In Europe, the lure of a return to cheap energy is ever-present, and that conversation is becoming easier as the Trump administration in Washington pushes hard for ceasefire negotiations with Moscow.

Senior German politicians are already calling for a resumption of ties with Russia. For example Michael Kretschmer, a senior member of Friedrich Merz’s centre-right Christian Democrats, is now arguing that EU sanctions on Russia are “completely out of date” as they increasingly openly contradict “what the Americans are doing.”

Financial Times in a fresh report quoted Kretschmer’s words to the German press agency DPA as follows: “When you realize that you’re weakening yourself more than your opponent, then you have to think about whether all of this is right.”

The same publication has observed the expected immediate backlash to the statements as follows:

Kretschmer, who is also a long-standing opponent of weapons deliveries to Ukraine, is the latest in a string of figures from both Merz’s centre-right CDU and the centre-left Social Democrats to have gone public in recent weeks with calls to resume economic or energy ties with Russia.

That has created a problem for Merz — who is all but certain to be Germany’s next chancellor — as well as for his likely coalition partners in the SPD at a time when he is trying to cast himself as a strong partner for Ukraine and for Europe. Germany’s Green party, which is strongly pro-Kyiv, called on Sunday for Merz to clamp down on “friends of Putin” in his party. 

But Merz hasn’t himself actively tried to silence this growing desire in some political circles for rapprochement with Russia.

But Bloomberg reported Monday, “The co-head of Germany’s Social Democrats party and frontrunner to become the next finance minister Lars Klingbeil dismissed swirling speculation over reviving pipeline gas deliveries from Russia after a potential peace deal for Ukraine.”

And as we highlighted, TotalEnergies’ chief executive Patrick Pouyanne said last week:

“I would not be surprised if two out of the four (came) back to stream, not four out of the four,” Patrick Pouyanne said at an industry event in Germany’s capital city, Berlin, as carried by Reuters.

“There is no way to be competitive against Russian gas with LNG coming from wherever it is,” the executive added.

Meanwhile, both Hungary and Slovakia not only continue bypassing Ukraine for imports of Russian gas – after Ukraine broke from the transit of Russian gas on January 1st – but are actually boosting these supplies.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto announced on Tuesday that the Veľké Zlievce/Balassagyarmat interconnection border point from Hungary to Slovakia has been brought to full capacity due to the stoppage through Ukraine.

“We managed to solve the problem of natural gas supplies to Slovakia and Hungary, despite the fact that Ukraine created very serious difficulties for us. To ensure reliable gas supplies to Slovakia via Hungary even with the cessation of its transit through Ukraine, we had to increase the capacity of the connecting gas pipeline between our countries,” the FM told a press briefing.

“Today, the gas pipeline between Hungary and Slovakia is operating at increased capacity. We have now increased the capacity of this pipeline by 900 million cubic meters per year. Until now, 2.6 billion cubic meters were transported between the two countries per year. Starting today, this volume will increase to 3.5 billion cubic meters,” Szijjarto noted.

He added that “compared to last year’s record volume, the volume of natural gas transported through Hungary to Slovakia has increased by 50% in the first three months of this year.”

Via Middle East Eye

Turkey has begun efforts to take control of Syria’s Tiyas air base, also known as T4, and is preparing to deploy air defence systems there, sources familiar with the matter told Middle East Eye. Construction plans for the site are also reportedly under way.

Ankara and Damascus have been negotiating a defense pact since December, following the ousting of Bashar al-Assad. The agreement would see Turkey provide air cover and military protection for Syria’s new government, which currently lacks a functioning military.

Although Turkish officials had previously downplayed the possibility of a military presence in Syria, describing such plans as premature, negotiations have quietly continued.

While Israel views a Turkish military presence in Syria as a potential threat, Ankara aims to stabilize the country by leveraging its military capabilities and filling the power vacuum left by the withdrawal of Russia and Iran.

Turkey also intends to intensify its fight against the Islamic State (IS) group, a key condition for the United States to consider withdrawing from the region.

A source familiar with the matter told MEE that Turkey has begun moving to take control of the T4 air base, located near Palmyra in central Syria. “A Hisar-type air defense system will be deployed to T4 to provide air cover for the base,” the source said.

“Once the system is in place, the base will be reconstructed and expanded with necessary facilities. Ankara also plans to deploy surveillance and armed drones, including those with extended strike capabilities.”

The source added that the base would help Turkey establish aerial control across the region and support its efforts to combat IS, which still has cells operating in the Syrian desert. 

Ankara eventually aims to establish a layered air defense system in and around the base, which would have short-, medium- and long-range air defense capabilities against a variety of threats, from jets to drones to missiles. 

A second source noted that the presence of Turkish air defense systems and drones would likely deter Israel from launching air strikes in the area. The Turkish defense ministry declined to comment. 

Unnerving Israel

Israel has regularly targeted Syrian military installations since Assad’s government collapsed in December, with a recent surge in operations around T4. Last week, the Israeli air force struck T4 and the Palmyra air base, targeting runways and strategic assets.

An Israeli security source told the media on Monday that any Turkish air base in Syria would undermine Israel’s freedom of operation. “This is a potential threat that we oppose,” the source said.

Tensions between Turkey and Israel have escalated since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in 2023, ending a brief period of reconciliation between the two countries. The collapse of the Assad government and Turkey’s emergence as a dominant power in Syria have further alarmed Israel, which now sees Ankara as a potentially greater threat in the region than Iran.

“We targeted the T4 military base recently to send a message: we will not allow any threat to our operational freedom in the air,” the Israeli security source told the Jerusalem Post.

The first MEE source also revealed that Ankara is considering the temporary deployment of S-400 air defence systems to T4 or Palmyra to secure the airspace during reconstruction efforts. However, no final decision has been made and Russia would need to give its approval.

Meanwhile, Ankara and Washington have been in talks about lifting the sanctions imposed on Turkey over its purchase of the Russian-made S-400 system, which led to Turkey’s removal from the F-35 fighter jet program in 2019.

Turkey is not building a military presence in Syria to fight ISIS, that’s a lie. They helped bring them over. Last time the two were neighbors, they were saluting each other. https://t.co/CZ593HRmqT

— Bassem (@BBassem7) April 1, 2025

In a phone call last month, US President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed possible ways for Turkey to rejoin the program. Under US law, Turkey must relinquish possession of the S-400 system to be readmitted.

