Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.,com,

Personal Freedom In The Age of Mass Compliance

What follows are a couple of excerpts from the last Bitcoin Capitalist Letter, which was a long-form piece that was a refinement of my overall long term investment thesis. It corrects for my biggest mistake in the previous model: the belief that nation states were in secular decline, and centralized government power was waning.

This may be true for the long haul, but for the next five, ten, twenty years – we’re heading into an era that numerous commentators have been identifying, and I’m looping under umbrella “State Capitalism”. 

More specific to our “Great Bifurcation” thesis, what this really means is State Capitalism for the “haves” and  mass compliance and (the warmth of?) collectivism for the  permanent underclass. UBI is coming out of necessity, and anyone who thinks that isn’t going to be some permutation of social credit (most likely based on personal carbon footprint quotas) is ngmi.

Late Stage Globalism

A paper I came across recently was Nicolas Colin’s Late-Cyle Investment Theory, which came out in June ’25 but Colin was recently a guest on Hidden Forces.

Colin’s paper posits that we are entering the maturity phase of the computer/networking information age.

What got my attention, both from the podcast interview with Demetri Kofinas and then as I read through the paper itself, is how it explains the mechanisms by which late-cycle dynamics force governments toward what we’ve described last edition, a global march toward a kind of “state capitalism” and that “uncomfortable reality I have been grappling with for a few months, that The State and The Economy are in the process of merging”.

We’re seeing a kind of  inexorable slide into state-directed capital allocation; it’s taking forms peculiar to its cultural backdrop but it’s happening all over the world.

Russell Napier calls it “National Capitalism”; he also appeared on Hidden Forces a year ago and we covered it in the December ‘24 edition.

WEF luminaries like Marianna Mazzacuto – wholly in favour of the trend – calls it “The Entrepreneurial State”; Tyler Durden over at Zerohedge calls the American expression of it “WHAM” – White House Asset Management.

My favourite version of it is George Gilder’s  “Emergency Socialism”, because it captures the exigencies that are making this a priority among governments worldwide.

Colin is somewhat unique in that he argues high public debt isn’t a policy mistake but a structural feature of technological maturity (not sure I agree, tbh).

As he puts it, governments continue borrowing as if the previous growth regime still applies, even as productivity gains plateau and returns diminish.

The numbers are stark:

• US public debt at 122% of GDP (255% including private sector)

• France at 112% (300% total)

• Japan exceeding 260% public (400% total).

Not mentioned in his paper, but I’ll add that Canada’s total government debt (all levels) is 120%, and our private debt on its own is north of 200%.

These levels dwarf anything seen during the 1970s inflation.

The options, as Colin lays them out, are brutally limited, and this shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of us here.

Governments cannot meaningfully raise taxes, any increases can only be performative and symbolic. Those who pay the lion’s share of them have already demonstrated a willingness to relocate if the “tax the rich” slogans translate into excessive action (we’re already seeing anticipatory exoduses from New York City as Mamdami comes in threatening full-on socialism).

Nor can governments cut spending, because various entitlement programs dominate budgets.

Colin thinks that they can’t outgrow the debt because technological maturity means slower productivity growth, which is the core of his thesis.

He may be right, but I don’t think governments believe that – they are looking at AI to ignite a productivity boom that can outpace the debt bubble.

Whether Colin is correct, or governments believe their own mantra about a productivity miracle in the offing, both roads lead to the same place:

There is only one politically viable path, and that is inflation.

“Run it hot”, basically.

But here’s where Colin’s analysis dovetails with our thesis: inflation has consequences.

As prices rise and real rates fall, voluntary demand for government bonds evaporates (this is why we’ve been seeing yields on sovereign debt spiking higher for over a year).

The one common denominator from those we’ve mentioned above (Colin, Napier, Gilder) is that the most likely outcome is financial repression: policies that force domestic savings into public debt through capital controls, regulatory mandates, and banking rules.

This is the merger of the state and capital that I’ve been warning about. It is a type of financial repression, but the quiet bureaucratic kind where your pension fund must hold treasuries, where capital controls prevent you from moving wealth offshore, where the rules of the game are systematically rigged to channel private savings toward public obligations.

Colin frames this as part of a broader institutional fragmentation. Trade wars, he notes (citing David Skilling), are precursors to capital wars.

States that once relied on global capital markets increasingly treat capital as a strategic resource (hence the advent of things like “Strategic Bitcoin Reserves” – my comment, not his).

The open, rules-based order many still assume to be in place is actively unravelling.

Napier talked about all this a year ago and never once uttered the word “Bitcoin”, let alone crypto.

Colin, for his part, sees crypto and stablecoins as part of the emerging new financial system (sound familiar?), and what’s fascinating is how this all maps onto The Stablecoin Standard thesis we’ve been developing.

He sees dollar-backed stablecoins as America’s attempt to extend monetary hegemony into the digital age, essentially creating a new channel for petrodollar-style recycling where foreign demand for USDT and USDC indirectly finances US government debt.

No surprise here, but it contains an inherent tension: stablecoins work precisely because they route around traditional banking, yet that same feature makes them harder to control when geopolitical pressures mount.

The implication for us is clear and it emerges in a kind of “Barbell trade” portfolio that both recognizes the reality of State Capitalism while also hedging for it via the simultaneous emergence of a parallel system (more on this below).

The big wake-up call for me, is that The State Is “The House”. I’ve spent most of my adult life thinking that it was on its last legs, that at some point a Geopolitical Minsky Moment would demolish the entire scaffolding, and then sound money and free markets would assert themselves.

I was wrong. I’ve now realized that.

The general public will never not believe in the legitimacy of “The State” (even though they may dispute who currently occupies the machinery). It’s baked in since childhood – and it won’t matter that their leaders debase the currency, leach away their wealth, send their children to die in turf wars or even load their neighbours into boxcars. The masses will always believe that The House is legitimate, inevitable and necessary.

With all that said, I still do think that there will be a geopolitical Minsky moment, a kind of global, macro “force majeure” that resets the table, simply because the fiat currency system is well past its “use by” date – but make no mistake, the only thing that happens to The House in the aftermath is that some other faction takes over the lease. And the masses will then dutifully follow the new boss.

The only antidote to this is on the individual level. Independent thinking and independent wealth. That’s it.

If you have a compassionate streak and you want to help the masses or uplift the poor, you have one way to do it: give them the means, motive and opportunities to lift themselves at an individual level – education, mentorship, motivation, angel investing, scholarships, introductions.

