Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

It’s not going to risk breaking up NATO, let alone over a war that it’ll certainly lose, no matter how tough its Foreign Minister is trying to sound as part of a ploy to present France as the EU’s leader.

Politico quoted French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot as saying that his country had discussed the possible deployment of troops to Greenland with Denmark in order to protect it from Trump’s claims, but Copenhagen didn’t want to move forward with Paris’ proposal. He then shrugged off the scenario of the US invading to make it seem like the aforementioned disclosure and its outcome were no big deal. It therefore appeared as though he only wanted to emphasize that France will protect the EU’s borders.

The reality though is that France won’t fight the US over Greenland if it came to that.

First, it would destroy NATO’s unity, which could lead to the second consequence of the US pulling out of the bloc and leaving the Europeans on their own to face Russia.

Third, France would certainly lose, so the fourth point is that there’s no reason risking all this for Denmark’s sake. And finally, Greenlanders might ultimately vote for independence, thus making France’s intervention a neocolonial war with the US.

As was assessed in late December, “The Panama Canal & Greenland Are Trump’s For The Taking If He Really Wants Them”, but it remains to be seen if he’s willing to use military force to that end or if his claims to both are just a negotiating tactic to respectively expel Chinese influence and keep it at bay. There’s also the possibility that he wants to turn them into protectorates, whether formally or otherwise, with unclear privileges for American citizens, companies, and/or the military.

In any case, these are important enough imperatives for the US to seriously consider the use of force if necessary depending on how negotiations over each might go, which stands in stark contrast to France’s interest in Greenland. France only wanted to reaffirm the importance of protecting the EU’s borders and present itself as the bloc’s leader amidst its traditional rival with Germany in this regard. It lacks the political will to actually make good on this pledge against the US if ever requested by Denmark to do so.

What this entire episode illustrates though is that Trump’s claim to Greenland has prompted panic among the Europeans.

They never expected anything of the sort to happen and are now at a loss for how to respond in the event that he applies more pressure upon Denmark. No matter how highly some European countries like France still think of themselves, the fact of the matter is that they’re still the US’ junior partners and even outright vassals in most cases. They depend more on the US than the inverse.

For that reason, it’s highly unlikely that any European troops in Greenland would do anything more than fire into the air in the event that Trump authorizes the military to seize that island, since using lethal force against American troops would spark an unprecedented intra-NATO crisis. The power dynamics between them are such that the European members of the bloc have become convinced that they need the US to protect it against Russia and therefore won’t risk being abandoned by the US over Greenland.

It also shouldn’t be forgotten that France never ended up conventionally intervening in Ukraine last year despite threatening to do so. That’s because it couldn’t secure Article 5 guarantees from the US. Since France obeyed the much weaker Biden Administration and showed that it wasn’t really as gung-ho about fighting Russia as it made it seem, it’ll predictably obey the much stronger Trump Administration and not dare to militarily challenge it over Greenland, which is much less significant for the EU than Ukraine is.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

In the late 1970s Donald Trump, in his early thirties, cocky as ever and recently married to Ivana in 1977, could be seen on and off hitting the electric New York City night life especially at glamour/hard partying disco dive Studio 54.

A certified dancefloor killer at Studio 54 was Disco Inferno by The Trammps, mixed by dance wizard Tom Moulton, released in 1976, two years before perennial Trump favorite YMCA – now resuscitated to global furor as the soundtrack to Trump 2.0 dance moves.

For all practical purposes, Trump is now the DJ turning the whole planet into a Disco Inferno (“folks are screaming, out of control”), as everything is “so entertaining when the boogie started to explode”. And the Trump “boogie” serially exploding is no less than the non-stop amplified sound of theater, bombast and uncontrolled chaos.

The spectacle of Trump’s sound and fury – a torrent of executive orders, photo ops, carefully scripted illusionist tricks, breathless headlines – signifying…something veils the same old imperial mindset, now blasting out in the open as a weaponized three-ring circus. Stagecraft invariably trumps substance as every smirk and scowl is media-weaponized to the enthralled, bloodthirsty arena spectators.

Mr. Disco Inferno won a mini-trade war with Colombia in only 10 hours, after posting an image depicting himself as an Al Capone-style Mafia boss in pinstripe suit and fedora hat, standing next to a sign that reads “FAFO”, which means “F**k Around and Find Out”.

He will win the proxy war in Ukraine. In 24 hours. Sorry, in 100 days. Sorry, maybe more. And “if they don’t settle this war soon, like almost immediately, I’m going to put massive tariffs on Russia and massive taxes and also big sanctions.” Why? Because, “you know, I love the Russian people.”

He brags that the United States “has the largest amount of oil and gas” (it does not) and is going to use it; he will “ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down oil prices” (they will say no); because if “the oil price came down, the war in Ukraine would end immediately” (this is definitely not a “cause and effect” case).

He will make “the largest tax cuts in US history.” The US can ensure LNG supplies to Europe (of course, at a huge mark-up); the US “does not need Canada to make cars, as well as Canadian oil and gas”;the United States’ “massive oil and gas reserves” will allow it to “become a manufacturing superpower and the world capital of AI and cryptocurrencies”.

Buried in the sound and fury is the fact that the US can count on a steady stream of gas for domestic needs but that turns problematic when it comes to exports. Hence the expropriation obsession – as in outright Empire of Plunder: the US badly needs Iraqi, Syrian, Venezuelan, Mexican, Iranian and Russian reserves. Because even if carefully exported, there is insufficient liquification facilities in the US to supply the EU. And that’s why Europe remains largely dependent on Russian LNG and other sources since the sabotage of the Nordstreams.

Satisfaction…came in a chain reaction

Yes: there is incoming blood on the dancefloor.

To get into the real groove of Disco Inferno, we might as well focus on the top three challenges for Trump 2.0:

1. the tech war against China;

2. the geoeconomics war against the Global Majority;

3. and the proxy war in Ukraine.

The irruption of Hangzhou-based Chinese tech start-up DeepSeek on the global stage was something for the ages, instantly decimating the spun-to-death “small yard, high fence” American strategy to smash China’s tech advances.

DeepSeek should indeed be seen as the “biggest dark horse” in the open-source Large Language Model (LLM) domain, now identified from Jakarta to Wall Street and Silicon Valley as potentially Beijing’s secret weapon in the AI war with the US. Even Mr. Disco Inferno was forced to admit DeepSeek’s breakthrough as a “wake-up call”.

At the heart of the matter we find two clashing models: neoliberal hypercapitalism versus meritocratic socialism.

The head of DeepSeek, Liang Wenfeng, is a fascinating geek. His given name (Wenfeng) means “Vanguard of Culture”; one of the meanings of his family name (Liang) is “bridge”. So he may be seen – as he is in China – as Mr. Bridge to the Vanguard of Culture (here’s Mr. Bridge in an excellent interview , in Chinese; please use auto-translate).

Mr. Bridge pulled a spectacular Sun Tzu on US sanctions over exporting advanced graphic processing units (GPUs), especially Nvidia’s advanced chips. Moreover, Chinese Big Tech firms cannot compete with the financial firepower of US Big Tech.

So the answer was to develop cost-efficient powerful LLM models, without access to literally hundreds of thousands of Nvidia H100s chips. DeepSeek stated they had used just 2,048 Nvidia H800s and only $5.6million to train a model with 671 billion (italics mine) parameters: that’s a very small fraction of what OpenAI and Google spent to train models of the same size.

And everything was developed locally, via scores of PHDs from the top Chinese universities – Peking, Tsinghua, Beihang – and not American Ivy League experts.

