Authored by Elizabeth Sheld via RealClearPolicy,

Since returning to office for a second term, President Trump has taken aggressive action to overhaul the federal bureaucracy. After a week in office some of Trump actions towards federal workers include: removing employment protections for civil servants, firing17 inspectors general, reassigning career officials in the Department of Justice, sending home 160 staffers from the National Security Agency and firing the lawyers at the Department of Justice who prosecuted Trump under special counsel Jack Smith.

Trump’s efforts have been met with hostility and criticism from the media and predictably from his political opposition.

Opinionist Phillip Bump at the Washington Post  writes Trump’s actions are “a sharp disruption of how the government works.” Bump laments that “Trump is clearly interested in…seeding loyalists throughout the executive branch.”  At Axios, Zachary Basu and Dave Lawler explain that Trump is “transform[ing] the federal bureaucracy into an army of loyalists.” Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who represents 140,000 federal workers in Virginia, told reporters “This gleeful hatred of the federal workforce will lead to nothing good.”

But are Trump’s efforts to transform the government workforce justified by a real concern that his policy platforms–which earned him a presidential victory–will be thwarted by anonymous bureaucrats?

Recent survey research suggests Trump is right to be concerned. Napolitan Institute found that just 45% of Federal Government Managers would follow a legal order from President Trump if they thought the order was bad policy and instead would do what they thought was right. Among managers who voted for Kamala Harris that figure jumps to nearly three-quarters (69%.) The survey also found a majority (52%) of the federal managerial class voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

Those current survey results are consistent with events that developed in the first Trump Administration, where we learned how bureaucratic opinions on “right” policy interfered with the power of the duly elected executive officer.

Former diplomat Jim Jeffrey revealed that his team routinely mislead the Trump Administration after the president had ordered the withdrawal of troops from Syria. “What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal,” Jeffrey said. “When the situation in northeast Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS, [Trump] was inclined to pull out. In each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay. And we succeeded both times. That’s the story.”

“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey said in an interview.

While Jeffrey’s revelation came after Trump had left office from his first term, there was a real time revelation of a policy conflict between President Trump and the “interagency consensus” that would become foundation of the first Trump impeachment.

The policy difference originated from a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when Trump requested Zelensky open an investigation into possible corruption at the Burisma energy company before receiving a military aid package. Trump’s 2020 election opponent Joe Biden’s son was on the board of Burisma.

A central part of the subsequent impeachment case was testimony from Lt. Alexander Vindman (ret.), who had been detailed to the National Security Council and present for the phone call. Vindman explained in his opening statement to the House impeachment committee he was concerned the president chose to wield his executive authority in a way that was at odds with the “interagency consensus.” Vindman testified “…a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency,” Vindman said in his opening statement. “This narrative was harmful to U.S. government policy. While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined U.S. government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.”  But Vindman and the “interagency consensus” have no authority to determine or execute their interpretation of U.S. government policy or in other words, “do what they thought was right.”

The New York Times editorial board supported and encouraged the usurpation of executive authority in favor of the “right” bureaucratic opinion by praising the government bureaucracy overriding or ignoring President Trump’s lawful authority. “…patriotic public servants — career diplomats, scientists, intelligence officers and others…have somehow remembered that their duty is to protect the interests, not of a particular leader, but of the American people.”

There is no way to know exactly how extensive bureaucratic resistance interfered with Trump’s ability to govern in his first term, but we do know 46% of current Federal Government Managers would ignore the legal order of President Trump and instead do what was “right.” Trump is making the correct move to overhaul the federal bureaucracy in order to deliver on the campaign promises that got him back in office.

Elizabeth Sheld is a veteran political strategist and pollster who has worked on campaigns and public interest affairs.

After multiple US federal government agencies required employees to remove gender-identifying pronouns from email signatures on Friday evening, the Defense Department issued a memo titled “Identity Months Dead at DoD.” The move is part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to remove toxic cultural Marxists from managerial roles across the federal gov’t and military.

Like this…

Trans Army Major discusses LGBTQ pride and diversity in the military.