One may ask what the exact change in thesis is; if we’re still long Bitcoin, we’re still invested in what we think is the emerging new financial system, we’re still long picks and shovels.

Before we get to it, we have to put a couple more pieces on the table.

The picture we see emerging is this:

• Increasing numbers of plebs are “checking out” of the system, trying to degen their way to wealth, and not even bothering to vote for a system that has essentially abandoned them (referring to our write up on The Prison of Financial Mediocrity  in the full edition)

• AI is killing not only jobs, but entire career paths. UBI is moving past being part of the conversation – I expect 2026 to be a  pivotal year in turning it into reality in multiple jurisdictions.

• Whoever still believes there’s a functioning system in place, does so for the simple reason that they are banking on it to save their asses: hence the growing populist surge on both sides of the political spectrum – but “democratic socialism” and collectivism seem to hold characteristically peculiar attraction for vast swaths of the public.

The final piece in all this is the unrelenting crack-up of the global financial system itself and the geopolitical scaffolding that, until recently, seemed immutable.

I reiterate my old prediction that Donald Trump will be the penultimate president of the United States as they are understood today. Whoever comes after will be the last. And then the US will morph into something else, similar to the breakdown of the USSR in the early 90s.

The same is happening in Canada – where there are now three separatist movements: Quebec, Alberta and now Saskatchewan.

it’ll be more like this pic.twitter.com/Sx4ixGUlOt

— Mark E. Jeftovic (@jeftovic) January 19, 2026

The Eurozone will likely crack up under its own internal tensions and secessionist movements are poised to gain momentum the world over.

How do we reconcile that with an era of Big Government and State Capitalism?

There will simply be more states: a multi-polar world, and different jurisdictions will govern with varying levels of heavy-handedness and interventionism.

Singapore, for example, is for all intents and purposes an authoritarian enclave – under the singular rule of the People’s Action Party since independence, and everybody who lives there seems fine with that. The trains run on time, there are very low levels of corruption and street crime is practically unheard of.

They’ll cane you for chewing gum in the subway (harsh? Try riding the TTC in Toronto without getting stabbed by a mental patient), and they’ll execute you for serious crimes, but there are no “immigration discounts” on sentencing (in November, two men were hanged for trafficking heroin, one a Singaporean, the other, Malaysian).

Singapore is no libertarian paradise, but there is also pretty well zero possibility that any purple-haired Trantifa berserkers are going to shoot up your kid’s school, or that some liberal arts soy-boy in a keffiyeh will smash your face in with a brick on New Year’s Eve.

So there’s that.

Parag Khanna, in his elite-class best-seller “Technocracy In America: Rise of the Info State”, said the governance model of the future should be some manner of Swiss-Singapore hybrid. I remember being both bemused and mortified when I first read that (it came out in 2016) …in the intervening years, I find myself thinking we may do OK with a touch of both:

“What model should post-authoritarian or newly democratic societies pursue: Swiss-style organic economic diversification or Singapore-style managed innovation?

The answer is both. Having lived for stretches in both these small countries, I’ve come to see that despite their enormous differences, what matters most is that Switzerland and Singapore are both verifiably democratic and rigorously technocratic at the same time.”

Khanna cites Harvard’s Michael Porter and Richard Rosecrance, who forecasted an emergence of a “market state” era.

Also,

“business strategist Keniche Ohmae, in his book The Next Global Stage (2005), argued that urban agglomerations of city-states resembling the medieval Hanseatic League would become the world’s power centers.”

When you take a step back, it’s not that different from the mosaic of competitive (not combative) sovereignties posited back in The Sovereign Individual (or, Snow Crash).

It just turns out that Khanna arrived as a similar conclusion from a different angle. If I’m honest, my initial reaction to it probably owed much to Khanna’s involvement with the WEF.

As a recent guest on the Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast once quipped, almost off-handedly, “the wealthy never suffer in any society”.

In places like Singapore – and the innumerable micro-sovereignties that will spring up over the coming years – there will be due process and basic rights (Singapore has a constitutional guarantee on free speech, with a lot of escape hatches for the government in cases of public order, hate, etc. – the same thing is happening here in Canada, and around the world).

But realistically, it will probably take deep pockets to be able to exercise those rights. In Canada we have an expression to describe what happens to property owners who use deadly force against violent home invaders, “The process is the punishment”.

It means if your door gets kicked in by some low-IQ imports who are already out on bail for doing this previously, and you blow their heads off with a legally owned shotgun, you will be charged and forced to stand trial. After a few years, and several hundred thousand dollars in legal fees, you’ll likely prevail in court. If you don’t have the resources to fight that battle, you’ll take a plea deal and spend some time behind bars with exactly the same types of people you just defended yourself against.

Remember our maxim: “In the future, it’ll be a lot more expensive to be free”.

Meanwhile, the bottom tiers of the wealth pyramid across most jurisdictions (the permanent underclass) are going to embrace collectivism, populism and wind up with varying degrees of authoritarianism.

The Post-Singularity Stack and the SoS Portfolio

This is the tightest wrapper I could come up with for everything I’ve been trying to set out in this issue.

Due credit goes to Addison Wiggin, from the Grey Swan Fraternity, who recently put out a piece entitled “Repricing Legitimacy”. It touches on many of the same themes we’re monitoring here: the widespread disaffection of the younger generations, and the loss of faith in legacy institutions – albeit, as we’ve noted above, somewhat ironically juxtaposed with a renewed enthusiasm for Big Government and even collectivism.

“Our job isn’t to pick a slogan or a side. It’s to recognize where legitimacy is being rebuilt, where it’s being faked, and where it’s quietly draining away.

Revolutions without plans tend to end in terror and sorrow. Systems without trust eventually seize up.

Cycles don’t care what we believe. They respond to balance. And balance, right now, is being renegotiated almost everywhere at once.“

Drawing on source material mentioned earlier, plus a few others:

• Viktor Shvets’ “Twilight Before The Storm”

• Jeffrey Towson’s “What Would Ben Graham Do Now?”

• Daniel Bell’s “The China Model”

The common theme seems to be that they are books which filled me with revulsion and dread the first time I read them.

Shvets’ thesis is point blank: the old neoliberal capitalist consensus has collapsed and no new model has yet emerged, but all indications are that it’ll include some kind of socialism (my extension on this is that we’re headed for a two-tier system of techno-socialism for the masses, and state capitalism for the asset holders).

If you hear Shvets on any interviews, he usually blames the markets for breaking down – saying, in effect, that “the market model has been discredited”. I would beg to differ, saying that the market functioning has been completely coopted by government interventionism and fiat debasement, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. The dysfunction is real.

