Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday announced a new national office that will assist states in implementing “red flag” laws – which allow for a judge like this…

…to approve the temporary removal of firearms from a person believed to be a danger to themselves or others, by a prosecutor like this:

Harris announced the new office, the federal Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center (Erpo), at a Saturday visit to Parkland, Florida, where she toured the site of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting that killed 17.

“The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school occurred after there were clear warning signs, but there were no tools to remove the shooter’s firearm,” the White House said in a statement announcing the resource office.

The office is being funded by a Justice Department grant, and will be operated through the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. It will help state and local governments, as well as law enforcement and others (including behavioral health and social service providers), to “optimize” the use of red flag laws, and will provide training and technical assistance “for a wide variety of stakeholders.”

Red flag laws have already been implemented in 21 states, of which the White House said that just six had taken advantage of $750 million in funding made available by the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act enacted by the Biden administration.

Meanwhile, the father of a victim of the Parkland shooting, Ryan Petty, slammed Harris in an interview on Fox News, telling the outlet “The vice president and the White House’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention made it very clear to families early on that nothing short of new gun control was going to satisfy them in protecting our nation’s schools. And that is just a slap in the face to those of us that have worked for six years now to try to protect our nation’s schools.”

“There are so many ways that we can protect our kids and our teachers at school that don’t require the infringement on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners around the country,” Petty added. “But the vice president and the Office of Gun Violence Prevention don’t want to hear any of those solutions. What they want to do is create an opportunity for the vice president to spout gun control talking points at a site that, quite frankly, is hallowed ground at this point.

“What’s frustrating to me is that this building should have been demolished years ago, and it’s now being used as a photo op for politicians that want to push an agenda,” he continued.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

We trust what we own / control, and the difference between elites and commoners is the elites own / control the wealth and power that dominate our daily lives.

It sounds too obvious to be profound: we trust what we own / control. Of course we do. But it becomes profoundly consequential when we add the shadow half of the statement: we don’t trust what we don’t own / control without constant feedback providing verifiable evidence that it is worthy of our trust.

Absent this positive verifiable (i.e. factual evidence based on both data and personal-anecdotal experience) feedback, we have good reason to assume whatever we don’t own / control is primarily serving the interests of those who do own / control it. And since this means the product/service’s trustworthiness is suspect despite claims that it serves our interests, we must seek a steady flow of feedback substantiating that the product/service is still providing the value the owners / managers are claiming, either explicitly or implicitly.

In other words, hands-on knowledge about the inner workings of the product/service generates trust. Absent this experiential knowledge, we’re flying blind as to the true value of the product/service. If the actual value is less than the owners / managers claim, both the owners / managers and the product/service they’re providing are unworthy of our trust.

Consider a simple example: the food we put in our mouths to sustain ourselves.

When I collect fruits and vegetables I’ve grown here in our yard, I have direct knowledge of what went into the care and nurturing of the plants/trees/soil, so I know that there are no pesticides or herbicides and there are an abundance of micronutrients in our food due to the careful management of compost and fertilizers.

The food we eat from our homestead is therefore trustworthy.

We get lettuce and beets from a longtime family friend who has been farming for decades. He takes great pride in his produce and works extremely hard to raise te highest quality produce. Though I don’t have direct knowledge of his day-to-day practices, I know and trust him and I can see the vibrancy of his produce and taste its quality.

These are the people in our trusted personal network.

You see the gradient of trust: first level is first-hand experience/knowledge, second level is trusted personal network.

Compare this to produce labeled “organic” in a supermarket. We are making a great many assumptions about the produce this label is attached to. We assume the agency monitoring the actual farm practices is thorough and accurate, but this is quite stretch in the real world. Are inspectors onsite every day? What exactly do they test? Where are the results posted?

Produce, organic or not, is a commodity, and nobody is testing the nutritive content of the produce. Maybe one field hasn’t been depleted of micronutrients, while the rest have been over-farmed and depleted of the micronutrients we need to be healthy.

Since all produce is a commodity in global markets, they’re all interchangeable: one kilo of organic tomatoes or wheat is interchangeable with any other kilo of organic tomatoes or wheat, so there’s no way to tell if the “organic” produce or meat has high or low nutritive value. All that’s being claimed is that no pesticides or herbicides were applied and whatever compost and fertilizer were applied were organic. That’s entirely different than claiming the produce/meat is high in nutritive value.

