Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Streaming company Spotify is featuring ICE recruitment ads in between content on its free tier, prompting deranged leftists within the music industry to throw tantrums.

Bands and musicians including Massive Attack, Sylvan Esso, and King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard have started campaigns to remove their songs from Spotify over the ads, with many of them also expressing anger at Spotify founder Daniel Ek investing in an AI military company called Helsing.

It’s the ads for ICE recruitment, however, that have triggered the most backlash.

Spotify has reportedly been running ICE recruitment advertisements in the US. pic.twitter.com/HumvkWJSAF

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) October 13, 2025

The short ads encourage listeners to “join the mission to protect America” and apply to become an ICE agent.

Some of the ads are also directed toward police, stating, “In sanctuary cities, you’re ordered to stand down while dangerous illegals walk free.”

Indie label Epitaph Records complained last week on Instagram calling for Spotify to “remove these ads immediately.”

“Epitaph joins others in the independent music community calling on Spotify to remove ICE recruitment ads,” the record label demanded, adding “Artists and fans deserve platforms that reflect the values of the culture they sustain.”

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Epitaph Records (@epitaphrecords)

A band called Thursday also decrees that Spotify “remove any and all” ICE recruitment ads from its platform, “immediately.”

“Thursday is an independent band and we join the wider independent musical community calling upon Spotify to remove any and all ICE recruitment advertising from its platform,” the band said.

It encouraged others to get on board, proclaiming, “A single voice is tiny but collective action is mighty.”

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Thursday (@thursdayband)

What they don’t say is exactly why they want ICE ads removed, and that’s because they don’t want to see illegal aliens, many of them gangbangers and violent criminals, brought to justice.

Whether that’s because of complete ignorance of the reality of the situation with crime and degradation in metropolitan areas or because they’re extreme leftists captured by ideological propaganda is up for debate. It’s probably a mixture of both.

All your favorite streaming services are serving up ICE Ads

HBO Max, Pandora, Spotify, and more have been running recruitment ads from the Department of Homeland Security for monthshttps://t.co/mUvqqcDE2B

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 15, 2025

Spotify has addressed the situation, pointing out that the ICE advertisements are “part of a broad campaign the U.S. government is running across television, streaming, and online channels,” and that the ads in no way violate the company’s policies.

A spokesperson also outlined that Spotify users have the option within their accounts to effectively down vote or block entirely the ads on their personal feeds. 

CANCELLED. @Spotify, you lost me with the ICE Recruitment Ads, you don’t deserve my $. Bye 👋 pic.twitter.com/4EdOKWXrl7

— JP (@american_lex) October 14, 2025

after 10 years i’ve made the switch from spotify to apple music

displaying ICE ads and their refusal to ban AI artists was the nail in the coffin pic.twitter.com/o3o7uXolMN

— newhaven 🌿 (@imnewhaven_) October 15, 2025

After learning that Spotify doesn’t mind accepting money from a fascist government and supports running ads from a government agency (that shouldn’t exist) which is responsible for tearing apart families I’ve cancelled my Spotify subscription🖕Fuck ICE and fuck Spotify. pic.twitter.com/a6ksqfDCtC

— RJ (@MKENewYorker) October 21, 2025

Oh Lordt Nooooo!!! I’ve been paying for a @Spotify subscription for about 8 years & I loooove my Spotify!

Whyyyyyy are yall playing ICE ads???? I can’t believe I have to cancel it. pic.twitter.com/W8kVstgCfD

— Drink Water (@PromiscuousLadi) October 13, 2025

Many bands and singers already hate Spotify with a passion due to the minimal profits they earn from their music streams, a grievance rooted in the platform’s per-stream payout model. 

For instance, Spotify pays an average of $0.003 to $0.005 per stream, meaning an artist needs millions of streams to generate substantial income—approximately 1 million streams to earn $3,000-$5,000. 

Independent or mid-tier artists lack the massive fanbases of top-tier acts, and the issue is compounded by the fact that a significant portion of streaming revenue is split among rights holders, including labels, publishers, and distributors, often leaving artists with only 20-50% of the payout. 

