Authored by Pepe Escobar,

We are the world. We are the people. We are NATO. And we’re comin’ to get ya – wherever you are, whether you want it or not.

Call it the latest pop iteration of the “rules-based international order” – duly christened at NATO’s 75th birthday in D.C.

Well, the Global Majority had already been warned – but brains under techno-feudalism tend to be reduced to mush.

So a gentle reminder is in order. This had already been stated in the first paragraph of the Joint Declaration on EU-NATO Cooperation, issued on January 9, 2023:

“We will further mobilize the combined set of instruments at our disposal, be they political, economic, or military, (italics mine) to pursue our common objectives to the benefit of our one billion citizens.”

Correction: barely one million, part of the 0.1% plutocracy. Certainly not one billion.

Cut to the 2024 NATO Summit Declaration – obviously redacted, with stellar mediocrity, by the Americans, with the other 31 assorted vassal members duly assenting.

So here’s the main 2024 NATO “strategic” trifecta:

1. Extra tens of billions of dollars in “assistance” to the upcoming rump Ukraine; the overwhelming majority of these funds will be slushing around the industrial-military money laundering complex.

2. Forceful imposition of extra military spending on all members.

3. Massive hyping up of the “China threat”.

As for the theme song of the NATO 75 show, there are actually two. Apart from “China Threat” (closing credits), the other one (opening credits) is “Free Ukraine”. The lyrics go something like this: it looks like we are at war against Russia in Ukraine, but don’t be fooled: NATO is not a participant in the war.

Well, they are even setting up a NATO office in Kiev, but that is just to coordinate production for a Netflix war series.

Those malignant authoritarians

The outgoing epileptic slab of Norwegian wood posing as NATO Secretary-General – before the arrival of his Dutch Gouda replacement – put on quite a performance. Highlights include his fierce denunciation of “the growing alliance between Russia and its authoritarian friends in Asia”, as in “authoritarian leaders in Iran, North Korea and China”. These malignant entities “all want NATO to fail”. So there’s much work to do “with our friends in the Indo-Pacific”.

“Indo-Pacific” is a crude “rules-based international order” invention. No one across Asia, anywhere, has ever used it; everyone refers to Asia-Pacific.

The joint declaration directly blames China for fueling Russian “aggression” in Ukraine: Beijing is described as a “decisive enabler” of the Kremlin’s “war effort”. NATO script writers even directly threaten China: China “cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation”.

To counter-act such malignity, NATO will expand its “partnerships” with “Indo-Pacific” states.

Even before the summit declaration, the Global Times was already losing their cool with these inanities: “Under the hype from the U.S. and NATO, it seems that China has become the ‘key’ to the survival of Europe, controlling the fate of the Russia-Ukraine conflict like a ‘decisive power.’”

The tawdry rhetorical fest in D.C. definitely won’t cut it in Beijing: the Hegemon just wants “to reach more deeply into Asia, trying to establish an ‘Asia-Pacific NATO’ to help achieve the U.S.’ ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy.’”

Southeast Asia, via diplomatic channels, essentially agrees: with the exception of bought and paid for misguided Filipinos, no one wants serious turbulence across Asia-Pacific like NATO has unleashed across Europe.

Zhou Bo, senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy and a retired PLA officer, also dismissed the Indo-Pacific shenanigans even before the summit: we had an excellent exchange about it late last year at the Astana Forum in Kazakhstan.

Whatever happens, Exceptionalistan will remain on overdrive. NATO and Japan have agreed to establish a “highly confidential security information” line, around the clock. So count on meek Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to enhance Japan’s “pivotal role” in the building of an Asian NATO.

Everyone with a brain from Urumqi to Bangalore knows that the motto across Asia, for the Exceptionalists, is “Today Ukraine, Tomorrow Taiwan”. The absolute majority of ASEAN, and hopefully India, will not fall for it.

What is clear is that the NATO at 75 circus is absolutely clueless and impervious to what happened at the recent SCO summit in Astana. Especially when it comes to the SCO now positioned as a key node in bringing on a new, Eurasia-wide collective security arrangement.

As for Ukraine, once again Medvedev Unplugged, in inimitable style, delivered the Russian position:

“The Washington Summit Declaration of July 10 mentions ‘the irreversible path of Ukraine’ to NATO. For Russia, 2 possible ways of how this path ends are acceptable: either Ukraine disappears, or NATO does. Still better, both.”

In parallel, China is conducting military exercises in Belarus only a few days after Minsk officially became a SCO member. Translation: forget about NATO “expanding” to Asia when Beijing is already making it clear it is very much present in NATO’s alleged “backyard”.

A declaration of war against Eurasia

Michael Hudson once again has reminded everyone with a brain that the running NATO warmongering show has nothing to do with peaceful internationalism. It’s rather about “a unipolar U.S. military alliance leading toward military aggression and economic sanctions to isolate Russia and China. Or more to the point, to isolate European and other allies from its former trade and investment with Russia and China, making those allies more dependent on the United States.”

The 2024 NATO declaration actually is a renewed declaration of war, hybrid and otherwise, against Eurasia – as well as Afro-Eurasia (yes, there are promises of “partnerships” advancing everywhere from Africa to the Middle East).

The Eurasia integration process is about geoeconomic integration – including, crucially, transportation corridors connecting, among other latitudes, northern Europe with West Asia.

For the Hegemon, this is the ultimate nightmare: Eurasia integration driving Western Europe away from the U.S. and preventing that perennial wet dream, the colonization of Russia.

So only plan A would apply, with absolute ruthlessness: Washington – literally – bombed Russia-Germany integration (Nord Stream 1 and 2, and more) and turned the vassal lands of frightened, discombobulated Europeans into a potentially very dangerous place, right beside a raging Hot War.

So once again, let everyone go back to that first paragraph of the January 2023 EU-NATO joint communiqué. That’s what we’re facing today, reflected on the title of my latest book, Eurasia v. NATOstan: NATO – in theory – fully mobilized, in military, political and economic terms, to fight against any Global Majority forces that may destabilize Imperial Hegemony.