So in a nutshell DeepSeek is a 100% Chinese LLM companywhich was capable to come up with open-source models and a free downloadable app for every consumer to use. That in itself destroys the current American-imposed neoliberal hypercapitalist AI business model.

The rules of the game indeed are being rewritten. So what is the – predictable – American response? Call for more sanctions. In parallel, DeepSeek was forced to suspend new registrations because its site suffered a massive cyberattack. Talk about the price to pay for eviscerating a humongous $1 trillion off the techno-feudalists gathered at the New York Stock Exchange.

Mr. Disco Inferno of course supports the commodifying of all data compared to free data for everyone. Right before the DeepSeek shock, he had – theoretically – secured as much as $1 trillion from the Saudis, including to a large extent investments to develop AI and data centers in the US.

The new game of course is just beginning. Stargate, OpenAI’s joint venture with Japan’s SoftBank, also heavily plugged by Trump, plans to spend at least $100 billion on AI infrastructure in the US. In parallel, Elon Musk’s xAI is massively expanding the Colossus supercomputer to contain more than 1million GPUs to help train its Grok AI models.

I couldn’t get enough, so I had to self-destruct

Now to the war against the Global Majority. Inestimable Prof. Michael Hudson is adamant: in an absolutely must read essay, he concisely explains that “when Trump promised his voters that the United States must be the ‘winner’ in any international trade or financial agreement, he is declaring economic war on the rest of the world.”

The key Hudson take away: If nations in the Global South are to save their economy “from being plunged into austerity, price inflation, unemployment and social chaos”, they will have to “suspend payments on foreign debts denominated in dollars.”

It’s a work in progress: “Circumstances…are forcing the world to break away from the US-centered financial order. The US dollar’s exchange rate is going to soar in the short term as a result of Trump blocking imports with tariffs and trade sanctions. This exchange-rate shift will squeeze foreign countries owing dollar debts in the same way that Mexico and Canada are to be squeezed. To protect themselves, they must suspend dollar debt service.”

There may be serious problems ahead for Mr. Disco Inferno: “Trump’s America First political theater that got him elected may get his gang unseated as the contradictions and consequences of their operating philosophy are recognized and replaced. His tariff policy will accelerate US price inflation and, even more fatally, cause chaos in US and foreign financial markets. Supply chains will be disrupted, interrupting US exports of everything from aircraft to information technology. And other countries will find themselves obliged to make their economies no longer dependent on US exports or dollar credit.”

Prof. Hudson notes how Trump “thinks that the US economy is like a cosmic black hole, that is, a center of gravity able to pull all the world’s money and economic surplus to itself. That is the explicit aim of America First. That is what makes Trump’s program a declaration of economic war on the rest of the world. There is no longer a promise that the economic order sponsored by US diplomacy will make other countries prosperous. The gains from trade and foreign investment are to be sent to and concentrated in America.”

The EU, in the Global North, is even more vulnerable to “America First”. Davos came and went with a mere blip on the screen, apart from the odd US banker bragging about “peak pessimism” in Europe – linked to the incoming Trump tariff tsunami – and head of the European Central Bank Christine “Look at my new Hermes scarf” Lagarde wondering it was “not pessimistic” to say that Europe is facing an “existential crisis”.

The US-EU trade balance stands at a hefty 1.5 trillion euros a year, including massive Atlanticist investment flows. But what really matters is the financial mess in individual EU nations, especially top two Germany and France, with their Via Dolorosa to be extended ad infinitum when it comes to their cost of borrowing driven by tax cuts in the US.

I heard somebody say (Burning Burning) burn that mother down

And now to the Forever Wars front.

Mr. Disco Inferno, posing as a humanitarian for the non-stop camera clicking, has asked vassals Jordan and Egypt to de facto become accomplices in ethnic cleansing, absorbing as many as 1.5 million people from Gaza. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly “prohibits the forced transfer of protected people out of or into occupied territory”.

Turning a genocide into a real estate opportunity  in a “phenomenal location” will proceed in parallel with energetically courting the Saudis, after MbS in Riyadh promised last week to invest at least $600 billion – and up to a possible $1 trillion – in the US.

The official Saudi position is on the necessity of “strategic investments” to “stabilize long-term revenue streams” – not to mention consolidate lavish spending on all those US-made weapons systems. Call it a classic geopolitical case of Power of Capital merging with The Strategy of Chaos.

Telling Riyadh how to dance is one thing. To entice the Russian bear to the dancefloor is a completely different proposition.

As star French historian Emmanuel Todd has brilliantly demonstrated , “Trump’s job will be to manage the defeat of the US against Russia.” That’s the toughest call ever. Trump’s supreme anathema is to be seen as a loser.

So there are only two feasible options.

1. To “end the war” by not really ending it, just postponing it to the end of the decade, stealing a de facto Russian victory via massive spin and a gargantuan P.R. campaign.

2. Keep weaponizing Kiev – especially via NATO vassals, while posing as a peacemaker who cannot deliver because of Russia. That will be a toxic variant of the current “war until the last Ukrainian”.

That kind of gimmickry won’t fly in Moscow. Putin and the Security Council have made it extensively clear the conditions for a real end to the war – not a pause for NATO rearmament.

The authentic-or-not 100-day plan for a possible deal that has been circulating in the Washington-London-Kiev echo chambers touches on a few probabilities: a Putin-Trump phone call in the next two weeks or so; a possible meeting, bilateral (Trump-Putin) or trilateral (with the Ukrainian actor; quite unlikely) until mid-March; start of negotiations on the main parameters; a possible ceasefire by Easter; an International Peace Conference by the end of April, mediated by US, China, some EU members and some from the Global South; presidential elections in Ukraine at the end of August.

Key parameters: Ukraine as a neutral state, and not a member of NATO; member of the EU by 2030; Ukraine does not reduce the size of the army; does not officially recognize Russian sovereignty over conquered territories; “some” sanctions against Russia lifted immediately after the conclusion of the peace agreement, some – over the course of three years – depending on Russia’s compliance; all restrictions on the import of Russian energy to the EU to be lifted; and last but not least, the thorny matter of a “European peacekeeping contingent”.

The CIA is feeding all sorts of misinformation to Trump on everything from the real state of things in the battlefield to the state of the Russian economy. As it stands, Russians watch all the bombast with barely a smirk. Peskov: “Moscow still hasn’t received word from Washington about possible Trump, Putin contact… Readiness for meeting remains.”

So far, nothing. Totally empty game playing. Perhaps Trump, in secrecy, may be practicing his master shot: “The heat was on, rising to the top / Everybody going strong, and that is when my spark got hot”.

Time to hit the dancefloor.

(Just can’t stop) when my spark gets hot
(Just can’t stop) when my spark gets hot
(Just can’t stop) when my spark gets hot
(Just can’t stop) when my spark gets hot

Well, it may turn out that the really hot spark will be detonated not by Mr. Disco Inferno, but by dance partner Vladimir Putin.

*  *  *

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

As we look ahead to 2025, there is no shortage of expert forecasts and predictions for what will happen to the world’s economy, markets, geopolitics, and technology in 2025.

In this now sixth year of Visual Capitalist’s Prediction Consensus (part of our comprehensive 2025 Global Forecast Series presented by Inigo Insurance), Kayla Zhu has summarized the most common predictions and forecasts by experts into a single visual of what they expect to happen in 2025.

Drawing from our predictions database of over 800 forecasts compiled from reports, interviews, podcasts, and more, the Prediction Consensus “bingo card” and this article offer an overview of the most cited trends and opportunities that experts are watching for the rest of the year.