Turkish officials have proposed deactivating the system by disassembling and storing it, or potentially relocating it to a Turkish-controlled base outside of Turkey. However, Israel strongly opposes any move that would allow Ankara access to the F-35, arguing it would erode Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region.

Authored by Josh Stylman via The Brownstone Institute,

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has long portrayed itself as America’s humanitarian aid organization, delivering assistance to developing nations. With an annual budget of nearly $40 billion and operations in over 100 countries, it represents one of the largest foreign aid institutions in the world. But recent disclosures reveal its true nature as something far more systematic: an architect of global consciousness.

Consider: Reuters, one of the world’s most trusted news sources, received USAID funding for ‘Large Scale Social Deception’ and ‘Social Engineering Defence.’ While there’s debate about the exact scope of these programs, the implications are staggering: a division of one of the world’s most relied-upon sources for objective reporting was paid by a US government agency for systemic reality construction. This funding goes beyond traditional media support, representing a deliberate infrastructure for discourse framing that fundamentally challenges the concept of ‘objective’ reporting.

Source: USASpending.gov database

But it goes deeper. In what reads like a Michael Crichton plot come to life, the recent USAID revelations show a staggering reach of narrative control. Take Internews Network, a USAID-financed NGO that has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive network, ‘working with’ 4,291 media outlets. In just one year, they produced 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and ‘trained’ over 9,000 journalists. This isn’t just funding – it’s a systematic infrastructure of consciousness manipulation.

The revelations show USAID funding both the Wuhan Lab’s gain-of-function research and the media outlets that would shape the story around what emerged from it. Backing organizations that would fabricate impeachment evidence. Funding both the election systems that facilitate outcomes and the fact-checkers that determine which discussions about those outcomes are permitted. But these disclosures point to something far more significant than mere corruption.

These revelations didn’t emerge from nowhere – they come from government grant disclosures, FOIA requests, and official records that aren’t even hidden, just ignored. As my old friend Mark Schiffer noted the other day, ‘The most important truths today cannot be debated – they must be felt as totalities.’ The pattern, once seen, cannot be unseen. Some may question DOGE’s methods or the rapid pace of these disclosures, and those constitutional concerns deserve serious discussion. But that’s a separate conversation from what these documents reveal. The revelations themselves – documented in official records and grant disclosures – are undeniable and should shock anyone who values truth. The means of exposure matter far less than what’s being exposed: one of the largest narrative control operations in history.

No domain is untouched – markets, tech, culture, health, and obviously, media – and you’ll find the same design. Intelligence agencies are deeply embedded in each domain because shaping how we perceive reality is more powerful than controlling reality itself

Just as fiat currency replaced real value with declared value, we now see the same pattern everywhere: fiat science replaces inquiry with predetermined conclusions, fiat culture replaces organic development with curated influence, fiat history replaces lived experience with manufactured narratives. We live in an era of fiat everything – where reality itself is declared, not discovered. And just as they create artificial scarcity in monetary systems, they manufacture false choices everywhere else – presenting us with artificial binaries that obscure the true complexity of our world.

As Schiffer wrote elsewhere, reality no longer requires consensus, only coherence. But there’s a crucial distinction: real coherence emerges naturally across multiple domains, reflecting deeper truths that cannot be fabricated. The coherence imposed by perception management isn’t truth – it’s a controlled discourse engineered for consistency, not discovery. The USAID receipts now provide concrete evidence of how this manufactured coherence is built: a scripted reality where the appearance of logic is more important than actual substance.

This isn’t just pattern matching – it’s pattern prediction. Just as algorithms learn to recognize and anticipate behavioral patterns, those who understand this system’s architecture can see its next moves before they’re made. The question isn’t whether something is “true” or “false” – it’s understanding how information flows shape consciousness itself.

To understand how deep this goes, let’s examine their methodology. As Dr. Sherri Tenpenny and others have meticulously documented through FOIA requests and government grant disclosures, the pattern emerges through two primary vectors of control:

Information Control:

• $34 million to Politico (which as Tenpenny notes, struggled to make payroll without this funding)
• Extensive payments to the New York Times
• Direct funding to BBC Media Action
• $4.5 million to Kazakhstan to combat “disinformation”

Health and Development:

• $84 million to Clinton Foundation health initiatives
• $100 million for AIDS treatment in Ukraine
• Funding for contraceptive programs in developing nations

Cultural Programming:

• $20 million to Sesame Street in Iraq
• $68 million to the World Economic Forum
• $2 million for sex changes and LGBT activism in Guatemala
• Global cultural initiatives (millions spread across LGBTQ programs in Serbia, DEI projects in Ireland, transgender arts in Colombia and Peru, and tourism promotion in Egypt)

What emerges is not just a list of expenditures, but a blueprint for global reality architecture: From Kazakhstan to Ireland, from Serbia to Peru, from Vietnam to Egypt – there isn’t a corner of the world untouched by this system. This isn’t merely a distribution of resources, but a strategic infrastructure of global influence. Each allocation – whether to media outlets, health initiatives, or cultural programs – represents a carefully placed node in a network designed to shape perception across multiple domains. First, control the flow of information through media funding. Then, establish legitimacy through health and development programs. Finally, reshape social structures through cultural programming. The end goal isn’t just to influence what people think, but to determine the boundaries of what can be thought – and to do so on a planetary scale.

For those who’ve been studying the architecture of censorship, like Mike Benz has been documenting for years, none of this comes as a surprise. It’s perfect symmetry: we knew about the censorship. Now we’re seeing the receipts. One hand feeds them talking points, the other hand feeds them our taxpayer dollars. This isn’t speculation; it’s documented fact. Even Wikipedia’s own funding database contains over 45,000 reports tied to USAID – many detailing corruption, media influence, and financial manipulation. The evidence has always been there, but it was ignored, dismissed, or buried under the very fact-checking apparatus USAID funds. These weren’t crackpot theories; they were warnings. And now, we finally have the receipts.

And it doesn’t stop at controlling information. USAID isn’t just shaping media portrayals – it’s funding the systems that enforce them. Last week, Benz broke a bombshell: USAID gives twice as much money ($27 million) to the fiscal sponsor of the group controlling Soros-funded prosecutors than Soros himself gives ($14 million). This isn’t about one billionaire’s influence – it’s about state-backed enforcement of scripted accounts. The same network that dictates what you can think is dictating who prosecutes crime, what laws are enforced, and who faces consequences.