This was posted to the IG account of the U.S. Army Sustainment Command.

The world is laughing at us. pic.twitter.com/a5kzXG0dMF

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 2, 2023

New guidance from US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed the following: “Identity Months Dead at DoD.” 

“Going forward, DoD Components and Military Departments will not use official resources, to include man-hours, to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months, including National African American/Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and National American Indian Heritage Month. Service members and civilians remain permitted to attend these events in an unofficial capacity outside of duty hours.” 

He continued: 

“Our unity and purpose are instrumental to meeting the Department’s warfighting mission. Efforts to divide the force – to put one group ahead of another – erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.” 

What’s key in Hegseth’s directive is “Efforts to divide the force”… 

https://t.co/zgxY0YPL8l

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) February 1, 2025

Cultural Marxists hide under the guise of ‘social justice warriors.’ They have reintroduced racism, created privileged classes, and controlled speech across government, the military, and houses of worship. Their goal is simple: dismantle the foundations of America and push for a socialist reconstruction. 

Sex, sexual orientation, climate, and other ways to divide people have been used by cultural Marxists to advance revolutionary goals. 

On Wednesday, Hegseth told Fox News that “one of the dumbest phrases in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength.'”

“Our diversity is not our strength,” Hegseth said, adding, “Our unity and our shared purpose is our strength.”

He noted, “We will be merit-based and color blind.” 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth: “One of the dumbest phrases in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength’… Our diversity is not our strength — our unity and our shared purpose is our strength.”

pic.twitter.com/20IS0BLS9L

— America (@america) January 30, 2025

Hegseth is correct. Unity is strength, and far too long, especially beginning under the Obama years and supercharged under Biden; the nation has been divided by Marxists based on sex, gender, “oppressed vs. oppressor,” and all other non-sense developed in far-left colleges that will come to an end under the Trump administration.

Hegseth noted in the memo:

Installations, units, and offices are encouraged to celebrate the valor and success of military heroes of all races, genders, and backgrounds as we restore our warrior culture and ethos. We are proud of our warriors and their history, but we will focus on the character of their service instead of their immutable characteristics.

News flash: China and Russia aren’t dividing their nations and hindering their warfighting capabilities as the world has crept closer to World War III.

Via American Greatness,

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearings for Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) have seen some of some of the harshest questioning of any of President Trump’s cabinet nominees by D.C. hardliners.

One upside to the acrimony is that Kennedy’s harshest critics and defenders of the status quo are now being publicly revealed as the lawmakers to whom the pharmaceutical industry has donated the most money.

The hostility @RobertKennedyJr experienced at his hearing was directly proportional to how much Pharma money each Senator received. In fact, each of them simply repeated the same attacks we just saw flood the mass media (all of which were blatant lies). 🧵 pic.twitter.com/ND7jqU4B1F

— A Midwestern Doctor (@MidwesternDoc) January 30, 2025

Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is the largest recipient of money from Big Pharma, asked Kennedy if healthcare was a human right and then refused to let the HHS nominee answer his question with anything other than a “yes” or “no” answer.

Sanders would not let Kennedy differentiate between unalienable rights like free speech and man-made “rights” that create ever-increasing obligations to the government.

RFK just gave a flawless answer to Bernie Sanders asking if health care is a human right.

Bet Sanders didn’t expect an answer this intelligent… he interrupted RFK IMMEDIATELY.

SANDERS: Is it a human right? Yes or no?

RFK: In the way that free speech is? It’s different,… pic.twitter.com/JR9UpdAB0A

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 29, 2025

Sen. Sanders has been the recipient of nearly $2 million in donations from pharmaceutical companies.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) showed herself to be one of Kennedy’s most strident detractors and was, by far, the angriest of the lawmakers questioning him during yesterday’s confirmation hearing.

Sen. Warren accused Kennedy of wanting to sue vaccine manufacturers whose vaccines cause harm as a means of personally enriching himself and warned that holding Big Pharma accountable for any harm caused could bankrupt the industry.

Kennedy responded, “Senator, you’re asking me not to sue pharmaceutical companies,” to which Warren became enraged shouting, “No, I’m not!”