Geopolitical Predictions for 2025

Increased geopolitical uncertainty and volatility is top of mind for many forecasters heading into 2025, as global trade dynamics restructure around tariffs and potential counter-tariffs.

For many forecasters, President Donald Trump’s return to office is anticipated to escalate U.S.-China tensions, potentially triggering increased economic competition, protectionist policies, and global fragmentation.

“For now, America’s rivalry with China will manifest itself as a trade war, as Mr Trump imposes restrictions and ramps up tariffs—including on America’s allies”

– Tom Standage, The Economist

The geopolitical landscape is likely to become more volatile as both nations navigate a complex and increasingly adversarial relationship, with the U.S. intensifying its protectionist stance under Trump while China looks to strengthening its BRICS partnerships.

Amid U.S.-China tensions, experts expect the geopolitical landscape to remain fraught as Sudan endures one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, marked by famine and mass displacement with limited aid while Syria faces a precarious transition following the fall of Bashar al-Assad.

However, some conflicts are predicted to wrap up this year, with a number of experts optimistic that 2025 could mark the end of the Russia-Ukraine war as it nears its third anniversary. Another significant conflict saw a breakthrough as Israel and Hamas reached a Gaza ceasefire in January 2025, offering a brief respite after 15 months of hostilities.

Along with these ongoing geopolitical issues, several major elections are on the horizon for 2025, including Canada, Germany, Belarus, the Philippines, and Australia.

Economy and Markets Forecasts for 2025

Based on the hundreds of economic forecasts and predictions we’ve sifted through, many analysts and experts share matching views on what’s ahead for inflation, interest rates, and economic growth in 2025.

Global inflation forecasts for 2025: Inflation is expected to continue easing in 2025 across many economies, with global inflation expected to drop from 5.8% in 2024 to 4.3% in 2025. However, some experts predict tariffs could drive acute inflation as firms pass additional costs onto consumers.

Interest rate forecasts for 2025: Further interest rate cuts are projected for the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank in 2025, while the Bank of Japan was expected to bump rates by 25 bps this year, and has already followed through with their rate hike to 0.50%–a level not seen since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Global markets forecasts for 2025: Forecasters are quite bullish on the markets, with positive S&P 500 forecasts in the 10% to 20% range and an expected broadening of returns beyond the Magnificent 7 expected for 2025. Consensus expectations see U.S. equities leading earnings while Europe rebounds and Asia softens.

Gold prices are expected to continue to surge this year, with experts positioning it as both an effective hedge against geopolitical and economic uncertainties and a general portfolio diversifier. Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are also expected to see growth as the Trump administration advances pro-crypto policies and global economies develop more structured regulatory frameworks for digital assets.

Global real GDP growth forecasts for 2025: The outlook for global growth continues to be fairly stable heading into 2025. Global GDP growth forecasts range from 2.7% to 3.2%, squarely in the range of IMF’s 10-year average (2015-2024) of 3.1%.

“With some shocks set to ease, such as Russia-Ukraine, along with a bonfire of regulations and tax cuts in the U.S. economy, the global economy is likely to perform better than last year.”

– Mo Tanweer, academic associate Pembroke College, University of Cambridge and consultant to Inigo Insurance

The U.S. and China are both expected to experience slower growth in 2025, with the IMF projecting U.S. GDP growth at 2.7%, down 0.1 percentage points from 2024, and China’s at 4.6%, down 0.2 percentage points from last year.

Technology and AI Predictions for 2025

Advancements in artificial intelligence innovation and infrastructure show no sign of slowing down in 2025.

Just this January, President Trump announced the Stargate Project, a $500 billion AI infrastructure venture led by OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX, aimed at building data centers across the United States to secure American leadership in AI technology, with an initial $100 billion deployment starting in Texas.

Significant strides in AI are in the works this year, including agentic AI systems and artificial general intelligence (AGI) which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have all stated are well-within possibility in the near future, possibly this year.

However, as companies scale up their AI operations, both capital expenditures and energy costs are projected to rise, highlighting the need for improvements in energy efficiency and renewable sources in shaping AI’s future and aligning it with environmental objectives.

Robotics and autonomous driving technology are also expected to continue to advance as AI systems become more sophisticated, with experts forecasting autonomous driving to become “safe and reliable” by 2025 and relatively mainstream across major cities in the United States.

2025 Forecasts: The Year of Recalibration

As we head into 2025, notable shifts are taking shape across geopolitical, economic, and technological landscapes. The year stands out as a pivotal moment of global recalibration—where established systems are being challenged, reimagined, and restructured.

Trump’s return to the White House is expected to dramatically reshape U.S. foreign and economic policy, with a particular focus on trade measures and protectionist strategies.

His administration’s approach is likely to test international relationships, potentially accelerating economic competition and global fragmentation while simultaneously pursuing domestic market stimulation and supportive policies for emerging technologies like AI and digital assets.

However, as a whole the world is carefully rebalancing economically. Inflation is gradually cooling, markets show optimism, and central banks are strategically adjusting interest rates. The global economic engine is humming at a steady, if not spectacular, pace, with GDP growth remaining stable despite slowing projections for major economies like the U.S. and China.

Perhaps most notably, technology—and particularly artificial intelligence—emerges as a transformative and disruptive force. Massive investments in AI infrastructure and predictions about artificial general intelligence signal a technological watershed, but are also being challenged by efficiency and cost innovations made apparent by China’s open source Deepseek R1 model release.

From geopolitical tensions to technological innovations, the year promises to be a period of strategic adaptation, where countries, markets, and technologies reassess and realign themselves to address the complex challenges of our interconnected world.

Authored by Thomas Harrington via the Brownstone Institute,

In need of a letter certifying that I do not suffer from a disease of international concern, I headed out to my primary care practitioner last Monday.

Knowing how busy most doctor’s offices are these days, I decided I’d make it easy on the staff by bringing a) a copy of the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR) regulations on diseases of international concern b) a list of the diseases currently covered under this rubric and c) explicit instructions about the elements such a letter must include (i.e. letterhead of the practice, stamp of the practice, doctor’s signature etc.).

They assured me that they were familiar with this procedure and that it would be no problem.

And when I mentioned that it would be great if they could do it in both English and Spanish, I was assured that would be no problem either as there was a Spanish-speaking provider on staff who could write it up in that language.

But again, in the interest of facilitating things, I provided them with a copy of this very type of certification letter written for me some time back by a doctor in Spain. This “letter,” such as it was, consisted of one sentence of 27 words in Spanish and a couple more than that when rendered into English.

Given that there were two staff members present, and that one of them was scrolling on her phone, I figured it would be a simple matter of one of them quickly writing up the letters, checking my file to see if I had any of the diseases of international concern (I had been there a week previous for my annual checkup) and catching my doctor (or one of his colleagues) between patients for a quick signature.

However, when I asked the woman in front of me how long it would take, she replied, “Three to five business days. That’s the procedure. We’ll call you when it is done”.

When I told them that I needed it for an appointment first thing on the following Monday in New York and that if I didn’t have all the documents, it would be months before I got another one, they just repeated the mantra that it would be done toward the end of the week, probably late on Friday.

On Friday, at 1:45 I received a call saying the letter was ready for pickup. Relieved, I entered the office, checked the letter quickly, and headed out. Upon rechecking it at home, however, I realized that it had not been signed by the doctor, which was one of the first requirements on the list of directions I had handed them on Monday.

So back I went to the office and explained to them it would be inadmissible for the bureaucratic procedure in question without that signature. By this time it was getting toward 3:15 in an office scheduled to close at 5:00.