He makes frequent references to something called the “Fujiwara Effect”, a meteorological term for when multiple hurricanes converge into a single, humongous, cataclysmic storm. The analogy here is the compounding of multiple negative cycles: financial, with the debt bubble; technological, with the existential disruptions coming from AI – and he also puts “climate change” in there, which I actually view as the one thing we don’t have to worry about, at least not now.

It’s still a fitting term for what we’re headed into: some kind of transition that won’t be incremental, but “rupture”-like.

Towson, whose book is over a decade old, reframed value investing as not only a game of mental chess with “Mr. Market”, but as one where “Mr. Government” had entered the chat. Investors and entrepreneurs would henceforth have to take the ever-increasing regulatory and ideological biases of The State into account when making their allocation decisions.

Daniel Bell himself defended criticisms that he was extolling a China-style command economy, which he maintains he was not, but that the point of his book was that nobody can dispute China’s results in operating that way. It works. Or at least it did (they too, have an enormous, untenable debt bubble, just like everybody else).

If there is a common aspect to these models it’s that policy starts to crowd out price discovery.

We’ve been dancing around this realization for a long time; this is what I’ve been intuiting every time I said that shorting anything was a fool’s errand because markets are now structurally hardwired to go up – more so than at any other time in history.

That’s fiat debasement at work, and it puts the entire universe of assets on an escalator, and from there it’s a matter of picking what will outperform the rate of decay in our denominators.

Tyler Durden’s phrase “White House Asset Management” (WHAM) is telling us that intrinsic value is now a political function, at least partially so. Imagine being short MSTR only to wake up some morning and find out that Trump put out a tweet during his morning dump announcing that the US government just took a 10% stake in MSTR, MARA and HUT/ABTC.

Nobody should be surprised if that happens. Not anymore

For many years I’ve taken pains to chart a largely libertarian, if not anarcho-capitalist path, the crux of which was trying to conduct myself with no regard to who was in power or which party formed the government.

I basically tried to tune out The State. I’ve conceded that it’s become much harder to do that since COVID, but I was still making my investment and capital allocation decisions from a market forces perspective.

And that is what is changing now. Our overall thesis may be unperturbed: The Great Bifurcation, Monetary Regime Change, etc. – but I am now grudgingly acknowledging that The State is going to impact our economic calculus more than I’d care to admit.

Those above-mentioned books which filled me denial and dread when I first read them, I’m now re-reading to adjust my investment theses around them.

I’m not exactly happy about it, but here we are…

Let’s talk SOS (Sovereign vs Serfdom):

If we’re going to stipulate that The State, “Mr. Government” (or “Mr. Regime” as I began to frame it mentally) is now part of the calculus, one of the places to start is to look at the largest economy in the world – The United States – and look at what its stated, national strategic objectives are.

The “economic security” objectives include: critical supply chains (logistics) and materials, energy dominance, reviving the defence industry, and growing financial sector dominance.

We know that energy dominance doesn’t mean windmills and solar, it means nuclear, oil, and natgas.

We also know that financial sector dominance will have Bitcoin, blockchain, crypto and stablecoins baked in.

And, big surprise, more military spending.

When I looked at all this and realized that all major powers are jockeying around these same themes, what came to mind for me was a kind of barbell positioning between “Mr. Regime” and a Parallel System (including “freedom tech”) across two axes:

Axis A: Serfdom vs Sovereign

Regime-aligned: are companies and assets that directly benefit from various national security strategy priorities (energy dominance, reindustrialization, defense industrial base, financial/AI leadership).

Sovereign / Parallel: Bitcoin, gold, privacy, decentralized rails and jurisdictions that hedge State Capitalism and what I sometimes call the “monetizing serfdom” trade.

These are positions that get us through whatever this is happening right now and over the next five to ten years.

Axis B: The “Post-Singularity” stack

Sound Money: Bitcoin, precious metals, future fintech

Smart Machines: AI / HPC / Big Data

Scarce Resources: energy, metals, base commodities

These are the companies and resources ushering in or underpinning “what comes next”.

Putting it all together

I touted this edition as a “major revision to the thesis”, however as I worked my way through it, what became apparent to me was that not a lot had changed within the thesis itself, except perhaps in timing:

• The Great Bifurcation was coming => TGB is here
• Governments and institutions are out of their depth
• Bitcoin will make a place in the next financial system => Bitcoin has taken its place within the emerging financial system

If the overall components and mechanics of the thesis haven’t changed – then what exactly did? Because something sure feels different to me.

I guess the big shift is from an overall optimism that humanity was going to level up en masse through the separation of the State and money (“fix the money, fix the world”), and admitting that was extremely naive.

It comes down to two things:

#1) Big Government is waxing, not waning:

Despite our governments and institutions being legacies of the industrial age, trying to linearly extrapolate their approaches into a non-linear world, their influence is not waning – as I have been positing since the aftermath of the pandemic.

The State is asserting itself ever more into the private sphere, everywhere.

I’ve made passing references to “a last gasp of Big Government” and the Nanny State in the past, but I think I under-emphasized it. This so-called “last gasp” will persist for a long time in the context of our lives. It could be a couple of decades, or more, before this plays itself out.

#2) I’ve completely misread the public mind

Again, thinking the demise of institutional credibility and loss of faith in an unaccountable and insular ruling class coming to a head during COVID was a secular wave.

That also appears to be wrong. It was an aberration and the general public has settled back into lethargy and compliance.

The combination of these realities pushes us toward the “Mr. Regime” side of the investment thesis, which is basically monetizing servitude, and on a certain level, that just feels wrong.

Aren’t we supposed to try to educate the masses? Make them understand how screwed they are if they don’t take massive action right away?

Our better nature may say so, but let me tell you a story about that impulse… (a true one):

In 1984, an unknown social psychology professor put out a book that was intended to be a consumer awareness tool designed to “pull back the curtain” on how people are manipulated.

The author described himself as a lifelong “patsy” and “easy mark” who wanted to educate the general public on the tactics of “compliance professionals” (like salespeople, marketers, nudge units and propagandists) so that they could defend themselves.

The book flopped, his publisher going so far as to withdraw promotion and publicity funds, citing that it would be like “throwing money down a pit”.

Nobody cared.

That book was eventually discovered by the very people who it was intended to expose: the marketing industry.

Robert Cialdini’s “Influence” is now an evergreen staple of the business world, having been re-released in an expanded edition, and has sold over 7 million copies worldwide.

This anecdote is both depressing and indicative of the world we live in – a microcosm for everything.

