trade data in March), historical patterns suggest a larger January trade surplus when the Lunar New Year date is earlier than usual like this year. The smaller inflows therefore imply that goods trade surplus FX conversion ratio likely declined in January from 33% in December. The FX outflows related to services trade deficit edged up to $33bn (vs. an outflow of $32bn in December). The income and transfers account showed outflows of US$2bn in January, slightly higher than the US$1bn outflows in December.

Turning to the far more important portfolio investment channel (which is where crypto flows tend to be located) we find net FX outflows in November (US$0.2bn in January vs. US$1.3bn outflows in December). Bond Connect flows showed US$3bn outflows vs. US$2bn inflows in December. The cross-border RMB outflows might be partly due to the US$16bn Southbound flows from onshore to offshore, though this is not captured by the portfolio investment channel of FX settlement.

Meanwhile, as noted above, the official FX reserves (released earlier in the month) edged up to US$3,209bn in January from US$3,202bn in December. One possible explanation for this odd divergence is that FX valuation effects raised FX reserves by $5bn in January, so after adjusting for FX valuation effects, FX reserves increased US$1bn. In addition, Goldman notes that commercial banks’ net external assets rose by US$15bn in January (vs. a US$72bn increase in December

Luckily, there is a simple “sanity check” way to confirm that the capital inflows story is propaganda, and China is once again suffering another scorching period of capital flight: just look at FX. Indeed, after after the yuan surged in the fall, coinciding with a period of relative dollar weakness, since October we have seen a surge in the USDCNH spot, as one would expect when there is capital flight, most likely driven by rising fears of Trump tariffs and the implicit devaluation the yuan would suffer in order to offset tariffs which according to Trump would start around 10% and likely rise much higher.

But wait there’s more.

Where the capital flight story gets really interesting, is when we look at what Chinese public and private entities were doing with US assets according to official Treasury data. What we find is that according to Treasury International Capital data, in December Chinese investors sold $14BN in US securities (bonds, MBS, corporate bonds, and stocks), and more notably, following a record sale in May, China has been a constant seller of US securities in the past 6 months!

So if one had to guess what was going on, as the yuan slumped in October, November and December (before a modest bounce on unfounded hopes that Trump’s tariffs will be far less punitive than expected) as the capital flight resumed, the hit to the yuan would have been even bigger had China not liquidated a record amount of US securities starting in May, while the PBOC was buying much more gold, and while China’s middle and upper classes were quietly buying up bitcoin through Macau and other illicit venues.

And while Chinese policymakers are still keen on maintaining FX stability (or at least create that impression) as the countercyclical factors in the daily CNY fixing remained deeply negative and front-end CNH liquidity tightened notably in recent weeks, the reality is that with China desperate to boost its exports at a time when its great mercantilist competitor, Japan, has hammered the yen to the lowest level in 3 decades, it is only a matter of time before the currency devaluation advocates win, as they did in 2015. No surprise that the biggest China-related story in recent months came from Reuters, and reported that Beijing in already planning how to devalue the yuan in response to Trump tariffs. And if you really want to see what capital flight from China really looks like, just wait until we get another 2015-style “one-time” devaluation.

As an aside, we hope we don’t have to remind readers that the first big trigger for bitcoin’s unprecedented eruption higher starting in 2015 was – you guessed it – China’s August 2015 FX devaluation, as we correctly noted at the time when we predicted that bitcoin would explode from $250 to the thousands; in retrospect we were very conservative.

So don’t be surprised if in the next 6 months Bitcoin doubles again – for the third time in the past year – and the move has little to do with ETF inflows, the halving, a pro-crypto Trump administration, or frankly anything else taking place in the US, and instead is entirely driven by China’s massive wall of money which at last check was almost 3x bigger than the US.

Authored by John Mills via The Epoch Times,

The media recently reported that China’s People’s Liberation Army is building the world’s biggest military base underground in possible preparation for conflict with the United States.

Large enough to fit 10 Pentagons, the new super large facility should not be a surprise – it is a logical and iterative next step of a long program of underground facilities by China. The command center is on the western outskirts of the capital city of Beijing.

In about 2011, stories began to appear around China’s “Underground Great Wall.”