The woman behind the counter said she really didn’t know what she could do. I said, “Why don’t you just write it up and grab one of the doctors in the practice (I had been shifted by them from one doctor to another owing to scheduling jam-ups on their end during the last few years) to sign it?” adding, “After all, it does not involve disclosure of any of my personal clinical details other than the fact that I do not have any of the mentioned diseases.”

After listening to me and saying nothing, she ran off to talk to her manager.

When she got back she said, “I’m going to put an order in for it,” and began typing into her computer looking for the page where she could “put in an order” for something that could literally be done in 2-3 minutes. I said somewhat incredulously “Put in an order at this point?” and repeated the idea of typing the letter anew and grabbing one of the doctors between appointments.

She said “That’s not the procedure” and besides, “Your doctor is no longer in the office,” implying that while they could shift patients from one doctor to the other according to their scheduling needs, my asking that a member of the same ostensibly interchangeable team of doctors carry out this simple task on the same premise was an anathema.

After another trip to the invisible manager, she returned saying I could leave and that they’d call me when and if the issue is resolved.

An hour later I received a call saying everything was arranged and that I could come and pick up the letter.

With a smiling face, she handed me the 27-word letter. But there was only one problem. It was signed not by a doctor but an APRN. When I explained that the directions clearly said that it needed to be signed by a doctor and that the foreign government agency I was taking it to was notorious for rejecting documents that did not conform exactly to their requirements, a confused frown returned to her face.

She asked me to sit in the waiting room and ran off to the manager again. It was now 4:45 in the afternoon, 15 minutes before closing time.

About 10 minutes later, the heretofore invisible manager emerged, and with a smiling face, assured me that the issue would be resolved shortly. And so it was.

At 4:55 she emerged with the letter signed by the only remaining MD at the office, grabbing her, I presume, as she emerged from one of her sessions with a patient.

In other words, the issue had been finally resolved by the very unalgorithmic, but highly practical and personal manner I had proposed four days earlier.

So, what’s the moral of the story?

Before getting to that, I should perhaps say what it is not; the idea is not to point out that the nice people at the office are all irretrievably stupid…at least not yet.

Rather it is to demonstrate a phenomenon that is rampant in culture that we seldom talk about openly, never mind decry with all the fury that it deserves.

It is the story of how a managerial elite possessed of generalized contempt for the bulk of their fellow citizens and a slavish adherence to an extremely narrow, algorithmically-generated notion of “efficiency” has created scores of so-called idiot-proof systems that dehumanize and demoralize those who work in or engage with them.

And while these systems are wildly successful at walling off the corporations that design them from the need to listen to and mindfully serve those who buy their goods and services, they are not, as my little story above shows, even efficient in any meaningful sense of the term.

Those of us of a certain age who have worked in office settings all know (or knew) that person, that wonderful person with a vibrant personality, quick intelligence, and top-notch social skills to whom you could always turn to get things done in a pinch.

She—and yes, it was usually a she—knew where all the bodies were buried and the strengths and weaknesses of every person in the house, something she would leverage to make things happen in the most unobtrusive and efficient way possible, pulling those she worked with out of tight spaces again and again along the way.

It pains me to say this, but it seems these linchpins of workplace culture are in extremely short supply today.

And it’s not, as many people assume, because we lack people with the aptitude to perform in this impressive multimodal manner in our society.

No, it is because, despite all the HR-generated rhetoric proclaiming the opposite, the people who design and run the systems within which we work are often true nihilists for whom the magical and life-giving processes of human relations, and what some students of psychological development call “human becoming,” mean next to nothing.

Caught in the “measure-grab-and-control” tyranny of the algorithmic mind, they cannot even begin to imagine how those they see as lesser than them, might, if left to their own devices, be capable of generating greater efficiencies than their vaunted oh-so-rational systems…and usually with a heaping portion of increased human joy as part of the bargain.

Worse yet, they do not realize that putting people in systems that assume they are stupid will, in the long run, make those who have intelligence (and what person doesn’t?) truly and profoundly stupid, sad, and ultimately unresponsive to anyone or anything in the long run.

Is that what the managerial elite truly want? Or is it that their imaginations are already so impoverished by fantasies of algorithmic perfection that they truly do not understand the wave of spiritual destruction they have set in motion and feed daily?

I honestly wish I knew.

Japan’s population aged 65 and over has reached an all-time high of 36 million, accounting for 29.3% of the total population.

With such a large portion at retirement age, the country faces the challenge of maintaining its workforce capacity.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, visualizes Japan’s population aged 65 and over compared to the total population from 1950 to 2045 forecasts, based on data compiled by the Statistics Bureau of Japan.

Half of Japanese Companies Report Employee Shortages

Japan has the world’s highest proportion of the population aged 65 and over. While the country’s population has been declining, the proportion of older citizens continues to grow and is projected to reach 34.8% by 2040.

As the population ages, Japan’s labor force is expected to shrink significantly. A recent research note from Morgan Stanley’s Robert Feldman estimates that, based on past demographic trends, the labor force could decline from approximately 69.3 million in 2023 to around 49.1 million by 2050.

Currently, 51% of companies in Japan report a shortage of full-time employees.

To address this issue, Japan has implemented immigration programs to attract skilled workers. In 2024, a record 2 million foreign workers were employed in Japan, with plans to add up to 800,000 more over the next five years.

If you enjoyed this topic, check out this graphic that shows how different generations will shape the global population by 2035.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has issued a major ruling on the Second Amendment, declaring that federal prohibitions on gun sales to adults between the ages of 18-20 are unconstitutional. The case is Reese v. ATF. For gun rights advocates, it may have been better if this decision had been handed down during the Biden Administration. The Trump Administration will likely support the ruling and might not appeal to the Supreme Court.

The case concerns 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(b)(1) and (c)(1), and related regulations, including 27 C.F.R. §§ 478.99(b), 478.124(a), and 478.96(b). These provisions are the basis for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to bar Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) from selling or delivering handguns to adults under the age of twenty-one.

Writing for the panel (with Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, a George W. Bush appointee. and Judge Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale, a George H.W. Bush appointee), Judge Edith Hollan Jones relied on the 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen to find that the prohibition was not grounded in the historical tradition of the amendment:

Ultimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals among “the people” whose right to keep and  bear arms is protected. The federal government has presented scant evidence that eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds’ firearm rights during the founding-era were restricted in a similar manner to the contemporary federal handgun purchase ban, and its 19th century evidence “cannot provide much insight into the meaning of the Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence.

…In sum…[statues which ‘prohibit Federal Firearms Licensees]…from selling or delivering handguns to adults under the age of twenty-one. and their attendant regulations are unconstitutional in light of our Nation’s historic tradition of firearm regulation.”

The decision reverses the ruling of Judge Robert Rees Summerhays of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, a Trump appointee.

The case involved some interesting historical arguments about how some states set the age for the militia at 21 rather than 18. The effort to ground the provisions in a historical context proved unavailing since most states set the age at 18.

“The government’s theory inverts historical analysis by relying principally on mid-to-late-19th century statutes (most enacted after Reconstruction) that restricted firearm ownership based on age. Then the government works backward to assert that these laws are consistent with founding-era analogues focusing on the minority status and general “irresponsibility” of eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds.”