You thought Bitcoin was going to emancipate the masses from the tyranny of central banking?

The masses don’t care. They’re busy piling onto Polymarket and betting on which Stranger Things character is going to die in the finale:

You know who does care about Bitcoin, now? JP Morgan. Wells Fargo. Citigroup.

As TFTC notes, “14 of the top 25 US banks are now building Bitcoin products”:

14 of the top 25 US banks are now building Bitcoin products pic.twitter.com/U7pMPmcRVr

— TFTC (@TFTC21) December 27, 2025

Note also how a couple are building their Bitcoin products for “HNW Clients Only.

And that’s why if we want to stay on the right side of The Great Bifurcation and have the means to chart our own paths through this period of State Capitalism, we’re going to have to do it individually – and recognize that in the future, it’ll be a lot more expensive to be free.

That’s why the revised thesis carries a cynicism that’s uncomfortable. Any remaining altruism I felt toward a public that would rather ignore, or even punish the messenger than act on the message has to be quelled, and any civic-mindedness I had left has to be channeled accordingly (mentorship, curation, lead by example, etc).

What bothers me the most about this, was that in the past there was no existential impetus to break oneself out from the crowd. Everybody had the perfectly reasonable option of simply fitting in: you could get an education or a trade, work for a living, buy a house, raise a family, put your kids through college and just live a quiet, middle class life.

My dad worked on the shop floor in a General Electric plant for over thirty years, after which they gave him a pen for his retirement and a pension that my mom collected for another 17 years after he died. My parents were probably among the last generation of truly working/middle class people to live, work, save and retire.

All that is over. A bygone era.

Serfdom or Sovereignty (“SoS”) – that’s the choice now and most people aren’t even aware of it, and when they see somebody choosing sovereignty it looks downright heretical to them.

We can’t help these people, and that makes me sad, even if the majority of them would gleefully stone me to death in the street if the TV set ever tells them that the reason their livelihood is gone and their savings have been vaporized was because of “Bitcoin speculators” and goldbugs.

Most people are stupid. Especially when they act in numbers. If you’re reading this letter, you aren’t one of them.

The next edition of The Bitcoin Capitalist Letter, with more on the Post-Singularity Stack, should be out next weekend. Bombthrower readers can get a special trial offer here

Sign up for the Bombthrower Mailing List here and get a free copy of The Crypto Capitalist Manifesto.

Leftists have a disconcerting habit of making everything lame and gay.  And, because they have zero talent for memes or clever ridicule, when they do try to take their political opponents “down a notch” the attempt usually comes off as unintelligent and humiliating.   

California Governor Gavin Newsom is the epitome of the bumbling narcissistic leftist stereotype.  His bizarre hot takes, robotic behavior and inability to read the room have made him the subject of embarrassment on numerous occasions.  Combine this problem with his ‘American Psycho’ demeanor (as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described him), and one can only hope that the Democrats are dumb enough to choose him as their presidential candidate in 2028.

It would appear that Newsom did not waste time making himself a subject of mockery during the Davos event this week after he hovered around geopolitical discussions vying for attention.  His complaints about Europe’s unwillingness to take a hard stand against Donald Trump’s Greenland agenda reflected growing delusion among US activists that the rest of the world is going to join their woke revolution.

Newsom was caught on camera more than a couple times lamenting the lack of European posturing and called EU politicians “pathetic”.  He also kept suggesting that EU leaders “should wear knee pads” in order to better please Trump.  And, just in case anyone missed the bad joke, he brought a pair of knee pads with him on stage to drive his point home. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom showcases the “Trump Signature Series Knee Pads”

I wonder if his wife helped design them? pic.twitter.com/4xhc3VFWP2

— TaraBull (@TaraBull) January 22, 2026

A handful of attendees laughed but the gimmick did not go over well for the rest of Newsom’s stay in Switzerland.  Scott Bessent, who previously referred to Newsom as “Sparkle Beach Ken”, was ruthless in his reaction to Newsom’s whining.

NEW: Secretary Scott Bessent rips Gavin Newsom, says he brought his knee pads to Davos for his meeting with Alex Soros.

“Being on the national stage is very different than being governor of California with no signature achievements…”

“I could say Gavin Newsom is a Brontosaurus… pic.twitter.com/PBGzbZv0Qv

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 23, 2026

The California peacock was not the only Democrat to make a fool of himself at Davos.  Al Gore was also in the audience and tried to heckle Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick after a speech in which he declared globalism a failed ideology.

🚨 BREAKING: Former Vice President AL GORE was caught HECKLING and YELLING at Trump’s Cabinet in DAVOS 🚨@HowardLutnick: “At the end of my talk, one person out of the 200 YELLED out “BOO,” and I look over and I’m like, who booed? And it is AL GORE.” 😡😡

“And I go, REALLY? And… pic.twitter.com/c3JfbmiUpK

— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) January 23, 2026

It is amusing to see that even among the WEF elites Democrats are struggling to garner much sympathy and support.  They’ve charged headlong to the far-left; so far to the left that almost no one can understand them and their rhetoric anymore.  It’s a stunning decline.  It’s also frightening to think that only couple years ago such people were actually writing US immigration policy, educational planning, health mandates, economic policy and dictating geopolitical agendas that had the potential to trigger global war.     

Authored by Kate Connolly via The Guardian,

Shift in relations and unpredictability of Donald Trump make it ‘risky to store so much gold in the US’, say experts

Germany is facing calls to withdraw its billions of euros’ worth of gold from US vaults, spurred on by the shift in transatlantic relations and the unpredictability of Donald Trump.

Germany holds the world’s second biggest national gold reserves after the US, of which approximately €164bn (£122bn) worth – 1,236 tonnes – is stored in New York.

Emanuel Mönch, a leading economist and former head of research at Germany’s federal bank, the Bundesbank, called for the gold to be brought home, saying it was too “risky” for it to be kept in the US under the current administration.

“Given the current geopolitical situation, it seems risky to store so much gold in the US,” he told the financial newspaper Handelsblatt.

“In the interest of greater strategic independence from the US, the Bundesbank would therefore be well advised to consider repatriating the gold.”

Stefan Kornelius, the spokesperson for Friedrich Merz’s coalition government, said recently that withdrawal of the gold reserves was not currently under consideration.

But Mönch is only the latest in a string of economists and financial experts to argue that such a move would be in keeping with the greater strategic independence that Europe’s largest economy has been seeking from the US in recent months.