This has led to a perception that Spotify undervalues artistic work, fueling resentment among creators struggling to sustain their careers.

However, Spotify itself isn’t entirely to blame, as it operates within a complex and historically flawed music industry ecosystem. The company distributes roughly 70% of its revenue—$6.5 billion out of $9.3 billion in 2024—to rights holders, a payout ratio comparable to or higher than other streaming platforms. 

Spotify must also cover operational costs, including licensing fees, infrastructure, and innovation, to remain competitive. The real issue lies in the broader music industry’s failure to adapt to technological advancements like digital distribution and streaming, which disrupted the once-lucrative model of physical album sales. 

Piracy in the early 2000s decimated profits, forcing labels to lean heavily on streaming without restructuring contracts to fairly compensate artists. This systemic imbalance, not Spotify alone, perpetuates the struggle for artists to earn a living wage in the digital age.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

“A civilization is defined by its ability to discern truth from falsehood,” writes ‘Camus’ (@newstart_2024) in a post on X.

So, what happens when every apparatus built for that purpose is systematically dismantled?

Bret Weinstein issues a stark warning: we are living through a coordinated sabotage of our truth-seeking institutions.

This is not a minor critique; it is a fundamental attack on the very mechanisms of a functional society.

He argues that the assault is comprehensive:

• The University System: Once a beacon of knowledge, now a source of unreliable research and curricula that teach verifiably false concepts as truth. The cornerstone of academic rigor has been cracked.

• Regulatory Agencies: These bodies have been inverted. Their purpose is no longer to protect citizens from harm, but to protect the regulators and the system from the citizens they are meant to serve.

• Scientific Integrity: We are left grappling in the dark on critical issues. Determining something as scientifically straightforward as the potential link between mRNA vaccines and turbo cancers should be a matter of transparent data. Instead, we are forced to rely on buried anecdotes and studies designed to fail.

This is the realization of René Descartes’ deepest fear – that the very foundations of what we believe to be factual cannot be trusted.

We have been severed from the tools of the Enlightenment, left in a precarious state where anecdote replaces evidence and ideology replaces inquiry.

We are now navigating a world without a compass.

The predicament is not just dangerous; it is existential.

The question is no longer just “what is true?” but “how do we find out, when the paths to truth have been deliberately destroyed?”

Watch the brief interview with Bret Weinstein below:

A civilization is defined by its ability to discern truth from falsehood. What happens when every apparatus built for that purpose is systematically dismantled?

Bret Weinstein issues a stark warning: we are living through a coordinated sabotage of our truth-seeking institutions.… pic.twitter.com/yL14zAl4mH

— Camus (@newstart_2024) October 23, 2025

h/t @newstart_2024

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The criticism of the European Union’s regulatory policies is growing louder. In a letter to Ursula von der Leyen, 19 EU heads of government demand the abolition of “superfluous and unbalanced regulations.”

It’s a grotesque political theater we are witnessing these days. Nineteen EU heads of government have signed a semi-public letter—obtained by Handelsblatt—demanding nothing less than a “regulatory reset” in Brussels. This comes after years of these same governments diligently building up the bloc’s eco-bureaucratic behemoth.

Merz Renews His Criticism

The letter follows just days after sharp remarks from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who criticized Brussels’ overregulation and the resulting bureaucratic burden—factors that have contributed significantly to Germany’s economic crisis.

Speaking at the SME Day of the Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion in Cologne in September, Merz declared:

“Let me put it a bit more bluntly: we need to throw a stick into the spokes of this Brussels machine so it finally stops.”

He lambasted the EU legislative machine for continuing its regulatory work “on and on and on—completely independent of whether a new Parliament has been elected or not, whether a new Commission is in office or not.”

Tough words from a chancellor who, domestically, has so far failed to reform even a single aspect of Germany’s own regulatory overreach, sky-high tax burdens, or its bloated welfare state.

A Coordinated PR Offensive?