Source: Wikileaks

USAID’s influence isn’t just about funding media control—it extends to direct political interference. It didn’t just send aid to Brazil – it funded censorship, backed left-wing activists, and helped rig the 2022 election against Bolsonaro.

Former State Department official Benz revealed that the agency waged a “holy war on censorship,” systematically suppressing Bolsonaro supporters online while bolstering opposition voices. Millions flowed to NGOs pushing leftist framing, including the Felipe Neto Institute, which received US funding while Bolsonaro’s allies were deplatformed. USAID also bankrolled Amazon-based activist groups, financed media campaigns designed to manipulate public opinion, and funneled money into Brazilian organizations that pushed for stricter internet regulations.

This wasn’t aid – it was election interference disguised as democracy promotion. USAID used American tax dollars to decide Brazil’s future, and it likely deployed similar tactics in many other countries – all under the guise of humanitarian assistance.

And it’s not just abroad. While USAID’s defenders claim it’s a tool for charity and development in poor nations, the evidence suggests something much more insidious. It’s a $40 billion driver of regime change overseas – and now, evidence points to its involvement in regime change efforts at home. Alongside the CIA, USAID appears to have played a role in the 2019 impeachment of Trump – an illegal effort to overturn a US election using the same tools of perception sculpting and political engineering it deploys abroad.

Left vs right, vaxxed vs unvaxxed, Russia vs Ukraine, believer vs skeptic (on any topic) – these false dichotomies serve to fragment our understanding while reality itself is far more nuanced and multidimensional. Each manufactured crisis spawns not just reactions, but reactions to those reactions, creating endless layers of derivative meaning built on artificial foundations.

The real power isn’t in manufacturing individual facts, but in creating systems where false facts become self-reinforcing. When a fact-checker cites another fact-checker who cites a “trusted source” that’s funded by the same entities funding the fact-checkers, the pattern becomes clear. The truth isn’t in any individual claim – it’s in recognizing how the claims work together to create a closed system of artificial reality.

Take the vaccine debate for example: The pattern manifests before the explanation – people passionately debate efficacy without realizing the entire framework was constructed. First, they fund the research. Then they fund the media to shape the narrative. Even skeptics often fall into their trap, arguing about effectiveness rates while accepting their basic premise. The moment you debate ‘vaccine efficacy,’ you’ve already lost – you’re using their framework to discuss what is, in reality, an experimental gene therapy. By accepting their terminology, their metrics, their framing of the discussion itself, you’re playing into their constructed reality. Each layer of control is designed not just to influence opinions, but to preemptively structure how those opinions can be formed.

Like learning to spot a staged photo or hearing a false note in music, developing a reliable bullshit detector requires pattern recognition. Once you start seeing how narratives are constructed – how language is weaponized, how frameworks are built – it changes the lens with which you view the whole world. The same intelligence agencies embedding themselves in every domain that shapes our understanding aren’t just controlling information flow – they’re programming how we process that information itself.

The recursive theater plays out in real time. When USAID announced funding cuts, BBC News rushed to amplify humanitarian concerns with dramatic headlines about HIV patients and endangered lives. What they didn’t mention in their reporting? USAID is their top funder, bankrolling BBC Media Action with millions in direct payments. Watch how the system protects itself: the largest recipient of USAID media funding creates emotional propaganda about USAID’s importance while obfuscating their financial relationship in their reporting.

Source: Lindsay Penny (left), BBC website (right)

This institutional self-defense illustrates a crucial pattern: organizations funded for reality construction protect themselves through layers of misdirection. When presented with evidence, the fact-checking apparatus funded by these same systems springs into action. They’ll tell you that these payments were for standard “subscriptions,” that programs promoting gender ideology are really just about “equality and rights.” But when USAID awards $2 million to Asociación Lambda in Guatemala for “gender-affirming health care” – which can include surgeries, hormone therapy, and counseling – those same defenders conveniently omit the details, blurring the line between advocacy and direct intervention. The very organizations funded for social architecture are the ones telling you there is no social architecture. It’s akin to asking the arsonist to investigate the fire.

Like characters in a grand production, I watch old friends still trusting in institutions like the New York Times. Even this exposition becomes a potential node in the system – the very act of revealing the mechanics of control might itself be anticipated, another layer of the recursive theater. In my earlier work on technocracy, I explored how our digital world has evolved far beyond Truman Burbank’s physical dome. His world had visible walls, cameras, and scripted encounters – a constructed reality he could theoretically escape by reaching its edges. Our prison is more sophisticated: no walls, no visible limits, just algorithmic containment that shapes thought itself. Truman only had to sail far enough to find the truth. But how do you sail beyond the boundaries of perception when the ocean itself is programmed?

Sure, USAID has done some good work – but so did Al Capone with his soup kitchens. Just as the infamous gangster’s charity work made him untouchable in his community, USAID’s aid programs create a veneer of benevolence that makes questioning their larger agenda politically impossible. Philanthropic window-dressing has long been a tool for power players to shield themselves from scrutiny. Consider Jimmy Savile: a celebrated philanthropist whose charity work granted him access to hospitals and vulnerable children while he committed unspeakable crimes in plain sight. His carefully cultivated image made him beyond reproach for decades, just as institutional benevolence now serves as a protective layer for global influence operations. The true function of organizations like USAID isn’t just aid – it’s social architecture, mind shaping, and the laundering of taxpayer dollars through an intricate web of NGOs and foundations.

This layered deception is self-reinforcing – each level of manufactured reality is protected by another level of institutional authority. These institutions don’t just dictate stories; they shape the infrastructure through which narratives are disseminated. For what it’s worth, I believe most tools themselves are neutral. The same digital systems that enable mass surveillance could empower individual sovereignty. The same networks that centralize control could facilitate decentralized cooperation. The question isn’t the technology itself, but whether it’s deployed to concentrate or distribute power.

This understanding didn’t come from nowhere. Those who first sensed this artificiality were dismissed as conspiracy theorists. We noticed the coordination across outlets, the strange synchronicity of messaging, the way certain stories were amplified while others disappeared. Now we have the sales receipts showing exactly how that manipulation was funded and orchestrated.