RFK Jr Shuts Down Sen. Warren 💥

“Senator, you’re asking me not to sue pharmaceutical companies … That’s exactly what you are doing.” pic.twitter.com/bEGRO8KP88

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) January 29, 2025

Warren is third on the list of U.S. Senators who have accepted large amounts of Big Pharma money having received nearly $1.2 million in donations from the drug industry.

Sanders and Warren are just two of the Senators engaging in astonishing hypocrisy for accusing Kennedy of trying to get rich at the expense of the health of the American public while lining their pockets with cash from Big Pharma.

Pay attention to who has accepted the most in drug industry money and it’s easy to connect the dots to who is fighting the hardest to prevent Kennedy from being confirmed.

The innumerable consequences of the 2024 election keep gushing forth at a pace that’s hard to keep up with. Here’s a new gem: On Friday evening, the Department of Defense told The New York Times, NBC News, National Public Radio and Politico that they have two weeks to vacate their long-held and treasured offices inside the Pentagon. 

Three of their four replacements skew decidedly to the Trump-friendly sector of the political spectrum: the New York Post, One America News Network and Breitbart. Throwing a bone to leftists, HuffPost news snagged Politico’s old slot. The Pentagon Press Association said it was “greatly troubled by this unprecedented move by DOD to single out highly professional media.”

The short-notice evictions from the hallowed “Correspondents’ Corridor” spring from the launch of a “new annual media rotation program for [the] Pentagon Press Corps,” according to a memorandum sent by DOD spokesman John Ullyot on Friday and posted by CNN Pentagon correspondent Haley Britzky. The program seeks to “broaden access to the limited space…to outlets that have not previously enjoyed the privilege and journalist value of working from physical office space in the Pentagon,” said Ullyot.

The booted outlets will retain their status as full members of the Pentagon Press Corps, entitled to attend briefings and be considered for travel with officials. “The only change will be giving up their physical workspaces in the building to allow new outlets to have their turn to become resident members of the Pentagon Press Corps,” wrote Ullyot. 

Make no mistake: Those physical workspaces are a big deal. “Kicking out reporters HURTS coverage. If you can’t file your stories from inside the building you are disadvantaged. If you don’t have a work space you are disadvantaged,” wrote former Pentagon Press Corps VP Kevin Baron on X. That commentary was part of a thread condemning the development as “the erasure of journalism at the Pentagon.” 

The Pentagon Press Corps comprises more than two dozen outlets. The program calls for one outlet from each press medium to rotate from the premises every year. As if Breitbart’s invitation into the Pentagon weren’t enough to outrage establishment media types, the fact that it’s taking the “radio” slot from NPR only compounded the indignation. In a Friday night article, CNN’s Brian Stelter called foul:  

“Breitbart – a well-known web site for pro-Trump coverage and commentary – barely has a radio operation of its own. The word ‘radio’ doesn’t appear on its home page at all. The media outlet has a distribution deal with SiriusXM and one big podcast, Breitbart News Daily. Its footprint pales in comparison to NPR, which provides news coverage for local stations all across the country.”

In another hilarious, leftist-pummeling swap, One America News Network will be sliding into NBC’s slot. Expressing sympathetic disbelief, CNN’s Britzky emphasized that NBC “has an entire booth w/ cameras etc.” NBC News promised to soldier on, telling Reuters,

“We’re disappointed by the decision to deny us access to a broadcasting booth at the Pentagon that we’ve used for many decades. Despite the significant obstacles this presents to our ability to gather and report news in the national public interest, we will continue to report with the same integrity and rigor NBC News always has.”

For the many Americans who are still angry about legacy media’s aggressive role in working to derail Trump’s 2020 re-election bid, Politico’s punishment is perhaps the most satisfying. The outlet took the lead in spreading the consequential, Deep State lie that Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” — first reported by the New York Post — was part of a Russian misinformation scheme. That lie helped ignite unprecedented censorship of the Post’s coverage. Fittingly, the Post — the country’s longest-running newspaper — is among the outlets graduating to space in the Pentagon. 