Merz’s words appear to have set the stage for a broader wave of criticism that has now culminated in the letter signed by 19 EU leaders. Alongside Merz, Emmanuel Macron and Giorgia Meloni have openly joined in the chorus against Brussels’ regulatory frenzy.

Their stated goal: to return Europe to a path of growth and competitiveness.

The letter calls for the elimination of “superfluous, excessive or unbalanced regulations.” A truism, perhaps—but in the face of Brussels’ sprawling regulatory apparatus, this reads like a maximalist demand, as real reform would also require dismantling parts of the bureaucracy itself.

The authors also demand relief for SMEs from reporting obligations—such as those contained in the planned supply chain law—and from absurd climate regulations like the EU deforestation regulation.

Subsidies, Once Again

More telling, however, are the letter’s final paragraphs. Here the true intentions are revealed: demands for eased rules on subsidies and corporate mergers. The scale of these subsidies is no mystery: they involve the enormous funds embedded in both the EU and national budgets for climate programs—and possibly for building a European war economy.

In other words, the transformation toward an increasingly centrally planned EU economy is supposed to run more smoothly. Merz’s recent call for a “European competitiveness pact” and his warnings about competition from Asia and the U.S. are not wrong per se—but the crucial question is how this challenge is interpreted, and how it’s addressed.

Notably, there was no mention whatsoever of lowering the bloc’s absurd CO2 taxes.

The Draghi Plan as a Blueprint

Brussels and EU capitals are now, in effect, aligning with the blueprint laid out by former Mario Draghi. He had called for an investment fund worth €800 billion annually for the Eurozone economy—flanked by deregulation where it suits Brussels’ interests.

In short: capital flows are to be channeled more directly into Brussels-preferred pipelines—fast, concentrated, and with minimal red tape. Policymakers hope this will trigger a kind of self-healing economic effect. But the crisis itself is largely the consequence of precisely this misallocation of capital and top-down overregulation.

Europe has clearly chosen the path of isolationism: centralization, debt pumping, and chronic deficit financing. It’s a dead end—and Brussels is its most visible manifestation.

Smoke Screens and Shadow Boxing

The fact that 19 EU leaders are now publicly criticizing Brussels’ regulatory politics is remarkable in two respects. First, it raises the question of whether Brussels has indeed become a bureaucratic spaceship—so detached from reality on the ground that its occupants no longer notice Europe’s accelerating economic decline.

Given the regulatory orgy of recent years, much of it justified by an apocalyptic framing of climate change, the answer is most likely yes.

Second, the semi-public way in which this criticism was presented—via selective leaks to outlets like Handelsblatt—was carefully chosen to create the impression that national governments are still sovereign, economically competent, and attuned to the concerns of their citizens.

In reality, it’s the same old shadowboxing between Brussels and increasingly powerless national governments. Apart from a few outliers like Hungary, Czech Republic or recently Poland, they all share the same ideological course.

Von der Leyen Firmly in Control

Von der Leyen may appear isolated, but she has already achieved her central objective: expanding the EU Commission’s budget for 2028–2034 to around €2 trillion. Roughly €750 billion—more than one-third—will be funneled into the drying channels of green cronyism. On top of this, massive national subsidy injections, such as Germany’s special funds, will flow.

Such state intervention cannot be implemented without additional regulation and an even larger bureaucracy.

So despite the lofty language in the letter to von der Leyen, there will be no real regulatory or administrative relief for businesses.

Ultimately, she should be judged not by her words—or those of her critics—but by her actions. And by that measure, this policy direction is already clear.

* *  *

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.

The world’s population is aging, but not evenly. While some regions are growing older at an alarming pace, others remain remarkably young.

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu maps the median age in every country, showing where populations are oldest and youngest around the globe.

Median age measures the midpoint of a population’s age distribution. In other words, it’s where half the people are younger and half are older. This is different from a mean average, which sums all ages and divides by the total number of people, making it more affected by very young or old individuals.

Data & Discussion

The data for this visualization comes from the World Factbook. Note that the median age of the world is around 30.9 years.

