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Had Enough?

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Had Enough?

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“Minnesota Democrats hate ICE because they’re deporting their voters.”

– Gunther Eagleman on “X”

Isn’t it obvious by now that the seditious mischief roiling Minneapolis is some kind of a demonstration project for a China-backed overthrow of the whole country? This is not hard. And, apparently, the Democratic Party is either a willing accomplice or a hostage in thrall to its captor — like Patty Hearst, the heiress kidnapped and bamboozled by psychotic Maoist maniacs who styled themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, until she was happily making bombs and robbing banks with them (and ended up in prison).

Neville Roy Singham

It is well understood that these ICE-Out riots are organized and funded by a network created by one Neville Roy Singham (American, b. 1954), now based in Shanghai. Singham funds the Party for Socialism and Liberation, The Peoples’ Forum, Code Pink, the United Community Fund and a web of other money laundries that supply all the logistics for Lefty-left mobs going back to the George Floyd / BLM operations of 2020 and including the pro-Palestinian uproars of 2024.

Singham’s father, Archibald, was a Sri Lankan poly-sci prof at Brooklyn College, specializing in Third World revolution; his mother was a Cuban-born Marxist. Singham founded a software development company called Thoughtworks in 1993, and sold it to a London-based private equity firm, Apax, for $785-million in 2017, after which he devoted himself to the cause of “dismantling capitalism,” and destroying the USA. If ever there was a James Bond villain come to life, it’s Neville Roy Singham.

And then you have his perfect foil, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who visited China at least thirty times in his previous career as a teacher, his travel often funded by the CCP. What was he up to there? I think we’re going to find out. We’re also going to find out what he has been up to in the state he supposedly runs, especially vis-à-vis the developing mega-scandal of billions creamed off taxpayers through the Somali fake social services fraud network. It’s already known that some of that money found its way into Democratic Party coffers. How much of it landed in the bank accounts of Minnesota politicians and administrative officials? We’ll find out about that, too.

ICE-Watch Signal Chat boss Amanda Noelle Koehler with her boss, Gov. Tim Walz

The communication system for the Minneapolis riots is an encrypted Signal Chat network (“MN ICE-Watch”) run by Tim Walz aide and campaign strategist Amanda Noelle Koehler. That’s how they organize rapid-response actions against ICE and broader mobilization for key propaganda opportunities like the recent shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan acts as an admin for the MN ICE-Watch Signal group. Kind of makes you wonder if Tim Walz himself is involved in orchestrating the chaos. Another thing we’ll probably find out. Are these officials criminally liable in the deaths of Good and Pretti? In any case, it’s all a grand distraction from the massive Somali fraud scandal that broke out over Walz this month like a case of scabies.

The overall Singham / CCP plan is to get rid of Donald Trump, elect a Democratic Party Congress, and turn the USA into CCP-inflected clone state. The Dems have already made their strategy clear: bring in X-million illegal aliens (done) and set them up as voters; admit DC and Puerto Rico as new states to secure the Senate; stuff the Supreme Court with extra Lefty-left justices, and set about “redistributing” the nation’s wealth from the productive class to their rainbow coalition of the oppressed, marginalized, non-white, and mentally-ill. I’m sorry if this sounds like the ridiculous plot of a James Bond movie. Oscar Wilde was onto something when he observed that life imitates art.

Now, the question is: what are we going to do about all this — we who care about preserving an American republic based on economic liberty? And perhaps more to the point: how to put down the current engineered chaos in Minnesota ASAP, in a way that serves notice we will not allow our country to be overthrown by any Marxist-Jacobin rabble. Many are calling for President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.

The Singham / CCP / Democratic Party axis would like nothing better, of course, because they could then slap the “tyrant” label on Mr. Trump and set him up for impeachment in 2027, if they can take the midterm election.

And they’ll do exactly that if Senate Majority Leader John Thune keeps obstructing passage of the SAVE (election reform) Act.

Is there a path short of the Insurrection Act to quell the Minneapolis mobs?

How about this: since the Minneapolis Police have been ordered to stand down by Mayor Jacob Frey. . . why not deputize the officers as federal marshals and put them under the direct authority of the US DOJ? Then arrest as many unruly mob actors as possible, just get them off the streets and make the point that there are consequences. Meanwhile, seize the assets of all the organizations that are funding the chaos. No more coffee and donuts. No more Signal Chat dispatch system. No more subsidized motel stays. No more riot paychecks. All support gone.

Perhaps that’s a start. Expect to see some resolute action this week against the parties involved in the Minneapolis attacks on Immigration Enforcement agents.

And understand that the forensic litigation over Alex Pretti’s foolish death is just an obsessive-compulsive public ritual that is fooling nobody with half a brain.

Get in law enforcements’ faces with a gun and you’ve signed your own death warrant. What part of that is a mystery?

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/26/2026 – 16:20

Abandon Big Tech: Ethereum Founder Buterin Calls 2026 The Year To Reclaim Self-Sovereign Computing

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Abandon Big Tech: Ethereum Founder Buterin Calls 2026 The Year To Reclaim Self-Sovereign Computing

Authored by Christina Comben via CoinTelegraph.com,

Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin declared 2026 to be the “year we take back lost ground in computing self-sovereignty,” starting with his own devices. 

In a Friday post on X, he laid out the software changes he has made to reduce reliance on data-hungry, centralized platforms.

The “two major changes” to the software he used in 2025 were switching “almost fully” to Fileverse, an open-source, decentralized document platform — a kind of privacy-preserving Google Docs — and switching “decisively” to Signal as his primary messaging app.

Signal uses end-to-end encryption by default for all one-to-one and group chats, and stores minimal metadata, meaning only limited information, such as when an account was created or the last date it connected to the service.

Telegram, in contrast, only offers end-to-end encryption in optional “secret chats” and otherwise keeps messages and metadata on its own servers, a model that has drawn scrutiny as law enforcement data requests have increased in countries like France.