“In March 2008, China’s state-run CCTV network broke the news about a 5,000-kilometre-long network of hardened tunnels built to house the Chinese Second Artillery Corps’s (sic) increasingly modern force of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles,” The Diplomat reported on Aug. 20, 2011.

Hui Zhang of Harvard’s Belfer Center downplayed China’s Underground Great Wall and explained it was only “defensive in nature.”

Prior to the Underground Great Wall, the People’s Liberation Army Navy built a large underground submarine base on Hainan Island that is still being expanded and improved.

The new command center in Beijing is described by online media BulgarianMilitary.com as a “command-and-control center for the PLA in wartime.“ The report notes that ”the site’s sheer scale, combined with its underground elements, points to a design built for survival,“ and  ”experts believe that the complex will feature a series of underground nodes, perhaps even a hidden subway system, all interconnected by subterranean passageways.”

When completed, this facility—now dubbed the “Beijing Military City” by Western military analysts—will be the largest underground command center in the world, possibly in history.

Western Equivalents Are Limited in Comparison

Zhang of the Belfer Center described the Beijing Military City as defensive in nature. That is one viewpoint but should also be measured and compared in terms of equivalency in the West. The challenge is that there is little equivalency in the West in modern times.

There are underground facilities dating back to the Cold War days in the West, but most have been decommissioned. Canada’s “Diefenbunker” in Ottawa is a museum and tourist attraction. In the UK, there was the Central Government War Headquarters (CGWHQ), close to Bristol, about 100 miles due west of London, which could accept about 4,000 to 5,000 essential personnel for the Continuity of Government (COG).

In the United States, there was The Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia, where, at one time, Congress would relocate to in case of conflict; it is now a museum with a gift shop. The Pentagon contains the existing National Military Command Center, which is in the above-ground basement, but also has a backup at Raven Rock and air and ground mobile alternate command posts. The White House has an alternate facility for COG, if necessary.

Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, has an underground facility that is being rebuilt due to a flood in 2019 that damaged part of the facility. The vaunted and historic Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was essentially closed around 2005 but was reopened beginning in 2015 as a backup for the above-ground facilities below at Peterson Air Force Base.

Most of the Cold War facilities in the West closed because there was a perception there was no compelling reason to keep them open, along with the enormous maintenance costs to keep them operational. The reality is that all of these Western facilities, whether they are active or museum pieces, would fill up only a small portion of the operational side of the underground Beijing Military City currently under construction.

China’s New Underground Headquarters

The message being sent from the construction is a theme of preparation for conflict. Bulgarian military expert Boyko Nikolov said, “This isn’t just about protecting assets; it’s about creating a self-sustaining, impenetrable hub that could coordinate China’s war efforts from the shadows.”

Dennis Wilder, former head of the China analysis section at CIA and senior adviser for Asia at the White House, said, “If the report is correct, it is a sign of China’s intention to build not only world-class conventional power but also advanced nuclear war fighting capabilities.”

The iterative buildup from the Hainan underground submarine base to the underground “Great Wall” for China’s ground-based nuclear force to the now-revealed Beijing Military City is likely the largest aggregation of underground military facilities in history. The indicators are that it is part of a pathway to conflict. Noted China expert Gordon Chang has framed it as “China is preparing for war, America is not.”  The assessment cannot be clearer or starker.

China is building and expanding underground facilities as protected wartime command and control centers to ensure COG. The West has nominal equivalent facilities; most have been converted into museums that would need significant modernization and time if they were to be brought back into service.

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

The Pentagon has confirmed that it deployed a pair of strategic bombers over the Middle East on Tuesday, accompanied with fighter jet escorts as well as refueling aircraft, in order “to demonstrate force projection capabilities in the region.”

US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that “live munitions drops at ranges in several partner nations” were part of the mission, making it a rare ‘live-fire’ exercise and warning to regional enemies.

CENTCOM Conducts Bomber Task Force Mission in Middle East

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) conducted a Bomber Task Force Mission in the Middle East, Feb. 17, to demonstrate force projection capabilities in the region.