“The National Press Club is deeply concerned by the Defense Department’s decision to remove certain media organizations from their dedicated spaces in the Pentagon,” club president Mike Balsamo said in a statement. “Any action that restricts the ability of journalists to report on the operations of the U.S. government should alarm all who value transparency and press freedom.” Balsamo pointed to the Pentagon press corps’ history of “diversity,” yet the announced swaps inarguably increase viewpoint diversity. 

The Pentagon’s shot across the bow of legacy media follows Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s announcement that the White House will significantly broaden media access, with an emphasis on alternative media. “The Trump White House will speak to all media outlets and personalities, not just the legacy media that are seated in this room,” she said in her first press conference. 

Never a dull moment in Trump II: The Revenge. What’s next? 

Authored by Adam Sharp via DailyReckoning.com,

Jim Rickards recently published a compelling article on AI risk for Insider Intel subscribers.

In it, Jim discusses a different way in which AI could crash markets. One that is totally separate from the DeepSeek, China, and NVIDIA angle we’ve been covering for the past week.

Today we’re going to review his key points and explore them in detail.

Here’s Jim:

“The ultimate danger arises when a large cohort of asset managers controlling trillions of dollars of assets all employ the same or similar AI algorithms in a risk management role. An individual robot working for a particular asset manager tells the manager to sell stocks in a crashing market. In some cases, the robot may be authorized to initiate a sale without further human intervention.

Taken separately, that may be the best course of action for a single manager. In the aggregate, a selling cascade with no offsetting buy orders from active managers, specialists or speculators takes stock prices straight down. Amplification through feedback loops makes matters worse.

Individual AI systems have various trigger points for selling. Not all will be triggered at once, yet all will be triggered eventually as selling begets more selling, which triggers more automated systems that add to the selling pressure, and so on. There are no contrarians among the robots. Building sentiment into systems is still at a primitive stage.”

This is a good example of why I read Jim’s work. He always approaches issues from a unique and thoughtful angle.

This risk is clearly real. We are now at the point where trading firms are integrating LLMs (AI models) into their proprietary algorithms.

What happens if a majority of trading firms are using the same AI software to drive their trading? For example, it’s likely that many money managers have integrated OpenAI’s ChatGPT models into their algos.

Now that DeepSeek R1 is the new shiny object, maybe a significant portion of firms are switching to that model.

Perhaps DeepSeek approaches trading in a completely different way. What happens if ChatGPT interprets data bullishly, but DeepSeek sees the same information as bearish?

This means that the release of a new cutting-edge model could actually change the market’s direction. It’s newer, it’s smarter, and it thinks stocks are overvalued by 40%! Sell!

Or perhaps even more disturbing, what if all the leading models come to very similar conclusions? Everybody deciding to buy or sell at the same time is a recipe for trouble. It would magnify moves on the way up and down, and could create a nasty feedback loop (as Jim points out).

70% of Markets

Today algorithmic (software-driven) trading accounts for an estimated 65-70% of American stock market volume. And this number is only increasing.

We don’t know how deeply AI models (specifically LLMs) are integrated into trading algorithms at this moment. Investment software is notoriously secretive. But my guess is it’s a significant part of the market and growing fast.

For example, we can assume that large trading firms are using LLMs/GPTs for market sentiment analysis. They’re reading and digesting social media like LinkedIn and X to figure out if the public is scared or greedy. This data is then integrated into core algos.

AI sentiment analysis has the potential to be a very useful tool for traders. However, the risks Jim mentions do apply. We will likely see increased “herding” behavior as a result.

Sentiment analysis is one thing. But are we at the point where LLMs are actually making trading decisions at a large percentage of firms? My guess is that if we aren’t there yet, we will be soon. Using AI models is an order of magnitude cheaper than hiring Harvard MBAs and Princeton PhDs.

As I mentioned earlier, AI users tend to latch onto the latest, hottest model. ChatGPT dominated early on, then Anthropic’s Claude became the trending new thing. Now, China’s DeepSeek is making waves.