Becoming more self-sovereign. Source: Vitalik Buterin

Local AI and self-hosted tools

In 2026, Buterin has moved from Google Maps to OpenStreetMap via OrganicMaps and from Gmail to Proton Mail, while prioritizing decentralized social media.

Buterin also discussed his experiments with locally hosting large language models, arguing that sending all data to third-party services is “unnecessary” when users can increasingly run artificial intelligence tools on their own hardware. 

He said better user interfaces, integrations and efficiency are still needed to make local models a seamless default, but added that there has already been “huge progress” compared with a year ago. 

Privacy advocates see broader shift

His post echoes points made by privacy advocate and NBTV founder Naomi Brockwell, who described running models locally as the most private way to use AI without sending prompts or documents to external servers.

How to use AI privately. Source: Naomi Brockwell

Brockwell has spent years teaching privacy-enhancing behavior to mainstream audiences, arguing that privacy is about autonomy rather than secrecy and encouraging the use of tools like Bitcoin, encrypted messengers and self-hosted services to reduce government and corporate surveillance power.

Buterin’s post also comes amid renewed debate over how much access governments and platforms should have to users’ private communications and metadata.

The European Union’s controversial Chat Control proposal, for example, originally included pre‑encryption scanning of messages to detect abusive material, and prompted warnings from civil liberties groups and technologists that client‑side scanning could undermine trust in encrypted apps.

Progressively swapping out everyday apps for encrypted, open-source and local alternatives is, according to Buterin and other privacy advocates, one way for users to start reclaiming control over their data flows.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/26/2026 – 15:25

FBI Launches ‘Signal-Gate’ Investigation: Patel

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FBI Launches ‘Signal-Gate’ Investigation: Patel

Update (1520ET):

“Signal-Gate” continues to erupt out of Minneapolis, as the organizational structure or command-and-control nodes of left-wing activists operating within encrypted messaging apps were infiltrated and exposed on Sunday, revealing that on-the-ground pressure campaigns against federal agents were highly coordinated and, according to some experts, exhibit characteristics of a “low-level insurgency.”

“We’re investigating. As soon as Higby put that post out, I opened an investigation on it. If that leads to a break in the federal statute or a violation of some law, then we are going to arrest people. They should be worried. If they broke the law, you should be worried,” FBI Director Kash Patel told Benny Johnson this afternoon.

Patel is referring to citizen journalist Cam Higby’s bombshell report on infiltrated Signal chats linked to left-wing groups in Minneapolis that are acting as a shadow revolutionary force against the federal government’s deportation operations targeting criminal illegal aliens.

What is especially concerning is that the federal government was unable to identify the command-and-control communication structures behind these pressure campaigns in the sanctuary city, while citizen journalists were the ones who ultimately uncovered the bombshell.

*   *   *  

What appears to be unfolding in Minneapolis, particularly following the emergence of “Signal-Gate” on Sunday via citizen journalists on X, extends well beyond any conventional protest activity. The evidence so far suggests coordinated pressure campaigns against federal agents exhibiting characteristics of a low-level insurgency, with direction, tasking, and information flow routed through encrypted messaging apps, implying an organized command-and-control structure functioning as a shadow revolutionary force.

What’s more, former Tim Walz campaign adviser Amanda Koehler, as well as Minneapolis City Council Member Aurin Chhowdhry, have allegedly been identified as a key figures in the now-leaked Signal group chat. 

Koehler has gone dark, deleting social media accounts and making her website private.

The group even had a ‘Signal Chat Guide’ advising anti-ICE protesters:

The Signal chat was exposed by journalist Cam Higby, who published a bombshell report on Sunday after infiltrating multiple groups across Minneapolis with the stated aim of tracking federal agents and impeding, assaulting, or obstructing their operations. The report sparked a wildfire across X overnight.

Higby’s reporting unleashed a rapid mobilization of citizen journalists, including accounts such as 0HOUR1, who began mapping what appears to be an organized command-and-control network of left-wing activists behind the groups.

Higby suggested that left-wing activist networks are leveraging local residents as force multipliers in coordinated pressure campaigns against federal agents, forming pressure campaigns that one military analyst characterized as “What’s unfolding in Minneapolis right now isn’t ‘protest.” It’s low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook.”

NGO expert Asra Q. Nomani at Fox News reported late Sunday:

The encrypted Signal messages obtained by Fox News Digital in real time show that anti-ICE “rapid responders” were actively tracking, broadcasting and summoning “backup” around federal agents outside Glam Doll Donuts on Nicollet Avenue, where the shooting happened. Local “rapid responders” made at least 26 entries into a database called “MN ICE Plates” in the critical hours before and after the killing, documenting the license plate numbers and details of alleged ICE vehicles they claimed to see around Nicollet Avenue.

This highly organized Signal group even managed to track journalist James O’Keefe, as well as quickly obtain his cellphone number, and threatened the journalist with violence…

Besides tracking and deploying anti-ICE pressure campaigns against federal agents like guerrilla-style warfare tactics through the messaging app, the group was also building a list of federal vehicle license plates stored in a database, 0HOUR1 revealed this on Sunday.

What was a Reuters reporter doing in the group?

By late Sunday afternoon, after Higby published the Signal chats on X and citizen journalists flooded the groups, exposing highly organized internal targeting plans, the revolutionaries appeared to panic.

Fleeing to Cuba? And we’ll revisit this possible reason shortly.

First, Eric Schwalm, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Green Beret who held the rank of Chief Warrant Officer 4, offered his assessment of events unfolding in Minneapolis.

Schwalm described the command-and-control dynamics operating within left-wing activist Signal groups as a form of “low-level insurgency infrastructure,” noting it appears to be created by individuals who have clearly studied and internalized the insurgency playbook.

Schwalm continued:

As a former Special Forces Warrant Officer with multiple rotations running counterinsurgency ops—both hunting insurgents and trying to separate them from sympathetic populations—I’ve seen organized resistance up close. From Anbar to Helmand, the pattern is familiar: spotters, cutouts, dead drops (or modern equivalents), disciplined comms, role specialization, and a willingness to absorb casualties while bleeding the stronger force slowly.