Plants have immune systems, too, and a healthy plant provided with sufficient nutrients and water will resist insect infestations, fungi, bacteria, etc. far better than plants raised in depleted soils. Anyone with experience in actually growing fruits and vegetables is keenly alive to signs of nutrient deficiency or infestation.

The point is “organic” doesn’t mean the produce or meat is packed with nutrients. It just means the minimal guidelines qualifying the product as organic (or “bio”) were met. Those guidelines don’t guarantee a product packed with micronutrients. That takes extra care and tracking that isn’t done in a commoditized economy.

Consider efficacy claims and side-effect labeling on pharmaceuticals. If you actually study the Phase III trial data (I have), you find that the medications were not actually tested in conjunction with other commonly consumed medications. The potential interactions are completely unknown. You also discover the statistical legerdemain that goes into claiming efficacy that may be just barely above random results.

Since we have very little knowledge or control of all the medications deemed “safe” by untrustworthy agencies, all these medications are intrinsically untrustworthy until proven otherwise by multiple independent sources over a decade.

How Two Pharmacists Figured Out That Decongestants Don’t Work: A loophole in FDA processes means older drugs such as those in oral decongestants weren’t properly tested. Here’s how we learned the most popular one doesn’t work.

Now consider social media sites such as Facebook or X/Twitter. You may have noticed that what appears in your feed/scroll changes. These changes are not within our control or transparent; we presume the algos are being tweaked to maximize the income being generated by our content and our attention.

When Big Tech notifies you that your content “violated our community standards,” the violation is not specified, and if you ask, you won’t get a reply or explanation. We have no idea who is seeing what we post, or what’s being done with our attention-data. We have no knowledge or control of these algos and processes, and so they are intrinsically untrustworthy.

If we examine all the agencies, institutions, monopolies and cartels that control the vast majority of our lives, we find that we have near-zero knowledge or control of any of their inputs, processes or outputs, and so all of these agencies, institutions, monopolies and cartels are intrinsically untrustworthy until they consistently prove themselves trustworthy in some verifiable fashion.

Few of these agencies, institutions, monopolies and cartels provide this feedback.

Consider the labels on processed foods for humans. Anyone caring for animals knows the labeling on food for animals is far stricter and more detailed than food for humans, for a good reason: those profiting from selling processed “food” to humans might have a harder time selling their low-quality products if we knew more about the low quality ingredients, high sugar and salt content, etc.

This is why commoners have lost trust in the nation’s agencies, institutions, monopolies and cartels, while the top 1% elites that own and control these entities still trust them: they trust them because they serve their interests.

The commoners intuitively sense these entities do not serve their interests, they only claim to do so to maximize profits / “shareholder value” or to divert attention from the poor quality service/products. We know the claims being made are false because we experience the absence of transparency and accountability first-hand, and the abysmally low quality of the products and services first-hand.

The only viable solution is to own/control as much as you can, and nurture our own trusted personal networks. The only way to escape being stripmined and shorn by the entities owned and controlled by the top 1% elites is to abandon those agencies, institutions, monopolies and cartels as much as possible. That is the essence of what I call self-reliance.

We are blind to the decay of the hierarchy of trust because we’ve been trained to trust sprawling, unaccountable agencies and corporations without actually having any evidence that they are trustworthy.

At the top is owning / controlling the products/services ourselves. We trust our produce because we grew it. We trust our home repair because we did the work. Very few of us own or control anything other than our house or financial abstractions controlled by others.

The second level is personal trusted networks. Very few of us have personal trusted networks that provide the essentials of life. Virtually everything essential to modern life is commoditized and globalized; it comes from far away and we know nothing about its origin, quality or value.

The third level is local enterprises and agencies that are local enough to generate feedback we can access simply by listening to our neighbors and peers. On a very practical level, most communities once had local dairies and bakeries and broader networks of local businesses that provided services that are no longer available: shoe repair, etc.

The fourth and lowest level is commoditized feedback from a variety of sources that can be compared for completeness and accuracy, feedback that enables us to assess the relative trustworthiness of commoditized products and services sold by private monopolies and cartels theoretically monitored by unaccountable sprawling state agencies.

Our essential public services are also provided by other unaccountable sprawling state agencies that can fail in every way but are not influenced by their failure because we have no alternative to the DMV, tax office, etc.

These public-private monopolies and cartels provide very little feedback, and what little is available is itself suspect due to self-interest.

We control and own so little of what we need to live and what impacts our lives, and very few of these essentials are produced locally. We receive very little if any trustworthy feedback about the mega-entities (universities, hospital chains, Big Ag, Big Pharma, government agencies, Big Tech, Big Finance, Big Retail, etc.) that dominate our economy and our lives or the quality / value of the products and services they provide.