Michael Jäger, the head of the European Taxpayers Association (TAE) as well as the Association of German Taxpayers, has also said Berlin should make its move, arguing that the US’s stated desire to seize Greenland should concentrate minds.

“Trump is unpredictable and he does everything to generate revenue. That’s why our gold is no longer safe in the Fed’s vaults,” Jäger told the Rheinische Post.

“What happens if the Greenland provocation continues? … The risk is increasing that the German Bundesbank will no longer be able to access its gold. Therefore, it should repatriate its reserves.”

Jäger said he had written last year to the Bundesbank and the finance ministry, urging them to “bring our gold home”.

Until recently the gold issue has been the preserve mainly of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which has repeatedly urged the return of the gold for patriotic reasons. But it has increasingly crept into the mainstream discourse.

Katharina Beck, the finance spokesperson for the opposition Greens in the Bundestag, has also spoken out in favour of relocating the gold bars, calling them an “important anchor of stability and trust”, which “must not become pawns in geopolitical disputes”.

However, Clemens Fuest, the president of the Institute for Economic Research (Ifo) and one of the country’s most prominent economists, warned against such a move, saying it could lead to unintended consequences and would “only pour oil on the fire of the current situation”, he told the Rheinische Post.

Germany’s total gold reserves are worth almost €450bn.

Just over half are held at the Bundesbank in Frankfurt am Main, 37% in the vaults of the US Federal Reserve in New York and 12% at the Bank of England in London, the global centre of gold trading. The Bundesbank says it regularly undertakes an audit of the supplies of gold it holds in storage.

Speaking last October at the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) autumn meetings in Washington DC, the Bundesbank president, Joachim Nagel, assured attenders there was “no cause for concern” over the German gold held at the US Federal Reserve.

Frauke Heiligenstadt, the parliamentary group spokesperson on financial policy for the Social Democrats, junior partners in the government, said that while she understood concerns about the gold reserves, there was no need for panic.

“Germany’s gold reserves are well diversified,” she said. Because half of them are located in Frankfurt, “our ability to act is guaranteed”. Having gold in New York made sense, she added, because “Germany, Europe and the US are closely linked in terms of financial policy”.

But, amid Trump’s hardening rhetoric towards his western partners, an increasing number of Merz’s Christian Democrats have been speaking out in favour of relocation.

“Due to the Trump administration, the US is no longer a reliable partner,” Ulrike Neyer, a professor of economics at the University of Düsseldorf, told the Rheinische Post.

By Michael Kern of OilPrice.com

In the first quarter of 2026, the global energy storage market is no longer a playground for visionaries… it is a graveyard for the undercapitalized.

The data is rough. As of March 2025, QuantumScape sat on $860 million in cash against a trailing twelve-month burn rate of $331 million. This 2.6-year window is the “valley of death” made manifest in a ledger. 

While the early 2020s were fueled by the speculative highs of SPAC mergers and theoretical energy density, the 2026 market has pivoted to “Balance Sheet Engineering.”

Success is now measured by manufacturing yield and the ability to exploit the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Section 45X.

The gap between a patent and a production line has become a chasm that physics and finance are struggling to bridge.

Lessons from the Liquidation Slow-Burn

The history of next-generation batteries is written in the records of bankruptcy courts. We see the “polysulfide shuttle” not as a chemical reaction, but as a financial sinkhole.

OXIS Energy, once the titan of Lithium-Sulfur (Li-S), entered administration in 2021 and spent four years in a liquidation slow-burn. Creditors were still waiting for “intended dividends” in September 2025. They received pennies for a dream that promised 550 Wh/kg but delivered fewer than 100 cycles before the chemistry ate itself.

Physics is indifferent to venture capital timelines… and physics usually wins.

Pellion Technologies attempted to harness the divalent power of Magnesium-Ion, offering theoretical density that dwarfed lithium. But magnesium ions move through solid hosts like sludge. When Khosla Ventures realized the drone market couldn’t fund the R&D required for automotive scale, they pulled the plug. Pellion is now “deadpooled.”

Not every failure ends in an auction of lab equipment. Ambri, the MIT-born liquid metal battery firm, utilized a Section 363 sale in 2024 to wipe its slate clean. By selling assets to a consortium led by Bill Gates’s Frontier fund, Ambri shed its legacy debt while keeping its calcium-antimony tech alive.

In energy finance, “failure” is a terminal event for the middle class… but it is merely a recapitalization event for the ultra-high-net-worth.

How Sodium Neutralized Lithium’s Edge

While Western startups navigate insolvency, China has executed a violent pivot to Sodium-Ion (Na-ion). This is the “Great Bifurcation” of 2026.

The Western strategy is a high-stakes bet on premium “leapfrog” technologies like Solid-State. The Chinese strategy is a brutal scale-up of the “good enough.”

In 2025, Lithium-Iron-Phosphate (LFP) prices in China crashed to $44/kWh due to massive overcapacity. Sodium-Ion, despite lacking the same scale, is hovering at $59/kWh.

• LFP Cost (2025): $44–$52/kWh
• Na-ion Cost (2025): ~$59/kWh
• The Friction: Sodium is currently more expensive than the lithium incumbent it was meant to replace.

But cost is only half the story. Sodium-Ion represents a geopolitical hedge. By deploying Na-ion via brands like CATL’s “Naxtra,” China has effectively destroyed the pricing power of lithium miners. If lithium prices spike, the world’s largest manufacturer simply flips a switch to sodium.

The West is playing for performance… China is playing for control.

Subsidy Lifelines

For the survivors in the U.S., the business model is no longer about selling batteries—it is about harvesting tax credits.

Section 45X of the IRA has become the primary revenue driver for firms like Peak Energy and Lyten. The credit provides 10% of the production cost for “electrode active materials.” Because the legal definition is chemistry-neutral, it doesn’t matter if the cathode is made of expensive lithium or dirt-cheap Prussian Blue.

The Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) rules have created a “supply chain wall.” Because China controls 80% of the lithium refining capacity, standard Li-ion batteries are increasingly ineligible for U.S. consumer tax credits.

This has created a desperate demand for “FEOC-compliant” alternatives.

• Sion Power: Secured $75M in Series A funding led by LG Energy Solution.
• The Logic: LG isn’t buying a chemistry; they are buying a 50 Amp-hour large-format cell production line in Arizona that doesn’t rely on Chinese precursors.
• The Shift: Hiring former GM executive Pamela Fletcher as CEO signals that the “science experiment” phase is over.

You don’t hire an automotive veteran to run a lab… you hire them to manage a supply chain.