What’s unfolding in Minneapolis right now isn’t “protest.” It’s low-level insurgency infrastructure, built by people who’ve clearly studied the playbook.

Signal groups at 1,000-member cap per zone. Dedicated roles: mobile chasers, plate checkers logging vehicle data into shared databases, 24/7 dispatch nodes vectoring assets, SALUTE-style reporting (Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, Equipment) on suspected federal vehicles. Daily chat rotations and timed deletions to frustrate forensic recovery. Vetting processes for new joiners. Mutual aid from sympathetic locals (teachers providing cover, possible PD tip-offs on license plate lookups). Home-base coordination points. Rapid escalation from observation to physical obstruction—or worse.

This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a SF team sergeant nod in recognition. Replace “ICE agents” with “occupying coalition forces” and the structure maps almost 1:1 to early-stage urban cells we hunted in the mid-2000s.

The most sobering part? It’s domestic. Funded, trained (somewhere), and directed by people who live in the same country they’re trying to paralyze law enforcement in. When your own citizens build and operate this level of parallel intelligence and rapid-response network against federal officers—complete with doxxing, vehicle pursuits, and harassment that’s already turned lethal—you’re no longer dealing with civil disobedience. You’re facing a distributed resistance that’s learned the lessons of successful insurgencies: stay below the kinetic threshold most of the time, force over-reaction when possible, maintain popular support through narrative, and never present a single center of gravity.

I spent years training partner forces to dismantle exactly this kind of apparatus. Now pieces of it are standing up in American cities, enabled by elements of local government and civil society. That should keep every thinking American awake at night.

Not because I want escalation. But because history shows these things don’t de-escalate on their own once the infrastructure exists and the cadre believe they’re winning the information war.

We either recognize what we’re actually looking at—or we pretend it’s still just “activism” until the structures harden and spread.

Your call, America. But from where I sit, this isn’t January 2026 politics anymore. It’s phase one of something we’ve spent decades trying to keep off our own soil.

Meanwhile, they’re back at it…

Well, well, well … 

The key informational gap citizen journalists face is who exactly is providing the organizational know-how required to coordinate these operations across Minneapolis via encrypted messaging platforms. There are reports that Antifa, government officials, gang members, journalists, and others were in the group, but the structure observed is well-disciplined, scalable, and purpose-built to disrupt federal deportation operations. We’ve told readers that Minneapolis has been a testbed for revolution, with tactics likely to be deployed across sanctuary cities nationwide.

This suggests involvement by socialist or Marxist-aligned NGOs, raising another question about the origin of their training. One plausible origin is Cuba, as outlined in earlier reporting:

And this:

DataRepublican writes, “SIGNALGATE Donor List Available for Download; Politicians and Foreign Leadership Confirmed?” 

If this movement is assessed as a communist revolutionary effort, and if the seasoned special forces expert is viewing it as more of a “low-level insurgency”, then the current characterization as a civil rights protest or democratic activism is a misdiagnosis of the actual threat – one that we’ve labeled is a color-revolution-style operation being waged from the left-wing NGO sphere against President Trump.

The big question is why mainstream Democratic leaders have remained largely silent as left-wing revolutionaries operate within their party under the guise of “democracy” or whatever the most trending cause is. The mobilizing narrative has shifted repeatedly, from George Floyd to pro-Palestinian activism, and now to anti-ICE. Just wait until spring; the revolutionaries want chaos – and Democrats are completely fine with this. 

Remember what retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn stated in late November:

Maybe it’s time… 

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/26/2026 – 15:20

What We Are Experiencing Is Not De-Dollarisation But De-Fiatization

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What We Are Experiencing Is Not De-Dollarisation But De-Fiatization

By Benjamin Picton, Senior Market Strategist At Rabobank

J.P. Morgan once famously remarked that “gold is money, everything else is credit.” That dictum was apparently forgotten during the 1980s & 1990s as gold’s share of central bank reserves steadily declined and gold prices – for most of that period – did the same.

That period was the most recent era of high financialization, where Hollywood movies like Wall Street, Trading Places, Barbarians at the Gate and even Pretty Woman glorified the swashbuckling lifestyle of financiers. It was also the era of the leveraged buyout, the rise of the MBA, the retail day-trader speculating in the dotcom boom and the germination of the idea (in the Anglosphere, at least) that you too can get rich through landlording – effectively transforming housing from a consumption good to a financial asset. This was also the era of the imperialism of the US Treasury Bond.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is reasonably clear from the data that this period ended with the popping of the dotcom bubble, but the final eulogy was not read until the financial crisis of 2008 when the excesses of high financialization were truly laid bare. This imbued the arguments of non-market economies like China that American system was decadent and sclerotic – and that the their system was superior – with apparent credibility. Along with military misadventure in the Middle East this constituted a heavy blow for the soft power and prestige of the United States.

While it is typical to think of the financial crisis is an epochal ending, gold’s share of central bank reserves hit its nadir around the year 2000. That was also the approximate highwater mark for US Treasury bonds’ share of global reserve assets. Many Western central banks – the last sellers of scale – had recently offloaded their holdings at low, low prices in the late 1990s having been taken in by fashionable ideas that gold was a “barbarous relic” and that the creation of the fiat monetary system and floating exchange rates in 1971 made holding gold a quaint anachronism.

Fast forward to today and gold is now trading well above $5000/oz. Silver is trading well above $100/oz. The financial has given way to the material and the fashionable narrative is now ‘sell America’ and de-Dollarisation. Dollar assets’ share of total central bank reserves has been in slow decline for years, but some commentators are now pronouncing the death of the Dollar system as Donald Trump’s abrasive style of foreign policy offends traditional allies. In seeming support of the sell America narrative, the Bloomberg Dollar spot index is down 1.14% year to date.