Professional elites still trust these mega-entities because they serve the interests of the elites who own / control them. The commoners no longer trust these entities because there is no reason or evidence to generate trust while there is a wealth of evidence supporting distrust.

We trust what we own / control, and the difference between elites and commoners is the elites own / control the wealth and power that dominate our daily lives.

As I noted in A Low-Trust Society Is an Impoverished Society, our only positive option is to regain as much ownership and control of our lives as we can manage, and nurture trusted personal networks and local enterprises and organizations. As I put it a few years ago: Tune in (to self-reliance), drop out (of hyper-consumerism and debt-serfdom) and turn on (to relocalizing capital and agency).

*  *  *

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Overnight, Ukraine’s capital of Kiev as well as Lviv in the West came under a “massive” Russian aerial attack, Ukraine officials said, describing that in total 29 cruise missiles and 28 drones were launched. 

Ukraine’s military said it was able to intercept 18 of the missiles and 25 drones, but significantly one of the Russian cruise missiles reportedly breached Polish airspace while en route, causing Warsaw to demand answers.

Poland scrambled NATO F-16 jets in response to the breach which it said occurred at about 4:40am near the village of Oserdów on the Polish-Ukraine border. 

“The object flew into Polish [air]space near the village of Oserdow (Lublin Voivodeship) and spent 39 seconds in it,” Operational Command said. “It was observed by military radar systems throughout its flight.” Over half a minute is a significant about of time for a cruise missile to spend over Poland.

Poland’s Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz told reporters in a briefing, “As last night’s rocket attack on Ukraine was one of the most intense since the beginning of the Russian aggression, all the strategic procedures were launched on time and the object was monitored until it left the Polish air space,” he said.

The incident occurred as other Russian missiles were raining down around the city of Lviv in western Ukraine, and the missile entered up to about one or two kilometers into Poland, Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

The defense ministry in follow-up stated, “Above all, we call on the Russian Federation to stop the terrorist air attacks on the inhabitants and territory of Ukraine, end the war, and address the country’s internal problems.”

Since the war began there’s been a few similar incidents of an errant missile entering Poland. In one of the most notable, which occurred in November 2022, it was later determined that a stray Ukrainian anti-air missile hit a Polish border village, tragically killing two people.

The Zelensky government has meanwhile continued to desperately appeal for more anti-air defense systems and missiles from the West. 

In this latest overnight missile and drone raid, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko announced early Sunday that there are “explosions in the capital” while urging to populace, “do not leave shelters” – given that “air defense is not working.”

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

• At the COP28 climate summit at the end of last year, the United States and 21 other countries pledged to triple nuclear energy capacities by 2050.

• Most Western governments – with the notable exception of Germany – are now betting on nuclear power to help them with the carbon emission targets.

• The West has seen in recent years several cautionary tales of huge delays and cost overruns in looking to boost nuclear capacity.

Western nations may be getting ahead of themselves in their ambition to swiftly roll out new nuclear power capacity in the current push to reduce dependence on Russian uranium and meet net-zero targets with more nuclear-generated electricity.   

At the COP28 climate summit at the end of last year, the United States and 21 other countries pledged to triple nuclear energy capacities by 2050, saying that incorporating more nuclear power in their energy mix is critical for achieving their net zero goals in the coming decades.   

The United States, alongside Britain, France, Canada, Sweden, South Korea, Ghana, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), among others, signed the declaration at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

“The Declaration recognizes the key role of nuclear energy in achieving global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and keeping the 1.5-degree Celsius goal within reach,” the U.S. Department of State said.

John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, says there are “trillions of dollars” available that could be used for investment in nuclear energy.

“We are not making the argument to anybody that this is absolutely going to be the sweeping alternative to every other energy source — no, that’s not what brings us here. But you can’t get to net-zero 2050 without some nuclear power,” he told reporters at the time.

“Too Optimistic”

Most Western governments – with the notable exception of Germany – are now betting on nuclear power to help them with the carbon emission targets.

But many may have become too optimistic they would see a fast rollout of nuclear reactors and capacities in an industry notoriously known for years of delays and huge cost overruns.  

“Clients, governments and ourselves as the industry players . . . we all become too optimistic,” Ian Edwards, chief executive of Canada’s engineering giant AtkinsRéalis, told the Financial Times.