The world’s economic powerhouses, like the U.S. or China, hold the majority of millionaires in absolute terms. But which countries are growing their millionaire populations at the fastest rate?

This chart, via Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins, shows the growth of millionaire populations by country between 2013 and 2023, using data from New World Wealth, as detailed in the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2024.

Specifically, the report tracks high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) who possess liquid investable wealth of $1 million USD or more. The figures are rounded to the nearest hundred and represent residents of each country as of December 2023.

Emerging Markets Like Vietnam Top the Ranking

While the United States remains the leader with over 5.4 million millionaires, emerging economies such as Vietnam, China, and India are seeing the fastest growth rates.

Vietnam’s millionaire population, in particular, has surged by 98% over the last decade, reflecting the country’s rapid economic development. Meanwhile, China and India have created hundreds of thousands of new millionaires, solidifying their positions as major players in the global wealth landscape.

Despite its modest growth rate of 62%, the United States still boasts the largest number of millionaires globally. China is nearing one million millionaires, becoming only the second country to approach this milestone after the United States.

Vietnam’s exceptional 98% growth rate stands out, particularly given its communist governance and initially low base of millionaires. This growth reflects the country’s recent economic success and suggests a continuing upward trend in wealth accumulation.

In contrast, the United Kingdom experienced a slight decline in its millionaire population over the past decade. Factors such as Brexit and other economic uncertainties have contributed to this reduction, highlighting the challenges faced by established economies.

African countries like Nigeria and South Africa have seen their millionaire populations decrease, partly due to emigration and economic instability. Nigeria’s struggle with currency devaluation has further impacted its wealthy class, while South Africa saw a notable 20% decline in its millionaire population.

Authored by James Varney via RealClearInvestigations,

Every day millions of parents put their children under the care of public school teachers, administrators, and support staff. Their trust, however, is frequently broken by predators in authority in what appears to be the largest ongoing sexual abuse scandal in our nation’s history.

Given the roughly 50 million students in U.S. K-12 schools each year, the number of students who have been victims of sexual misconduct by school employees is probably in the millions each decade, according to multiple studies. Such numbers would far exceed the high-profile abuse scandals that rocked the Roman Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America.

For a variety of reasons, ranging from embarrassment to eagerness to avoid liability, elected or appointed officials, along with unions or lobbying groups representing school employees, have fought to keep the truth hidden from the public.

“In any given year they have failed to report thousands of these situations, and instead they’ve papered them over, acted like it’s not an issue,” former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told RealClearInvestigations. Stunned by a 2018 Chicago Tribune investigation that found 523 incident reports of sexual misconduct by employees of the city’s schools during the past decade, DeVos during the Trump administration launched the process of including specific questions about such cases in the Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection, a process it undertakes every two years. Previously, the Office for Civil Rights asked only general questions about sexual misconduct incidents, without a breakdown of alleged perpetrators.

The Biden administration initially sought to remove those questions, saying it wanted to avoid data duplication, but it backtracked after fierce criticism it was doing so as a sop to teachers unions. Consequently, the question will be included on future questionnaires, but, as of today, the Department of Education “has no data,” a spokesperson told RCI. These days, from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, even a cursory review of local news reporting brings disquieting revelations of teachers accused of or arrested for alleged sexual relations with a student. In just the past month:

• In California, multiple students filed a lawsuit against a male music teacher who had taught at three different schools in the San Jose area. The teacher is already serving prison time for previous convictions in sexual misconduct cases with students.
• In New Jersey, a female middle school teacher was arrested for an alleged ongoing sexual relationship with a student.
• In Texas, a male teacher was arrested for allegedly having a sexual affair with a 12-year-old student. 
• In Illinois, a female substitute teacher faces charges of “grooming and predatory criminal sexual assault” for an alleged relationship with a sixth-grader.
• In Washington, the arrest of a male high school teacher on charges of sexual misconduct with a minor represented a repeat nightmare for a school district that previously had a psychologist convicted on the same charges.
• Just last weekend, a 36-year-old New Jersey teacher was arrested on multiple assault charges involving a sexual relationship with a teenage student.

These stories hold a lurid appeal to some. Sensational accounts of seductions of students by teachers, typically by high school female teachers, are tabloid catnip. The topic has provided material for standup comics, Hollywood writers, and pop tunes that didn’t begin or end with Van Halen’s 1984 hit “Hot For Teacher.”

But experts who track the problem don’t take the problem lightly. Pointing to research from Hofstra University that found roughly 1 in 10 students in K-12 schools have suffered “some form of sexual misconduct by an educator,” Terri Miller, head of the advocacy group SESAME (Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation), said the number of victims is staggering.

“The rate of educator sexual misconduct is 10 times higher in one year’s time than in five decades of abuse by clergy,” Miller said, noting that in 2021 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reported it had received nearly 4,300 sexual abuse allegations. “Another striking contrast is we are not mandated to send our children to church; we are mandated to send them to school.” 

The extent of the problem may shock many Americans. The topic has long been shrouded by a curtain held by various actors in the drama: schools reluctant to go public with embarrassing and possibly criminal activity, unions fighting for members’ privacy and sometimes state laws that protect it, and a government reluctant to ask hard questions that would gather reliable data.

But the cases and tactics often used to cover them up have become common enough to earn an ugly nickname: “passing the trash.”

“DOE does not and never has tracked sexual misconduct committed by adults against students,” said Billie-Jo Grant, a professor at California Poly State University who is one of the nation’s top researchers on the topic.

“DOE has never aggressively worked to stop teachers’ unions and administrators from passing the trash,” she told RCI. “DOE does not hold accountable the many enablers who have created a pool of mobile molesters in our schools nationwide. Your questions should include why? Why? Why?”

Grant and Miller attended a Department of Education conference on the topic in D.C. in October 2019, and it was out of that meeting that its Office for Civil Rights decided to ask more specific questions in its Civil Rights Data Collection, according to Miller.

And while the government may be groping toward more clarity, as a DOE official acknowledged having “no data” the Department would make public, he insisted the matter is viewed with concern.