Instead, the court found ample support for the right of young adults to bear arms:

“[C]ontrary to the government’s recitation of concerns expressed in the colonial and founding eras about the “irresponsibility” of those under twenty-one, these young individuals were expected to keep the peace rather than disturb it. In addition to serving in the militia, eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds could be obliged to join the posse comitatus, for which the minimum age was often fifteen or sixteen, and bring “such arms or weapons as they have or can provide”…Before the emergence of standing police forces, the posse comitatus was made up of civilians who accompanied sheriffs or other officials in pursuit of fugitives. … In early colonial America, the posse was “transformed . . . from an instrument of royal prerogative to an institution of local self-governance” that “all but precipitated the American Revolution.” Citizens could be called to “execute arrests, level public nuisances, and keep the peace;” they faced fines or imprisonment if they refused. Instead of refusing to arm young Americans for fear of their irresponsibility, founding-era regulations required them to be armed to secure public safety.”

Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group associated with former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, called upon the Trump Administration to appeal the decision:

“We hope the federal government will fight this reckless ruling by seeking rehearing en banc, or taking the case directly to the Supreme Court.”

There is an argument for the Solicitor General to defend the federal law as a matter of course. However, the ruling is consistent with the views of many in the Administration.

Had this decision come down under the Biden Administration, an appeal would likely have been taken and this could have strongly reinforced the Court’s Second Amendment jurisprudence. Success at the Supreme Court would have extended this precedent nationally. Of course, there is always the unknown of how Chief Justice John Roberts would react to such limits. Roberts has previously signaled his willingness to entertain reasonable limits.

The case, however, will add persuasive authority for challenges in various states to age limitations.

Authored by Joe Murphy via The Brownstone Institute,

Some years back, in calmer times before the storm, we officers at sea held the wardroom mess in accordance with that classic naval tradition. It was modernized and conducted over secure video, so those of us in the Med studied with those in the Gulf and those in the BAM,¹ but it was all the same. Our study was Thucydides. 

The Peloponnesian War is too large for a deployment’s worth of weekly studies to cover, so after each session, I filled my evening with further reading. As the Oak Hill² passed Sicily, I was drawn to the history of the Sicilian Expedition. History is studied to draw lessons for present times. Athens’ lessons are abundant for ours.

In the midst of the 30-year Peloponnesian War, factions of Athens deemed an invasion of Sicily critical to overall victory. Inherent to their argument was the reality that Sicily would be impossibly lucrative if victorious. So it was then, so it is now: potential profit often clouds sound judgment. 

The opposition lost and the attack proceeded. It took the entire fleet and all its citizen manpower and it was entirely defeated. During the multi-year effort, the factions that drove it fused into an oligarchy that perpetuated itself and its war until its incompetence and complete defeat undermined its despotism. It still took the Demos physically overthrowing the Oligarchy for democracy to be restored in Athens.³ 

Athens could rebuild the ships. But it could not rebuild the men. Thirty thousand citizen sailors were lost in the expedition – the heart of Athens’ civilizational power. The demographic catastrophe is considered a cause of Athens’ eventual defeat in the war and its civilizational decline.⁴

Two decades ago, factions argued that biowarfare threats were so significant that biodefense responsibility needed to be removed from the purview of the uniformed military and placed within NIAID under NIH and under HHS. There were structural and efficiency reasons to do this but the intangible reason was that the uniformed military officer corps would not stain its honor with biowarfare. It had held the line with the bioweapons convention since Nixon axed the US bioweapons program, so it had to be removed from the picture for the factions to proceed.

This action, called BioShield, fused the pharmaceutical industry with biodefense and fused the public health agencies with the intelligence community. The two entities in America not held accountable by law or practice, the vaccine industry and the intelligence community (IC), were joined into one. Though done to achieve a positive aim, it is obvious in hindsight that this fusion would create unaccountable oligarchy. Its most apparent manifestation is the director of NIAID’s salary, the highest in government and higher than the president’s, with corresponding tangible worldwide political power. This power structure was known previously to insiders⁵ but only became visible to the public during the Covid response. It also goes without saying that merging medicine with biodefense under the pretext of foreign biothreats is impossibly lucrative. So it was then, so it is now: potential profit often clouds sound judgment.

The biodefense oligarchy spread its tentacles across government and industry. There is pie to be had and it is lucrative. Adversaries make advances in biotechnology so funds must keep coming and riskier and riskier research must be done to supposedly stay ahead of those adversaries, especially if it proves true that the DOD and NIH traded advanced technology to those adversaries so the IC could gain access and spy on their laboratories.⁶Now with more advanced technology, the IC must do more spying on those adversaries and NIAID more research. The biodefense oligarchy is a reinforcing feedback loop. It perpetuates its reason to exist. 

There does not appear to be a valid evaluation as to whether the biothreat rates such an apparatus in the context of the overarching threat picture the United States faces. It is unclear if the warriors, the combat armsmen, and the unrestricted line officers are involved in the assessment since they ceased to be involved years ago in an act of false piety (to which the origin of the Covid fiasco can be traced). And the director of NIAID will just turn off funding to the universities in the Congressman’s district when the Congressman raises opposition to the arrangement if the universities in his district have not already complained, for the oligarchy’s funds are substantial. The biodefense grantee taps DOD and NIAID for biodefense funds.

That’s two pots. Because of “the threats,” they can tap IC funds. Three pots. With the Global War On Terror creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the delegation of defense functions to DHS, including biodefense, there’s a fourth pot. There are actually even more pots, as the DEFUSE proposal shows, to the consternation of federal agents trying to piece the web together.⁷ There is pie to be had and it is lucrative.

As with the Athenians’ Sicilian Expedition, the biodefense oligarchy became stronger as it accrued failures. The predominant failure is the creation and release of SARS-CoV-2 and the consequent response. Biodefense acolytes called Covid a war and treated it as so, forcing the nation into a war footing. War demands resources and faltering war campaigns demand more resources to keep them afloat. Resourcing demands organization – consolidation – and consolidation equates to more power.

All governments accrue more powers in wartime. Jacob Siegel, a 9/11-generation veteran like me, wrote a fantastic Tablet essay⁸ on the disinformation complex which addressed the fusion of the biodefense apparatus with the GWOT-Patriot Act apparatus during the Covid event (I have near verbatim unpublished essays that say the same, and my peers and I discuss this repeatedly, so it is equally fascinating that our generation sees this so clearly).

Essentially, Americans were subjected to a counterterror-insurgency strategy implemented against them by the administrative state in response to the virus. This architecture was for war overseas but was implemented against the American people. With too many interests involved, the expanding apparatus could not be stopped, even by the party in power (which is the nature of oligarchy). As occurred overseas, counterinsurgency failed and in failure imposed despotism and broke the social compact of the country. Alas, the biodefense oligarchy only accumulated more power.

War added a final element to the oligarchy. SARS-CoV-2 occurred amidst a predicted class conflict⁹ between the credentialed class and everyone else (laptop class, expert class, essential v. nonessential, etc.).¹⁰ The landscape of politics had arranged in recent years to where the dominant credentialed caste aligned with the Democrats. This class and party alignment postured this faction to align with the biodefense oligarchy when the Covid “war” started, which is what happened. So biodefense + public health + vaccine industry + intelligence community + social class + political party + “war” = American Oligarchy.¹¹

In such a landscape, the Demos emerged in opposition, another parallel to Athens. The Demos is the opposition party plus the rebellion. In counterinsurgency, the goal is to protect the people from the insurgent. In the Covid war, the “war” against the insurgent virus involved the biodefense oligarchy imposing war on the American people to “keep safe” [from the insurgent]. Since the people are oppressed in counterinsurgency, many rebel. The rebellion expands as the authorities’ ineptitude against the actual threat becomes too obvious for mass propaganda to conceal. The ineptitude also weakens and fractures the oligarchy. During the coup against Biden in July, a Harris staffer quipped that Biden was the oligarchy that needed to go away. Oligarchy complained to oligarchy that it was an oligarchy.¹² This turned out to be a signal of the oligarchy’s pending implosion. Absent war, the oligarchy’s factions could no longer hold. 