However, on the other side of the ledger we continue to see strong demand at US Treasury auctions and SWIFT data shows that the use of the US Dollar in international payments is actually increasing, mostly at the expense of the Euro. The Chinese Renminbi has seen a modest rise in its use in payments, but small declines in its already low share of central bank reserves. Even the increased use in payments is exaggerated somewhat by transactions between mainland China and Hong Kong. At only 3-4% of total payments versus more than 50% for the Dollar, it would seem to us that the demise of the Dollar in favor of other currencies is much exaggerated.

Speaking to the media at Davos, hedge fund manager Ray Dalio argued that what we are experiencing is not de-Dollarisation, but de-fiatization. That is, flight from fiat currencies in favor of real assets or – as J.P. Morgan might have advised – real money in the form of gold and silver. Ray pointed out that “in a war-like environment” countries don’t want to hold each other’s debt for fear of sanctions (Russia presents a cautionary example), while other investors don’t want to hold financial claims for fear of debasement through deficit spending by national governments and debt monetization – quantitative easing – by central banks. Under this scenario, it is rational to hold neutral money with no counterparty risk, no risk of debasement and less scope for the imposition of capital controls. The last sellers of scale (central banks) became the first buyers of scale in 2024 and 2025, but the trade has broadened out to other buyers.

The debasement of fiat currencies is now easy to spot. Aside from gold and silver regularly re-setting all-time highs the Bloomberg commodity index has surged to sit at its highest level since mid-2022. Brent crude prices have risen for the last five weeks straight and Henry Hub natural gas prices have surged more than 65% year-to-date. These types of moves signal a scarcity of the material relative to the financial. Consequently, long yields have remained elevated (or surged, in the case of Japan) and the Reserve Bank of Australia – who took the ‘gently, gently’ approach on fighting inflation – may soon become the first G10 currency-issuing central bank (aside from Japan) forced to hike rates. The AUD has recently been surging in anticipation.

As Dalio explained to Bloomberg, the flipside of a trade imbalance is a capital imbalance. This is because the capital account is – by definition – the inverse of the current account (which includes the trade balance) in the balance of payments. With the USA running record current account deficits in early 2025, it’s a matter of mathematics that foreign investors have to buy US Treasuries for that deficit to be financed. For the US to make progress on reducing its trade deficit (as it has recently), it must also make progress on reducing its capital account surplus. That means fewer Dollars for the rest of the world who – as detailed above – rely on Dollars to conduct trade.

This is the Triffin Dilemma, which also describes why China – with its immense and growing trade surplus – cannot supplant the Dollar’s global role with the CNY. How are you going to get CNY into the hands of other countries unless China runs a trade deficit? Logically – though its appeal as a store of value may be diminishing – the Dollar must remain the global reserve currency because there is no viable alternative. Central governments will not return to a gold standard for the same reason the last vestiges of the gold standard were abandoned in the first place: it would constrain governments’ freedom to engage in deficit spending and create inflation.

Very clearly the world is erecting new barriers to the free movement of goods. With the US embracing a re-invigorated Monroe Doctrine under its new National Security Strategy, it now views the economic affairs of its neighbours in the Western Hemisphere as issues of interest for the United States. This is obvious in the case of Venezuela, and also in the case of the Panama Canal, and was again highlighted over the weekend when President Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs on all Canadian goods if Canada were to do a trade deal with China.

Canadian PM Carney became the darling of Davos by delivering a speech articulating the changes in the world order and attempting to rally middle powers to band together and stand against great power coercion. Carney was delivering jabs at the United States, but the credibility of his message may have been diminished somewhat by his actions in signing an agreement with China to reduce Canada’s 100% tariff on Chinese EVs in exchange for a reduction in Chinese tariffs on Canadian canola and seafood products.

Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explained the tariff threat by making it clear that Canada’s deal was not acceptable from the perspective of the USA. “We have a highly integrated market with Canada… Goods can cross the border six times during the manufacturing process. And we can’t let Canada become an opening that the Chinese pour their cheap goods into the U.S.”

For now, the geostrategic competition between China and the United States continues to be prosecuted as a trade war but investors may do well to heed Dalio’s warning that punishment in the form of a global capital war is on the horizon. For details on how one part of that might look, see our thoughts on US Dollar stablecoins here.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/26/2026 – 15:00

Mobocracy: Democratic Politicians Compete In Race To The Bottom Over ICE Shooting

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Mobocracy: Democratic Politicians Compete In Race To The Bottom Over ICE Shooting

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

This year, there has been a race to the bottom as Democratic politicians fuel the rage in our streets against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

That continued this last week when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz again rushed to judgment after a shooting, adding that the public should not treat Border Patrol or ICE officers as real “law enforcement” officers.

However, rock bottom was finally reached by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), who not only said that she does not consider ICE officers to be “real law enforcement,” but raised the possibility of citizens shooting them under state law.

First, the obvious.  

Mayes said, “I put [“officers”] in air quotes because I don’t think they are real law enforcement.” These are real law enforcement officers under federal law, enforcing federal law. Period. The effort by Walz, Mayes, and others to question their status or treat them as impostors is clearly designed to inflame citizens and encourage greater confrontations.

It is a dangerous form of demagoguery. It is sending citizens into harm’s way, encouraging them to impede federal operations involving the arrest of criminal suspects.

Mayes’s comments could justify many putting “attorney general” in air quotes since she is not only misleading citizens about the status of these officers but also enabling the very rage that is causing the injury and death of individuals.

Again, repeating Walz’s talking points, she referred to these officers as “poorly trained.” She obviously has no idea about the training of these officers. The officer involved in the Alex Pretti shooting was an experienced officer with the Border Patrol. The officer involved in the prior Renée Good shooting was also an experienced officer.

While mischaracterizing the officers, figures like Walz are sending demonstrably “untrained” citizens into highly dangerous situations. Walz specifically called out citizens into the streets to record these operations, which is precisely what Pretti was trying to do before his fatal confrontation with officers.

Mayes, however, was not looking for a tie in that race to the bottom. She told citizens that Arizona’s “Stand Your Ground” law might be cited as grounds for the use of lethal force against officers.  She declared:

“You have these masked, federal officers with very little identification — sometimes no identification — wearing plain clothes and masks and we have a ‘Stand Your Ground’ law that says if you reasonably believe your life is in danger and you’re in your house or in your car or on your property, that you can defend yourself with lethal force.”