“We have this optimism bias towards being able to deliver faster.”Related: Big Oil Grows Bolder in Transition Pushback

The stakeholders need to plan better and get the execution phase done right, according to the executive of the company, which manufactures the CANDU reactor, the only nuclear reactor that doesn’t need enriched uranium.

The CANDU technology stands for Canada deuterium uranium because it uses deuterium oxide, or heavy water, as a moderator and coolant and uses natural – not enriched – uranium as a fuel.

The West has seen in recent years several cautionary tales of huge delays and cost overruns in looking to boost nuclear capacity. Two of the glaring examples are the UK’s Hinkley Point C project by French energy giant EDF and the Vogtle nuclear power plant in the U.S. state of Georgia.

Early this year, EDF pushed back – again – the probable operational start at Hinkley Point C to 2029-2031, depending on various scenarios, compared to the original intention to have the first unit at the plan running in 2025. The costs have gone through the roof – to an estimated $43.5 billion (£34 billion), from $23 billion (£18 billion) budgeted initially.

In Georgia, a new reactor at the Vogtle nuclear power plant began commercial operation last summer in what was the first new nuclear reactor to start up in the United States since 2016. Construction at the two new reactor sites at Vogtle began in 2009. Originally expected to cost $14 billion and begin commercial operation in 2016 (Vogtle 3) and 2017 (Vogtle 4), the project ran into significant construction delays and cost overruns. The total cost of the project is now estimated at more than $30 billion.  

New Technology Promises Revival of Nuclear Power

AtkinsRéalis, whose natural-uranium reactor design differentiates it from the competition, has a sales pitch advantage because of the Russian dominance in enriched uranium supply, Edwards told FT.

But he warned that demand for AtkinsRéalis’s technology is likely to exceed the company’s capacity to meet it.

Last year, AtkinsRéalis’s revenues from its nuclear division rose by 16.5% compared to 2022, thanks to higher sales volumes from Europe, Asia, and the United States.

Despite the West’s attempts to reduce its reliance on Russian uranium, the EU doubled its imports of Russian nuclear fuel last year, mostly due to former Soviet bloc countries such as the Czech Republic and Slovakia importing Russian fuel for their Soviet-era nuclear plants, NGO Bellona said in an analysis last week, citing data from Eurostat and the UN’s international trade service Comtrade.

The United States is doubling down on its own supply of nuclear fuel and technology, including innovative reactor designs.

Soaring uranium prices and a supply squeeze on the global uranium market have prompted U.S. uranium producers to revive abandoned mines that haven’t been operational in more than a decade.

Early this year, Uranium Energy Corp said it would restart uranium production at its fully permitted site in Wyoming as the resurgence in nuclear power has led to a new bull market in uranium.

“Uranium market fundamentals are the best the industry has witnessed,” Uranium Energy president and CEO Amir Adnani said in January.

The U.S. is also backing advanced nuclear technology and small-scale reactors, hyped to be the future of nuclear energy.

This week, TerraPower, a company working on small-scale nuclear reactor development backed by Bill Gates, said it would begin construction on its next-generation nuclear reactor in the United States as soon as June.

TerraPower has been developing the Natrium technology for advanced reactors, which features a sodium-cooled fast reactor with a molten salt-based energy storage system. The Natrium demonstration plant will be built near a retiring coal facility in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

There’s a whole lot of former Star Wars fans out there today, and we say “former” because once George Lucas made the fatal (but lucrative for him) decision to sell the franchise to Disney the beloved brand was doomed to lose a majority of its existing audience.  To date, Disney has burned every ounce of fan capital it once had and each successive Star Wars movie and series has performed worse than the last in terms of box office and viewership.  And, it was all done in the name of going woke.

Disney as a company has become the mascot for “Get Woke, Go Broke” with an extensive list of theatrical and streaming service failures the past few years, and they continue to refuse to learn from their mistakes.  The bottom line?  Legacy companies like Disney are willing to destroy their own market share in the pursuit of political propaganda; they’ll keep on pontificating about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion until they are bankrupt.  

Their upcoming Star Wars streaming format release called ‘The Acolyte’ is expected by many to become the worst woke/feminist disaster in the company’s history handling the franchise.  And, it might not be a coincidence that their latest DEI endeavor will be directed by a former assistant to Harvey Weinstein, the very man that the “Me Too” movement was created to admonish.

How aware was Leslie Headland of the casting-couch activities of her boss when she was his assistant?  It’s hard to say.  However, Hollywood has determined that her status as a lesbian and queer activist negates any connections she might have had to that ugly association. 