There’s a very real risk of herding reactions if everyone is trading off similar analysis. And if everyone is constantly switching to the hot new model, there are countless ways in which it could affect markets going forward.

Mr. Rickards closes his piece with a powerful metaphor:

“You might want to re-read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The novel centers on the creature made by Dr. Victor Frankenstein. The term “creature” is not incidental; it’s intended to evoke the term Creator. Contrary to movie portrayals of the creature as a brutish, homicidal monster, the literary version was actually highly intelligent and learned French, read Shakespeare, and was able to engage in long philosophical discourses.

Of course, such natural language processing and self-learning are exactly what AI is about. The creature can be thought of as the first fully realized AI system in literature. The central dilemma in Frankenstein was not whether the creature was intelligent (it was). The dilemma was whether it had a soul. You can draw your own conclusions. My view was that the creature did not have a soul … but perhaps it deserved one. Now we face the same dilemma with AI.”

One way to prepare is to hedge the digital world with the analog (gold and silver), as Jim suggested yesterday. I especially like silver here (which is +3.6% on the day as I write this and looking good).

*  *  *

Insider Intel subscribers can read Jim’s full AI analysis here. And if this topic interests you, I strongly recommend checking out Jim’s new book: MoneyGPT – AI and the Threat to the Global Economy. The book couldn’t be more relevant.

Stablecoins, which play a major role in the global cryptocurrency ecosystem, saw massive adoption in 2024, with their transfer volumes beating those of Visa and Mastercard combined.

The annual stablecoin transfer volume reached $27.6 trillion last year, surpassing the combined volumes of Visa and Mastercard by 7.7%, according to a Jan. 31 report by crypto exchange CEX.io.

As CoinTelegraph’s Helen Partz reports below, one of the major catalysts amplifying stablecoin transfer volume has been the increased use of bots, especially on Solana and Base, CEX.io lead analyst Illia Otychenko said.

Tether’s USDt, the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization, accounted for 79.7% of stablecoin trading volume on average, strengthening its position amid surging stablecoin reserves on centralized exchanges.

Stablecoins beat Visa and Mastercard despite losing share in the market

Stablecoin supply saw a significant surge of 59% in 2024, reaching 1% of the US dollar supply. Despite beating Visa and Mastercard in volumes, stablecoins lost 13.5% in share within the total market cap, CEX.io noted.

The market share drop mainly occurred in the third quarter of 2024 amid decreased activity in the broader crypto market.

2024 quarterly transfer volumes of stablecoins vs. Visa and Mastercard. Source: CEX.io

Regarding their overall growth, CEX.io’s Otychenko said:

“Stablecoins experienced a surge in both supply and volume following the post-election spike in crypto activity, surpassing Visa and Mastercard by over two and three times, respectively, in Q4 alone.”

Otychenko pointed to trends indicating that regular users are increasingly using stablecoins for savings and remittance transfers as a cost-efficient way to transfer value compared to traditional payment methods.

“However, stablecoins’ role as the lifeblood of crypto trading and DeFi interactions currently far outweighs this trend,” he added.

Bot activity accounted for 70% of stablecoin transfer volume

Trading bot activity comprised a massive share of stablecoin transaction volumes in 2024, which CEX.io estimated to account for 70%. On Solana and Base, the bot transactions accounted for 98% of the volume.

“High bot activity within the network doesn’t necessarily mean ‘worse’ transfer volume,” Otychenko said, adding that bots are often used to improve market efficiency through arbitrage or cover gas fees by paymasters.

Bots can be used for harmful practices like frontrunning, sandwich attacks, pump-and-dump schemes and snipping liquidity pools. Still, the bot dominance in stablecoins could also represent the maturation of certain networks, he noted.

Ethereum and Tron retain dominance, but other networks build up momentum

Ethereum and Tron continued to dominate as the primary networks for stablecoins in 2024, accounting for more than 83% of the market by the end of the year.

At the same time, their combined share fell from 90% at the beginning of the year, pointing to the ongoing diversification across other networks, particularly Solana, Arbitrum, Base and Aptos.

Stablecoin market cap distribution by network. Source: CEX.io

“This shift was particularly pronounced for Tron, which saw its market share decline significantly from 38% to 29%,” the report noted.