Africa Has the Youngest Populations

Africa stands out as the youngest region by far, with 21 countries reporting a median age below 20, led by Niger (15), Uganda (16), and Mali (16). Altogether, these 21 countries represent 790 million people.

This demographic structure reflects high fertility and improving child survival rates, but also signals future challenges in job creation and education. These youthful populations could shape global labor markets and migration flows in the decades ahead.

Europe and East Asia: Aging at Record Speeds

On the other hand, Europe and East Asia have some of the oldest populations on the planet. Europe’s oldest include Monaco (57), Italy (48), and Germany (47), while in Asia, Japan (50), Hong Kong (47), and South Korea (46) underscore the region’s demographic decline.

Shrinking workforces and rising dependency ratios pose serious challenges in the future, particularly when it comes to healthcare and pensions.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The World’s Fastest Shrinking Countries by Population on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Via Remix News,

New data from Germany and Poland is putting a spotlight on aid to Ukraine, including welcoming refugees who end up receiving benefits from the state. These countries are now asking just how much more they are willing to give.

Ever since Russia’s invasion in 2022, Ukrainian citizens aged 18 to 60 have been able to leave the country only with official permission. But at the end of August, Kyiv decided to liberalize the law, allowing young men aged 18 to 22 to travel abroad. 

According to data from the German Interior Ministry, the number of Ukrainians coming to Germany per week increased from just 19 in August to over 1,000 in September.

In October, the number increased even further to 1,400-1,800 per week.

Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder has now called on the EU to respond to a massive influx of Ukrainian refugees. 

“We must control and significantly limit the rapidly increasing influx of young men from Ukraine,” Söder said in an interview with the Bild daily, as cited by Do Rzeczy.

“The EU and Berlin must influence Ukraine to change its liberalized exit regulations again,” he added. 

A new survey by the INSA Institute for “Bild” has also shown that the majority of Germans do not want to finance benefits for refugees from Ukraine.

Currently, only 17 percent of respondents answered “yes” or “rather yes” to the question about citizenship benefits for refugees from Ukraine. The majority, 66 percent, are against it, and 7 percent of respondents indicated that it makes no difference to them. The remainder either did not answer or selected “don’t know.”

The survey also asked about the idea of ​​mandatory return of Ukrainian men to their homeland to serve at the front. 

Sixty-two percent of respondents believed that able-bodied Ukrainian men who arrived in Germany after the outbreak of the war should be allowed to return to their homeland. Eighteen percent of Germans surveyed opposed this, while 8 percent indicated they were indifferent, and 12 percent did not provide a clear answer.

Over in Poland, there has also been a report published highlighting just how much aid that country has provided to Ukraine. 

Paweł Kowal, Chairman of the Council for Cooperation with Ukraine, presented the “Polish Aid to Ukraine 2022–2023” report on Thursday.

The total cost of free assistance, including training, logistics, repairs, and medical support, exceeded $4 billion by March of this year. In 2022, it reached $1.6 billion, and in 2023-2024, $1.3 billion. Poland has also donated over 19,500 Starlink terminals to the front.

In total, aid for Ukraine represented 3.83 percent of Poland’s GDP. 

The report’s authors, notes Do Rzeczy, also highlighted assistance for Ukrainian refugees, including access to healthcare, the labor market, and the education system. Poland additionally supported Ukrainian entrepreneurs by facilitating their business operations.

The report also notes that Ukraine did purchase €2.2 billion worth of weapons from Poland between 2022 and 2023. 

Read more here…

Authored by Mark Keenan via AmericanThinker.com,

In Sweden, a two-kilometer stretch of electrified highway allows electric vehicles to charge while they drive — a prototype for 3,000 kilometers of such roads planned by 2045.

It all sounds sleek, modern, and progressive, like something from a futurist’s dream.

Eddie Grant once sang, “We’re gonna rock down to Electric Avenue.”

But before we charge headlong into this electric future, we should pause to ask: is any of this really helping the environment?

The answer, inconveniently, is no.