In 2004, then-Hofstra professor Carol Shakeshaft did a report for the DOE that assessed the data available on the topic. From a handful of regional studies and media reports, Shakeshaft’s report found some broad parameters of the problem.

For example, while stories involving female teachers may be more titillating and gain more media attention, about two-thirds of the predators in schools are male. While no region seems to be immune from the problem, about half of the reported incidents occurred in southern states, Shakeshaft’s report found. Most of the victims are female (56%), and the majority of incidents involve high schools (62%).

The problem is not confined to public schools, although the public school student population dwarfs that of private and parochial schools. Incidents of sexual misconduct at tony schools like New York’s Horace Mann, or at St. George’s in Rhode Island are but two of the most publicized examples of the problem.

Protecting kids in school from inappropriate or criminal sexual activity involving employees and students would seem a surefire winner, but instead DeVos and her team found it was a political football. Union contracts and in many cases state law protect the privacy of employees. What that meant, DeVos explained, is that even if credible allegations of sexual misconduct were leveled against an employee, unless authorities were called in or an arrest made the alleged perpetrator was often free to leave one school and work in another. 

The definitions of what constitutes sexual misconduct could be broadly construed, and the proliferation of social media has not only loosened the boundaries of contact between school employees and students, but provided more opportunities for wrongdoers.

Still, for the most severe conduct, the Trump administration finally introduced on the 2020-21 school year questionnaire specific questions regarding “a school staff member and rape or attempted rape.” Answers for the initial year were optional, as is common with new reporting requirements, and the DOE declined to make the results public. But, in any case, those figures would be hopelessly incomplete because of the widespread school closures that were part of the COVID response. 

Even with the new questions, Miller wondered how clear the picture provided might be, because for now OCR is asking only about incidents that occurred on school grounds.

“That means incidents that happen in a car, or an apartment, or anywhere off-campus, won’t be included, and that’s where the majority of these attacks happen,” she said.

The same problem had confronted one of DeVos’ top lieutenants, Kimberly Richey, when she served as chief counsel to the school system in Oklahoma. Even in a deeply conservative state, Richey found few supporters when, surprised by how many complaints were reaching her desk, she approached lawmakers in Norman about changes.

“I met with resistance from the very beginning,” she said. “And I had complaints, 95 percent of the time coming from parents, about a school or a teacher, and when I contacted them the teacher would immediately resign, travel five miles to the next district and start working there.”

Several people who spoke with RCI said teachers unions’ contracts were a major obstacle to both moving forward with credible allegations of sexual misconduct and blocking future school employment for alleged perpetrators. Neither the American Federation of Teachers nor the National Education Association responded to questions from RCI about this topic.

Teachers aren’t the only obstacles to reform. While Superintendent of Public Education in Oklahoma from 2011-2015, Janet Barresi said, state groups lobbying on behalf of school administrators and board members were much more vociferous opponents than teachers unions of laws that would force schools to disclose information about prior allegations and cases involving school employees.

“If the system would be more open and honest about all this, then parents would feel more relieved and it would get rid of a great deal of rumor and conjecture,” Barresi said.

It is those employee protections that produce the pattern known as “passing the trash,” several experts told RCI. This is particularly relevant in cases where state or local law enforcement agencies are never notified of allegations. A school may launch an investigation after a parent or student files a complaint, but that investigation would cease when the employee resigned, and then state law or bargaining agreements often prohibit officials administrators from relaying such information to any new school where the alleged perpetrator applied or began working.

Miller said SESAME has model legislation states could pass to confront the problem, but thus far the group has found limited success. 

The Enough Abuse Campaign, which did not respond to RCI’s questions, notes that age-of-consent laws and the definitions of what constitutes sexual misconduct have created a complicated legal and regulatory map. Still, the campaign seems more optimistic about legislative progress than SESAME, declaring that “over 75 percent of states have now passed legislation specifically outlawing educator sexual misconduct,” in recognition of the power imbalance that exists in a teacher/student relationship.

And there are some signs lawmakers are grasping the enormity of the issue.

On July 1, an Oklahoma law went into effect mandating any verbal or social media contact between school employees and students be done on platforms the school controls, which state Rep. Sherrie Conley called a “long overdue” regulation.

Similarly, in Michigan, state Rep. Brad Paquette, himself a teacher, has proposed legislation appointing a state ombudsman to deal with sexual misconduct complaints.

“It’s just a beginning but we have to start somewhere,” Paquette told RCI. “I first heard back in 2012 or 2013, when I started teaching, that I had to join the union because I might have an accusation filed against me. But I thought, ‘No, I should be fired if I did something wrong.’”

“I think we need to be engaged aggressively to root out the problem,” he said. “There’s no good reason for us to take a lax approach. You see these headlines all over the place and it’s unacceptable. People need to start asking questions.”

While Richey said she did not recall any credible allegations crossing her desk during a brief stint as an attorney with Virginia schools, Paquette’s “everywhere” assessment seems on the mark.

In Texas, for example, the online site Texas Scorecard started looking at the issue in 2022 after administrators in Prosper, a swanky Dallas suburb, attempted to cover up alleged repeated sexual offenses by a school bus driver. Since then, Texas Scorecard has kept an unofficial tally of such incidents, and the Lone Star State has had more than 100 cases every year since.

The Prosper superintendent is currently under investigation by Texas agencies, in part for the 2022 coverup, as Texas law requires officials to report any credible allegations of child abuse within 48 hours. In May, two Prosper high school coaches were arrested for allegedly covering up another sexual assault that involved students.

Separating student-on-student sexual misconduct is key to understanding how deep the problem may run with school employees, according to Grant and other experts. For example, in the more general questions DOE’s OCR would ask regarding improper incidents that fall under Title IX, troubling trends emerged. For 2015-2016, there were 9,649 incidents of sexual violence, and of that figure 394 cases were categorized as rape or attempted rape. In 2017-2018, those numbers skyrocketed, with overall incidents rising by 43% to 13,799 and the most serious category 74% to 685.

As alarming as that trend may be, there is no way of knowing how many of those cases involved school employees, and Richey suspects that, given how the questionnaire was traditionally perceived, the majority of them are student-on-student.