I know this journey of discovery intimately. When I started understanding the dangers of mRNA technology, I went all in. I connected with the incredibly talented filmmaker Jennifer Sharp and helped with Anecdotals, her film about vaccine injuries. I was ready to tether my whole identity to this cause. But then I started zooming out. I began seeing how Covid might have been a financial crime designed to usher in central bank digital currency. The deeper I looked, the more I realized these weren’t isolated deceptions – it was part of a larger system of control. The very fabric of what I thought was real began to dissolve.

What disturbed me most was seeing how deeply programming relies on mimicry. Humans are imitative creatures by nature – it’s how we learn, how we build culture. But this natural tendency has been weaponized. I’d present friends with peer-reviewed studies, documented evidence, historical connections – only to watch them respond with verbatim talking points from corporate media. It wasn’t that they disagreed – it was that they weren’t even processing the information. They were pattern-matching against pre-approved chronicles, outsourcing their thinking to “trusted experts” who were themselves caught in the same web of manufactured perception. I realized then: none of us knows anything for certain – we’re all just mimicking what we’ve been programmed to believe is authoritative knowledge.

The challenge isn’t just seeing through any single deception – it’s understanding how these systems work together in complex, non-linear ways. When we fixate on individual threads, we miss the larger pattern. Like pulling a thread on a sweater and watching it unravel, eventually you realize there was no sweater in the first place – just an intricately woven illusion. Just as a hologram contains the whole image in each fragment, every piece of this system reflects the larger blueprint for reality construction.

Consider the $34 million to Politico – this isn’t just a funding stream, but a holographic reveal of the entire system. It’s not merely that Politico received money; it’s that this single transaction contains the entire blueprint of perception management. The payment itself is a microcosm: struggling media outlet, government funding, narrative control – each element reflects the whole. This recursive system protects itself through layers of self-validation. When critics point out media bias, fact-checkers funded by the same system declare it ‘debunked.’ When researchers question official accounts, journals funded by the same interests reject their work. Even the language of resistance – ‘speaking truth to power,’ ‘fighting disinformation,’ ‘protecting democracy’ – has been co-opted and weaponized by the very system it was meant to challenge.

The Covid story epitomizes this systemic manipulation. What began as a public health crisis transformed into a global experiment in narrative control – demonstrating how rapidly populations could be reshaped through coordinated messaging, institutional authority, and weaponized fear. The pandemic wasn’t just about a virus; it was a proof of concept for how comprehensively human cognition could be engineered – a single node revealing the true scope and ambition of discourse manipulation.

Think about the cycle: American taxpayers unknowingly funded the crisis itself – then paid again to be deceived about it. They paid for the development of gain-of-function research, then paid again for the messaging that would convince them to accept masks, lockdowns, and experimental interventions. The system is so confident in its psychological control that it doesn’t even bother hiding the evidence anymore.

As I’ve documented in my Engineering Reality series, this framework for consciousness management runs far deeper than most can imagine. USAID’s revelations aren’t isolated incidents – they’re glimpses into a vast system of social design that has been in operation for decades. When the same agency funding your fact-checkers is openly paying for ‘social deception,’ when your trusted news sources are receiving direct payments for ‘social architecture,’ the very framework of what we consider ‘real’ begins to crumble.

We’re not just watching events unfold – we’re watching reactions to artificial events, then reactions to those reactions, creating an infinite regression of derivative meaning. People form passionate positions about issues that were constructed, then others define themselves in opposition to those positions. Each layer of reaction fuels the next phase of steered consensus. What we’re witnessing isn’t just the spread of manufactured realities, but the architecture of cultural and geopolitical trends themselves. Artificial trends spawn authentic reactions, which generate counter-reactions, until we’ve built entire societies responding to carefully orchestrated theater. The social engineers aren’t just steering individual beliefs – they’re reshaping the very foundations of how humans make sense of the world.

These revelations are just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone paying attention to the depth and depravity of the corruption knows that this is only the beginning. As more information emerges, the illusion of neutrality, of benevolence, of institutions acting in the public interest, will crumble. No one who truly engages with this information is walking away with renewed faith in the system. The shift is only happening in one direction – some faster than others, but none in reverse. The real question is: what happens when a critical mass reaches the point where their foundational understanding of the world collapses? When they realize that the records shaping their perception were never organic, but manufactured? Some will refuse to look, choosing comfort over confrontation. But for those willing to face it, this is not just about corruption – it’s about the very nature of the reality they thought they inhabited.

The implications are staggering not just for individual awareness, but for our very ability to function as a republic. How can citizens make informed decisions when reality itself has been splintered into competing manufactured tales? When people discover that their most deeply held beliefs were shaped, that their passionate causes were scripted, that even their cultural interests and tastes were curated, that their opposition to certain systems was anticipated and designed – what remains of authentic human experience?

What’s coming will force a choice: either retreat into comfortable denial, dismissing mounting evidence as “right-wing conspiracy theories,” or face the shattering realization that the world we thought we inhabited never actually existed. My research over the past few years points to far more nefarious activities yet to be revealed – operations so heinous that many will simply refuse to process them.

As I wrote about in “The Second Matrix,” there’s always the risk of falling into another layer of controlled awakening. But the greater risk lies in thinking too small, in anchoring ourselves to any single thread of understanding. The USAID revelations aren’t just about exposing one agency’s role in shaping reality – they’re about recognizing how our very thought patterns have been colonized by recursive layers of artificial reality.

This is the true crisis of our time: not just the manipulation of reality, but the fragmentation of human consciousness itself. When people grasp that their beliefs, causes, and even their resistance were shaped within this system, they are forced to confront the deeper question: What does it mean to reclaim one’s own mind?

But here’s what they don’t want you to realize: seeing through these systems is profoundly liberating. When you understand how reality is constructed, you’re no longer bound by its artificial constraints. This isn’t just about exposing deception – it’s about freeing consciousness itself from manufactured limitations.

The jig may be up on USAID’s reality architecture operation. But the deeper challenge lies in reconstructing meaning in a world where the very fabric of reality has been woven from artificial threads. The choice we face isn’t just between comfortable illusion and uncomfortable truth. The old system demanded validation before belief. The new reality requires something else entirely: the ability to recognize patterns before they’re officially confirmed, to feel coherence across multiple domains, to step outside the crafted game completely. This isn’t about choosing sides in their manufactured binaries – it’s about seeing the pattern architecture itself.