She later added, “It’s a fact that we have a ‘Stand Your Ground’ law and, in other states, un-uniformed, masked people who can’t be identified as police officers.”

It was a reckless statement of the law.

These laws only protect “reasonable” uses of self-defense. However, they have an express exemption for using force “to resist an arrest that the person knows or should know is being made by a peace officer or by a person acting in a peace officer’s presence and at his direction, whether the arrest is lawful or unlawful, unless the physical force used by the peace officer exceeds that allowed by law.”

It is not uncommon for law enforcement to use officers in plain clothes to make initial arrests or contacts with suspects who might flee or resist.

Mayes’s comments could encourage an already enraged and irrational segment of our population to use lethal force under the false pretense of standing their ground.

Attacks on these officers have increased exponentially with the violent rhetoric of these politicians. Just last week, a rioter bit off the finger of an officer.

Mayes also vowed to prosecute any ICE agent who violates state laws in these operations. She is also mimicking Walz in spreading legal disinformation. While federal officers do not have absolute immunity in all cases, it is extremely unlikely that state officials could successfully prosecute such cases without facing a transfer to federal court and likely dismissal.

Walz made the same misleading claim in saying that Minnesota would investigate the shooting and that the federal government would not be allowed to conduct the investigation. He has no authority to dictate who or how the shooting will be investigated.

While the state can conduct its own investigation, the federal government will investigate a shooting by a federal officer. Walz further pandered to the mob by raising the debunked “bait boy” story and telling citizens that ICE was “shooting them in the face when they come out of donut shops.”

Rage is hard to maintain for months and the Pretti shooting, as described by one Democratic operative according to Fox’s Chad Pergram, is a “new wild card” in the politics on the Hill over funding.

There remain legitimate questions about this shooting. The videotapes do not show, as suggested in early accounts from the federal government, that Pretti approached the officers brandishing a weapon.

Pretti does not obey the commands of the officers in returning to the middle of the road during their operation. However, he did not appear threatening until after the officer pushed him to the side of the road. At one point, he appears to shove the officer as he tries to assist a woman who was pushed to the ground.

What happens next is hard to determine. There is a video that suggests that an officer may have removed his weapon from its holster just before another officer yells “gun.” It is hard to see Pretti’s hands and we do not know what happened in that split second. We may get a better idea as new videotapes emerge.

Law enforcement officers do not expect blind deference on shootings. However, they have a right to expect a fair chance for an investigation to hear their side of a shooting — not a governor or a mayor rushing before cameras to effectively accuse them of murder.

At this point, it may not matter. Only the mob matters.  Minneapolis Brian O’Hara explained: “even if there is an investigation that ultimately proves that at the time of the shooting it was legally justified, I don’t think that even matters at this point, because there just- there is so much outrage and concern around what is happening in the city.”

Walz has demonstrated politics of the lowest kind, stoking anger as citizens and officers alike are injured. Walz is pledging to go to court to stop further operations—a lawsuit that would be another frivolous filing. Previously, the state, including Attorney General Keith Ellison, filed to prevent the federal government from increasing forces to investigate fraud and immigration violations.

Walz, Mayes, and others are following a long line of demagogues who sought to use social unrest to advance their political careers. For Walz, sending people into the streets has the benefit of not having them at home watching and reading about the growing fraud scandal in his state.

It is not a defense of democracy, but mobocracy in Minnesota.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the author of the forthcoming “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” which will be released on Feb. 3 as part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/26/2026 – 14:45

Saudi Aramco Dismisses Oil Glut Narrative As “Seriously Exaggerated”

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Saudi Aramco Dismisses Oil Glut Narrative As “Seriously Exaggerated”

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Forecasts of a massive oil glut are seriously exaggerated as demand keeps rising and global stocks are below the five-year average, according to Saudi Aramco’s chief executive officer, Amin Nasser. 

“Oil glut predictions are seriously exaggerated,” Nasser said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week as carried by Reuters.

Global oil stocks are low, while the amassed barrels in floating storage on tankers are mostly sanctioned supplies, the CEO of the world’s biggest oil firm and top crude exporter said. 

Moreover, spare capacity has dwindled over the past year, also limiting potential efforts to boost output in case of major supply disruptions, according to Nasser. 

“It (spare capacity) is ‌at 2.5% and we need a minimum of 3%. If OPEC+ further unwinds cuts, spare capacity will ‌fall even further and we will need to watch this very carefully,” Aramco’s top executive said. 

The market is oversupplied, analysts say, as reflected in only brief spikes in oil prices in recent weeks driven the geopolitical developments. 

Most investment banks and the EIA forecast that average oil prices will be below $60 per barrel in 2026 due to an emerging and persistent market oversupply, especially during the first half of the year.  

But OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, insists that the market would be balanced as demand growth is robust and will remain such in 2027, too. 

The International Energy Agency (IEA) this week raised its oil demand growth estimate and expects growth at 930,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2026, up by 70,000 bpd from last month’s assessment. 

The upgrade reflects a recovery in feedstock demand in the petrochemicals industry, on top of expectations of normalized economic conditions after the unpredictable and chaotic tariff policy of the Trump Administration last year.

But the market continues to be oversupplied, the Paris-based agency noted. 

“Indeed, benchmark crude oil prices remain $16/bbl lower than a year ago, reflecting the large global supply surplus that built up over the past 12 months, in line with our forecasts,” the IEA said.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/26/2026 – 14:05

Post-Winter Storm, Deep-Freeze Pushes Power-Grids To Brink As Feds Move To Avert Blackouts

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Post-Winter Storm, Deep-Freeze Pushes Power-Grids To Brink As Feds Move To Avert Blackouts

The major winter storm that dumped heavy snow and ice across much of the eastern US is finally over, but the cold-weather danger is far from over.