Nevertheless, Grant pointed to multiple studies that came to similar conclusions to that reached in the 2004 Hofstra report. That study found that 9.6% of the U.S. student body fall victim to educator sexual misconduct.

Looking at California data from 2010-2021, Grant of Cal-Poly found 2,497 “school employees disciplined, reprimanded or arrested for sexually abusing K-12 students.” Between 2012 and 2018, the DOE received 280 complaints of adult-on-student sexual harassment in Chicago Public Schools. A Texas study from 2008 to 2016 found 1,415 Lone Star State educators “sanctioned for sexual misconduct.”

These academic papers and sometimes salacious news accounts of teacher/student relationships do send up flares from time to time. In 2007, the Associated Press declared that “sexual misconduct plagues U.S. schools,” after its investigation “found more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic.” In December 2023, Business Insider looked at the issue and concluded “shoddy investigations, quiet resignations, and a culture of secrecy have protected predators, not students.” 

Last year, the Defense of Freedom Institute released a report titled “catching the trash” that concluded sexual misconduct by school employees has raged in the school system for decades. 

“Various actors – school and district personnel, teacher unions, and the federal department charged with enforcing laws against sexual assault in public schools – bear responsibility for a systemic failure in preventing, and responding to, sexual assaults in public schools,” the report said.

Pointing to the Biden administration’s attempt to remove specific questions about the issue from the OCR questionnaire, report author Paul Zimmerman told RCI the public should not expect much daylight on the topic in the near future.

“The Biden administration has gone dark on this, they’re not interested in pressing this issue as evidenced by trying to discontinue the efforts made on this front by the previous administration,” he said.

These political bumps, and the wreckage the COVID shutdowns unleashed on education in America, means there is no way of tackling the problem’s dimensions, let alone the problem itself. “It takes so long to get these numbers that in the end they’re not that helpful,” he said.

The best way to block the passage of trash is through the SESAME Act, which DOE has cited as “model legislation” for states. To date, only a handful of states have passed the act, most recently Illinois in 2023. It requires the prohibition of non-disclosure agreements in personal or collectively bargained contracts, as well as deep background checks on all applicants.

Only such thorough steps will break what Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah who has worked with Miller and SESAME, calls “the complicity of silence.” While the parameters of the problem may be hard to find, Guiora said he was stunned when he recently published what he acknowledged is a niche book on a West Virginia teacher exposed years late as a pedophile murderer. The limited book sold out on Amazon and his podcast has now topped 1 million views.

“That tells you that what’s happening is something that is touching a chord,” he said. “It is so goddamn egregious what they have done to protect people who do this. Lawmakers will have to break the institutional complicity that surrounds this or they’ll just be protecting the perpetrators.”

Authored by Michael Tracey,

“Dangerous, diabolical, and dastardly” is how Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic Leader, just described the so-called “Project 2025” planning document that all liberals have now been commanded to light their hair on fire about and run around in circles screeching how it portends some imminent apocalyptic MAGA takeover.

First off, it’s the least surprising thing in the world that the preeminent DC think tank of the “Conservative Movement” would merge itself to the maximum extent possible with the branding and sensibility of Donald Trump, the current undisputed ruler of the “Conservative Movement,” such as it exists. What would be far more surprising is if the Heritage Foundation, which drafted the document now being wailed about by every Democratic pundit, had not maximally ingratiated itself with Trump — in fact, the Trump Administration’s embrace of the Heritage Foundation was already well underway during his first term. But now liberals, desperate for a campaign pivot amidst Joe Biden’s cognitive implosion, are using their usual overwrought melodrama to hype “Project 2025” as slam-dunk proof that Trump obviously represents an Existential Threat To American Democracy™ or whatever. What they curiously fail to mention is that the document is robustly aligned with many of the liberals’ most sacrosanct priorities.

Amusingly, Trump has been busy lately ‘disavowing’ Project 2025, but that’s neither here nor there.

What percentage of despondent Dems who have this crippling fear of Project 2025 have actually read the document? I’m not going to claim to have read all 920 pages, but I did read the sections on the Department of Defense, State Department, and “Intelligence Community.” I would love to ask MSNBC anchors if they read these portions, because if they did, they should be celebrating the glorious reaffirmation of “bipartisan consensus” contained therein, rather than fulminating about some despotic nightmare.

Christopher C. Miller, who briefly served as Trump’s “acting” Secretary of Defense, writes in his Project 2025 contribution that the next Conservative Administration must “prevent Beijing’s hegemony over Asia,” including by “modernizing and expanding the US nuclear arsenal.” Because we all know that what the “Deep State” fears most is pouring untold billions into nuclear weapons boondoggles that will keep themselves and their corporate partners gainfully employed in perpetuity. Miller solemnly declares that in addition to China, “the United States and its allies also face real threats from Russia, as evidenced by Vladimir Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine, as well as from Iran, North Korea, and transnational terrorism.”

Countering these alleged threats, he concludes, “will require more spending on defense, both by the United States and by its allies.” Thus the fearsome Project 2025 envisions a future in which the march of US and “allied” militarization continues apace, just like it has during the Biden Administration. Someone’s going to have to explain how massively increasing expenditures on what is sometimes derisively referred to as the “military-industrial complex” represents any sort of severe blow to the “Deep State,” as the trembling libs claim to fear, and as “anti-establishment” right-wingers claim to yearn for.

Miller says US conventional force planning must be structured in such a manner as to “defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan,” so if what you deplore in this document is that bipartisan planning for war with China could accelerate under a second Trump Administration, that may be legitimate — but that does not seem to be what the liberals are whining about.

The chilling cover page of the Think Tank document

Because the Biden Administration is currently doing the same thing!

Miller amusingly calls for the “acquisition community,” also known as arms manufacturers, to be granted greater flexibility in securing multi-year procurement contracts to spur the “innovation” required for the Defense Industrial Sector to adequately confront all the scary Emerging Threats around the world. Liberals in a state of terror can take solace that this multi-year procurement reform has already been well underway during the Biden Administration, largely to provide armaments for Ukraine (and Taiwan), and these legislative adjustments have been enacted with thoroughly bipartisan support, as usual.