Interviews with Headland suggest she will be bringing all her activism and politics to the latest Disney Star Wars installment along with a predictable interest in making the classic archetypal tale about good and evil “morally ambiguous.”  As she notes in the Hollywood Reporter:

“People who are good guys can be bad guys, and people who are bad guys can be good guys. There’s a lot of moral ambiguity, which is why Jodie’s [Turner-Smith] line in the trailer is so important: “This isn’t about good or bad; this is about power and who is allowed to use it.” And I believe, of course, that the Jedi are a benevolent, well-intentioned institution, but they are an institution and they have amassed all the power…”

As with all woke activism, good and evil are considered relative social constructs that don’t really exist, and Headland wants to bring that philosophy to Star Wars.  In other words, the Sith might do things that are considered evil, but did you ever ask yourself how they feel about it?  What if they have an emotional justification for their actions? 

Any normal person would say “Who cares?”  But writers and directors with narcissistic tendencies don’t understand the world of heroism or moral principle.  They are also incapable of writing from another person’s perspective and are only capable of injecting their own views into everything they touch.  Moral ambiguity is a completely counterintuitive interpretation to the symbolism of Star Wars, as well as contrary to what the vast majority of audiences connect with.

The entertainment media is also buzzing with excitement over the amount of LGBT representation in The Acolyte, with a number of gay and trans actors and crew members involved.  Not to mention, the show trailer is noticeably devoid of white male characters; par for the course in today’s far-left content.  Kathleen Kennedy’s mantra of “the force is female” is heavily present here.  

As usual, the show is being sold on the basis of its diversity rather than the merit of its storytelling, with cast and crew asserting that Star Wars is finally “safe for black nerds” and other minorities because now they can see themselves represented on screen.  Of course, if you can’t relate to a well written story unless the characters share your skin color or ethnic background, then there’s probably something very wrong with you.  

The production is tied directly to Disney’s ‘The High Republic’ book series, which is widely regarded as an epic marketing blunder and dismal seller.  The books showcase an array of leftist ideological concepts that immediately turned off readers, and fans have long suspected that Disney’s agenda was to eventually replace all Star Wars lore with High Republic wokism.  Added to the terrible base material is Headland’s own fan fiction, which she admits she wrote when she was younger and is at least partially ingrained into the show. 

At this time, The Acolyte trailer has received 366,000 dislikes on YouTube, compared to 160,000 likes and Disney executives are allegedly scrambling to produce positive PR.  Disney denies that their DEI based content has anything to do with the growing public skepticism for the show.  In what has become an endlessly repeating cycle, Hollywood produces woke bomb after woke bomb, refuses to admit that wokeness is the problem, the movies or series are quickly forgotten and then they start all over again.   

Authored by Susan Harris via The Epoch Times,

It’s been hard to watch the effects of forced diversity, multiculturalism, and mass immigration on the tiny island of Great Britain—the most densely populated nation in Europe. At least in America we still have so much land area that most people are not yet feeling the effects of large-scale population displacement stemming from all forms of immigration.

In the UK, however, every day feels like an episode of “Survivor” as people who are being crammed in like sardines are increasingly made to fear that they’ll be voted off the island.

Recently, protests surrounding the Israel–Hamas war have exposed the fragility of a British culture—and nation—on the verge of capsizing from the weight of immigration and cultural divides.

Well-known British YouTuber Paul Joseph Watson has been covering events there, addressing the British prime minister’s remarks that his country is descending into “mob rule” and that the situation is urgent. The prime minister was referring to pro-Palestinian protesters currently flooding the streets of Britain.

Mr. Watson shared a genius chart from a user on social media platform X supposedly detailing the rise of mob rule in London. The user commented, “HOW DID WE GET HERE? After importing millions of people from countries with a culture of mob rule into London, mob rule has taken over London. Experts are crunching the numbers to figure out if systematically undermining basic law and order could have affected basic law and order.”

Meanwhile, Pro-Palestinian protesters across Britain vowed more marches, ostensibly to protest Israeli attacks in Gaza.

Mr. Watson has also been covering reactions to another member of parliament recently claiming there were “no-go zones” in Birmingham. To support the existence of “no-go zones,” Mr. Watson cited the Birmingham Mail newspaper, which reported that “due to soaring crime being committed by ‘urban youths,’ parts of the city center are no-go zones and the areas immediately surrounding Birmingham are no-go areas for the same reason,” according to Mr. Watson.

All of this comes after a huge blow-up about a comment made by a Conservative member of parliament on conservative-leaning GB News. Lee Anderson told the news outlet (where he also hosts his own show) that “I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of [Mayor of London Sadiq] Khan and they’ve got control of London. … He’s actually given our capital city away to his mates.”