Roughly 185 million Americans remain under winter alerts today as Arctic air continues to pour deep into the central and eastern states. Wind chills are dropping into the minus 20s and minus 30s in some areas, with temperatures running 10 to 40 degrees below seasonal averages.

This prolonged cold – expected through the week – will continue to pressure major natural gas production hubs with freeze-offs, send pipeline volumes sliding, and push already-strained power grids to the brink.

The latest on grids: 

  • The Electric Reliability Council of Texas projected a record demand of 86 GW on Monday, above its prior summer peak.

  • PJM Interconnection warned it faces days of extreme winter demand, an unprecedented stretch for the grid spanning the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic.

  • Grid operators are paying large customers to curb usage to avoid widespread rolling blackouts.

  • Power prices spiked to crisis levels, with PJM on peak prices averaging about $639 per MWh and ERCOT North hub prices jumping more than 1,200% day over day.

On Sunday, the Energy Department issued emergency orders authorizing PJM to operate power plants at maximum capacity, including those fueled by coal and oil, regardless of limits set by environmental rules or state law. Similar orders were issued for ERCOT and ISO New England.

Golf clap for fossil fuels saving the grid from collapse. It wasn’t solar or wind. It was oil and natural gas.

UBS analyst David Robinson told clients, “Natural gas futures have surged nearly 20% Monday Asia morning as the worst winter storm in recent years in the US has seen surging demand for heating, with plunging temperatures knocking off nearly 10% of production.”

US natural gas futures in New York jumped nearly 20% to more than $6 per million British thermal units when trading opened up on Sunday (read here). Gains have largely held into early Monday, with prices still up about 17% as of 0715 ET.

Highest since 2022.

January could be the largest NatGas futures spike on record.

With 10% of US natural gas production knocked offline just as heating demand surges, this week shapes up as a major stress test for the nation’s power grids. Stack the firewood high and make sure the whole house generator is fueled up.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/26/2026 – 08:05

EU Launches New Probe Into Musk’s AI Chatbot Grok

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EU Launches New Probe Into Musk’s AI Chatbot Grok

The European Commission has opened a new formal investigation into Elon Musk’s X under the Digital Services Act (DSA) and expanded a separate probe launched in December 2023.

“The new investigation will assess whether the company properly assessed and mitigated risks associated with the deployment of Grok’s functionalities into X in the EU,” the European Commission wrote in a press release, adding, “This includes risks related to the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, such as manipulated sexually explicit images, including content that may amount to child sexual abuse material.”

The Commission is examining whether X:

  • Diligently assess and mitigate systemic risks, including of the dissemination of illegal content, negative effects in relation to gender-based violence, and serious negative consequences to physical and mental well-being stemming from deployments of Grok’s functionalities into its platform.

  • Conduct and transmit to the Commission an ad hoc risk assessment report for Grok’s functionalities in the X service with a critical impact on X’s risk profile prior to their deployment.

“Non-consensual sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” EU tech commissioner Henna Virkkunen said, who was quoted by Bloomberg. This case falls under the DSA, which places strict guardrails on harmful and illegal material on the web. And it’s up to Brussels to define what is illegal material…

X, a subsidiary of xAI, pointed Bloomberg to a previous statement that it actively removes illegal content where necessary: “We remain committed to making X a safe platform for everyone and continue to have zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content.”

The EU’s Grok investigation comes shortly after a separate 120 million euro fine imposed on X under the DSA.

In that earlier case, EU regulators found that X’s paid blue check system misled users, the company obstructed researchers’ access to platform data, and it failed to properly establish an advertising transparency repository.

Vice President JD Vance criticized Brussels in an X post last month, saying, “The EU should be supporting free speech, not attacking American companies over garbage.”

Our assessment is that the EU’s move against Grok has little to do with safety. If it did, regulators would be scrutinizing every major social media platform and chatbot operating on the continent. Instead, Brussels appears unwilling to tolerate free speech or anything associated with Elon Musk.

Forcing xAI out of the EU would only confirm that the DSA functions less as a safety framework and more as a censorship weapon designed to crush free speech. If Europe chooses stagnation over freedom, the outcome here is very clear: the US becomes an even more attractive space for innovation and freedom.

We must note that the EU’s Grok investigation comes shortly after Europe plans to launch its own X-like social media platform called “W,” a subsidiary of Swedish climate media firm We Don’t Have Time.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/26/2026 – 07:45

Erosion Of Freedom In The EU: From Censorship To Centralized Power

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Erosion Of Freedom In The EU: From Censorship To Centralized Power

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The European Union has increasingly fallen on the defensive in foreign policy. Domestically, the Green Deal has significantly damaged the economic foundation. Together with its main pillars Berlin and Paris, the Brussels-based EU Commission is pushing forward the systematic construction of a censorship apparatus to suppress its own failures from public debate.

The heated discussion in recent days over the censorship of unpopular platforms like Nius is far more than just a warning sign. Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister-President Daniel Günther offered a deep insight into the strategic toolbox of current politics during Markus Lanz’s ZDF show. The politician’s subsequent, at times desperate, attempts—alongside the host and state-affiliated media—to retract his openly stated censorship demands toward critical platforms and media such as Nius illustrate the seriousness of the situation: Germany is slowly but steadily sliding toward a surveillance state.

The Vulgar Side of Censorship

The debate over controlling public opinion, particularly in the digital space, also has a vulgar, unrestrained side—as Apollo News experienced a few months ago. At that time, the local branch of the Left Party openly called for, if necessary, violent action against the newsroom to drive it out of its neighborhood. The statement was phrased as: one should “kick the journalists on their keys.” This is far more than a verbal lapse by radicalized ideologues. It marks a rupture in the political culture of the Federal Republic, in which repressive elements, faced with a simmering economic crisis and growing criticism of the political course, emerge plainly and unapologetically.

We are witnessing an attempt to delegitimize what is visible: the democratic right to freedom of speech and open discourse. The very nature of new digital media—their ability to create fragmented opinion clusters—makes them dangerous for a political system increasingly focused on control. Media like Apollo News contribute to genuine public discourse and thereby evade the interpretive authority of established apparatuses, making them a threat to the censor.