Present politics mirror the Athenian conflict between the Oligarchy and Demos, with November’s electoral victory another parallel to the Demos’ ultimate victory. How ultimate this Demos’ victory will be will play out in time. For, like Athenian history, America’s story will pivot on our version of the failed Sicilian Expedition. 

America’s Sicilian Expedition is the creation and response to SARS-CoV-2. It is the compounding of errors from the Biodefense Oligarchy that culminates in our equivalent to Athens’ loss of its 30,000.

First is the death toll from SARS-CoV-2 itself. SARS-CoV-2, a synthetic virus or a reverse genetics system or a synthetic self-spreading vaccine – a living thing created in man’s hubris in “defense” against potential natural or man-made pathogens – harmed and killed many people.¹³This number is clouded by the Lockdown and treatment debacle. This number will remain disputed until the actual origin and nature of SARS-CoV-2 is known – what it is down to the amino acid level – and the statisticians and systems dynamicists rework the calculations. These losses were painful, but they were predominantly the old. The creation of and losses to SARS-CoV-2 itself equate to the initiation of the Sicilian Expedition. These losses are not equivalent to the loss of the fleet and its 30,000 citizen-warriors.

The losses from the vaccines are. These losses came well after the start of the war, at a time when the purpose and value of the war and the perpetuation of it could be re-evaluated. Moreover, these losses are in the young. These losses are concealed by the oligarchy but visible: the athlete who drops on the field, the runner who clutches his heart and face-plants on the street corner, the hyper-fit lieutenant who lies dead on the side of the road, the major collapsed during the fitness test with his peers pinning his violently stroking body to stop him choking on his tongue, the captain who collapses dead in his home before his wife and children, the veteran who wakes suddenly in the night, clutches his wife, screams, and dies instantly of pulmonary embolism, the little girl playing erratically with the neighborhood kids, the mothers over dinner watch weeping that she is not the same girl since the heart medicine. 

The oligarchy was forced by reality to acknowledge that the shots cause cardiac injuries. The data accumulates for autoimmune conditions, menstrual irregularities, miscarriages, cancer, and numerous other ailments – vertigo, tinnitus, hypertension, colitis, Bell’s palsy, full-body rash, Guillain-Barre, and of course the clots and the clots and the clots. Like most Americans, my wife and I have dozens of family and friends with these injuries. Some estimate the country is losing a Vietnam’s worth of men every year since the shots were introduced.¹⁴ Twenty-four percent reported knowing someone killed by the shots.¹⁵ What is the compound interest on this loss rate? I can name eighteen wounded or dead veterans. My battalion’s casualties from two Afghan War deployments were half that.

Few take the shots anymore because they know. Governments and even the media now acknowledge that there are excess deaths. But, unlike the Athenians, the number is not known because the authorities refuse to do the math. The number is visible though. For instance, the Navy cannot man its ships.¹⁶ America already cannot man its fleet. There are other factors that contribute, but every organization is short people and every organization knows it is short people, for everyone in the organizations complains about it. The manpower shortage is not just a recruitment issue. The nation does not know if it is already Athens, and it should.

The physical manpower injury is compounded by moral injury. The healthy veteran gets sudden cancer, is near dead a month later, but miraculously and thankfully survives. He is left in a daze with no cause. The wounded themselves cannot even discuss the possible cause of their injuries less the acolytes of the oligarchy shame them, which perpetuates the moral injury. Another gets clots. Repeatedly now, the same time every year, as if the mRNA made his cells permanently produce spike protein at a consistent rate in a consistent location to eventually mass and annually clot. Naturally, his wife is concerned that one of these years the just-in-time blood thinners will not work and the injury will take him.

They live with moral injury and with no redress. Can he charge his chain of command with murder ahead of his death? Naturally, away from the acolytes, the injured discuss their physical and their moral injuries, usually with the unvaxxed, most of whom were forced out, adding to the manpower shortage. There it is spoken: Their sons will not serve. The manpower loss is compounding and multi-generational.

The magnitude of this loss is great. In itself, it demands resolution. But the situation is actually far worse than the visible injury of our people. The risks and harms from the gene-encoded (mRNA) vaccine technology are direct from either the biotechnology itself or the use of the spike protein as the epitope. More significantly, indirect risks exist as well and at greater scale. Any single-epitope vaccine can cause the body to only generate immunity against that epitope and make a person vulnerable to the illness when the virus adapts that epitope (i.e. Antibody Dependent Enhancement). But the vaccinated also suffer from IgG4 antibody class switching.¹⁷ In this situation, the body adapts to the vaccine by treating the epitope as an allergen. This makes the person even more vulnerable, for the body ignores the virus when infected. That individual now risks becoming even sicker.

Recall that the US funded risky research with intent to gain insight into what the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was doing with coronaviruses.¹⁸ There was a focus on spike proteins for legitimate purposes because work was being done worldwide on enhancing spike proteins to study (“study?”) them, and also because the PRC has published research intent to weaponize coronaviruses because of the spike proteins.¹⁹ It is known amongst investigators that the IC leveraged the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance for Type II Diplomacy access into the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to learn what its scientists were doing with epitopes like spike proteins. There is nothing inherently wrong with this; it is the IC’s job to spy. But the IgG4 matter shows that large numbers of Americans are now indefinitely vulnerable to a spike protein that emerged out of Wuhan. The biodefense oligarchy made the population vulnerable to the very thing the biodefense apparatus was operating in Wuhan to ostensibly protect us from. 

The existence of this vulnerability is now replicated in numerous research studies. The severity in scale and duration of this vulnerability is unknown, but it should be known.

Aside from the strategic failure this matter is, the indirect casualties of a flawed response – specifically, the lack of detailed risk analysis to the individual and to the population of a mass vaccination course of action (with additional risk from the unready mRNA technology and the spike protein epitope) – compound the direct injuries and losses and contribute to the overarching demographic damage suffered from America’s version of the Sicilian Expedition. 

Sicily Redux.

This is the reason the origin of SARS2 must be known. Not for retribution or reconciliation, not to prevent a man-made pandemic from occurring again. These are valid, but are not the reason. It must be known to accurately assess the demographic damage from the response, to know the near and long-term effects, to know the myocardial state of the nation’s fighting-aged men, and to know the cruel annual compound interest in deaths the mRNA decision will bring, to know the citizenry’s vulnerability to the [PRC]²⁰ spike protein, to know the duration of our civilization’s vulnerability. 

To those who argue that it would be too costly for America to acknowledge its role in creating SARS-CoV-2, or that America cannot afford for its enemies to know how bad the vaccine injuries in the military are – arguments I heard repeatedly in these years as a whistleblower – the potential magnitude of the screwup, Sicily Redux, our equivalent to Athens’ loss of 30,000, both the physical and moral injury, far surpasses the financial and reputational costs to admitting the truth. The failures will only exacerbate as the new administration declassifies intelligence, for the cardiac and IgG4 risks of using the spike protein as the mRNA epitope could have been extrapolated from the suppressed Department of Energy assessment had the cover-up not fouled informed risk analysis.²¹

Whether America’s version of the Sicilian Expedition will have the same result as the Athenians’ remains to be seen. The parallels inform how our maritime democracy navigates its way forward. The primary lesson is that which every quality sports team and mature military formation understands: lie to yourself about yourself and you will be weak; know yourself – know your weaknesses – and you will be stronger. Or unperiled in a hundred battles, as a Chinese military philosopher once said. 