Mayor Khan then responded with three strikes against Mr. Anderson, saying his remarks were “Islamophobic, anti-Muslim and racist” and poured “fuel on the fire of anti-Muslim hatred.”

It was all downhill from there. Mr. Anderson was suspended from the Conservative Party after refusing to apologize and later defected to the Reform UK party.

After that, a GB News guest said Mayor Khan was “not British. He doesn’t support Britain.” Which led to calls for GB News to be investigated by Ofcom, Britain’s communications regulator, similar to our FCC. And it won’t be the first time; Ofcom seems to be targeting GB News for investigations quite a lot lately.

Another British YouTuber who’s been weighing in on the ongoing cancel culture wars in her country is Katie Hopkins. In a video titled, “How cancel culture (evisceration) REALLY works,” Ms. Hopkins outlines what she believes is “currently being done to GB News by those that want to see it done away with.” She also claims that “Ofcom is the weapon wielded in a war of attrition against GB News.”

And she should know.

The controversial celebrity, journalist, and comedian has done her share of shocking the public and angering many over these last many years, but she’s also become quite the conservative hero. She’s been re-tweeted by President Donald Trump multiple times, banned from Twitter, reinstated on Twitter (now X), and thrown out of Australia for mocking quarantine lockdowns. She’s called Islam the “single biggest threat” to Europe and was named as a target in a planned terror attack by ISIS supporters. Most recently, she’s done a hilarious must-see YouTube short dedicated to all the people who “pushed the jab.” It currently has over 1 million views.

In 2020, Ms. Hopkins told conservative host Candace Owens that her situation in Britain was so much more than the cancel culture that was overtaking America. She explained that in the UK it had become “acceptable” to think that a targeted physical attack against her would be “welcomed and applauded.”

She continued to explain to Ms. Owens that she lost her jobs, her home (which she said had to be sold due to litigation), and even experienced having her children reported to social services with the intent to have them taken away. She concluded by saying that, in the UK, “[T]he darkness is that when they come, it’s not something flippant that is cancel culture, it is taking you to the point where I truly believe they will only stop when they find that you will swing from a tree.” Her fundamental commitment, she added, was to not allow that to happen.

In the few short years since that interview, America has seen cancel culture morph from online censorship to real-life consequences: We’ve watched helplessly as former President Trump has been indicted in four separate prosecutions, 91 criminal counts, and threatened with financial ruin. We’ve seen the entire MAGA movement labeled “as something representing domestic, violent extremism” by our own government. And being banned on Twitter was nothing compared to the ongoing persecution of Jan. 6 rally attendees.

Keep an eye on the United Kingdom. Not unlike the dark days of World War II, that tiny island country may once again be the canary in the coal mine for predicting the survival of Western civilization.

*  *  *

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

Almost half of the world’s approximately 7,000 signed and spoken languages are currently endangered.

Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti introduces this graphic, from Stephen Jones, CEO of Derivation.co, examines the current global landscape of languages that could become extinct.

Almost 90 million Speak Languages at Risk of Extinction

An extinct language is one that no longer has any first-language or second-language speakers.

In modern times, languages have usually become extinct due to cultural assimilation, leading to language shift, and the gradual abandonment of a native language in favor of a foreign language, primarily those of European countries.

For instance, numerous Native American languages were supplanted by English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, or Dutch due to European colonization of the Americas.

Currently, out of the world’s 7,168 living languages, 3,078 (43%) are classified as Endangered. Over 88 million people speak languages at risk of extinction.

Additionally, 100 of them face the genuine threat of extinction within a few decades if no action is taken.

While every language matters to the individuals speaking, writing, and signing them across the planet, 80% of endangered languages (2,484) exist within just 25 countries.

Of those, the top four countries alone – Indonesia (425), Papua New Guinea (312), Australia (190), and the U.S. (180) – account for well over a thousand endangered languages.

Just as during the colonization period, the majority of endangered languages are spoken in Indigenous communities, putting their inherent culture and knowledge at risk of loss.

Languages, however, can be revitalized.

Over the last 50 years, for example, government support to teach native languages in schools has helped increase the number of speakers of the Māori language in New Zealand, and Hawaiian in the American state.

Advancements in AI are also providing tools to preserve languages.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Some Western banks are lobbying against an EU plan to use profits made by Russian central bank funds that are frozen in Europe to arm Ukraine, Reuters reported.