A Pattern at the EU Level

On the EU level, a media-tactical pattern emerges. Representatives in Brussels and their national proponents pursue a clear goal: when externally pressured—such as in the Greenland conflict with the United States—they present themselves in public discourse as victims. Domestically, however, they adopt precisely the position they accuse U.S. President Donald Trump of: acting with elbows, showing no regard for fair negotiation.

The narrative created in this mode is largely carried by a media apparatus closely aligned with Brussels’ political lines. We have seen this in climate policy (Apollo News reported): first, the narrative of existential emergency is established, the story of a burning planet woven into public discourse over years. This is followed by the construction of a centrally planned, strictly regulated transformation economy. Criticism of this strategy has so far been marginalized through a form of soft censorship, placing critics near conspiracy theories in public media. The critic is ridiculed, publicly humiliated.

A similar pattern is evident in the EU’s treatment of countries like Hungary. Because Budapest has resisted open borders and mass migration for years, it is sanctioned in the style of a known bully: sometimes through funding cuts, sometimes via openly threatened penalties. It is always about money. The EU sanctions rather than negotiates. In essence, the EU applies Trump’s “dealmaker” strategy with precision domestically, against its own citizens.

Romania experienced similar treatment last year. During the presidential election, significant pressure was applied to the judicial apparatus to annul the unwanted election of a right-wing conservative president. The aim was not political competition over the country’s future, but institutional and legal intervention to control the outcome.

The explicit goal of EU policy is to centralize power within the Brussels Commission apparatus permanently. This can only succeed if dissenting forces—such as the strengthening right-wing opposition in Eastern Europe—are kept in check and growing criticism of the disastrous economic course of the Green Deal is systematically excluded from public debate.

The Decline of Germany

Since 2018, Germans have witnessed the gradual decline of their industry—and with it the erosion of the foundation of their prosperity. The idea of “Net Zero,” the forced restructuring of the economy toward a fully CO₂-free order, has so far led to a roughly 14% decline in industrial production in Germany, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. The German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) reports that over 400,000 industrial jobs were lost in this period.

While industrial value creation and productivity shrink, the state apparatus expands. Bureaucracy and administration boom, creating hundreds of thousands of new positions where no market value is generated. At the same time, a stagnating or shrinking GDP—exacerbated by ongoing mass migration—is spread across a growing population. The result is a large-scale poverty program, which the government prefers not to discuss openly.

The Digital Services Act as a Censorship Tool

The debate over this process increasingly shifts to digital platforms. Leading the way are Elon Musk’s company X, as well as secondary arenas like Telegram or Reddit, offering forums for exchange, research, and counter-speech—places where information circulates that Brussels or Berlin will not accept unchallenged. This is exactly where the problem lies from the policymakers’ perspective: they want to buy time, convinced of the success of their social and economic transformation strategy, while reversal would mean a loss of power.

With the Digital Services Act (DSA), a comprehensive regulatory framework has come into force EU-wide. In simple terms, it obliges large online platforms to remove, restrict, or flag content classified under EU law as illegal, hateful, or socially harmful, including disinformation. Companies must also report on these actions in detail.

In practice, the DSA forces corporations like Meta, X, or TikTok—under threat of heavy fines—to systematically act against content deemed problematic, for example on climate policy, pandemic consequences, migration, or the Ukraine war. Measures include deletions, shadowbanning, warning labels, and deep interventions in recommendation algorithms.

Critics argue that the underlying criteria are often vague, placing political speech under preventive moderation pressure—even before open societal debate can occur.

The Perfidy of the DSA

The DSA’s perfidy lies in creating deliberately vague pseudo-legal grounds under terms like hate, incitement, and disinformation. Platform operators are pushed by economic incentives into preemptive censorship. Legal clarity is not the controlling factor; economic pressure via threat of fines is.

Combined with a growing network of so-called “trusted flaggers”—NGOs and private actors reporting potentially critical content to national authorities—a more constrained public discourse emerges. Brussels’ compliance rules are thus effectively enforced without formally naming a censorship regime.

In this context, it is understandable why a politician like Daniel Günther casually offers a glimpse behind the scenes in the safe space of public broadcasting. Where one believes oneself unobserved, one speaks what elsewhere is carefully concealed: unable or unwilling to make substantive course corrections in economic, climate, or migration policy—or in dealings with Moscow—critics are removed via the censorship stick.

The deliberately provoked dispute with the United States over the future of freedom of speech in Europe, and the threats toward American tech companies, are accepted. Political costs are externalized. Ultimately, the citizen pays the price—both as taxpayer, user, and censored participant in an increasingly narrow public discourse.

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/26/2026 – 07:20

Three Lessons From Venezuela’s Economic Collapse

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Three Lessons From Venezuela’s Economic Collapse

Authored by Matthew Mitchell via TheDailyEconomy.org,

President Trump has accepted the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado.

Unlike Machado, however, he does not accept the central lessons that can be gleaned from five decades of Venezuelan misrule.

There are three. 

Lesson 1: Past prosperity is no guarantee of future prosperity. 

In 1970, Venezuela was the wealthiest country in Latin America. Sitting atop the world’s largest proven oil reserve, it churned out more than 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. Using GDP per person as a metric, its citizens earned 2.7 times as much as the rest of Latin America — about the same as the average Finnish, Japanese, and Italian citizen. 

This prosperity bought Venezuelans better health, longer life, and more creature comforts — especially fancy foreign cars that poured into the country as oil poured out. And it wasn’t just the wealthy that benefited. Venezuela’s poverty rate was about a third of what it was in the rest of Latin America. 

The zenith was around 1977. Thanks to the global oil crisis of a few years earlier, crude prices had quadrupled. Amidst the boom, President Carlos Andrés Pérez made the fateful decision to nationalize the country’s oil industry, hoping to use its wealth to fund economic development and poverty relief. Instead, by combining public and private interests, the decision proved a boon for corruption, eventually turning the country into a petrostate. 