Two B-52s from RAF Fairford, U.K., flew across Europe and… pic.twitter.com/MEepc9hGiI

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) February 18, 2025

CENTCOM further described that this shows the US “ability to respond to any state or non-state actor seeking to broaden or escalate conflict.”

Tehran will no doubt see this as a threat aimed at the Islamic Republic, given Trump’s recent words saying the Iranians should negotiate a new deal to end their nuclear program, or else potentially face American bombs. The Houthis could also come under attack, given they are threatening to start up Red Sea shipping attacks if the Gaza ceasefire collapses.

The provocative bomber exercise and flyover of the region also comes after Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in Israel Sunday. Prime Minister Netanyahu during that visit urged a muscular anti-Iran policy by Washington, after Trump restored ‘maximum sanctions’.

Importantly, Netanyahu declared that Israel and the US should “finish the job” against Iran. Israeli officials have frequently floated the idea of preemptive attack against Tehran and nuclear facilities.

Iran has meanwhile said it won’t respond to such threats, and has described that even if it wanted a deal, it can no longer trust Washington given it agreed to the JCPOA nuclear deal under Obama, and then Trump pulled out of it in 2018.

Tuesday’s flyover included live ordinance drops…

But it remains that Iran’s position in the broader Middle East has been greatly weakened. Israel has essentially decimated Hezbollah’s top leadership in Lebanon, and President Assad of Syria was forced to flee the country late last year. This corresponded with Iranian advisors and proxies withdrawing from Syria, and now Israel has free reign and is occupying large portions of southern Syria.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s confirmation as the Secretary of Health and Human Services in the US is the ultimate repudiation of the Covid policy response. 

The scheme of lockdown-until-vaccination was the biggest effort of government and industry on a global scale on historical record. It was all designed to transfer wealth to winning industries (pharma, online retail, streaming services, online education), divide and conquer the population, and consolidate power in the administrative state. 

By 2021, RFK, Jr., had emerged as the world’s most vocal, erudite, and knowledgeable critic of the scheme. In two brilliant books – The Real Anthony Fauci and The Wuhan Cover-Up – he documented the entire enterprise and dated the evolution of the pandemic industry from its postwar inception to the present. There was simply no way to read these books and think about the corporatist cabal in the same way. 

The circumstances that led to his appointment at HHS are themselves implausible and remarkable. Perceiving President Biden to be a weak candidate – one who had forced masks and shots on the population and brutally censored tech and media – he decided to make a run for president, presuming that there would be an open primary. There wasn’t one, so he was forced into an independent run. 

That effort was chewed up by the usual political dynamic that befalls every third-party effort – too many ballot-access barriers plus the usual logic of Duverger’s law. That left the campaign in a difficult spot. At the same time, two huge political shifts had become clear. The Democratic Party had become a vessel and a front mainly for the administrative state with a veneer of woke ideology, while the Republican Party was being taken over by refugees from the Democrats, in effect creating a new Trump party out of the remnants of the other two. 

The rest is legendary. Trump linked up with Elon Musk to do to the federal government what he did when he took over Twitter, taking the company private, gutting the place of embedded federal assets, and firing 4 out of 5 workers. In the midst of this, and faced with a terrifying flurry of legal attacks, Trump dodged an assassin’s bullet. That triggered terrible memories of RFK, Jr.’s father and uncle, and thus sparked discussions about coming together. 

Within a matter of weeks, we had a new coalition that brought together old antagonists, as many people and groups seemingly in the same instant realized their conjoined interests in cleaning up the corporatist cartel. With the newly freed platform of X to reach the public, MAGA/MAHA/DOGE was born. 

Trump won and chose RFK, Jr., to lead the most powerful public health agency in the world. The barrier was Senate confirmation, but that was achieved through some incredible triangulation that made it extremely difficult to vote no. 

In the big picture, you can measure the size of this titanic shift in American politics by the way the votes in the Senate lined up. All Republicans but one voted for the most prominent scion of the Democratic Party to head the health empire while all Democrats voted no. That alone is striking, and a testament to the power of the pharma lobby, which, during the hearings, was exposed as the hidden hand behind the most passionate opponents of the confirmation. 