“Replenish and maintain US stockpiles of ammunition and other equipment that have been depleted as a result of US support to Ukraine,” the document advises. Good news: that, again, is already happening, with new artillery factories popping up everywhere from Arkansas to Texas.

Miller’s DOD section additionally declares that the US “must regain its role” as the “Arsenal of Democracy” by further ramping up foreign arms sales, which he says have fallen to unacceptable lows under the Biden Administration — despite Biden and Democrats similarly trumpeting the “Arsenal of Democracy” concept as it relates to Ukraine and other conflicts in which “Democracy is on the Line,” just like WWII. (Yawn.) Apparently there is firm agreement on this messianic imperative amongst the “Project 2025” crowd. The US has firmly retained its distinction as the world’s number one global arms exporter all throughout the Biden Administration, but this clearly isn’t enough for Project 2025. Weirdly, the MSNBC liberals don’t seem to be particularly troubled by that policy prescription.

Among the “byzantine bureaucracy” that Project 2025 wants to cut is those bureaucratic impediments which prevent the US from exporting arms across the world at an acceptably rapid pace. The Heritage Foundation pinheads also want to eliminate the practice by which the State Department notifies Congress about such arms sales, decrying this already-meager oversight opportunity as a terrible “hinderance” (sp).

As far as the DOD’s “intelligence” assets, Miller advises that they more fulsomely “align collection and analysis with vital national interests (countering China and Russia).” Can someone explain what Democrats find so “existentially” horrifying about this? They support the same exact thing, and in fact often argue that Trump is insufficiently committed to countering Our Big Bad Enemies. If there’s an “existential threat” contained anywhere in this document, it’s the same one that Democrats are currently promoting at full-blast: a lurch into a hotter-than-Cold War with China and Russia. (Which was just bolstered once again at the Washington NATO Summit this week, having produced an official Declaration that came closer than ever before in designating China an official enemy, by accusing it of providing “material support” to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.)

Miller wants to “increase the Army budget”; for the Navy, he wants to “build a fleet of more than 355 ships” as well as “produce key munitions at the maximum rate with significant capacity,” because the Navy must be urgently “prepared to expend large quantities of air-launched and sea-launched stealthy, precision, cruise missiles.” If any of this sincerely troubles hysterical Democrats, they would’ve been troubled by the budget-busting Defense expenditures that Biden has ushered in, building on the similarly budget-busting expenditures ushered in by the “dangerous” Trump. But of course they’re not troubled by any of this stuff.

As far as the Ukraine war, the author of the State Department portion of the tome, Kiron Skinner, a former Director of Policy Planning in Trump’s State Department, attempts to distill what she concludes to be the consensus “conservative viewpoint” with respect to Ukraine: “Continued US involvement must be fully paid for; limited to military aid (while European allies address Ukraine’s economic needs); and have a clearly defined national security strategy that does not risk American lives.”

This nicely mirrors what has indeed been the Congressional Republican consensus with respect to Ukraine policy under Biden, including among many self-proclaimed “MAGA” Republicans; it also tracks with the garbled and obfuscatory policy stance that’s been intermittently articulated by Trump.

Trump and the mainline GOP seldom ever object to the principle of funding and supplying the Ukrainian war effort. (After all, Trump is the one who started sending Ukraine lethal weaponry in the first place.) They simply call for that funding to be streamlined with a greater emphasis on core military expenditures, rather than the “economic aid” that Democrats are generally more keen to tack on. This was the essence of a House GOP policy brief that “MAGA Mike Johnson” (to use Trump’s preferred nickname for the Speaker) personally hand-delivered to the White House in late 2023, while the mammoth National Security Supplemental bill was being preliminarily negotiated — and which Trump himself eventually orchestrated the passage of. Another key prescription in that policy brief was that the US should “descope” its involvement in Ukraine to only that which is necessary for “enabling the killing of Russians on the front lines. That means providing the necessary weapon systems and tactics to win — not to tie.”

If you notice, this proclamation amounts to House Republicans (the group most acutely responsive to Trump’s political influence and dictates) arguing that the Biden Administration has been insufficiently aggressive in supplying Ukraine with weapons. The final War Funding Bill that Trump backed in April thus included a requirement for the Biden Administration to send Ukraine longer-range missile systems, which was then followed by Biden’s authorization for Ukraine to strike territorial Russia with US-provided materiel.

Project 2025 states that “European allies” must take center stage in “addressing Ukraine’s economic needs,” which is also already well underway, with the EU approving 50 billion euro in “economic” assistance several months ago. Hence, even the marginal, insignificant critiques of Ukraine policy in this document could become mostly irrelevant by the time Trump theoretically takes office.

So what exactly are Democrats and liberals blabbering about when they screech that Project 2025 is an “existential threat”? Insofar as it relates to the Ukrainian war effort, which they also fanatically support, the document merely reinforces and solidifies the pro-war bipartisan consensus. (As usual.) They should therefore be cheering the document, rather than screaming like banshees about it, but of course a rational policy analysis is not what Dems are aiming for with their present bluster. They just want a scary-sounding applause line for revving up anti-Trump voters by making them think Trump is getting ready to barrel into office with some crazed tyrannical plan, while omitting any mention that the “plan” is fully consistent with the foreign policy prescriptions they fervently support.

When it comes to what’s commonly referred to as the “Deep State” in MAGA parlance — aka, the “Intelligence Community” — Project 2025 contains virtually the opposite as what’s being suggested by hysterical libs. (Go figure). Fundamentally, the guidance calls for marginally re-organizing the Intelligence Services so as to empower them.

Trump loves to grouse that elements of the National Security State were irrationally against him in 2016-2018, and that’s true as far as it goes, with the Russiagate/Mueller fiasco being proof of these tawdry machinations. So it would make sense that Trump and the people in his orbit would want to impose various safeguards to prevent any future sabotage against Trump. But the idea that this means Trump would radically overhaul the “Intelligence Community” and put it in service of Putin and Kim Jong Un, or whatever other nonsense, is just entirely wrong. Simply read the text!