Almost immediately, incomes began to fall. By 1999, average Venezuelans were earning less than 90 percent of what they had three decades earlier. But the worst was yet to come. 

Which brings us to the second lesson. 

Lesson 2: Policy matters. 

Oil was not the only explanation for Venezuela’s 1970s prosperity. The government spent and taxed modestly. It left most industry in private hands. Inflation was low. And international trade was almost entirely free of tariffs and regulatory barriers to trade. 

In 1970, Venezuela scored a little less than 7 on the Fraser Institute’s 10-point Economic Freedom of the World index, making it the 13th most economically free country in the world, just ahead of Japan. 

But as the rest of the world liberalized in the 1980s and 1990s, Venezuela went in the opposite direction. The government ramped up transfers and subsidies and began to acquire more assets. Property rights grew less secure. Inflation reached 26 percent in 1980 and over 50 percent in 1995. By 2000, Venezuela had slipped to 116th in economic freedom. 

In 1999, as the economy faltered, a frustrated electorate turned to an outsider, Hugo Chávez. Chávez had risen to fame seven years earlier when he led an unsuccessful coup d’état against the democratically elected government (ironically led by Andrés Pérez, who had returned as president in 1989). 

Though left-of-center, he did not begin as a radical. Instead, he positioned himself as a populist reformer who could steer a “Third Way” between socialism and capitalism. But he grew more radical after a failed coup attempt against him in 2002. By 2005 he had fully embraced the socialist label, recasting his movement as “Socialism of the 21st Century.” 

It wasn’t just branding. He nearly doubled transfers and subsidies and more than doubled government investment. He tightened control over the government-owned oil company and nationalized other industries, including steel, iron, mining, cement, farming, food distribution, grocery chains, hotels, telecommunications, and banking. The government stopped respecting and protecting private property. Annual inflation bounced around from 20 to 60 per cent. At the time of his death in 2013, Venezuela’s overall economic freedom was close to 3 on the 10-point scale, making it the least economically free country in the world. 

But as the government took, nature gave. The country’s massive Orinoco Oil Belt continued to churn out about 2.5 million barrels of oil every day. As a result, GDP per person recovered. 

Many Western observers, from Senator Bernie Sanders to director Oliver Stone, saw this as a sign that socialism works. But the reality is that Venezuela’s oil-fueled boom had only managed to bring incomes back to 1970s levels. Moreover, careful econometric analyses comparing Venezuela’s performance to that of other similarly situated countries, found that Venezuela consistently under-performed. 

Chávez died in 2013, leaving the country in the hands of his Vice President, Nicolás Maduro. Maduro clung fast to Chávez’s policies, but as global oil prices plummeted, Socialism of the 21st Century began to look a lot like socialism in the 20th century: incomes collapsed, poverty exploded, and inflation became hyper (reaching over one million percent in 2018). 

Maduro responded predictably, imposing price controls that produced massive shortages of household necessities. About a quarter of the population fled the country. 

But the cost was not merely economic. Which brings us to the final lesson. 

Lesson 3: Economic and Personal Freedom are Deeply Intertwined. 

Socialism is typically imposed at the point of a gun. But notwithstanding his attempted 1992 coup, Chávez had come to power through free and mostly fair elections. This seems to have been one reason why Western observers were so taken in by the regime. Writing in her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein claimed that Venezuelan “citizens had renewed their faith in the power of democracy to improve their lives.”   

But if she had looked closer, she would have seen the early signs of Venezuela’s anti-democratic turn. The Human Freedom Index, co-published by the Fraser Institute and the Cato Institute, builds on the Economic Freedom of the World index by adding 7 additional areas of personal freedom. As the figure below shows, the regime cracked down on personal freedoms just as it limited economic freedoms. By the time Klein wrote her book, Venezuela had already severely restricted freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of movement, and the rule of law. 

This, unfortunately, is common. As we see in the final figure, most regimes that restrict economic freedom also tend to restrict personal freedom. It is easy to imagine why. People value their economic liberties, so regimes that seek to severely repress these liberties often cling to power by suppressing dissent. And because socialist regimes own the means of production — including media production like radio, print, and TV outlets — they have a handy tool at their disposal for suppression. 

What now? 

As the Cato Institute’s Marcos Falcone recently explained, one Venezuelan who seems to have internalized these lessons is María Corina Machado. As a decades-long leader of the opposition, she has consistently championed both personal and economic liberty. She traces much of the country’s corruption, mismanagement, and stagnation to its 1976 nationalization of the oil industry. 

And she is wildly popular. In the unified opposition primary of 2024, she ran on a platform of complete oil privatization and won 90 percent of the vote. Maduro refused to let her run in the general election, so she backed Edmundo González Urrutia and he is estimated to have won 70 percent of the vote. But Maduro refused to recognize the result and clung to power. 

Now, apparently, President Trump is in charge. But like Maduro before him, Trump refuses to recognize the results of the last election. He claims that Machado lacks the “respect” and “support” to lead. Polls, meanwhile, indicate that she is favored by more than 70 percent of the country. While accepting her re-gifted Nobel Prize, Mr. Trump has decided to give the reins to Maduro’s Vice President, the socialist Delcy Rodriguez, calling her a “terrific person” and predicting a great Venezuelan renaissance. 

As for privatization, Trump instead says “we’re going to keep the oil.” He claims that Rodriquez will be “turning over” up to 50 million barrels to the US, the proceeds of which will be “controlled by me, as President of the United States of America.” 

Meanwhile, he is strong-arming US oil companies to invest in the country, telling them that if they want to recover their property that was seized by President Andrés Pérez in 1976, they’d better cooperate in rebuilding Venezuela’s infrastructure. For their part, the companies have been reluctant to do so, citing the country’s poor track record of protecting private property. 

Like Andrés Pérez, Chávez, and Maduro, Trump seems to imagine that the right central plan will unlock the country’s vast oil wealth. But history teaches a different lesson.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/26/2026 – 06:30

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