Electric vehicles are not the sustainable miracle they’re marketed to be — this article details the hidden environmental toll of battery production, the inefficiency of “green” energy systems, and the deeper agenda behind the global push toward EVs and UN-driven sustainability mandates.

The prevailing narrative of “zero-emission” transportation falls apart with documented evidence, industry data, and science itself.

The green movement’s corporate and political drivers open up broader questions of personal freedom, economic control, and truth in environmental science.

Why Electric Cars Are Fake Environmentalism

The truth is that electric cars represent not genuine environmental progress, but a triumph of corporate marketing — or, depending on your view, outright deception. Buyers are told they’re saving the planet, but the materials required for millions of lithium-ion batteries — lithium, rhodium, cobalt — must be mined and refined in massive industrial operations powered by diesel and coal.

Those mining and processing sites, particularly in rural China and Mongolia, have left behind serious air, water, and soil contamination. These are real environmental problems — not the imaginary CO2 “crisis” that global bureaucrats prefer to talk about.

In a recent article, I describe how 2,000 scientists from over 30 nations have signed a declaration stating there is no “CO2-induced” climate emergency — a document I also signed.

In the book Climate CO₂ Hoax I detail that modern environmentalism has been hijacked by a communist-type agenda of political control aligned with the deceptive U.N. Sustainable Development Goals; and is also designed to compel us all to buy millions of so-called green products, such as EVs.

“Buy an [expensive] electric car to save the planet” is one of the great marketing lies of our time — a devastator, as I call it, a lie so large it bewilders the public.

Furthermore, when a cold snap hits an EV can lose 10%–50% of its driving range; and can take two to three times longer to charge.

Consider this image: a lithium leach field so toxic that a bird landing on it dies within minutes. This is what your “eco-friendly” battery is made of. Yet we are told to congratulate ourselves for saving the environment.

The Carbon Footprint of an EV is Worse Than Diesel

Governments are now pushing to eliminate gasoline and diesel cars by 2035 in favor of EVs.

But once you factor in the energy and pollution costs of mining and manufacturing, the carbon footprint of an EV is worse than that of a diesel vehicle.

Even after production, most EVs run on electricity generated from fossil fuels. Despite decades of subsidies, wind provides less than 5% of global energy and solar just 1%.

According to a European Commission study, the total “well-to-plug” efficiency of electric energy — after accounting for production and distribution losses—is only 37%.

The electric dream, then, is profoundly inefficient.

Marketing, Not Miracles

The first illusion came with the “hybrid.”

These cars are still gasoline-powered; the tiny battery is charged by the engine itself. A hybrid that gets 55 mpg is no cleaner than a conventional car achieving the same mileage. A planet full of hybrids would remain 100% addicted to oil.

Elon Musk’s Tesla marketing has taken this one step further.

Musk writes that Tesla’s mission is to move humanity from a “mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy” to a “solar electric economy.” He argues that even if EVs use fossil-generated electricity, they emit less CO2 per mile than conventional cars.

But Musk omits five crucial facts:

1. Repurposing the world’s industrial base for “green” energy demands a vast new fossil-fuel expenditure — factories, grids, and distribution systems—all still dependent on diesel, coal, and mining.

2. The energy return on investment (EROEI) for solar and wind is too low to sustain modern civilization without subsidies.

3. Mining for rare earths — lithium, cobalt, rhodium — remains devastating to land, air, and water.

4. The full life cycle of an EV, from mining to manufacturing, shipping, and eventual disposal, consumes enormous energy. Charging from solar barely scratches the surface of this embedded cost.

5. CO₂ itself is not the problem as detailed in the book Climate CO2 Hoax.

As a former technical expert at the U.N. Environment Programme, I have seen firsthand what real pollution looks like.

CO2 is not soot, not poison, and not a pollutant. It is an odorless gas and an essential plant nutrient. The Earth’s biosphere runs on CO2 — without it, crops and forests would die.

Climate shifts, meanwhile, are natural. The Little Ice Age ended around 1800; a modest warming since then is hardly cause for alarm. Periods of warming and cooling have defined our planet for billions of years.