What does this liberation look like in practice? It’s catching the pattern of a manufactured crisis before it’s fully deployed. It’s recognizing how seemingly unrelated events – a banking collapse, a health emergency, a social movement – are actually nodes in the same network of control. It’s understanding that true sovereignty isn’t about having all the answers, but about developing the capacity to sense the web of deception before it solidifies into apparent reality. Because the ultimate power isn’t in knowing every answer – it’s in realizing when the question itself has been designed to trap you inside the manufactured paradigm.

As we develop this pattern recognition capacity – this ability to see through algorithmic manipulation – what it means to be human is itself evolving. As these systems of ideological infrastructure crumble, our task isn’t just to preserve individual awakening but to protect and nurture the most conscious elements of humanity. The ultimate liberation isn’t just seeing through the deception – it’s maintaining our essential humanity in a world of tightly controlled perception.

As these systems of reality sculpting crumble, we have an unprecedented opportunity to rediscover what’s real – not through their manufactured frameworks, but through our own direct experience of truth. What’s authentic isn’t always what’s organic – in a mediated world, authenticity means conscious choice rather than unconscious reaction. It means understanding how our minds are shaped while maintaining our capacity for genuine connection, creative expression, and direct experience. The most human elements – love, creativity, intuition, genuine discovery – become more precious precisely because they defy algorithmic control. These are the last frontiers of human freedom—the unpredictable, unquantifiable forces that cannot be reduced to data points or behavioral models. 

The ultimate battle isn’t just for truth – it’s for the human spirit itself. A system that can engineer perception can engineer submission. But there’s a beautiful irony here: the very act of recognizing these systems of reality construction is itself an expression of authentic consciousness – a choice that proves they haven’t conquered human perception completely. Free will cannot be engineered precisely because the capacity to see through engineered reality remains ours. In the end, their greatest fear isn’t that we’ll reject their manufactured world – it’s that we’ll remember how to see beyond it.

Republished from the author’s Substack

The White House on Tuesday declared that Iran has been “incredibly” weakened as a result of the Pentagon operation against Yemen’s Houthis which was renewed on March 15 by President Trump and his national security cabinet.

Immense controversy has ensued in the wake of ‘Signalgate’ which involved discussions of war planning with Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg privy to the group chat conversation. 

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said there’s has been over 200 strikes on targets in Yemen. It has long been a US talking point going back to 2015 that the Houthis (Ansarallah movement) has been supplied by the Iranians. Shipments of Iranian weaponry has over the years been intercepted by US naval ships in Gulf area waters.

The group has fired at least eight ballistic missiles on Israel over the past week, but the US is leading the way in anti-Houthi operations.

“There have now been more than 200 successful strikes,” Leavitt said. “Iran is incredibly weakened as a result. They’ve taken out Houthi leaders, critical members who have been launching strikes on naval ships and commercial vessels. This operation will not stop until the freedom of navigation in this region is restored.”

The Houthis haven’t confirmed the deaths of any leaders, nor has the US side acknowledged the repeat attacks on US warships or the carrier USS Truman. 

According to some of the latest:

According to a brief statement broadcast by the Houthi-run al-Masirah TV, five airstrikes at dawn targeted the Jarban area in the Sanhan district southeast of Sanaa, while two others hit the Bani Matar district west of the capital.

The statement further indicated that Saada, a stronghold of the group, was subjected to 15 U.S. airstrikes overnight, but did not disclose specific locations targeted.

Israeli media and The Associated Press have meanwhile said that these last two weeks of strikes on Yemen have been far more devasting than similar aerial assaults under Biden.

According to a report featured in center-left Times of Israel:

A new American airstrike campaign against Yemen’s Houthi rebels appears more intense and more extensive, as the US moves from solely targeting launch sites to firing at ranking personnel as well as dropping bombs in city neighborhoods, an Associated Press review of the operation shows.

The pattern under US President Donald Trump reflects a departure from the Biden administration, which limited its strikes as Arab allies tried to reach a separate peace with the group. It comes after the Iran-backed Houthis threatened to resume attacking “any Israeli vessel” over the country’s refusal to allow aid into the Gaza Strip.

Both sides appear content to keep mum on the extent of ‘success’ of the back-and-forth attacks. But the consensus among war analysts is that if the Houthi threat to Red Sea shipping is to be rooted out, it will take a long, sustained campaign – which we should note has not had formal war authorization from Congress.

“Folks that say, ‘We’ll go in there and take out everyone with the last name Houthi and we’ll win.’ The Houthi leadership has been taken out in history in the past, and they are resilient,” said retired US Navy Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, per AFP. “They came back and they grew stronger. So this isn’t something that is a one-and-done.”

.@PressSec: “These Houthi strikes have been incredibly successful. Last time I was at this podium, there were more than 100 successful strikes. There have now been over 200 successful strikes — Iran is incredibly weakened as a result of these attacks.” pic.twitter.com/FEPyvFH5c8

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 1, 2025

As for Iran, it costs little for it to wage proxy war against US Navy ships positioned in the region. In a sense, the Pentagon is in the Iranians’ backyard. Already, the Houthis have claimed to have downed the 16th US MQ-9 Reaper drone as of Tuesday, which hasn’t been acknowledged as yet by the Pentagon. The controversy over the scope of US actions will likely only grow among the American populace.

By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com

Arctic LNG 2, the processing and export facility that was billed as Russia’s flagship LNG project, has gradually resumed gas processing after months of hiatus, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing industry sources and satellite images.

Arctic LNG 2 has been under U.S. and EU sanctions since last year, and the project hasn’t been able to sell any cargo because of the sanctions.

The first production train at the plant was shut in early October over the project developers’ inability to secure buyers amid the Western sanctions on Arctic LNG 2, according to one of Reuters’ sources.

The plant continues has now slowly resumed gas processing and keeps it at low rates as Russia expects what the Trump Administration would do with the sanctions.

Russian LNG developer and exporter Novatek, the majority owner of Arctic LNG 2, is looking to rebuild relations with the U.S. with the help of lobbyists, sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters in December.

Hit heavily by sanctions, Arctic LNG 2 was put on ice last year and Novatek has struggled to sell any cargo to a buyer.

Located in the Gydan Peninsula, Arctic LNG 2 was considered key to Russia’s efforts to boost its global LNG market share from 8% to 20% by 2030-2035.