The whole point of these fearsome reforms with respect to the “Intelligence Community” is to enable “an incoming conservative President” to use all the “intelligence authorities” at his disposal to more “aggressively anticipate and thwart our adversaries, including Russia, Iran, North Korea, and especially China.” Is this what Democrats have in mind when they hyperventilate about Project 2025? Of course not, because the Biden Administration is doing essentially the same exact thing. As usual, however, recognizing the fundamental cross-party continuity in US foreign policy and “national security” serves no one’s short-term partisan interests, so they have to deceive the public about it for votes.

The document merely recommends mild bureaucratic reorganization, some of which it says has already been implemented by the Biden Administration — at the urging of the outgoing Trump Administration! 

To help further the legislative intent behind IRTPA, DNI Ratcliffe advised during the transition of incoming Biden DNI Avril Haines that the DNI should be the only Cabinet-level intelligence official. While his recommendation was adopted and has corrected the previously allowed imbalance by making the DNI the only Cabinet official and head of the IC at the table, the ODNI’s effectiveness and direction leave much to be desired.

With regard to the CIA, Project 2025 decries the tendency of “risk aversion or political bureaucracy to delay execution of the President’s foreign policy goals.” It thus recommends the diminution of bureaucracy and placement of individuals in the agency who will more effectively harness the power of clandestine operations to fortify and expand American hegemony. Another huge shocker!

The “intelligence” section of the document further advises the renewal of FISA warrantless surveillance, declaring that “Section 702 should be understood as an essential tool in the fight against terrorism, malicious cyber actors, and Chinese espionage.” Which again nicely aligns with Trump’s position, so far as it can be ascertained, seeing as he backed MAGA Mike Johnson’s successful effort to renew FISA in April, on the understanding that they both wanted Trump to be the one wielding that power when it next comes up for reauthorization in two years.

It would also be fascinating to hear exactly what Biden boosters find so objectionable about the document’s exhortation for the next Administration to double down on “ensuring Israel has both the military means and the political support and flexibility to take what it deems to be appropriate measures to defend itself against the Iranian regime and its regional proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.” Yeah, nothing like that going on at the moment.

So when the MSNBC crowd shrieks that Project 2025 is the terrifying roadmap for the next Trump Administration, they perhaps have it half right. There’s every reason to think the plan does in fact broadly represent DC conservative priorities for the next administration. But what the shriekers fail to convey is that this comfortably aligns with vaunted bipartisan consensus on critical issues. Many sections could easily have been pilfered from a Democratic think tank.

The 1981 version of the fearsome Think Tank manifesto

Yes, there’s a bunch more domestic policy stuff in Project 2025 that I haven’t focused on here. (I’ve only even highlighted a small percentage of the “national security” stuff.) But for the record, Ronald Reagan also ran on abolishing the Department of Education in 1980, back when he was also outsourcing his personnel and policy plans to the reviled Heritage Foundation. The abolition never happened. Whatever your views on this desirability of maintaining the existence of the Department of Education, the fact remains that this has been a bog-standard “Conservative Movement” aspiration for ages. So you might as well call the plan Project 1981 rather than Project 2025. To portray it as some sort of apocalyptic fascism unique to Trump is just totally ridiculous.

The 1981 version was compiled in 1979, similar to the advance compilation of the “2025” document, which was published in 2023. (The Reagan-era document is about equally as long and comprehensive, clocking in at at least 1077 pages, while the Trump-era document fizzles out at a paltry 920 pages). Comparable plans had also been drafted in the late 1990s in anticipation of the Conservative Movement returning to power after eight years of the Clinton Administration:

On August 20, 1999, the well-known American conservative think tanks, Heritage Foundation and The Project for a New American Century, together launched a policy statement calling for an end to the US’s “strategic ambiguity” policy on Taiwan, openly calling on the US government to “clearly announce that in case of an attack or blockade of Taiwan, the United States will go to defend Taiwan, including Kinmen and Matsu islands along the coast.” This statement has 23 people’s signatures, including Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby (later served as Chief of Staff to the Vice President), Richard Perle (later was appointed as Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, Rumsfeld’s main assistant), Richard Armitage (later served as Deputy Secretary of State).

“Project for a New American Century” might ring a bell as the classically “neoconservative” think tank that in 1998 wrote an infamous letter to Bill Clinton demanding regime change in Iraq. The letter was signed by a bevy of luminaries who’d later serve in the George W. Bush Administration, like Elliott Abrams and John Bolton, who also went on to serve in the… Trump Administration.

So yes, there’s plenty to be “alarmed” by in “Project 2025,” but none of it is particularly unique to Trump. Instead, it’s part and parcel of longstanding DC Conservatism, sometimes known as Con Inc., which will inevitably shape the personnel and policy framework of a forthcoming Trump Administration — just like it did with the previous Trump Administration. But of course that’s not the fear being stoked by anguished Dems, who are desperate to inspire the 10 millionth Mega Trump Panic in hopes of salvaging their current electoral prospects.

The Heritage Foundation used to love to tout that “the foundation had a great hour when Ronald Reagan was elected president and found waiting for him three volumes of Heritage material designed to help him chart the nation’s course in the right direction.” Undoubtedly future homages will be made to the amazing greatness of their influence under Trump, while befuddled Democrats wonder how “democracy” managed to remain in tact.

Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times,

New research indicates that U.S. public school spending has doubled since 2003, outpacing the rate of inflation and showing no clear correlation between more dollars per pupil and higher eighth-grade math and fourth-grade reading scores.

The Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University released its latest findings last month. The report, titled “Will Academic Recovery Stall When the Federal Relief Funds Dry Up?”  also draws attention to the fiscal cliff many districts face in the year ahead as they weigh expenditures against desired achievement.

School districts are required to earmark whatever is left of their post-COVID American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds by Sept. 30. The liquidation deadline is Dec. 31. ESSER, established in 2021, allocated $122 billion over three phases to help schools with learning recovery efforts.