The Physical Cost of a “Zero Emission” Car

The reality of EV production should end the myth. A single Tesla Model Y battery demands massive resources — about 12 tons of lithium ore, 5 tons of cobalt minerals, 3 tons of nickel ore, and 12 tons of copper ore. Roughly 250 tons of soil must be moved to yield small amounts of these metals. Each battery also requires hundreds of pounds of aluminum, steel, plastic, and graphite.

The giant Caterpillar machines used in this mining can burn hundreds of gallons of diesel every 12 hours. Once complete, we get a so-called “zero-emission” car — built with materials largely sourced from China or Africa, often mined by child labor.

Tesla battery packs cost $5,000–$20,000 and last about ten years. It takes roughly seven years for an EV to reach “net-zero” carbon parity with a gasoline car — by which time the battery’s life is nearly over, and the cycle begins again.

The Real Agenda

The green revolution, like so many fashionable causes, is less about saving the planet than consolidating control — over energy, your money, and your freedom. The word “sustainable” has been hijacked by mega-corporate interests and global institutions, such as the U.N., the WEF, and the Davos elite. Behind the U.N. slogans lies a communist-style totalitarian vision of control over the people: “sustainability” as perpetual dependency, “carbon neutrality” as bureaucratic rationing, and “climate emergency” as a tool of economic centralization.

Electric cars are not liberation — they are compliance devices.

It’s time to call the bluff: driving an electric car does not make you a defender of nature. It makes you a customer in the most profitable deception of the modern age.

*  *  *

Mark Keenan is the author of Climate CO2 Hoax: How Bankers Hijacked the Environment Movement and The War on Men: How the New Gender Politics Is Undermining Western Civilization. A former UN technical expert, he writes on culture, science, and the ideological forces reshaping the West.

Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In response to the Trump administration’s new U.S. policy of reasserting control over the Panama Canal, China and Brazil are exploring the possibility of building a transcontinental railway to provide an advantageous alternative to the Panama Canal. The proposed rail system would potentially run from Brazil’s Atlantic coast, perhaps Ilhéus, Bahia, to Peru’s Pacific coast at Chancay.

The project, known as the Central Bi-Oceanic Railway Corridor (CRBC), has been in consideration since at least 2017. Other proposed projects of a similar nature and objectives have been considered since at least 2013. There are other terms applied to the transoceanic railway project, but essentially, the system would cut across the Amazon rainforest and go over—and likely tunnel through—the Andes mountain range, linking Atlantic and Pacific port facilities.

Many Obstacles and Risks to Overcome

Of course, there’s often a wide gap between planning a project and actually doing it successfully. There are certainly formidable obstacles that would have to be overcome for the project to move forward to completion. The geographic and topographic challenges are considerable. Clearing a path through the Amazon rainforest or tunneling through the Andes mountains aren’t easy engineering feats.

There would also be legal challenges over land rights and environmental resistance to the project and against the development of the necessary supporting infrastructure along the way. The initial costs incurred by each country would also be a significant challenge, as would be establishing a sustainable debt service and maintaining the political will to stick to the plan when these and other obstacles arise.

The Trade Advantages Would Be Significant

Although it would be a complex, multi-year project with significant costs and engineering challenges, there would also be several advantages in doing so. For one, proponents estimate that it would cut shipping time to Asia by 10 to 12 days. With shipping costs rising and economies struggling, those factors aren’t easily ignored.

But it’s not just a railway system that would be built. The system will be a key addition to the deep-water port that China is building in Chancay, Peru, on the Pacific Ocean. Deep-water ports enable the largest cargo ships and container vessels to dock and transfer their goods quickly and easily, without the complications of moving through various locks and channels that come with relying on the passage through a very crowded and slow Panama Canal transit.

A similar deep-water port would be constructed on Brazil’s Atlantic coast, with both ports providing a much smoother and more economical way to move goods around the world.