But the project has come under intensifying sanctions from the United States, which have put off any buyers that were previously considering buying cargoes from Arctic LNG 2.

The project has seen months of delays after the initial U.S. sanctions in November 2023 upended the company’s plans for production start-up and export timelines.

In August 2024, the U.S. State Department intensified efforts to derail Arctic LNG 2 exports by targeting companies involved in the development of the project and vessels found to have loaded LNG from the facility.

The U.S. designated multiple companies related to Arctic LNG 2 to further disrupt the project’s ability to produce and export LNG, as well as the project’s ability to procure critical LNG carriers.

(Update 2210ET): According to multiple outlets, Democrat-endorsed Susan Crawford has won the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, beating Republican-endorsed Brad Schimel in the most expensive judicial election in US history.

The campaigns and their supporters spent more than $81 million, and drew the involvement of Elon Musk, Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders, and other political figures.

Crawford’s win means that liberals will retain a 4-3 majority in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

*  *  *

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Today, the voters of Wisconsin go to the polls in what may be the single most expensive and important judicial race in modern history. 

Both parties are spending millions with the balance of the state Supreme Court in the balance. 

If liberal Susan Crawford wins, the expectation is that she will vote with the Democratic majority to approve a gerrymandering of congressional districts to guarantee the loss of two Republicans and possibly flip control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats.

The raw political pitch in the election is disturbing. It assumes that both candidates will blindly support the objectives of their respective parties. The real reason to cast a vote today should be on judicial ideology. Ironically, the United States Supreme Court made that plain in an important Wisconsin case argued just the day before the state election.

The case is Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission.

In the decision below, the Democratic-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Catholic Charities could not benefit from a religious exemption to the state’s unemployment tax because its charitable work was not sufficiently religious.

Catholic Charities is one of the world’s oldest and most respected charities. However, the church believes that it has a duty to help people of every faith who are in need. Thus, the church does not proselytize in offering such aid and services.

A state labor commission ruled that the charity’s lack of such religious expression and prayer makes it secular, even if it has religious motivations.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed and ruled that the charity is not operated primarily for religious purposes because it does not “attempt to imbue” beneficiaries “with the Catholic faith nor supply any religious materials to program participants or employees.” In other words, the fact that Catholic Charities helps everyone and does not proselytize worked against it. The Wisconsin Supreme Court essentially argued that it needs to pray more to offer such charity as a church.

It is a disturbing ruling that would allow the state to choose between religions in weighing their relative manifestations of faith.

Even liberal justices cried foul over the standard.

Justice Elena Kagan suggested it was “pretty fundamental that we don’t treat some religions better than others. And we certainly don’t do it based on the content of the religious doctrine that those religions preach.”

Kagan noted, “Some religions proselytize. Other religions don’t. Why are we treating some religions better than others based on that element of religious doctrine?” 

She noted that the standard “basically puts the state on the side of some religions with some doctrine versus other religions with a different doctrine.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested that the Wisconsin Supreme Court was asking the wrong questions about what it means to be an organization “operated primarily for religious purposes.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch virtually mocked the standard of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, asking if Catholic Charities have to require the people receiving their services to “repent.” He then asked: “is mandatory church attendance versus optional church attendance, that’s the line?”

Gorsuch then delivered the haymaker:   

“Isn’t it a fundamental premise of our First Amendment that the state shouldn’t be picking and choosing between religions, between certain evangelical sects, and Judaism and Catholicism on the other, for example?”

The case shows that there are far more important issues dividing these candidates on judicial philosophy that should drive this election. I am not a fan of state elected judges and justices precisely because of the raw political element to these contests. 

The Catholic Charities case shows that the Wisconsin Supreme Court is divided along more than just a party line.

*  *  *

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Leaders of a trucking advocacy group are sounding the alarm, claiming that the American Trucking Association (ATA) advised the federal government during the Biden-Harris administration to issue hundreds of thousands of non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) to non-citizens—many of whom reportedly cannot read or write English. Many of these unvetted migrants were funneled into the long-haul trucking sector, which poses national security and public safety risks.

Harvey Beech, a co-founder of American Truckers United (ATU), addressed lawmakers in Arkansas earlier on Monday, warning about migrant truck drivers on the state’s highways—and nationwide. 

ATU commented on Beech’s address to Arkansas lawmakers, stating:

Arkansas Trucking Association’s full-on backing of the Biden-Harris Trucking Action Plan is the REAL reason we’re seeing a flood of non-citizen truck drivers on Arkansas highways! He’s not holding back—this move has unleashed chaos, and HB1745? It’s doing NOTHING to pump the brakes! Are we just handing over our roadways to Non-Citizens? Sound off below and spread this like wildfire—America needs to know

🚨BREAKING – A founder of American Truckers United (ATU) just unleashed a jaw-dropping truth: The Arkansas Trucking Association’s full-on backing of the Biden-Harris Trucking Action Plan is the REAL reason we’re seeing a flood of non-citizen truck drivers on Arkansas highways!… pic.twitter.com/eOQe2mikFk

— American Truckers (@atutruckers) April 1, 2025

The National Transportation Research Board recently ranked Arkansas fourth for fatalities involving large trucks. Earlier this month in Texas, a migrant truck driver killed five people and injured 12 others.

Advocacy Group Calls For US Probe On Non-English Speaking Migrant Truck Drivers After Deadly Austin Crash https://t.co/453papF7Pg

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 19, 2025

This is shocking! 

Non-Citizen Trucker Kills Colorado’s Scott Miller. Widow Deann Demands Immigration & Trucking Overhaul! pic.twitter.com/QtVZy6ApDZ

— American Truckers (@atutruckers) April 1, 2025

ATU co-founder Beech and another co-founder, Shannon Everett, provided more color about their fight at the Arkansas State Capitol Building to get non-domiciled CDLs off America’s highways.

Update on Arkansas Trucking Battle pic.twitter.com/7qCgzQpzYx

— American Truckers (@atutruckers) March 31, 2025

ATU Everett also warned Arkansas lawmakers how non-English speaking migrants pose a significant danger to all Americans. 