This young man asks that a mature republic do the same. Far too many amongst us feel the losses but lie to themselves about their nature. This is yet another moral burden stacked onto the others. The situation is not healthy for the individual, or the nation.

As the burden is felt, so is the newfound energy in the land. The Demos is in rebound. It dismantles illicit oligarchy. It returns accountability and vigor to the state. Let it not be spoiled by discounting the physical loss of an errant expedition. Let it not be further spoiled by ignoring the moral injury accrued from that failure. A great republic learns from the past.

References

1. BAM – Bab el Mandeb Strait. Colloquialism used by Marines and sailors.
2. LSD-51 USS OAK HILL
3. The Oligarchy of 400 took power in 411 BC. It transformed into the “5000” oligarchy shortly afterwards before the Athenian Navy liberated Athens and re-established democracy. https://www.britannica.com/event/Peloponnesian-War
4. Athens replaced the citizen sailors with slaves. Thucydides reports that Greece at large was stunned that Athens endured another decade following the catastrophe.
5. I learned about the fear of Dr. Fauci’s influence in my first month as the 2020-2021 Commandant’s Fellow at DARPA. The power structure and internal biosecurity enterprise battles were also explained to me at this time.
6. David Asher Interview – The Vince Coglianese Show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI43JEUfXOQ
7. DEFUSE project proposal: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal/. For the unaware reader, I uncovered the possible blueprint for SARS-CoV-2, called Project DEFUSE, while a Marine Corps fellow at DARPA in 2021. This is public information reported numerous times and included in books and a movie.
8. Siegel: “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.” Tablet Magazine. March 28, 2023. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/guide-understanding-ho…
9. See George Friedman’s 2020 book The Storm Before the Calm: America’s Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond amongst others.
10. See Michael Lind’s “The New National American Elite” as a reference, also referenced by Siegel in Section XI of his work. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/new-national-american-…
11. The Athenians recorded and historically referred to their oligarchy as the Oligarchy.
12. https://www.axios.com/2024/06/29/biden-debate-replace-advisers. There is another article where a young Harris staffer quips that Biden’s team is an oligarchy.
13. See DRASTIC for the 2018 EcoHealth Alliance Project DEFUSE proposal to DARPA: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21066966-defuse-proposal/. See Alex Washburne for the reverse genetics system hypothesis: https://alexwasburne.substack.com/p/reverse-genetic-systems.
14.  Canary in a COVID World, Canary House Publishing, edited by C. H. Klotz, P. 117-118
15. “‘Died Suddenly’? More Than 1-in-4 Think Someone They Know Died From COVID-19 Vaccines – Demographics”, Rasmussen Reports, poll conducted 28-30 Dec 2022. https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/public_surveys…
16. https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/navy-sailor-shortage-ship-readiness/3625593/; https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106525; https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2024-09-10/navy-gao-fleet-readiness-report-15128703.html; https://news.usni.org/2024/08/22/navy-could-sideline-17-support-ships-due-to-manpower-issues
17. See Quay and Berenson. https://x.com/quay_dr/status/1872681596400394461?mx=2; https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/very-urgent-do-covid-mrna-vaccines; Also https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12979-024-00466-9#Fig2
18. This is known from whistleblower reporting and congressional inquiry. It is also known amongst investigators that Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance performed Type II Diplomacy. There is nothing ostensibly wrong with the IC doing its job to obtain hard-to-get information. It broaches immorality when it contributes to cover-up when lack of oversight leads to a leak and corresponding pandemic.
19. The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons, 2015.
20. Keeping this bracketed in case it turns out the spike protein was designed and/or made in the US and tested in Wuhan.
21. I possess the security clearance to view Covid origins intelligence and analysis.

The entertainment sector has been at the core of the woke movement over the course of the last ten years, integrating Critical Race Theory, feminism, gay and trans propaganda, climate change hysteria, anti-gun rights messaging and pro-socialist rhetoric into their content at breakneck speed.  There has always been progressive politics in movies and TV, but this new social justice takeover was a highly coordinated tidal wave; a Blitzkrieg of hard-left ideology into every possible media space.

One group of consumers noticed the threat very early on – Gamers picked up on the leftist subversion of their hobby almost immediately in 2013.  They would go on to launch “Gamergate” in 2014, a movement to expose the feminist hijacking of games journalism and the hobby at large.  They were punished for their foresight, accused of “misogyny”, “bigotry”, “racism” and even terrorism, but they were correct.  There was indeed a far-left agenda to dominate the gaming world and extort companies into adopting social justice propaganda. 

The plan succeeded spectacularly.  Most corporations eventually folded and instituted DEI programs outright.  Gaming developers were some of the worst perpetrators and their products quickly became replete with woke indoctrination.  The one thing they didn’t count on, though, was a consumer revolt. 

It’s hard to say what they expected; maybe they assumed that once the market was saturated with leftist content the average customer would give up hoping for a normal game with a good story, compelling characters and fun mechanics and simply buy whatever the critics told them to buy.  Instead, gamers stopped buying anything and walked away.

Any product with leftist messaging, race swapping, LGBT characters or situations, etc. is exposed long before the project is released.  The more insidious developers have actually sought to stop people from reporting on the content of these games using intimidation and legal measures, but nothing they do will save them.  These businesses are, rightfully, collapsing.  

More recent casualties include Ubisoft, which reportedly stands on the edge of financial ruin due to multiple woke failures.  Ubisoft is also sitting on perhaps on of the most woke AAA game releases of all time – Assassins Creed: Shadows.  

The group hitched their wagon to an activist historian named Thomas Lockley with a wild tale – The supposedly “true story” of a black slave named Yasuke who traveled on a Portuguese ship to Japan and became a samurai.  Instead of making a game about a Japanese samurai in Japan’s Azuchi-Momoyama period, they instead chose to use Lockley’s research as the basis for their plot.

(Leftists are known to be particularly hostile towards the Japanese because of their highly controlled immigration policies. Featuring a black samurai protagonist is obviously meant as a jab at Japanese culture). 

As it turns out, Lockley’s research is likely exaggerated (or fabricated) and he has been accused by the Japanese government of potential fraud.  Yasuke was never a samurai; he was treated as an oddity by the Japanese emperor who had never seen a black man before.  He became a fixture at the emperor’s court for a short period, but was never given the title of samurai, nor did he have time to learn any of the warrior disciplines that samurai are renowned for.  The man existed, but the idea of him being a samurai is complete fiction.  

Statements made by Ubisoft also seem to indicate that the characters of Assassins Creed will be gay, including Yasuke.  So, a black gay samurai in feudal Japan who is supposed to be an assassin?  Genius.  He wouldn’t stand out at all.

Ubisoft is stuck with this project.  Hundreds of millions of dollars are already invested and they have delayed the release multiple times.  Most gamers are well informed of the fallacies and propaganda in the title and it is expected to bomb hard once it is finally put on the market.  The company is now engaging in mass layoffs across multiple studios, apparently in preparation of the vast sums of money they’re about to lose. 

Another big developer that’s in the midst of an implosion is Bioware, which is now being downsized by Electronic Arts after the embarrassing release of their highly expensive Dragon Age: The Veilguard title.  The company hired gay and trans consultants and developers to inject LGBT propaganda into the fantasy project and the results were hilariously bad, including trans “dragon people” and gay pirates preaching about neo-pronouns.