Most of the ESSER money was spent on labor—more teachers, classroom aids, counselors, reading coaches, tutors, subject area specialists, and administrators, but it was not applied to raise pay rates for existing teachers, Edunomics Lab Director Marguerite Roza told The Epoch Times on July 10.

While one device (laptop or tablet) per child became an industry standard largely funded by federal money, equipment purchases did not make up a significant portion of expenditures, Ms. Roza said. She and her team of researchers interviewed school administrators and analyzed data at the federal and state levels dating back 20 years, including information from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which runs The Nation’s Report Card website. Many comparisons cited involved shorter time frames, and the findings were largely focused on the pandemic era.

“The priorities and the value these investments brought varied by state,” Ms. Roza told The Epoch Times on July 10.

“Some states were able to eke out more value.”

At the national level, math scores declined sharply between 2013 and 2022, with 30 states reporting that students were more than half of a grade level behind before scores began rising slightly between 2022 and 2023, according to the report.

For reading, the negative trend line began in 2017, with the average score in 30 states dropping below grade level in 2020 and continuing downward until last year, the report noted.

Meanwhile, the national average per-pupil spending rate increased by 100 percent between 2003 and 2023 to $16,100 ($1,350 of the 2023 amount came from federal relief funds).

Total inflation for the two decades was 67 percent, according to the report.

The report also notes that U.S. schools now have more instructional staff than ever before, with that number increasing from 3,465,906 in 2005 to 3,842,000 this past academic year ending in the spring of 2024. By contrast, the number of K-12 public school students during the same period increased slightly, from 48,150,528 to 49,033,092.

Ms. Roza stressed that results were varied at the state level. Mississippi, Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky reported reading/English Language Arts assessment scores averaging above grade levels during the 2022-2023 academic year, while average scores in California, Oregon, Washington State, Virginia, and South Dakota were below grade level.

Mississippi’s overall per-pupil spending rate has been much lower than that of the schools it outperformed, but its ESSER aid per student, at about $1,600 compared to California’s estimated $1,300, is higher. The report also noted that the Golden State disproportionately spent more money on social-emotional learning, tutoring, and summer programs.

“But,” Ms. Roza said, “within the states, some individual districts saw some real growth, and some saw lackluster growth. Compton (California) saw quite impressive scores.”

For math assessments, all states surveyed reported average scores around or above grade level in the 2022-2023 school year, with Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi showing the most progress, with average scores approaching or exceeding half of the next grade level, according to the report.

In the absenteeism measurements section, the report shows that attendance improved in most states between 2022 and 2023, highlighted by Hawaii and Michigan’s 7 percent increases. South Carolina reported a 5 percent decrease, and Louisiana reported a 4 percent decrease.

“Is it possible to get improved outcomes without sizable funding increases? Yes. There are policy strategies that wouldn’t require new funds,” Ms. Roza said. “What really matters is implementation.”

She said this research is a work in progress. The 2024 national and state reading and math assessment scores should be available by October, and final ESSER expenditure figures by school district and state should be available next month.

The U.S. Department of Education notes that while learning recovery in the wake of the pandemic is the highest priority of ESSER, the program also aims to rebuild the educator workforce and help schools operate safely. With the ESSER program ending, many school districts must find other ways to cover those added labor costs, either by increasing the tax levy, making cuts in different areas of the budget, or obtaining more state aid.

In the Guymon Public School District in the Oklahoma panhandle, about $7 million in ESSER funds were applied to replace the high school’s heating, cooling, ventilation, and air conditioning system, which was considered a facility safety issue. Superintendent Dixie Purdy said the district did not come to rely on aid for other programs and is financially sound heading into future school years.

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

The tremendous suffering that we are seeing all over the world right now is only just the beginning.  As I have documented repeatedly, we are in the midst of the worst global food crisis in modern history, and we haven’t seen this many countries engaged in military conflict since World War II.  In other words, this is a time of famine, and it is a time of war.  This represents a major problem for those that believe that humans are intrinsically good and that humanity is moving into a new golden era of peace and prosperity.  If humans are intrinsically good, why is there so much evil all around us?  Of course the truth is that the evil that we see all around is the product of the evil in human hearts.  Humanity is the reason why there is so much war, so much famine, so much greed, so much corruption, and so much suffering.

While billionaires in the western world live the high life, vast hordes of people on the other side of the planet are literally starving to death.

In Sudan, right now more than 25 million people “are facing high levels of acute food insecurity”…

In addition to the threat of violence, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification reported that 25.6 million people in Sudan are facing high levels of acute food insecurity, and 8.5 million people are facing emergency food shortages. The IPC also warned about the risk of famine across 14 areas, impacting residents and refugees in areas like Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan.

There have been some nightmarish famines in Sudan before, but this is the worst.

The CEO of World Vision, Edgar Sandoval, says that people in Sudan are literally fighting over anthills because it is the only source of food available in some cases…

Sandoval also met another mother and her son, who weighed only 26 pounds. He said his heart broke as the mother wept, telling Sandoval that people in her community are fighting each other over anthills because they’re so hungry. She said they’ll eat the millets stored there by the ants.

“And they’re fighting for that as the only source of food,” Sandoval said. “I think that speaks to the level of desperation that the Sudanese people are facing. It’s the situation that children and moms in particular are facing.”

Can you imagine what it would be like to be that hungry?

And can you imagine what it would be like to watch your own children beg for food?

It is being reported that 730,000 children in Sudan are at “imminent risk of dying”…

In June, the United Nations Children’s Fund announced that nearly 9 million children in Sudan face acute food insecurity and access to safe drinking water. More than 3,800 children have been killed since the fighting escalated in April 2023, and almost 4 million children under the age of 5 are suffering from acute malnutrition, with 730,000 projected to be at an “imminent risk of dying.”

When I try to explain what is happening in Sudan to clueless people here in the western world, they look at me like I am from outer space.

Many of them have never heard about the hordes of people starving on the other side of the planet because the mainstream media is absolutely obsessed with talking about Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

But this is really happening.

As I discussed in a previous article, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is warning that over 2.5 million people could starve to death in Darfur and Kordofan alone by the end of September…

The Ethiopian famine killed a million people between 1983 and 1985, according to UN estimates. Thomas-Greenfield said that in a worst-case scenario, a famine in Sudan could become even more lethal.