Is our nightmare over? Not yet. Writing not even a month into the second presidential term of Donald Trump, it is still unclear just how much authority he truly exercises over the sprawling executive branch. For that matter, no one can even agree on how large this branch is: between 2.2 million and 3 million employees and somewhere between 400 and 450 agencies. The financial bleed in this realm is unthinkable and far worse than even the biggest cynic can imagine. 

Five former secretaries of the Treasury took to the pages of the New York Times with a shocking claim. “The nation’s payment system has historically been operated by a very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants.” This has included a career employee called “fiscal assistant secretary—a post that for the prior eight decades had been reserved exclusively for civil servants to ensure impartiality and public confidence in the handling and payment of federal funds.”

There is no reason even to read between the lines. What this means is that no person voted into office by the people and no one appointed by such a person has access to the federal books since 1946. This is startling beyond belief. No owner of any company would ever tolerate being barred from the accounting offices and payment systems. And no company can offer any public stock without independent audits and open books. 

And yet almost 80 years have gone by during which time neither has been true for this gigantic enterprise called the federal government. That means that $193 trillion has been spent by an institution that has never faced granulated oversight from the people and never met the normal demands that every enterprise faces every day. 

The usual habit in Washington has been to treat every elected leader and their appointments as temporary and transitory marionettes, people who come and go and disturb little to nothing about the normal operations of government. This new administration seems to have every intention to change that but the job is inconceivably challenging. As much public support as MAGA/MAHA/DOGE enjoy for now, and as many people from those groups are getting embedded in the power structure, they are outnumbered and outmaneuvered by millions of agents of the old order. 

This transition will not be easy if it happens at all. 

The inertia of the old order is mighty.

Even on the issue of health and pandemics, there is already confusion. 

CBS News has reported that Fauci-loyalist and mRNA pusher Gerald Parker will head the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response or OPPR. The report cited only unnamed “health officials” and the appointment has been celebrated by Scott Gottlieb, the Pfizer board member who nudged Trump into backing lockdowns in 2020. 

All the while, this appointment has not been confirmed by the White House. We do not know if OPPR, created by Congressional charter, will even be funded. The reporter will not reveal his sources – raising the question of why any appointment having to do with health should be surrounded by such cloak-and-dagger machinations. 

If Dr. Parker becomes ensconced in this position and another health emergency is declared, this time for Bird flu, HHS and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will not be in any kind of decision-making position at all. 

The larger problems have to do with a broader question: is the president really in charge of the executive branch? Can he hire and fire? Can he spend money or decline to spend money? Can he set policy for the agencies? 

One might suppose that the whole answer to these questions can be found in Article 2, Section 1: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” And yet that sentence was written almost 100 years before Congress created this thing called the “civil service” that nowhere appears in the Constitution. This fourth branch has grown in size and power to swamp both the presidency and the legislature. 

Courts are going to have to sort this out, and already an avalanche of lawsuits has hit the new administration for daring to presume control over agencies and their activities of which the president is and must necessarily be held accountable. Lower federal courts seem to be demanding that the president be that in name only, while the Supreme Court might have a different opinion. 

The much-ballyhooed “constitutional crisis” consists of nothing other than an attempt to reassert the original constitutional design of government. 

This is the background template in which RFK, Jr., takes power at HHS, and oversees all the sub-agencies. These agencies played a huge role in covering for the attack on liberty and rights over five years. His confirmation is a symbolic repudiation of the most egregious public policies on record. And yet, the repudiation is entirely implicit: there has been no commission, no admission of error, no one truly held responsible, and no real accountability. 

The trajectory on which we find ourselves affords many reasons for champagne celebrations, but sober up quickly. There is a very long way to go and enormous barriers in place to get us to the point that we are really safe again from the marauding corporatist/statist complex and their plots and schemes to rob the public of rights and liberties. In the meantime, to invoke a common phrase, keep these new appointees in your thoughts and prayers.

A wacky story of anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab animus played out in Miami Beach on Saturday night, as a Jewish American mag-dumped a pistol at two visiting Israeli nationals, telling police he attacked them because they were Palestinians. It gets nuttier: After the shooting, one of the Israeli victims reportedly posted “Death to the Arabs” on his social media account, declaring the attack was an act of antisemitism. 