The European Commission has proposed sending up to 3 billion euros to Ukraine per year using the revenue. About 90% would go to a fund called the “European Peace Facility” that can be used to buy weapons for Ukraine, and the remaining funds would go to the EU’s central budget for other types of aid.

Russia has slammed the plan and has vowed to respond. “This is outright banditry and theft. These actions are a gross and unprecedented violation of basic international norms. We said that we would respond, and so we shall,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

Sources told Reuters that banks fear they could be held liable by Russia in the future for being involved in the transaction. The report said once sanctions on Russia are eased or lifted, they could face decades of legal action.

The banks also worry the move would erode trust in the Western banking system. One source said it would set a bad precedent and that stealing the funds would amount to the “weaponization of foreign-held reserves and assets.”

Another banking industry source was cited as follows:

A second person said their bank was seeking legal advice on indemnities it could demand to participate in the EU’s plan.

“If these proposals move forward, the whole legal architecture would need to change,” said Paul Feldberg, partner and head of Brown Rudnick’s White Collar Defense, Investigations & Compliance practice in London.

Another sources said: “There isn’t an immediately obvious way for banks to insulate themselves comprehensively from future challenges and clawback actions.”

The US is looking to take an even more extreme measure by giving all of the Russian funds to Ukraine, not just the profit and interest. Last month, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen came out strongly in favor of the idea. “It is necessary and urgent for our coalition to find a way to unlock the value of these immobilized assets to support Ukraine’s continued resistance and long-term reconstruction,” Yellen said.

Legislation to give the Russian money to Ukraine has been introduced in Congress and has received bipartisan support, but the bills have yet to be voted on. About $67 billion in Russian central bank funds are held in the US, while over $200 billion is held in Europe.

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The grind of heavy machinery breaks the silence of the Darién jungle, where the Pan American Highway ends at Yaviza in Panama.

Construction workers have cleared towering trees to make way for a steel and concrete bridge mighty enough to withstand flooding from the Chucunaque River.

An onsite worker for the construction company Cusa told The Epoch Times the construction project will cut 4 miles into the Darién jungle at a cost of $42 million and includes a second bridge crossing the Tuira River.

That would leave some 55 miles to finish the Pan American Highway, also known as Highway 1, through the mountainous rainforest to connect it to Turbo, Colombia.

If it’s ever completed, the Pan American Highway will stretch about 18,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina, opening up a land corridor the length of the Americas.

It has gone unfinished for decades due to American and Panamanian concerns over the environment, crime, and disease—and more recently mass migration. The dangerous, rugged terrain acts as a natural barrier to travel from South to Central America.

The bridge and road expansion will end near the town of Bocas de Cupe, in the Darién Gap. However, bridging the rivers has been considered one of the major obstacles blocking completion of the highway.

The new project has worried some who fear completing the road into the Darién Gap will be a win for China and a loss for America.

Michael Yon, a former war correspondent, has been covering mass migration through Panama for several years and has used social media to bring attention to the bridge’s construction and its implications.

China would benefit through an alternate trade route around the Panama Canal, which is essential to global trade. But for the United States, it could open the floodgates to migrants from South America, he told the Epoch Times.

Meanwhile, U.S. leaders have grown increasingly wary of the military implications tied to Chinese infrastructure projects being built in America’s backyard as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), particularly around the Panama Canal.

In 2018, Panama signed on to China’s ambitious BRI project, dubbed a modern Silk Road, after publicly recognizing Taiwan as part of China, much to the surprise and concern of the United States.

The CCP aims to utilize the BRI “to amass power and influence at the expense of the world’s democracies,” U.S. Southern Command Commander Army Gen. Laura Richardson warned in March.

She and other commanders in recent years have been sounding the alarm about China’s incursion into the Western Hemisphere.

China “seeks to supplant the United States as the world’s leading economic and military power,” Gen. Richardson noted in a written statement to the House Armed Services Committee.

Closing the Gap

Last year alone, a record 500,000 migrants traveled through the Darién Gap on their way to the U.S. southern border, documents show.

Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, believes China’s economic development in the region threatens America’s influence and security.

“If China displaces the U.S. in the Western hemisphere as the dominant economic power, then we lose our leverage,” Mr. Howell, formerly an attorney with the Department of Homeland Security, told The Epoch Times.

China is encircling the United States with infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean, Mr. Howell said.

“It’s like a boa constrictor that’s tightening and tightening around the United States,” he said.

In the 2019 book, “China’s Belt and Road and Panama: A Strategic and Prospective Scenario between the Americas and China,” author Eddie Tapiero touts the rise of China’s BRI in utopian terms.