“We’ve seen mortality projections estimating that in excess of 2.5 million people, about 15% of the population in Darfur and Kordofan – the hardest hit regions – could die by the end of September,” the ambassador said.

“This is the largest humanitarian crisis on the face of the planet. And yet, somehow, it threatens to get worse,” she added.

Meanwhile, military conflicts all over the world just continue to intensify.

The Russians continue to gain ground in several areas of eastern Ukraine, and this is making a number of Ukraine’s neighbors very nervous.

In fact, the head of the Polish military just stated that his forces need to prepare for “full-scale conflict”…

Poland needs to prepare its soldiers for all-out conflict, its armed forces chief of staff said on Wednesday, as the country boosts the number of troops on its border with Russia and Belarus.

Poland’s relations with Russia and its ally Belarus have deteriorated sharply since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, starting a war that is still being fought.

“Today, we need to prepare our forces for full-scale conflict, not an asymmetric-type conflict,” army chief of staff General Wieslaw Kukula told a press conference.

Of course Poland is a member of NATO, and so if Poland ends up fighting Russia we will be fighting Russia too.

This week, Chinese forces are engaged in very alarming military exercises that are taking place just miles from the Polish border…

Belarus and China kicked off 11-day joint military training exercises Monday, Belarus’ defense ministry said – with activities taking place just miles from the border of Poland, a NATO and European Union member.

The joint anti-terrorist training “Attacking Falcon” exercises in Belarus would see military personnel from both countries “act together” as one unit in certain stages, Maj. Gen. Vadim Denisenko of the Belarusian military said in a Telegram post.

I think that Chinese forces are there to ward off a potential invasion of Belarus.

Ukraine has been building up large numbers of troops and vast quantities of equipment near the border with Belarus for quite some time, and there had been fears that Ukraine may try to do something really stupid.  In fact, officials in Belarus were so concerned that they were publicly warning that they would use tactical nuclear weapons if they were invaded.

Meanwhile, NATO has started delivering F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine…

NATO allies on Wednesday announced they had started transferring F-16 jets to Ukraine and stepped up promises to Kyiv on eventual membership in the alliance at a 75th anniversary summit clouded by political uncertainties in the United States.

In response, Russia has been bombing the daylights out of the airfields where those F-16 fighter jets were supposed to be based.

I really wish that leaders on both sides would sit down and try to find a peaceful way out of this mess.

But that isn’t going to happen.

In the Middle East, western powers are desperately trying to avert a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah…

Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group have been exchanging near-daily fire along the Israel-Lebanon border since Oct. 8. The US and France are attempting to broker a diplomatic solution that would end the fighting. Should those negotiations fail, Israeli officials anticipate a full-blown war with the Iran-backed militia.

Sadly, I am entirely convinced that such a full-blown war could be just months away.

This war in the Middle East is still only in the early stages, and the utter carnage that we will eventually witness will shock the entire world.

We really are living in a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and famines will intensify as global conflict spreads.

So no, a new golden era of peace and prosperity is not on the way.

Instead, our future will be filled with war, famine and a tremendous amount of pain.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

China unveiled Friday that it has been conducting major joint naval drills with Russia along its southern coast, during the same week that NATO leaders met in Washington D.C.

The drills have apparently already been underway for a while, since “early July” – according to a Chinese military statement, and have been dubbed Joint Sea-2024. They are slated to continue for several more days into mid-July.

The defense ministry identified that the drills, which include an aerial component, are centered near the southern city of Zhanjiang, and aim “to demonstrate the resolve and capabilities of the two sides in jointly addressing maritime security threats and preserving global and regional peace and stability.”

The exercises “will further deepen China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for the new era,” the ministry continued.

China and Russia are without doubt signaling the West that their relations and cooperation on the levels of defense, industry, and technology will remain ironclad. 

Leaders of NATO this week issued a communique which among other things declared that Beijing “cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history” without facing repercussions.

China has remained officially neutral on Ukraine, but has still faced US sanctions for supplying Russia with industrial parts and goods which are vital to Russia’s defense manufacturing sector.

One analyst was cited in The New York Times as pointing out that the NATO statement was especially strong and full-throated: 

“It’s a very rare move for NATO to openly accuse China, saying Beijing is massively supporting Russia’s defense industrial base,” said Liou Shiau-shyang, an expert on China and Russia at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a government-funded research group in Taiwan. “Clearly, the United States has won over some skeptics who did not see China as a key player in the Russia-Ukraine war.”

Meanwhile China has responded in part through a series of English language op-eds in state-run Global Times, with themes of NATO constantly “hyping” the China threat.

For example, one Tuesday article in the publication charged that Washington is using NATO to expand its hegemony into southeast Asia:

NATO, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary but should have been ditched into the trash bin of history long ago, is now weak internally and facing numerous challenges. The uncertainty concerning the French parliamentary elections, the US upcoming presidential elections, and the increase in European defense spending have raised concerns. NATO is no longer a united organization on many issues. This already loose alliance, under the leadership of the US, is now hoping to build unity by spreading the rumor that “China is threatening regional security.” 

In fact, the US is not only aiming to contain China through NATO, but to control the entire Asia-Pacific region. In order to achieve this goal, NATO is trying to woo regional countries in many ways, constantly creating and exaggerating security crisis in the Asia-Pacific. 

The fact has remained that the more that Moscow and Beijing find themselves in US crosshairs and under Western pressure, the closer they become, despite having been historic rivals throughout much of the prior hundred years. Biden did not have an answer to this when asked Thursday about this policy backfiring on this front.

On this foreign policy master point: One reporter basically said to Biden, look, two years ago, we asked if your sanctions policy was merely going to bring Russia and China much closer together rather than accomplish its goals. You assured us it wouldn’t. You were totally wrong.… https://t.co/gYIaE0vkKN

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) July 12, 2024

It was only in early 2022, very soon before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that Presidents Xi and Putin declared their countries’ partnership to have “no limits”.