Police say that, at 9:30 pm on Saturday, 27-year-old Mordechai Brafman was driving south on Pine Tree Drive before executing a U-turn at 48th Street and then stopping. His victims were in a Hyundai behind him and in the next lane. “[Brafman] then exited his vehicle and remained on the driver’s side,” the police report says. “As the victims were driving past him, he shot at the victim’s vehicle 17 times, unprovoked, striking both victims.”

Brafman, 27, has been booked into Miami-Dade’s Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on two counts of attempted murder. When he was interviewed by police, Brafman was quick to admit to his intent and motive, as he “spontaneously stated that while he was driving his truck, he saw two Palestinians and shot and killed both,” police say.  

He was wildly wrong about the ethnicity of his victims — and the efficacy of his pistol work. Despite firing 17 shots, he only managed to hit one of the Israelis, Ari Rabi, in the shoulder, while grazing Rabey’s father in the forearm. Rabi made his own false conclusions about what transpired. According to a Facebook screenshot posted on X and credited by The Guardian, Rabi posted pictures of himself and his shot-up vehicle, along with this narrative, which is Facebook’s imperfect translation of the original Hebrew: 

“My father and I went through a murder attempt against anti-Semitic background. They tried to murder us in the heart of Miami but the creator of the world is with us so he didn’t go. I want to say thank you to everyone for their support it is not taken granted with Israel Live. . Death to the Arabs .” 

“It is deeply ironic and telling that both the alleged pro-Israel perpetrator and the pro-Israel victim in the Miami Beach shooting reportedly hold racist anti-Palestinian views,” said Nihad Awad, National Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “Policymakers in our nation should stop fomenting the anti-Palestinian hate that led to the genocide in Gaza and to hate crimes in America.”

Rabi struck a different tone when talking to CBS News about the incident: “A life shouldn’t just be taken away from anyone. It doesn’t matter who you are, what religion you are, or where you’re from. People should just live in peace.” Speaking of different tones, Brafman in 2023 told a local TV station that “I’d love to see some unity and people come together,” as he commented on incidents in which Israeli flags and pro-Israeli banners were yanked from the eaves of a bagel shop he frequented:

I think this is the guy who shot two israelis in miami thinking they were palestinians https://t.co/fxGrTGN8pc pic.twitter.com/rJhTX1AGNs

— max 🇵🇸 (@langezahl) February 17, 2025

Brafman’s lawyer quickly attributed his client’s attempted murder of two randomly-selected “Palestinians” to mental health problems. “It is believed that his ability to make sound judgments was significantly compromised,” Dustin Tischler told the Miami Herald. “We are…committed to working with healthcare professionals to ensure Mr. Brafman receives the appropriate and necessary treatment. 

The bizarre episode has drawn light media attention. It’s safe to say that, if a Palestinian-American shot two vacationing Arabs in Miami because he thought they were Israelis, the story would have a very high media profile, with the incident decried as terrorism and exploited by US and Israeli politicians to advance pro-Israel policies.  

American Jew shooting Israelis in Miami because they looked Palestinian is really the ne plus ultra of deranged Zionist culture

— Jeff Melnick (@melnickjeffrey1) February 17, 2025

Authored by Clayton Baker, MD, via The Brownstone Institute,

Bird flu can be very confusing. This is true because, as is so often the case with our government, those who claim to be trying to solve the problem – our so-called “public health” and “pandemic preparedness” “experts” – are actually the ones who created the problem. What is worse, they are actively seeking to perpetuate it.

In this brief article, my goal is to explain what is happening with H5N1 Bird flu in the clearest, most fundamental terms. I hope to make it so clear that all our elected officials can understand what is going on, and therefore can take action to stop it.

The key to understanding the current Bird flu panic is this: Bird flu is a complete rerun of the Covid script. There is just one twist:

• Last time, with Covid, the pandemic-planning bioterrorists directly blackmailed us by taking away our civil rights, in order to coerce us to accept their unsafe and ineffective vaccines. 

• This time, with Bird flu, the pandemic planning bioterrorists are indirectly blackmailing us by targeting our food, in order to coerce us to accept more of their unsafe and ineffective vaccines into our food supply and those who supply it.