An ATU representative exposed how the Arkansas Trucking Association’s bill claims to crack down on foreign and non-domicile CDLs—but its really a smokescreen to protect the loopholes letting them flood our roads. This is a betrayal of American Truckers! Watch and decide for… pic.twitter.com/2Y1YVJ0RUy

— American Truckers (@atutruckers) April 1, 2025

Flooding the nation with non-English-speaking migrants holding non-domiciled CDLs and operating 80,000-pound semi-trucks poses a serious national security and public safety risk.v

Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

When you go to a gun store to buy a new gun, you can expect a few things to happen.  First, some paperwork.  Second, you can expect to have to pass a background check before leaving with your gun.  And third, you can expect that the gun store will keep a record of your purchase for as long as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) requires.  After all, that is how the government traces crime guns back to their original purchasers.

But what you might not expect is an FBI agent receiving a ping that you – yes, you – just successfully bought a gun.  And you might be surprised to learn that this agent has been receiving notifications of your purchases for months – or years.

Of course, such a surveillance scheme would be flatly unconstitutional – not to mention a violation of several safeguards already codified in federal law.  Yet slowly but surely, the government has been building a record of the private collections of thousands of American citizens, even though federal law expressly prohibits that “any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions” be established.

Of course, even though they are being monitored, these victims remain law-abiding, meaning the government has no probable cause to justify seeking a warrant authorizing such a search in the first place.

Now, Gun Owners of America has discovered that the FBI has been using its Second Amendment surveillance program not only to enforce federal law, but also to help California target owners of newly banned “assault weapons.”

FBI’s NICS Monitoring Scheme

When news first broke of the FBI and ATF’s joint “NICS Monitoring” surveillance scheme, the public was shocked.  As journalist John Crump reported in April of 2021, “monitoring of NICS isn’t for prohibited people,” but rather those who are eligible to purchase firearms but who law enforcement agents nevertheless suspect might commit a crime.

GOA learned that targets of NICS Monitoring – which exploits records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (“NICS”) before they are deleted within 24 hours – never receive notice that their firearm transactions are being monitored.  Thus, there is no way to challenge the FBI’s surveillance.

In fact, in order to enroll a target for NICS Monitoring, an agent only needs to complete an internal request form. At no point does an agent seeking NICS Monitoring have to convince a judge (or anyone other than himself, really) that this surveillance comports with the Fourth Amendment.  Entirely usurpingly, then, the FBI’s abuse of NICS Monitoring is rampant.

Rampant Abuse of NICS Monitoring

After the NICS Monitoring scandal went public, GOA filed Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) requests with the FBI and ATF seeking further records.  Naturally these agencies, the program’s biggest abusers, were less than forthcoming with evidence of their clandestine activities, and GOA ultimately had to file suit to compel production of documents.

The subsequent document productions were illuminating.  They revealed a pattern of surveillance abuse so pervasive that federal agents could obtain NICS Monitoring based on anonymous tips.

As GOA reviewed more documents and public scrutiny increased, more and more abuses came to light.  For example, in one case an ATF agent requested NICS Monitoring of a man who had purchased a shotgun during the George Floyd riots, on the theory that he “may use a gun for rioting.” 

In another case, an ATF agent requested NICS Monitoring of a man whose “reported wage earnings” did not “appear to supply the financial means to afford” firearms.  And in another case, ATF had a man monitored who merely “had a ‘habit’ of purchasing new guns, tinkering with them, losing interest, and subsequently selling them.”

Thus, it would seem that self-defense, having a savings account, and a tinkering hobby – although perfectly lawful activities – are justification to have one’s gun purchases surveilled indefinitely.

NICS Monitoring Is Unconstitutional and Unlawful

The FBI’s surveillance scheme violates the Second and Fourth Amendment rights of gun owners. 

The Founders never sanctioned governmental monitoring of Americans’ gun purchases.  Moreover, the Founders specifically required that all searches be reasonable, almost always meaning that they are based on warrants issued upon a finding of probable cause.  The FBI’s NICS Monitoring program respects neither right.

NICS Monitoring also violates a number of provisions of federal law.  In anticipation that the NICS system would be abused to track gun owners, Congress has mandated that the FBI destroy all NICS records of “approved” firearm transactions within 24 hours. 

The FBI’s copying and pasting of certain records out of the NICS system before they can be deleted clearly contravenes the 24-hour destruction requirement.

NICS Monitoring also violates the federal prohibition on the creation of registries of gun owners – a prohibition so important that Congress codified it twice: once generally, and once specifically with respect to NICS.

FBI Now Aiding State Gun Control Efforts

If the NICS Monitoring program’s history thus far was not troubling enough, GOA has made a shocking new discovery – that, since at least 2023, the FBI has been surveilling gun owners on behalf of anti-gun states.  And to make matters worse, the FBI’s surveillance involves firearm sales that are perfectly legal under federal law.

In one FBI NICS Monitoring submission, an FBI Special Agent from the agency’s Chicago field office cited the following suspected violations of California law to justify a sixth-month monitoring period:

“MFG/SELL/TRANS/ETC ASSAULT WPN (30600(A) PC), STATE OFFENSE CODE 52509, FELONY 2; ILL POSS ANY ASSAULT WEAPON (30605(A) PC), STATE OFFENSE CODE 52510. FELONY.”

Just how a federal background check approval would constitute evidence of unlawful state possession of an “assault weapon” within California, the agent did not say.  Nor did the agent seem to recognize that it is entirely possible to possess a firearm (or even have a residence) in a neighboring state and lawfully purchase and possess an “assault weapon” there without committing a California crime.

And regardless of California law, it is entirely unclear how it furthers the FBI’s mission to prosecute violent crime by monitoring gun purchases that are completely legal under federal law.

Tellingly, the FBI refused to release further details of its investigation into the California gun owner, asserting a so-called “privacy Glomar” as to those details.  In other words, the FBI ridiculously refuses to acknowledge the existence of redacted information that it has already produced.

Thus, we are left with more questions than answers:

• What is the FBI doing worrying about violations of California’s ban of pejoratively labeled “assault weapons”? 
• Is the enforcement of state gun control laws really an FBI priority, such that Second and Fourth Amendment rights are thrown by the wayside?

We hope FBI Director Kash Patel can answer these questions and dismantle this unlawful and unconstitutional program once and for all.

Authored by Terri Wu & Olivia Li via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Tensions have been simmering between the United States and communist China as the two countries escalate tariffs on each other’s imports. Meanwhile, Beijing’s rhetoric has become increasingly confrontational.