Much More Than Just a Railroad

Chinese planners envision the CRBC as a comprehensive project that serves the entire trade and transportation cycle. This “dual-track” logistics corridor—combining port infrastructure, rail links, logistics hubs, and industrial zones to permit transit from Pacific to Atlantic (or vice versa)—could well prove to reimagine and redirect global and regional trade flows.

It would also reduce the canal’s chokepoint dependencies and potential vulnerabilities. Compared to all of the benefits the proposed railway, the Panama Canal would become seen as more burdensome—not less—to global trade, rendering it a less-desirable, more costly and time-consuming option.

The transformative potential of the CRBC project cannot be overstated. It would be a continuation of China’s role as a major player in ports, dams, energy, and other infrastructure in the region.

Gaining Strategic Regional Leverage While Avoiding US Control

From China’s perspective, the proposed transcontinental rail system is a way to minimize or even eliminate U.S. dominance of interoceanic trading in the region. The proposed overland route would significantly reduce Beijing’s vulnerability to U.S. control, blockades, and trade leverage over canal access.

That alone is a compelling reason to pursue the project.

But developing an economically superior alternative to the Panama Canal also gives Beijing more leverage and influence over their Latin American trading partners. That influence would largely come at the expense of U.S. influence, thereby diminishing American power in the region. It would also add proof of concept and gravitas to China’s Global South initiative and help expand the BRICS currency influence and use in the Americas.

All of these factors would give China added leverage over its Latin American partners. Those countries helping to build and host parts of the railway system will certainly gain strategic importance. At the same time, their dependency on Chinese capital, products, and technical assistance would expand, allowing Beijing to embed itself into those regional governments and economies more deeply.

Furthermore, the development of deep-water ports in both Brazil and Peru will give the Chinese regime safe havens to park its rapidly expanding navy, and the pretext to establish and maintain a large and adversarial naval warship presence in America’s backyard. A regional threat on such a scale would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. It could reasonably be compared to the re-colonization of the region.

A Multidimensional, Long-Term Impact

Beijing’s plans for the CRBC are as expansive as they are threatening to U.S. regional hegemony and beyond. The resulting impact of the CRBC would be transformational in a multidimensional context, and for the long term. Beijing would reasonably be able to shape trade terms, shipping standards, customs operations, and logistics norms in the region, and much of the rest of the world.

If Beijing succeeds in its CBRC plans, it could elevate the blighted Belt and Road Initiative up to a new level and lift China to the pinnacle of global power. The United States, on the other hand, would find itself out-hustled, out-traded, out-funded, and out-gunned by China in the Americas.

Let’s hope that the United States has plans to preempt or prevent China’s big move in America’s backyard.

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

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

A drone strike that hit southern Somalia on Tuesday may have caused civilian casualties, according to Somali media reports.

Garowe Online reported that the strike hit the Lower Shabelle Region, which neighbors Mogadishu, in an area controlled by al-Shabaab militants. The report did not say how many civilian casualties were caused by the strike, which was likely carried out by US Africa Command.

So far, AFRICOM hasn’t said it launched an airstrike in the area that day, but the command typically reports airstrikes a few days after they occur. Turkish drones are also known to carry out strikes against al-Shabaab in Somalia, but on a much less frequent basis.

Garowe Online also reported that the US-backed Somali government claimed it killed seven al-Shabaab fighters in an operation with support from AFRICOM, though it was conducted further north in the central Hiraan Region.

If the drone strike in Lower Shabelle is confirmed to have been carried out by the US, it would mark at least the 84th US airstrike launched in Somalia this year, as the Trump administration has been bombing the country at a record pace.

The current administration has shattered the record for total US airstrikes in Somalia in a single year, which President Trump previously set at 63 during his first term in 2019.

Last month, AFRICOM took credit for an airstrike in the northern Sanag region that killed a prominent clan elder. AFRICOM claimed he was an al-Shabaab weapons dealer, but that was strongly denied by family members and locals who say the victim, Abdullahi Omar Abdi, was known as a peacemaker.

The US has also been bombing the ISIS affiliate in northeastern Somalia’s Puntland region, where it is backing local forces. AFRICOM said this week that it launched a strike in Puntland on October 20.