Mr. Tapiero, a Panamanian professor and international economist who wrote his book after a BRI meeting in China, called the initiative a catalyst for “global public good,” envisioning a world where “borders no longer exist, nor do countries.”

The book includes a BRI scenario with a map titled “Globalized Belt and Road,” showing Panama and its canal connected to Colombia by rail through the Darién Gap.

On the Colombian side of the Darién Gap, Chinese companies are working to build highways and ports.

Roadwork near the Pan American Highway in Turbo is part of the “Autopistas al Mar 2” highway project.

The project will connect Colombia’s second-largest city of Medellín to ports in Urabá, including Turbo, where the Pan American Highway ends.

China’s state-owned China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), along with four local companies won the 2015 bid to build the Autopistas al Mar 2, according to the nonprofit Colombia Reports website.

The project was delayed until late 2019, when the Chinese-led consortium obtained the necessary loans from the China Development Bank.

Mr. Tapiero sees Panama, bookended by Colombia and Costa Rica, as a central hub in Latin America for the BRI. He suggests the United States could “reduce geopolitical uncertainty” if it, too, joins the BRI.

His globalized BRI map also showed rail routes slicing through the United States, to significant markets on America’s east and west coasts.

Infrastructure “connectivity” through air, land, and sea is a central theme of the book, which is playing out in Panama.

The bridges into the Darién are part of a contract for the rehabilitation, improvement, and maintenance of the East Pan-American Highway.

It was awarded to Intervial Chile, S.A. under a public-private partnership with the government of Panama, according to government documents.

The investment for the project stands at more than $262 million as part of Panama’s Performance Standards Maintenance Program, which aims to promote agricultural, commercial, and tourist development.

Funding for the project is through the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a part of World Bank Group. China has ties with both banking establishments. In 2009, China pledged $1.5 billion to IFC to boost global trade and more recently has intensified collaboration with IFC on climate friendly bonds.

Global Choke Points

A highway through the Darién Gap stands to diminish the importance of the Panama Canal, which the United States still protects under a neutrality treaty.

The canal was returned to Panama in 1999 under a treaty brokered in the 1970s with President Jimmy Carter.

The Darién Gap by land is similar to the Panama Canal by sea as a choke point, which holds military and economic value.

China’s attempt to minimize or control the canal’s strategic importance to the United States could be significant should a conflict break out over Taiwan in terms of China’s ability to shut down sea lanes, said Andrés Martínez-Fernández, the Heritage Foundation’s senior policy analyst for Latin America.

“That’s a very concerning issue in particular,” he told The Epoch Times.

Mr. Martinez-Fernandez noted that Chinese companies have been busy building infrastructure on either end of the U.S.–built Panama Canal.

The canal has become a point of tension between China and the United States, which has retained the right to enforce operational neutrality on the Panama Canal.

The Panama Canal Authority controls the administration and maintenance of the waterway’s resources and security, independent of the Panamanian government.

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Slowly, but steadily, Philadelphia’s drug-ridden Kensington section is all but shutting down. The area, best known for its zombie-like appearance, is now forcing 24 hour businesses like gas stations and convenience stores to shut down between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Because what better way to address the drug problem than to shut down law-abiding businesses in the area? Once again, government is thinking ‘outside the box’ with your tax dollars. 

The proposal was put forward by Councilmember Quetcy Lozada of the 7th District, representing Kensington, during a Council Stated Meeting on Thursday and is aimed at curbing crime, mitigating litter issues, and moderating nocturnal activities in the community.

Approximately 90 businesses will be affected, a new report from NBC Philadelphia said. Establishments holding a liquor license within the specified zone will be exempt from these new rules, allowed to keep their operations open until 2 a.m., which is the current law for bars and restaurants with liquor licenses. 

The bill was conceived in February and was developed with feedback from local residents, businesses, and non-profit organizations, driven by concerns related to the opioid crisis, as noted by city representatives.

The proposed regulations are set to affect the vicinity enclosed by East Lehigh Avenue, Kensington Avenue, D Street, E Tioga Street, and Frankford Avenue, encompassing businesses along the blocks bordering this area.

Kensington-based nonprofit IMPACT Services Roberto Rodriguez commented to NBC Philadelphia: “The businesses in the Kensington Corridor are in support of this initiative. They are thankful that Councilmember Lozada has included them in the conversation and considered their opinions. During the meeting that she held at our office with them, it was clear that they are supportive of this and future public safety measures.”