Here is their playbook. Learn it, and you can understand how to put an end to it.

Let’s review. What happened during Covid? 

1. Over many years, bioweapons scientists, under the guise of “pandemic preparedness,” genetically manipulated a bat coronavirus to be both transmissible and virulent in humans. In other words, they created a bioweapon.

2. Meanwhile, they also developed and patented technologies for vaccines against that same virus. In other words, they created the countermeasure to their bioweapon.

3. In late 2019, the lab-manipulated coronavirus bioweapon, SARS CoV-2, was leaked from a lab. 

4. While the countermeasure vaccines were rushed into production, “public health” authorities took advantage of the lab leak by denying its occurrence, while simultaneously coercing governments to impose lockdowns and other civil rights violations on the human population.

5. To perpetuate the lockdowns, “public health” authorities performed indiscriminate PCR testing for the virus among the population, knowing full well this would generate countless false positives.

6. The authorities used this excessive testing along with media-generated fear-mongering and governmental abuse of power, to prolong the lockdowns and the civil rights abuses.

7. The lockdowns and civil rights abuses were used to blackmail the population into mass acceptance of the vaccines into their own bodies, in exchange for a return to normal life.

What is happening now, with H5N1 Bird flu?

1. Over many years, bioweapons scientists, under the guise of “pandemic preparedness,” have genetically manipulated the H5N1 avian influenza virus to cross classes of animals and even become more transmissible to humans. In other words, they created a bioweapon.

2. Meanwhile, they also developed and patented technologies for vaccines against that same virus. In other words, they created the countermeasure to their bioweapon.

3. In early 2022, a lab-manipulated Bird flu bioweapon leaked from the USDA Southeast Poultry Lab in Athens, GA. Multiple Bird flu leaks have also occurred from other labs.

4. While the countermeasure vaccines are being rushed into production, “public health” authorities take advantage of these lab leaks by denying their occurrence, while simultaneously coercing our government to impose mass slaughter of farm animals, creating food shortages for the human population.

5. To perpetuate the mass slaughter and worsen food shortages, “public health” authorities are performing indiscriminate PCR testing for the virus among the animal population and farmers, knowing full well this will generate countless false positives.

6. Authorities are using this excessive testing along with media-generated fear-mongering and governmental abuse of power, to prolong the mass slaughter of farm animals and the food shortages.

7. The mass slaughter of farm animals and resulting food shortages are being used to blackmail the population into mass acceptance of the vaccines in their food supply, in exchange for a return to normal life.

This is not conspiracy theory. This is basic pattern recognition.

The “pandemic planners” are operating just like a moderately competent, if unimaginative, high school football coach. If you run a play, and it works, run it again. Keep running it until they stop it.

How do we stop it?

Here’s how:

1. End the brutal mass slaughter of poultry flocks immediately. This disgusting, death-wish practice is directly analogous to the deadly and unconstitutional human lockdowns during  Covid. It is also an act of biological terrorism. It traumatizes farmers, wastes resources, creates food shortages, is inhumane in the extreme to animals, and does nothing to stop the virus. Let the flocks develop natural immunity. Slaughtered flocks cannot develop natural immunity to a virus, just as locked-down human populations cannot either. Sound familiar?

2. End the indiscriminate PCR testing for Bird flu in animals and humans immediately. A positive PCR test is like the proverbial grand jury indictment – you can get one on a ham sandwich if you try hard enough. Willy-nilly PCR testing creates innumerable false positives, which fuels the fear porn and hysteria, paralyzes decision-makers, and promotes population-wide blackmail. 

3. The USDA appears to be acting as a rogue agency. The USDA’s leadership needs to be thoroughly reviewed and, well, culled. All those attached to the pandemic preparedness industry, and all those perpetuating the fear-mongering, irresponsible mass PCR testing, mass slaughter of animals, etc. must be immediately removed from the agency. They represent not only a threat to animals and the food supply but to President Trump’s entire second term.