In early March, the Chinese Embassy in Washington shared a social media post from its Foreign Ministry, repeating its message: “If war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.”

President Donald Trump has warned that, while the United States does not seek war with China, it is “very well-equipped to handle it.”

Trump has imposed an additional 20 percent tariff on all goods made in China, citing a national emergency on the continued trafficking of fentanyl—a deadly opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine—into the United States.

To this day, China remains the primary source of fentanyl precursors, which are shipped to Mexico, where they’re manufactured into the illicit drug. It is then smuggled into the United States mainly via the southern border.

In response to Trump’s added tariff, Beijing imposed an additional 15 percent tariff on U.S. coal and natural gas and an extra 10 percent on agricultural equipment and pickup trucks.

The communist regime has also called the fentanyl epidemic the United States’ “own problem“ and has cast the U.S. tariffs as ”blackmail.”

Yuan Hongbing, a former law professor at Peking University in China who now lives in Australia, said the American opioid epidemic is far from the self-inflicted wound the CCP has suggested it is.

The Chinese regime has played a significant role in America’s fentanyl crisis, and blaming the United States for it has long been Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping’s strategy, Yuan told NTD, Epoch Times’ sister media outlet, in a recent episode of the Chinese-language program “Pinnacle View.”

Yuan, who has insider access to senior CCP leaders, said Xi has consistently given internal directives during both Trump’s first and second terms that Beijing must maintain the narrative that the drug crises in both Europe and the United States are not linked to China.

Yuan said the regime has also been directed by Xi to assert that China makes the chemical precursors legally, and that if they are converted into deadly drugs and smuggled into the United States or Europe, it is not China’s responsibility.

The China expert further stated that fentanyl is at the core of Xi’s bid to “take revenge” on the West. He said Xi blames the West for subjecting China to a century of humiliation as a result of the Opium Wars in the mid-19th century. During that time, China had to sign a series of unequal treaties that ceded Chinese territory and opened Chinese ports to foreign control.

“It is precisely due to Xi’s directives that we are now seeing a dramatic increase in both the production of fentanyl precursors in China and the export of these chemicals, fueling the ongoing fentanyl crisis in the United States,” Yuan said.

Fentanyl overdose deaths have become a national crisis, taking more than 200 American lives per day, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. In 2023 alone, about 75,000 Americans died from fentanyl overdose, a staggering 23-fold increase from 10 years ago.

Today, accidental drug overdoses are the leading cause of death among Americans aged 18 to 45. On a more positive note, the number of opioid-related overdose deaths decreased by more than 20 percent in 2024, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The fentanyl crisis has become a key concern among American voters and has become one of the driving forces behind the dynamics of U.S.–China relations, said China expert Alexander Liao.

He said relations between Beijing and Washington have fundamentally changed. During the Biden administration, the two countries went through a diplomatic “ice age,” when senior-level official communication froze for approximately 10 months in 2022 and 2023. However, Liao believes the confrontation has now escalated to a new level.

“Whether it’s trade or other aspects, the United States and China have basically turned against each other,” Liao told The Epoch Times.

“Little noise but fierce action” is how he categorizes the current state between Beijing and Washington, in contrast to the “big arguments and little action” going on between the United States and Europe.

“The politics play differently between enemies and friends,” he said.

US Makes Perfect Enemy for Chinese Regime

Over the past decade, China saw significant economic growth. Its nominal GDP is now over three-quarters of that of the United States, according to data from the World Bank. When measured by purchasing power, China’s economy surpassed that of the United States in 2016.

Xi rose in the CCP ranks a few years before that and in 2013 took over its leadership.

According to Yuan, Xi’s communist nature drove him to immediately cash in on China’s economic strength to establish a foreign policy program, the Belt and Road Initiative, aimed at expanding communist totalitarianism around the world.

Under the guise of infrastructure development, the $1 trillion geopolitical platform snatches up other countries’ natural resources, including critical minerals for computer chip production, and expands its use of their ports for its own civil and military purposes.

Read the rest here…

Indian oil refiners have started looking for alternative supplies of crude after President Trump threatened secondary sanctions on Russian energy exports if Moscow refuses to sign a ceasefire deal for the Ukraine.

Bloomberg reported that companies such as Bharat Petroleum Corp. and Hindustan Petroleum Corp. were looking for oil cargoes from the Middle East, the North Sea, and the Mediterranean for May delivery in anticipation of tariff action.

India has emerged as one of the biggest buyers of Russian crude since the start of the war in Ukraine, with grades including Urals accounting for almost 40% of the nation’s imports last year. Refiners have enjoyed elevated profits due to the cheaper supplies, although that advantage has waned in recent months. China has also purchased bigger volumes since the invasion.

President Trump threatened a 25% tariff on all Russian oil, saying “If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault — which it might not be — but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” in an interview for NBC.

“That would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States. There will be a 25% tariff on all oil, a 25- to 50-point tariff on all oil,” Trump elaborated.

The mechanism would be the same as the one Trump applied to Venezuela, slapping a 25% tariff on all imports from countries that continue buying crude from the South American nation.

Since the US is India’s top trading partner, under a scenario of “secondary tariffs” for buyers of Russian oil, it’s likely that the South Asian nation would look for alternative supplies, said Warren Patterson, the head of commodities strategy for ING Groep NV in Singapore.

“Traditional sanctions have created enough uncertainty,” he said. “The idea of secondary tariffs only intensifies this uncertainty, given that it is a new tool. Buyers need to decide whether the advantages of picking up discounted crude outweigh the potential hit on its economy from additional tariffs.”

“The big question is, will these repeated shocks end up structurally reducing Indian appetite for Russian crude? I have my doubts, as long as the economics works,” said Vandana Hari, founder of Vanda Insights in Singapore. “It’s a bluff, a bargaining ploy on the part of Trump. But refiners need to prepare, they can’t rely on hunches, no matter how bizarre and unlikely a supply threat.”

Such a tariff would be a considerable problem for India, whose dependence on imported crude hit an all-time high in the latest fiscal year. India imported 88.2% of the crude it consumed in the April 2024-February 2025 period, according to oil ministry data released at the end of last month. This is up from 87.7% for the previous fiscal year.

Due to this dependence, India is particularly price-sensitive, which is why it stepped up its purchases of Russian oil following the barrage of Western sanctions directed at Russia’s energy industry. Russia is currently India’s biggest single oil supplier.