A Solid-State Stalemate

If Sodium-Ion is the hammer, Solid-State is the ghost. Toyota, the undisputed leader in solid-state patents, has moved the goalposts again. Mass production, once promised for 2025, has been pushed to 2027 and beyond.

The technical friction remains the “yield” bottleneck.

Ceramic separators are brittle. In a laboratory, a 90% yield is a triumph. In a gigafactory, a 10% scrap rate is a financial death sentence. This is why companies like Solid Power have pivoted to a capital-light licensing model. They are letting BMW and SK Innovation take the hit on the CAPEX-heavy manufacturing while they collect royalties on the sulfide electrolytes.

The market has bifurcated into two distinct spheres:

1. The China-Sphere: Focused on LFP and Na-ion, driven by TWh-scale manufacturing and low-cost exports.
2. The Western-Sphere: Focused on High-Nickel and Solid-State, propped up by Section 45X subsidies and trade barriers.

The “PowerPoint Engineering” era is dead. The “Balance Sheet Engineering” era is here.

The winners of 2026 are not the companies with the highest theoretical energy density… they are the ones with the smartest tax lawyers and the highest manufacturing yields.

President Trump used his time at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to denounce the globalists’ disastrous “Green New Scam” policies that have caused degrowth in parts of the West and helped spark an energy crisis with soaring power prices.

“You’re supposed to make money with energy, not lose money. Here in Europe, we’ve seen the fate that the radical left tried to impose on America,” Trump told the elites in Davos.

The Climate Hoax was created by the WEF Losers and President Trump just called them out to their faces.

“The United States avoided the catastrophic energy collapse which failed every European Nation that pursued the Green New Scam…perhaps the greatest hoax in History…” pic.twitter.com/Pq5mNDUKk6

— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) January 21, 2026

Just a few years ago, Davos elites were betting big on solving their made-up climate crisis, which was used to loot taxpayers by diverting public funds into risky green energy companies and climate NGOs. But with Trump restoring common-sense energy policies centered on reliable fossil fuel power generation, and rolling back left-wing green policies that handed China and the East a competitive manufacturing edge, globalists were absolutely furious with the president this week.

Take, for instance, climate alarmist and grifter, Al Gore, on Tuesday booed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick during his speech at a VIP dinner in Davos.

The Financial Times reported the dinner “descended into uproar after combative remarks from Lutnick,” with European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde leaving the event early.

Gore’s behavior was just as embarrassing for the United States as Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bizarre behavior. The unhinged behavior of both Gore and Newsom – both leftist – in the public domain is merely a sign that Trump is winning against America’s left-wing.

Lutnick responded on X…

Thankfully, we didn’t come to Davos for Al Gore’s praise.

— Howard Lutnick (@howardlutnick) January 22, 2026

Let’s circle back to the so-called “climate crisis” narrative, which was merely an information operation to sway public sentiment polls to pass the controversial Green New Deal into law in 2019, but failed to gain legislative traction. Following that failure, corporate media helped set and amplify the narrative, unleashing what amounted to a broad psyop on the American public about a planet in crisis. Then Democrats were able to push through the Inflation Reduction Act, a massive climate and energy spending package signed by former President Joe Biden in 2022.

As shown in the Bloomberg data below, as soon as the climate bill was passed and taxpayer funds flooded the green industry and NGOs by the tens of billions of dollars, the narrative of the world on fire because of cow farts and Taylor Swift’s private jet almost disappeared.

Earlier today, Trump on Truth Social said, “Record Cold Wave expected to hit 40 States. Rarely seen anything like it before. Could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain — WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???”

Of course, left-wing corporate media was furious with Trump …

Trump is correct about the climate crisis agenda and how it amounted to one giant “scam.” It served as a vehicle for Democrats to loot the Treasury, and the reckless spending that followed the IRA fueled the worst inflation storm in more than a decade, which Trump is now working to correct through common-sense energy policies that will bridge the power grid until reliable clean nuclear power comes online in the 2030s.

Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,

Why is it so important to the Trump administration to take control of Venezuela and encourage the people of Iran to overthrow the Islamic regime?

The link between the two is obviously oil.

Of course, the strategy in Venezuela involves oil, but also includes restricting China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere, undermining the BRICS currency, and shutting down Venezuelan drug trafficking, illegal immigration, and other nastiness.

Same for Iran regarding oil. Both are important energy suppliers to China, but especially Iran.

But it’s not the whole picture. President Donald Trump’s broader strategy is about restricting China’s access to cheap, reliable oil at the exact moment it needs that energy to compete with the United States in artificial intelligence (AI).

Venezuela Was a Great Deal—For China

Looking back, Venezuela was as an unbelievable good deal for China. Sanctioned by the United States and shunned by much of the West, Caracas sold heavily discounted crude to Chinese refiners willing to tolerate risk. It wasn’t glamorous oil—but it was dependable and cheap. Venezuela provided about five percent of China’s annual oil needs; not a huge figure, but enough to matter.

Trump’s decision to blockade Venezuelan oil exports and assert control over the country’s oil infrastructure effectively ends that dream deal. With U.S. control, China loses a meaningful slice of supply, about four percent, that helped buffer it from global price swings.

That matters more than it sounds.

As the world’s largest oil importer, even small disruptions force Beijing to scramble for alternatives—often at higher prices, longer shipping distances, or greater political cost.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) speaks during a meeting with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza (L) at the Diaoyutai State Guest House in Beijing on Jan. 16, 2020. Ng Han Guan-Pool/Getty Images

Iran: The Bigger Pressure Point

But the Venezuelan oil flow to China is small potatoes compared to that of Iran.

China is Iran’s largest oil customer, buying the vast majority of Tehran’s exported crude, up to 80 percent, often at steep discounts, and is the life blood to China’s independent refineries, its petrochemical sector, and its power-hungry industrial base. In other words, Iranian oil is critical to China’s continued economic and technological growth.

That fact puts Trump’s renewed pressure on the ruling Islamic regime in Iran in a different light. The tariffs, sanctions enforcement, secondary penalties, and encouraging rebellion by the Iranian people is more than just punishment for Tehran. It puts China in an energy bind.

Should Beijing keep buying Iranian oil and risk broader economic retaliation, or comply and lose one of the cheapest energy sources available?

Either way, Beijing pays more for less reliable oil supplies.

Why Oil Still Matters in the AI Age

There’s a popular myth that AI runs on “clean” digital infrastructure—clouds, algorithms, and software. In reality, AI runs on electricity, and electricity is still largely generated through nuclear power and fossil fuels, i.e., oil, natural gas, and coal. Training large AI models requires staggering amounts of energy, and a single hyperscale data center can consume as much electricity as a mid-sized city. Multiply that by hundreds of facilities, and energy, not chips, becomes the real bottleneck in the AI race.