4. The personnel at the CDC need a similar prompt and thorough overhaul. The CDC, while somewhat chastened by President Trump’s executive order silencing HHS agencies, and benefitting from the departure of former Director Mandy Cohen, is still led by Biden-era appointments whose past resumes raise serious doubt about their willingness to abandon the  Covid-era “pandemic planning” model of public health. For example, acting director Susan Monarez, PhD’s bio shows multiple Deep State connections to the pandemic preparedness industry. Should she remain at the CDC?

5. The USDA Southeast Poultry Research Lab in Athens, Ga. should be shut down and thoroughly investigated.

6. The Kawaoka Bird flu lab at the University of Wisconsin, which has been doing reckless gain-of-function research for decades, and which has had multiple lab leaks, should be shut down and investigated as well.

7. Brooke Rollins, the new USDA Secretary, needs to be fully briefed on H5N1 Bird flu by honest experts who are not embedded in the pandemic preparedness industry. Individuals such as Meryl Nass, MD, and Peter McCullough, MD and his team would both be excellent choices.

8. President Trump should follow through on his 2024 promise to disband the redundant, Biden-created Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR). Mr. Trump’s instinct was correct then, and it remains correct now.

9. The $590 Million dollar Bird flu vaccine development contract to Moderna that the Biden administration approved a couple of days before President Trump’s inauguration should be cancelled. 

10. The USDA’s reported “conditional approval” of a Bird flu vaccine with Zoetis should be cancelled. Bird flu vaccination in poultry flocks has been demonstrated in other countries to select for more virulent strains. Furthermore, the CEO of Zoetis has close ties to Pfizer, BlackRock, and the Gates Foundation, all well-established bad actors during the Covid era. Beware, Mr. President.

The “pandemic preparedness” racket isn’t as complicated as it seems. Once one comes to terms with the fact that the arsonists are running the fire department – as they have been demonstrated by DOGE to be doing in so many other areas of government as well – we can recognize what is actually happening and apply the necessary solutions.

US Air Force spy planes have recently conducted signals intelligence (SIGINT) operations along the US-Mexico border, while Green Berets from the US Army’s 7th Special Forces Group have been deployed to a naval facility in Campeche—a Mexican port city on the Gulf of Mexico—for what’s described as a “training mission.” These developments offer a clearer picture of President Trump’s emerging strategy to combat Mexican cartels, which have fueled a drug death catastrophe of 100,000 Americans per year. This approach aligns with Trump’s designation of these cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations.” 

The CIA, operating under the Trump administration, has been secretly deploying unarmed (at the moment) General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drones over regions of Mexico dominated by heavily armed drug cartels, according to a CNN report. The report comes from current and former officials with knowledge of ongoing national security operations, shedding light on what is happening under the cloak of darkness – in preparation to disrupt and dismantle drug cartels. 

Here’s more from the report:

Some current and former officials say designating cartels as terrorist groups could potentially lay the groundwork for direct US strikes against the cartels and their drug labs in Mexico.

The CIA has flown surveillance drones to hunt cartels inside Mexico before, according to a former and a current US official, under at least one small program that partnered with Mexican authorities.

But the more recent flights were communicated to Congress by the Trump administration using a particular notification reserved for new or updated covert programs that the CIA intends either to conceal or deny, a source familiar with the matter said — suggesting that the flights represent a distinct escalation. The notifications made no mention of Mexican partners, the source said.

CIA spokesperson told the media outlet that “countering drug cartels in Mexico and regionally is a priority for CIA as a part of the Trump Administration’s broader efforts to end the grave threat from narco-trafficking. Director [John] Ratcliffe is determined to put CIA’s unique expertise to work against this multifaceted challenge.”

Here’s the latest:

• USAF Spy Plane Runs SIGINT Operation Near Cabo As US Preps For Potential Cartel Fight

• USAF Spy Jet Flies Second SIGINT Operation On US Border With Focus On Narco Hub

• Border Czar “Expects” Kinetic Warfare Between US Troops & Mexican Drug Cartels

Beyond spy planes and drones conducting SIGINT and other surveillance operations in the region, as well as US Special Forces operators in Campeche, this should all be viewed as the beginning innings of the war against cartels. We suspect financial sanctions could be used to pressure Mexican banks to disrupt cartel financial networks. 

This is what ‘America First’ looks like. 

… and Kyle Bass could never be happier…