The layoffs come less than two weeks after Dragon Age game director Corinne Busche announced her own departure from BioWare, and just a week after EA said Veilguard had underperformed sales expectations.  In reality, the game was an unmitigated failure.  EA said Veilguard was “down nearly 50% from the company’s expectations.” 

Gaming developers were some of the first people to join the woke insurrection of American media, so it’s fitting that they are now among the first people to go bankrupt and lose their jobs because of it.  Get Woke, Go Broke.

Hopefully, these collapsing companies will stand as a smoldering reminder that the consumer runs the show, not the creators.  The free market is still a thing, and it decides if a game is going to succeed or crash and burn.  The gaming industry in its hubris has been begging for a slap in the face for years, and now they have it. 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The man who led the U.S. Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section has resigned, according to a new letter.

Corey Amundson, who had been in charge of the section for years before the Trump administration recently reassigned him to work on immigration issues, has stepped down.

“I am honored and blessed to have served our country and this department for the last 23 years,” Amundson wrote in his letter to Acting Attorney General James McHenry.

“I spent my entire professional life committed to the apolitical enforcement of the federal criminal law and to ensuring that those around me understood and embraced that central tenet of our work.”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) did not respond to a request for comment.

Amundson started working for the DOJ out of Louisiana in 2002, according to his LinkedIn profile. He shifted to Washington about 10 years ago.

The profile lists his experience with the DOJ as ending in 2025.

Amundson was tapped in 2019 during Trump’s first term to become chief of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section. That put him in charge of overseeing public corruption and other politically sensitive investigations.

Amundson is one of an estimated 20 career officials inside the DOJ to be reassigned to a new Sanctuary City Working Group inside the associate attorney general’s office.

At least two of those officials, Amundson and George Toscas from the National Security Division, had some involvement in the two criminal investigations against Trump.

Former special counsel Jack Smith said in his final report that his team “consulted regularly” with the Public Integrity Section on topics such as serving subpoenas, bringing election fraud charges, and a U.S. Constitution clause that provides immunity to members of Congress who are furthering legislative acts.

Amundson’s resignation letter did not make reference to his section’s role in the Trump cases.

However, it cited a number of other high-profile cases he helped oversee, including the public corruption cases against Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), former Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), and Fugees hip hop group member Prakazrel Michel.

The DOJ, in addition to the recent reassignments, recently fired a number of officials who worked on Smith’s team.

The reassignments and terminations have drawn scrutiny from Democrats, who expressed concern about the treatment of individuals they said were “excellent career prosecutors.”

The moves contradicted Trump’s “repeated pledges to maintain a merit-based system for government employment,” Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said in a letter to DOJ officials.

“By removing them from their positions in this hasty and unprincipled way, you have very likely violated longstanding federal laws,” they added later.

The DOJ has not responded to an inquiry about the letter.

Jacob Burg and Reuters contributed to this report.

Authored by Zena le Roux via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

We often hear about the brain-gut connection and how the vagus nerve keeps our mood in check. But did you know that this same nerve quietly shapes our metabolism every day?

The vagus nerve acts as a metabolic control center, affecting hunger, fullness levels, weight, and blood sugar. The effect of vagal stimulation on weight loss is an emerging area of interest.

Guiding Metabolism

The vagus nerve helps signal feelings of fullness after eating by communicating signals from the gut to the brain. It regulates hunger hormones (such as leptin), influencing food choices and satiety levels. Stimulating this nerve may, therefore, offer a less invasive alternative to traditional bariatric surgery for weight loss.

“A well-functioning vagus nerve can help regulate appetite and prevent overeating, which is key for maintaining a healthy metabolic state,“ Nasha Winters, a naturopathic doctor and integrative oncology specialist, told The Epoch Times. ”This is the ‘I’ve had enough’ signal, but even goes further to the ‘I am enough’ signal.”

The vagus nerve connects the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) with organs that help regulate the absorption of food and storage of nutrients. It innervates organ systems that contribute to metabolism, ensure energy balance, and prevent fluctuations in body weight.

This nerve is involved in blood glucose regulation by prompting the pancreas to release insulin. It also signals the liver to store and release glucose and triggers the release of bile and digestive enzymes.

Another reason that vagus nerve stimulation may support weight management and metabolic health is its ability to reduce inflammation, a significant driver of metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome refers to conditions—including high blood sugar, high blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol levels, and excess belly fat—that together increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.

Vagus Nerve Therapy for Weight Loss

Device-based vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is often used to improve metabolism. Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) is a great option, Jodi Duval, an Australia-based naturopathic physician and owner of Revital Health, told The Epoch Times. The tVNS method delivers gentle electrical impulses and sends signals through the ear to regulate hunger and digestion.

Other alternative and complementary therapies have also been shown to suppress inflammation and increase vagus nerve activity. These approaches include acupuncture and biofeedback, a method that uses sensors to help you learn to control automatic body functions. Calming the nervous system in this way helps maintain stable blood glucose levels and optimize digestion, both essential for efficient metabolic function. Meditation has also been suggested for the clinical management of metabolic syndrome and obesity.

Another promising type of vagal nerve therapy for weight loss is vagal nerve blocking, often referred to as VBLOC therapy, according to Lena Beal, a registered dietitian nutritionist and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

VBLOC transmits electrical pulses to the vagus nerve at regular intervals, interrupting normal signaling between the brain and the stomach and decreasing hunger and food intake. Because of its pulsed nature, VBLOC does not affect other VNS outcomes, such as reduced inflammation or stabilized blood sugar.

“The higher the electrical current of the stimulator, the greater the weight loss, with some cases leading to significant weight loss,” Beal told The Epoch Times.

The effects of VNS appear to be more noticeable in individuals with a higher body mass index (BMI) or those classified as obese.

Vagus Nerve Therapy Versus Ozempic

Vagus nerve therapy and semaglutide (found in Ozempic and Wegovy), the trending weight-loss drug, tackle weight loss in very different ways, Duval said.

“Ozempic mimics a natural hormone that controls blood sugar and appetite, making it a potent tool for rapid weight loss,“ she said. “However, it is a medication, meaning it can come with side effects and is not normally a long-term solution for everyone.”

Common adverse effects of semaglutide include nausea, diarrhea, constipation, and stomach pain.

Vagus nerve stimulation, in contrast, works more subtly by restoring the body’s natural balance. It may take longer to see results, but it addresses the root causes of metabolic dysfunction, such as stress and inflammation, and comes with added benefits such as improved mood and digestion, Duval said.

“It’s a long-term investment in overall health rather than a quick fix,” she said.

tVNS

• Cost: $1,000 to $2,500 for the device, plus additional fees for sessions or consultations
• Average Weight Loss: 3 percent to 5 percent
• Side Effects: skin irritation, headache, and dizziness

VBLOC

• Cost: between $18,000 and $22,000 per year
• Average Weight Loss: about 8.5 percent
• Side Effects: indigestion, heartburn, abdominal pain

Ozempic and Wegovy

• Approved For: Type 2 diabetes (Ozempic); BMI greater than 30, or BMI greater than 27 with other medical conditions related to obesity (Wegovy)
• Cost: $12,000 to $15,000 per year
• Average Weight Loss: about 12 percent
• Side Effects: gastrointestinal upset (nausea, diarrhea, bloating), retinal damage, and pancreas inflammation
• People often partially regain weight when the medication is discontinued.

“The vagus nerve acts as the body’s communication superhighway, connecting the brain and the gut,” Duval said. “Think of it as your body’s internal coach, softly reminding you when it’s time to rest and digest. Essentially, the vagus nerve is your internal guide, helping keep your metabolism balanced and healthy.”