Beijing understands this. That’s why it continues to approve a record number of new coal plants, expand its gas infrastructure, and secure long-term oil contracts—even while leading the world in renewables.

What’s more, China knows that oil and gas help stabilize power grids that support data centers. Intermittent renewables alone can’t guarantee the always-on power that AI systems require. Plus, AI hardware depends on petroleum-based products—plastics, resins, coolants, lubricants, and advanced composites used in chips, servers, and cooling systems. Oil is a non-negotiable industrial input.

Finally, oil is relatively inexpensive, lowering the cost of training models, which compounds quickly, because whichever nation can train more models faster and cheaper leads the AI race.

Cutting China off from discounted oil doesn’t just raise fuel prices, it raises the cost of intelligence itself.

A worker rides bicycle at an oil refinery of China’s Sinopec in Wuhan, a city in China’s Hubei Province on May 10, 2011. STR/AFP/Getty Images

Energy as a Hidden AI Weapon

This is where Trump’s strategy becomes clearer.

The United States doesn’t need to out-build China in data centers if it can out-price and out-power them. America has abundant domestic oil and gas, expanding LNG exports, and deep capital markets to finance new, energy-hungry infrastructure.

China, by contrast, is vulnerable. It imports over 70 percent of its oil. Much of that comes from politically unstable or sanctioned states. Disrupt those flows, and China’s AI ambitions become more expensive, more fragile, and more dependent on geopolitical goodwill.

In that sense, oil becomes a second-order AI weapon, in that it is not something that directly attacks technology, but something that quietly determines who can afford to scale it.

What This Means for the Global Balance

Yes, Russia still matters in this equation—but more as a background variable than the main event. Lower oil prices and tighter markets can squeeze Moscow’s revenues and complicate its war financing. China’s increased reliance on Russian crude also deepens a partnership that carries long-term risks for Beijing.

But the real target of Trump’s energy denial strategy isn’t Russia. It’s China’s momentum.

Trump’s energy foreign policy is about slowing China’s rise without firing a shot—forcing it to spend more, plan more cautiously, and accept structural disadvantages in the most important technological competition of the century.

The Bigger Picture

AI dominance won’t be decided by who writes the best code. It will be decided by who can power the most machines, the longest, at the lowest cost.

By squeezing Venezuela, pressuring Iran, and reshaping global oil flows, Trump is betting that energy strategy, not algorithms, will decide the winner in the AI-driven economy.

And if that bet is right, the future of AI may be decided not in Silicon Valley or Shenzhen, but in oil fields, shipping lanes, and sanctions that most people aren’t paying attention to.

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

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Whatever the barbarians may be potting, the fact that matters is that China is already deep into the next phase, where it is expected to replace the United States as the world’s primary consumer market.

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.

Antonio Gramsci

Davos 2026 was a demented kaleidoscope. The only possible way to wallow through the mire was to put on the headphones and resort to the Band of Gypsys smashing sonic barriers, and drowning a frankly terrifying series of events, including a Palantir-BlackRock connection, Big Tech meets Big Finance; the “Master Plan” for Gaza; and the acute discombobulation in neo-Caligula’s rant, here in the 3-minute version.

Then there was what the fragmented West’s mainstream media erected as a visionary speech: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s mini-opus magnum, complete with a – what else – Thucydides quote (“The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must”) to illustrate the “rupture” of the “rules-based international order”, which was already a Dead Man Not Walking at least for a year now.

And how not to laugh at the extremely rich notion of a letter by 400 “patriotic” millionaires and billionaires directed to heads of state in Davos claiming for more “social justice”. Translation: they are terrified – in Paranoia Paradise mode – by the “rupture”, actually the advanced collapse of the neoliberalism ethos that enriched them in the first place.

Carney’s speech was a wily, headline-grabbing device to – in thesis – bury the “rules-based international order”, actually the euphemism du jour, since the end of WWII, for total domination by the Anglo-American financial oligarchy. Carney now only recognizes a mere “rupture” – supposed to be sewn up by “middle powers”, mostly Canada and a few Europeans (no Global South).

And there’s the dead give away: the presumed antidote to “rupture” has absolutely nothing to do with sovereignty. It’s actually a controlled hedging, a sort of managed ersatz multipolarity – nothing to do with the BRICS drive – based on a fuzzy “values-based realism”, “coalition building” and “variable geometry” mish mash, destined to keep in place the same old monetarist scam.

Welcome to Lampedusa’s The Leopard, remixed: “Everything must change for everything to remain the same.”

And all that coming from a playbook liberal, a former Governor of the Bank of England. Such tigers never change their spots.

The true levers of power – exercised by the City of London and Wall Street – are totally immune to the “rupture” antidote.

The evolving, multi-layered Russia-China strategic partnership already invalidates Carney’s very sophisticated fraud, which fooled a lot of informed people. Same as BRICS – as it advances in the long and winding road of real multi-nodality.

Which brings us to the real message generated by Carney’s trademark limited hangout:

Canada and the European “middle powers” now find themselves not on the table, but on the menu, as neo-Caligula, the ruler of the world, can do to them what NATO has de facto been doing to the Global South over the past 30 years.

“Everything must change for everything to remain the same”

Many of those who now enshrine Carney as The New Messiah – and such a defender of international law – totally ignored or covered for the Zionist genocide of Gaza; demonized Russia to Kingdom Come and keep instigating a Forever War; and now beg on their knees for neo-Caligula to engage in a “dialogue” to solve his self-proclaimed Greenland land grab.

Elon Musk, incidentally, also showed up at Davos on short notice. He is a huge supporter of the Greenland land grab. Musk and other techno-feudalist stars cannot but be seduced by the project of turning that “piece of ice” (neo-Caligula terminology) into the prime hub for digital states, the successors of nation-states, supposed to be ruled by Techno-CEOs posing as Philosopher Kings.

Combine it with the Big Tech-Big Finance connection – at the Palantir-BlackRock table – and we have the Kings of AI leading the way, with financiers following.

The “piece of ice” of course was melting non-stop all across the Davos spectrum. When neo-Caligula announced that he would not do to Greenland what he did to Venezuela, the collective European relief really exploded the Champagne-O-Meter.

It was up to certified NATO poodle Tutti Frutti al Rutti, with that perpetual smile of a withered Dutch tulip, to convince “Daddy” to be lenient, proving once again that the EU is a Banana Republic, actually Union, without the bananas.