Ethereum’s stablecoin market cap surged by 65% in 2024, reaching a new all-time high. This growth was partly driven by a reduction in transaction fees following the Dencun upgrade in March, as well as post-election optimism in the United States, Otychenko said.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Russia may expand its arsenal of nuclear weapons if the US goes ahead with a major missile defense program that’s been ordered by President Trump, Russia’s TASS news agency reported on Thursday.

Trump signed an executive order on Monday to develop an “Iron Dome for America” that can intercept ballistic, hypersonic, and other types of advanced missiles, unlike Israel’s Iron Dome, which is designed to intercept short-range crude rockets. The order also calls for an improvement in missile defense to protect US troops deployed in other countries and the territory of US allies.

Writing in the Russian journal International Affairs, Grigory Mashkov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s special ambassador, said the US’s global missile defense posture was already a threat to Russia and said expanding it further “puts an end to the prospects of strategic offensive arms reduction and preservation of strategic stability on the previous terms.”

Mashkov said that it is “not ruled out that in the current conditions of confrontation with the West, with its policy of inflicting strategic damage on Russia, we may face the need for moving away from restrictions on nuclear and missile arsenals in favor of their quantitative and qualitative increase.”

He said one possible retaliatory measure Russia could take is adjusting its position on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and other commitments Moscow has made related to the transparency of its nuclear stockpile.

“We will have to take a fresh look at all our commitments in the area of strengthening transparency and confidence-building measures, and suspend discussions on nuclear risks and threats, which are becoming empty talk in the context of growing efforts by the West to undermine strategic and non-strategic nuclear deterrent forces,” Mashkov said.

Trump’s executive order clashes with his recent comments about seeking “denuclearization” with Russia and China since it’s clear the development of a major new missile defense system would spark a new arms race.

Mashkov warned that an arms race was already underway. “A missile arms race is already in full swing. So is the large-scale modernization of nuclear arsenals and WMD delivery vehicles. The militarization of space is gaining momentum, which, in the near future, is likely to become another scene of military confrontation,” he said.

Iraqi refugee and anti-Islam activist Salwan Momika was shot dead overnight on Wednesday, shockingly as he was in the middle of a live-stream in his apartment.

Five people had immediately been arrested in connection with the murder. Suspicion has been raised over the obvious likelihood that Islamic hardliners took his life, given Momika had become well-known for holding regular Quran-burning events. He would also upload videos of this ultra-provocative religious offense towards Islam to the internet.

It’s unclear what specific evidence police had on the five suspects, for example whether they were actually apprehended at the apartment grounds where the killing took place. The speed at which they were arrested, within hours of Momika’s death being revealed, strongly suggests they may have been linked to the scene.

But shockingly, the suspects who have not been named, have been released. “A Swedish prosecutor said on Friday he had decided to release from detention five suspects who were held over the killing on Wednesday of an anti-Islam campaigner,” Reuters confirms.

Just a day prior, here’s how Anna Westberg from Stockholm police’s media center presented the initial arrests: “Five people were arrested overnight in connection with the murder incident.”

The suspects’ release is sure to arouse deep anger and frustration among the European right, given it has the appearance of pro-Islamic appeasement. 

Meanwhile the police are presenting it as a case of the evidence being thin:

While five suspects were initially apprehended by police, the suspicion against them had weakened as the investigation progressed, Senior Prosecutor Rasmus Oman said in a statement on Friday.

The five were, however, still subject to further investigation, Oman said.

Also interesting is that Swedish police have raised the possibility of foreign involvement in the killing.

This also as Reuters highlights the following past statement out of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in 2023 that people who desecrate the Koran should face the “most severe punishment” and that Sweden had “gone into battle-array for war on the Muslim world” by supporting those responsible.

Momika’s Quran-burning events have long been widely condemned in Europe and internationally (especially Middle East leaders) as incitement; however, the slain activist always defended what he was doing as acts of free expression.

His native Iraq was especially outraged that Swedish authorities allowed and protected the Quran-burning events. However, a Swedish court was expected to rule on whether it is protected speech.

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

• Global green energy investment hit a record $2.1 trillion in 2024, up 11% from 2023, but growth has slowed.

• To achieve net-zero by 2050, annual investment needs to reach $5.6 trillion, meaning current levels are only 37% of what’s required.

• While China leads in green spending, investment in the US has stagnated, and it has fallen in the EU and UK.

Global investments in green energy solutions topped $2 trillion last year, for the first time ever, but the world needs to pour in $5.6 trillion each year into low-carbon energy to get on track for global net zero by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement, BloombergNEF said in a new report on Thursday.

Last year, green energy investments reached a record high globally, but the pace of growth has slowed from the 2021-2023 period, according to BNEF’s report Energy Transition Investment Trends 2025.

The world invested a total of $2.1 trillion in low-carbon energy in 2024, up by 11% compared to 2023, the report found.

However, the pace of growth has slowed. In the years 2021 to 2023, global investment in clean energy jumped by between 24% and 29% each year, according to BNEF.

Electrified transport continued to be the top segment for low-carbon energy investment, drawing in $757 billion in 2024.

China remained the single biggest market with $818 billion of investment, up by 20% from 2023 and increasing investment in all sectors.

China’s total investment last year was greater than the combined investment of the U.S., the EU, and the UK.

However, investment was stagnant in the U.S., at $338 billion, and fell in both the EU and UK, hitting $381 billion and $65.3 billion, respectively, BNEF said.

The research provider also noted that energy transition investment will have to average $5.6 trillion each year from 2025 to 2030, in order to get on track for global net zero by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement.

The current investment level of $2.1 trillion implies that the world is only at 37% of what is required to get on track, BNEF said.

“There is still much more that needs to be done, especially in emerging areas like industrial decarbonization, hydrogen and carbon capture, in order to reach global net-zero goals,” commented Albert Cheung, Deputy CEO of BNEF.

This week defense officials told Axios that the United States has begun transferring Patriot air defense interceptors from storage in Israel for eventual delivery to Ukraine.

Some 90 Patriot missiles will first be sent from Israel to Poland, after which they’ll go to Ukraine as part of stepped-up efforts of Washington to boost Ukraine’s air defenses. Russian missiles and drones have been pummeling Ukrainian cities, and especially power and energy infrastructure, on a near daily basis.

The Patriot system has become somewhat irrelevant or outdated in Israel since it was first introduced there some three decades ago. Israel is now reliant on the Iron Dome and its other domestically developed systems.

The Patriots have instead long been used for training purposes in Israel, with the bulk of the arsenal having been relegated to storage. 

Axios notes that “Last April, the Israeli Air Force officially decommissioned the Patriot air defense system, more than 30 years after it was first given to Israel during the first Gulf War.”

From there, the prior Biden administration began working on a plan to refurbish the stored missiles and give them to Ukraine.

But Israel was deeply wary at the time of poking or crossing Russia:

• For several months, Israel dragged its feet out of concern Russia would retaliate, perhaps by supplying sophisticated weapons to Iran.
• A Ukrainian official tells Axios Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to take his calls on that issue for weeks.
• But in late September, Netanyahu finally approved the idea, an Israeli official says.

Israel will no doubt be much more cooperative with the US on Ukraine in the wake of December 8. That’s when longtime leader Bashar al-Assad fled Syria, and with the end of his rule Iranian forces have pulled out of the country.

Additionally, Russia is busy packing up its two military bases on the Syrian coast. The bases’ ultimate status is anything but clear at this point, but much heavy equipment has been set up at a Libyan port.

While Assad was in power, and Russian presence inside Syria was significant, Israel had to maintain a delicate balance in its relations with Moscow and Washington. Throughout nearly three years of the Ukraine war, Israel has rebuffed calls from Kiev to send weaponry. 

Ukraine has tried to argue that the presence of Iranian drones used by Russian forces is a threat which Israel can help counter. It’s looking like Israel may begin boosting some level of support to the Zelensky government in coordination with the US, also as the truce in Gaza is holding.