Neo-Caligula and withered tulip cobbled together a “framework” for the US to get some Greenland real estate for military base purposes and limited development of rare earth mining, plus the requisite ban on Russian and Chinese projects. Denmark and Greenland were not even in the room when this “deal” was reached.

Still, that may all change in a flash, or in a social media post. Because that’s not what neo-Caligula wants. He wants Greenland splashed in red-white-and blue on a US map.

Still, the most terrifying land grab plot highlighted in Davos had to be Gaza. Cue to that insufferable Zionist dimwit – the brains in the family actually belong to wife Ivanka – presenting the master plan for “the new Gaza”.

Or How to Market The Horror…The Horror (my excuses to Joseph Conrad).

Here we have a mass slaughtering/extermination campaign coupled with grabbing of what’s been reduced to rubble, leading to a high-security containment zone for token, “approved” Palestinians and prime beachfront real estate for real estate scammers and Israeli settlers.

All that managed by a private company, chaired by neo-Caligula for life, now in charge of the annexation, occupation and exploitation of Gaza: a monstruous land grab burying in one go a genocide and what remains of international law – everything fully approved by the EU and a bunch of political “leaders”, some too terrified, others basically hedging to bypass neo-Caligula’s wrath.

The Chinese “rupture”

Some clown by the name of Nadio Calvino, president of the European Investment Bank, actually argued at Davos that the EU “is a superpower”.

Well, History is loath to register as a superpower a set up that is totally dependent on the US and NATO for defense; exhibits zero power projection; harbors no major tech companies (those that still exist are collapsing); is 90% dependent on foreign supplies of energy; and is drowning in debt ($17 trillion in total, equivalent to over 80% of the EU’s GDP).

So in the end, amidst so much – silly – sound and fury, what was the real game-changer at Davos? It was not the “rupture” or even the land grab plots. It was the speech by China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng.

Incidentally, Carney’s “rupture” speech was heavily influenced by his recent trip to China – where he met with He Lifeng, a serious candidate to succeed Xi Jinping in the future.

At Davos, He Lifeng made it very clear that China is determined to become “the world’s market”; and that boosting domestic demand was now “on top of [China’s] economic agenda,” as reflected in the 15th Five-Year plan which will be approved this coming March in Beijing.

So whatever the barbarians may be plotting, the fact that matters is that China is already deep into the next phase, where it is expected to replace the United States as the world’s primary consumer market.

Now that’s what’s called a rupture.

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

The recent U.S. operation against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro demonstrated that military power is not only about troop numbers or superior combat technology.

With the successful extraction of Maduro and his wife from a military compound in just 2.5 hours, the extremely effective operation showed how far training, intelligence, and logistics go towards driving military power.

This infographic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, ranks the world’s most powerful militaries in 2025.

The data for this visualization comes from the Global Firepower Index, which assesses 145 countries.

The World’s Top Military Powers

The index evaluates more than 60 factors, including active military manpower, land, air and naval assets, logistics, natural resources, and geographic considerations.

Importantly, a lower Military Power Index score indicates greater overall strength.

The United States ranks first, with the lowest Military Power Index score and more than 1.3 million active-duty personnel. Its position reflects unmatched global reach, advanced technology, and extensive logistical capabilities.

Russia and China follow closely behind. China stands out for having the largest active military manpower among the top three, with just over 2 million personnel, while Russia combines large troop numbers with extensive land and strategic capabilities.

Manpower Isn’t Everything

While troop numbers matter, they do not tell the full story. Countries like Japan, the United Kingdom, and France rank among the top 10 despite having far smaller active forces than some lower-ranked nations.

Japan ranks highly due to its advanced naval and air forces, including one of the world’s most capable destroyer fleets, modern fighter jets, and strong missile defense systems.

Despite a smaller army, the UK maintains strong air and naval assets and benefits from deep integration with NATO operations. Meanwhile, France ranks among the top militaries thanks to its nuclear arsenal, blue-water navy, and proven ability to conduct overseas operations independently.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Ranked: Countries With the Highest Cost of Violence on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Catherine Salgado via PJMedia.com,

It seems long past time for President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.

In the chaos and violence following the death of an armed Minneapolis would-be terrorist shot while fighting Border Patrol, another protester has bitten off the finger of a federal officer.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin posted photos on X showing the loathsome protestors who so viciously assaulted federal officers, and also photos of the one officer’s wounded hand and the severed finger.

What absolute scum these protestors and the politicians who encourage them are.

McLaughlin explained, “In Minneapolis, these rioters attacked our law enforcement officer and one of them bit off our HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] officer’s finger. He will lose his finger.”

What a proud victory for Walz and co.! They managed to ruin a brave officer’s life.

Just ponder how deranged and bestial you have to be to seek out a federal law enforcement officer for the express purpose of assaulting him, and then deliberately bite off his finger.

I can’t help but think of Gollum biting off Frodo’s finger at the climax of The Lord of the Rings to obtain the Ring; and the fiction has a parallel to the reality. As Tolkien meant the Ring to represent sin and evil, and as Gollum is destroyed and driven mad by it, so leftist domestic terrorists seem drunk on and driven mad by their lust for violence and revenge.

Indeed, the protestor who bit off the HSI officer’s finger is d*mn lucky he didn’t get shot. One hopes he at least faces some legal accountability, but that seems in precious short supply in Minneapolis.

As for the shooting that triggering the other violence, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem explained that Border Patrol officers were simply trying to carry out the arrest of an illegal alien who was wanted for violent assault.

“During the operation, an individual approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. The officers attempted to disarm the suspect, but the armed suspect violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots,” she declared.

“This violence is directly fueled by hateful rhetoric from Minnesota’s sanctuary politicians. It must end now.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz rushed to frame the armed protester as an innocent victim of eeeevil federal goons, raving about a “horrific shooting by federal agents” and labeling them “violent, untrained officers.” 

This is why there is violence. The gunman who died had two magazines of ammunition and no ID on him, indicating he planned to trigger a mass casualty event. Furthermore, he was trying to intervene on behalf of a violent criminal illegal alien — which is in itself a felony (as is protecting illegal aliens, as Minnesota politicians do).

There is no possible way a sane person could be on the side of such a man, and yet Democrats are all on his side. Of course, fully committed Democrats are also insane.

Pray hard for our brave HSI, Border Patrol, and ICE officers in Minneapolis.

Local police are not helping them, local authorities are lying about them, and mobs of protestors are literally out for their blood.